Organizational Strategies for XYZ Company Research Paper

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XYZ Company is looking for several measures to promote its growth and profitability in a manner that aligns with its respective organizational goals. This process requires development of strategies for the company that helps in determining the direction it undertakes in its respective industry and market. The ability of this company to achieve its desired goals is dependent and affected by its capability to develop effective operational strategies. Without suitable and effective strategies, it will be relatively difficult for the company to achieve its goals. In essence, XYZ Company cannot achieve desired success and profitability without creating and implementing suitable strategies. The development of effective strategies for this company requires examining its various operational components including marketing, operations, laws, ethics, leadership, globalization, economics, and information systems.

Organizational Strategy

Organizational strategy is defined as the sum of the activities or initiatives a company or business seeks to undertake in order to achieve its long-term goals (Johnson, n.d.). These actions or initiatives are put together to develop a strategic plan for the company. During the process of developing an organizational strategy, it's important to consider the organization's mission, functional and business objectives, and grand strategies. This is primarily because these components are crucial towards determining the strategic direction of the business and ensuring that adopted plans align with established long-term goals.

An organizational strategy must emerge from the vision and mission of the company because mission and vision is the basis of a company's existence and its associated operations. The various activities that the company seeks to undertake must be geared towards fulfilling its vision and mission. While the organization's vision describes what the firm seeks to achieve in the long-term, the mission provides direction to all strategic decisions. Therefore, the vision and mission is the basis with which strategic directions and long-term goals are developed.

The second important consideration is business and functional objectives, which implies that an organizational strategy should be based on short-term and long-term goals. When considering business and functional objectives, organizational strategy should be changed into smaller, short-term plans that guide daily operations and activities. The tactical and functional objectives act as the building blocks of a suitable and effective organizational strategy. In this case, the organization's middle management creates goals and plans for competing in the market whereas lower organizational levels implement these plans across daily operations and activities.

Grand strategies are important considerations when developing an organizational strategy because organizational strategies are usually part of the overall objective of a business. Some of the various elements of an organization's grand strategies include integration, growth, and diversification. In this case, growth refers to the productivity and numerical increase of a company whereas diversification refers to expansion into new markets or inclusion of new products and integration refers to plans for increased competitiveness in existing product lines.

Components of Overall Organizational Strategy

In addition to making these considerations, an overall organizational strategy comprises of several components that are combined to formulate the strategic direction and decisions of the business or company. Some of the most important components of the overall strategy for an organization like XYZ Company include

Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is basically defined as the ability or potential of an organizational leader/manager to express the organization's strategic vision in a manner that persuades others to embrace it and work towards accomplishing it. Based on this definition, strategic leaders utilize organizational strategy and plans in management of employees towards the achievement of established long-term goals. Through this process, these leaders develop organizational structure and culture, allocate resources, and create strategic vision. Therefore, strategic leaders work towards promoting strategic productivity through creating an environment where employees work towards achieving organizational goals while meeting their needs. However, the ability of organizational leaders to exercise strategic leadership requires them to have potential to predict and understand the working environment.

For XYZ Company, one of the important components that should be developed and established in the overall strategies of the company is strategic leadership. The organization needs to develop measures that will help enhance the capabilities of its managers to predict and understand the workplace and create a vision towards strategic productivity. The company can achieve this through training its leaders or managers essential skills for strategic leadership. These essential skills for strategic leadership include anticipation, challenge, interpretation, decision-making, ability to learn, alignment capabilities.

With regards to anticipation, the organization's leaders should conduct market research and business simulations that involve talking to its business partners like customers and suppliers to understand their challenges (Schoemaker, Krupp & Howland, 2013).

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These leaders should develop their abilities to anticipate through scanning and evaluating the environment for indications of change. The other vital elements for enhancing leaders' ability to anticipate include scenario planning and attending relevant events and conferences.

Secondly, strategic leaders develop by challenging their own and others' views and assumptions while encouraging different perspectives regarding business processes and operations. Some of the measures to develop these skills include encouraging debate and examining whether long-standing assumptions affect business operations positively or negatively. Third, the ability to interpret can be developed through analyzing ambiguous data, being proactive in finding mission information and evidence, and observation. On the other hand, decision-making skills are developed through consideration of pilots or experiments before long-term commitments and separating big decisions into smaller parts. Organizational learning is developed by creating a culture of inquiry, establishing after-action reviews, and examining root causes of failed initiatives. The company's leaders can enhance their alignment skills through identifying common ground and realizing buy-in among the company's stakeholders with divergent views and goals.

Functional Level Strategy

Functional level strategy is also an important element to an organization's management because organizations are made of different functions. Each function within a business organization must work towards obtaining and creating necessary resources that contribute to the firm's competitive advantage in its respective market or industry (Gutterman, 2011). During this process, every function within an organization is dependent on various specific methodologies for lessening costs and differentiating products/services. This is primarily because of the need for every function to ensure quality, innovation, superior efficiency, and customer responsiveness. The significance of functional level strategy also emerges from its role in supporting business level and corporate level strategies. Some of the important aspects of functional level strategy include marketing plans, operational plans, IT strategy, and human resources strategy.

Given the importance of functional level strategy, XYZ Company should establish suitable and effective function strategies in its various operational departments in order to enhance its competitive advantage in the market. This would require identifying unique competencies and skills for efficient production and strong brand reputation. As part of functional level core competencies, XYZ Company should execute its various functional activities at lower costs and increased efficiency as compared to its competitors. Alternatively, the company could consider executing certain functional activities through differentiating its products/services from those provided by its rivals. By focusing on low costs in its functional activities, XYZ Company will achieve low cost advantage whereas focus on product differentiation will enable the company to realize differentiation advantage over competitors.

Business Level Strategy

One of the most significant core competencies of a business organization is to satisfy customer needs or preferences while generating above average profits or returns ("Business-Level Strategy," n.d.). The ability of a company to achieve this goal is largely affected by the kind of business level strategies it establishes for its operations. Business level strategies generally provide comprehensive information regarding actions or initiatives undertaken by a firm to provide customer value which contributing to competitive advantage. Therefore, the focus of business-level strategy is the company's position in the market in comparison to that of competitors and the five forces of competition. An organization establishes effective business level strategies through exploiting its core competencies in the particular product or service market it operates in.

Since customers are the foundation or essence of a company's operations, XYZ Company can develop effective strategies through examining three important aspects relating to these strategies. First, the company should determine the customers it seeks to serve or the target market to be reached by its products/services. Customers or target market is identified through consideration of their demographics, lifestyle choices, consumption patterns, personality traits, geographic factors, organizational size, and characteristics of the industry or market. Secondly, the company's management should determine the kinds of products and/or services needed by potential customers or target market. Actually, the key to obtaining and maintaining competitive advantages over rivals is understanding customers. This also requires ability to forecast and meet the current and future needs of identified target market or customers. Third, the company should answer how it's going to satisfy customers' needs depending on their tastes, values, and preferences. During this process, the organization must examine the ability of its resources and internal capacities to satisfy customers' needs through value-driven strategies.

Corporate Level Strategy

Corporate level strategy primarily focuses on answering what businesses and markets the company want to operate in. The ability of a company to….....

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