Developments in management and organizational thinking

Résumé du document

In the era of the mass production from 1945 to 1980, companies were directed to produce identical products, with hierarchical structures, all in a stable environment. In the present "era of information", companies must produce products with dynamic structures in a turbulent environment as the only constant is change. To make this environment more and more turbulent and changing, companies use strategic tools which make it possible to make an internal and external analysis of the company. On one hand, the external analysis includes the general analysis of the environment, the analysis of competition and also the analysis of the industry. On the other hand, the internal analysis includes the analysis of the resources, the analysis functions and the analysis of the performances.

Extraits

[...] A. (1993). «Empirical support for a paradigmatic theory of strategic success behavior of environment serving organization», International Review of Strategic Management, Vol pp. 173-203. - Porter M.E. [1985], “Competitive Advantage”, The Free Press, NewYork. -Proctor,T.(1997) “Establishing a strategy direct” Management decision vol 35 University press - Bourgeois, L.J (1980) “Strategy and environment a conceptual integration” Academy review vol 5 p 25-39 - Castrogiovanni,C.( 1991) Environmental munificence a theorical assessment »Academy of management Review Vol 16 p 542-543 - Peteraf M.A. [...]

[...] It makes it possible to gather in the same table opportunities and threats of the environment external of a company, as well as forces and weaknesses of the object of study which it is necessary to take into account to succeed in innovating and being better than competitors. It was creates by Ansoff in the Fifties. In a turbulent environment, it nowadays appears difficult to use strategic tool SWOT because it requires a rather long time. Thus, with the reactivity and innovations, companies less and less have time to set up a good strategy. The company will be able to never know perfectly its environment in an uncertainty world. Moreover, the model Porter is complementary to analysis SWOT. [...]

[...] The concept of environment is central in strategic management. According to Venkatraman and Prescott (1990), the strategy must be in coherence with the environment to reach a good performance level. Nowadays, companies install strategic tools in an environment very turbulent and changing. The level of turbulence of a market will be defined like the extent and the frequency of the changes in technology and the expressed needs (Julien and Marchesnay, 1988). The concept of turbulence was introduced by work of F.E E mery and E.L Trist 1965. [...]

[...] Complexity corresponds to the heterogeneity and the extent of the activities of an organization (Dess and Beard, 1984). It can represent the competitive measurement of the number of configurations that a firm can ideally regard as good for its own strategy (Chakravarthy, 1997). The dynamism involves the absence of models by reinforcing the unpredictable character of the environment (Dess and Beard, 1984). Uncertainty is the lack of information on environmental factors making impossible the forecast of the impact of a specific decision on the organization and where one will be able to give probabilities as for the impact of the environmental factors on organization (Morris and Al, 1995). [...]

[...] Especially, it results adapting to the past, possibly to the present but certainly not in preparing the future . The whole of these explanations induced new reflections, which call into question the bases of the traditional approach to propose new ideas. To conclude, according to Pall Knott, term “strategic tools” is used to encompass the full range of concepts, ideas, and techniques and approaches that structure or influence this activity. There exists much of “strategic tool” but this essay deals with the principal ones. Tools such as SWOT and Porter analyse the company. [...]