Strategic management: vision, mission and value statements

Strategic Management and SWOT Analysis

One of the most important aspects to the success and profitability of a business is business strategy, which should be designed in a manner that helps in the achievement of the desired goals and objectives. For a business strategy to be effective in ensuring the success and profitability of an organization, it should capitalize on the organization's strongest capabilities and explore the various opportunities in its industry and market. Additionally, a business strategy should focus on lessening risks related to the organization's weaknesses and threats from its operational environment and market. Some of the important considerations to make when designing a business strategy include the vision, mission and value statements of the organization and creating buy-in of the strategy by the leadership team.

What Makes a Strategy Successful or Unsuccessful?

Creation of Vision, Mission and Value Statements

One of the important considerations when developing a business strategy is the organization's vision, mission and value statements. The vision is the company's idea of what they want to become. On the contrary, the mission is how they are going to accomplish this and the values are the core principles that will guide the company to their vision. Value statements determine what an organization stands for and provides guidelines for its operations and business practices. Given the significance of an organization's vision, mission and values statements, the creation of these aspects have an important role in the development of the overall strategy for a business organization.

The creation of the vision, mission and value statements are critical in the development of the overall strategy because it provides the framework with which an organization's direction is determined and included in the strategy (Hawthorne, n.d.). The overall strategy is determined based on the direction established by the company's vision, mission, and value statements. The crucial role of the company's mission in the formation of the overall strategy is that it clarifies the purpose and basic, measurable objectives of the firm (Hawthorne, n.d.). The overall strategy is developed based on the mission statement in order to reflect the organization's direction with regards to its business operations and practices. While vision statements also describe a company's purpose, they also help provide inspiration and govern the behaviors of employees. In this regard, the creation of a vision plays an important role in formation of overall strategy by ensuring the company's direction is designed based on its purpose. Additionally, the vision statement ensures that the strategy is developed in a manner that encourages and inspires employees towards realizing the company's purpose. Value statements provide the basis for nurturing desired behaviors within the organization and provide principles to be considered when developing the overall strategy. Moreover, these statements provide guidelines through which the overall strategy ensures the accomplishment of the firm's ultimate goal and vision. Vision, mission and value statements act as the basic building blocks for a company's overall strategy through providing a sense of direction and guiding behaviors of a business' stakeholders.

Importance of Leadership Team buy-in of the Strategy

Once an overall business strategy has been created, its implementation is crucial towards enhanced success and profitability of the organization. An important aspect towards the implementation of a business strategy is the creation of leadership team buy-in of the strategy. The leadership team plays an important role in strategy formulation and implementation because of its impact on the strategic management process. Generally, an organization's leadership determines its vision and mission as well as the implementation of effective strategies towards the realization of the vision and mission (Azhar et al., 2013). The role of the leadership of an organization in the crafting and implementation of its strategic vision is that it functions as the link between the soul and body of the organization (Azhar et al., 2013). During this process, the leadership team assimilates the vision of the organization and ensures that strategies are developed and implemented in a manner that reflects and is in line with this vision. In this case, the leadership is involved in decision making and creation of the corporate culture based on the vision of the organization.

Given the role of the leadership in acting as the link between the soul and body of the organization, the creation of leadership team buy-in of the overall strategy is crucial towards organizational success and profitability. The significance of this process is attributable to the fact that if the leadership team is not on board with the strategy of the company it will not be successful. If buy-in of the overall strategy is not created for the leadership team, the organization's leaders are likely to sabotage the success of the strategy in achievement of organizational goals and objectives either knowingly or unknowingly. Without leadership team buy-in of the strategy, there will be disconnect between the soul and body of the organization, which will in turn hinder the effective execution of the strategy. When leadership team buy-in is created, the organization's leaders make effective decisions and create suitable corporate cultures for the execution of the strategy in a manner that reflects company vision, mission, and values.

Analytical Tools in Performing a Situational Analysis

Situational analysis is a term used to refer to a collection of techniques that are utilized by organizational managers to examine the firm's internal and external environments in order to understand its capabilities, business environment, and customers. Situational analysis is an important component for ensuring the success of a business strategy because it provides insights regarding the firm's internal and external environments. The insights obtained from this process are utilized to formulate and implement a company's strategic direction in a manner that helps in the achievement of desired business goals and objectives. Without consideration of an organization's internal and external environment, a business strategy will relatively be unsuccessful because of probable failure to incorporate important factors when during formulation. The main objective for conducting situation analysis is to understand the organization's position with regards to products and/or services, its overall survival, and environmental conditions affecting it. There are several analytical tools that business managers can utilize to conduct situational analysis including Porters Five Forces Analysis, SWOT Analysis, Resource and Capability Analysis, Competitive Advantage Test, Fit Test, and Strong Performance Test.

SWOT Analysis is defined as a framework for evaluating the company's internal and external environment based on its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This structured method provides insights regarding these four important components of a business organization. On the contrary, Porter's Five Forces Analysis is an assessment framework or tool that is used to evaluate an industry rather than a company (Richards, n.d.). These two evaluation frameworks are utilized by business managers and professionals in strategic planning activities since they provide insights and answers relating to the internal and external business environments of a business.

SWOT Analysis is important for a business since it provides information regarding the organization's internal and external business environments. The strengths and weaknesses of the organization are its internal factors whereas the opportunities and threats are external factors. This test is usually carried out based on the overall goals and objectives of the business organization in order to provide valuable information about the company's abilities to achieve these goals or objectives. In light of its significance, SWOT analysis plays a crucial role in the process of strategy formulation. The impact of SWOT analysis on the process of crafting a successful strategy is attributable to the information it provides regarding the internal and external factors in the business environment. In essence, SWOT analysis provides information that is utilized in crafting a strategy. During strategy formulation, business decision-makers consider the attainability of the company's objectives based on its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The strategy is developed in a manner that reflects internal and external factors of the business in order to help in achieving the desire business objectives and goals. If a strategy is not based on the internal capabilities of the organization and external factors affecting its operations, it is considered unsuccessful.

In contrast, Porter's Five Forces analysis provides valuable information regarding the industry where an organization operates. While this test provides information regarding external factors, it primarily focuses on the industry or market in which the company operates. Through this information, an organization's leadership obtains information regarding competitive intensity and market attractiveness (Downey, 2007). In essence, the test is utilized to assess the company's competitive strength and its position in the industry/market. This information is crucial when crafting strategies because the competitive position and strength is taken into account when developing the strategic direction of a company. During strategy formulation, information from Porter's Five Forces analysis is utilized to determine the direction of the business towards enhancing competitive strength and position. According to Downey (2007), strategic analysts utilize this test to examine whether a business' products and/or services could be profitable. In this case, the analysis impacts the process of crafting business strategy through fostering an understanding of industry competitiveness and position.

Importance of Alignment between Strategy, People, and Corporate Culture

Organizational alignment is an important consideration for leaders because of the significance of alignment in promoting the success of a business strategy. Organizations in the modern business environment are increasingly facing the need to ensure they have the right alignment between strategy, human resources, and corporate culture. Corporate culture is a term used to refer to a set of beliefs, values, and norms that drive the behaviors of employees as they carry out their roles and responsibilities towards realization of organizational goals and objectives. It is important to have a suitable alignment between an organization's strategy, people, and corporate culture in order to enhance organizational performance and productivity.

Corporate culture affects nearly every aspect of an organization's operations that range from leadership decision-making to everyday activities. When corporate culture is effectively aligned with human resources and strategy, it propels the organization to high performance. This improved performance is brought by the fact that corporate culture provides the framework for developing and achieving strategic objectives and guides the planning process (Blevins, 2015). Through aligning corporate culture and strategy, individual employees are motivated towards enhancing their contributions and input to organizational processes, which in turn contributes to improved performance. The alignment helps to ensure that there is harmony in organizational operations, which is crucial towards enhancing the success of the strategy.

For example, if an organization's leaders develop a strategy and ensure employees have necessary resources and capabilities towards achieving this strategy, the lack of a suitable environment could hinder success and discourage employees. While strategy and people are crucial towards promoting organizational success, corporate culture provides a suitable environment through which all organizational stakeholders can work in harmony towards achieving the desired business goals and objectives. This essentially means that ensuring that the right working environment or corporate culture exists is as important as the other factors of organizational success and profitability. However, none of these components is more important than the other since they need to work in harmony to ensure success.

Some of the most important factors relating to corporate culture include ethics, values, and norms, which have significant impacts on results. As previously mentioned, corporate culture refers to a set of values, norms and beliefs that guide employee behaviors. Given the significance of corporate culture in ensuring a suitable working environment exists, ethics, values and norms play a crucial role in organizational operations and business practices. Generally, values, norms and ethics influence the behaviors of organizational stakeholders, especially leaders and employees. These three elements play an important role in determining how an organization does it things in relation to achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Therefore, the establishment of suitable values, norms and ethics helps in generating better results with regards to profitability and success. On the contrary, unsuitable norms, values and ethics have negative impacts on organizational performance since they do not promote suitable actions and business practices that help in realizing desired business goals.

SWOT Analysis

The company under evaluation for this assignment is Healthy Fruits Company, which is a medium-sized business organization with an employee base of 80 workers and a small scale production line. The company manufactures and sells several food and fruit items including fruit & nut candies and fruit & nut health bars. Since inception, the company has developed to become one of the leading organizations in its market given that it sells its products through wholesale, retail stores, and mail order.

The strengths of Healthy Fruits Company include unique products such as handmade fruit candy and chocolates, a dedicated and committed management team, knowledgeable employees, committed-long time employees, and mail order catalog sales. The other strengths include a strong brand name and position because the company has been operating since 1918 and tourism through local store front. On the contrary, the weaknesses of this business organization include high fixed expenses, resistance to change because the business has been in operation since 1918, health conscious attitude of the public, has a small factory that cannot compete with large scale operations, and expensive packaging or shipping suppliers.

Despite these weaknesses, the company has several opportunities including new markets in countries in Europe and Asia that can be served through mail order, the need for healthy alternatives i.e. fruit bars, and the likelihood of the company to go small and focus on high end specialty market. The other opportunities include large internet market, increasing internet sales, and younger more competitive sales, management. The threats to the firm include intense competition in the market, health conscious market, which decreases sales for candy, extensive and expensive food industry labeling requirements, and increased minimum wage.

SWOT analysis impacts the company's strategic decisions and planning by providing information regarding internal and external factors of the business. This information is utilized to develop and implement strategies based on the internal capabilities of the business, opportunities in the market, and dealing with threats to success. Based on this analysis, some of the changes that could be made by the business include internal realignment, streamlining labor intensive jobs, focusing on healthy alternatives, and expansion into new markets in Europe and Asia. This can be achieved through eliminating old salaried employees who are past their retirement age, establishing new computer system, and more advertising.

Business Report

Executive Summary

The vision of Healthy Fruits Company is to be the leading specialty candy making company throughout the United States. The mission for this company is to strive for excellent quality with a 100% commitment to customers. To realize this vision and mission, the organization is guided by some values across all operations as shown in the value statement. The value statement for this business organization is that through honesty, integrity and quality, the company will ensure that it realizes its vision and mission while bringing 100% customer satisfaction. The strategy of Healthy Fruits Company is to position itself as a market leader in the specialty fruit candy industry through creating unique products and ensuring maximum customer satisfaction. This strategy is based on the company's vision of being a leading firm in this industry and its mission of delivering 100% customer satisfaction. The execution of this strategy include providing unique handmade fruit candy and chocolates, utilizing a strong brand name and position to enhance competitive strength, and utilizing several distribution channels to market these unique products.

Overview of the Company

Healthy Fruits Company, which is a medium-sized business organization with an employee base of 80 workers and a small scale production line. The company manufactures and sells several food and fruit items including fruit & nut candies and fruit & nut health bars. Since inception, the company has developed to become one of the leading organizations in its market given that it sells its products through wholesale, retail stores, and mail order. Customers who purchase the firm's products through these distribution channels are provided a money back guarantee if not satisfied. The company currently targets markets in the United States, Mexico and Canada whereas some European and Asian countries provide opportunities/markets for expansion of Healthy Fruits Company's operations. The geographic scope of the organization's current operations is in Washington and Oregon where most of its products are sold.

The vision, mission and values statement of Health Fruits Company provide an indication of the goals and objectives of the company as well as crucial factors that govern employee behavior and business practices. As shown in the previous section, the vision and mission of this company shows its objective of becoming the leading firm in the specialty candy market through high level customer satisfaction. Based on its mission statement, Health Fruits Company works towards becoming a leader in its respective industry while maintaining a huge focus on customer satisfaction. In essence, customer satisfaction is basis for the company's operations as it seeks to provide customers with healthy and nutritious specialty fruits. The company's operations are based on integrity, honesty, and quality, which are considered as important components towards enhanced customer satisfaction. This implies that all organizational practices and operations are based on three important values honesty, quality, and integrity. Therefore, business decisions at Healthy Fruits Company are made on the basis of these three important values, which are considered critical for achieving customer satisfaction and becoming a leader in the market.

Based on the vision, mission, and values statement of the company, the strategy of Healthy Fruits Company is to position itself as a market leader in the specialty fruit candy industry through creating unique products and ensuring maximum customer satisfaction. This strategy is brought by its vision to become a leading company in this market and the consideration of customer satisfaction as an important aspect towards the realization of the overall business purpose or objective. The company strives towards exceeding customers' expectations by providing healthy fruit items that are developed in consideration of health guidelines and nutrition. The most important components of Healthy Fruits Company's overall business strategy are market position (competitive strength) and customer satisfaction. In this regard, the company works towards utilizing the most suitable production processes for its fruit items and ensuring that its resources are utilized in a manner that helps in the creation of such products. Additionally, the company incorporates customers' needs, preferences, demands and expectations in its production processes to ensure 100% customer satisfaction and obtain competitive advantage over its rivals.

Importance of Testing Competitive Strategy in Developing Business Strategy

As shown in Task 1, one of the most important factors towards ensuring and enhancing the success of a business strategy is testing using various analytical tools. There are three tests of a good competitive strategy that are vital in the development of a business strategy including fit test, competitive advantage test, and strong performance test. The three test of a good competitive strategy is critical in the development of Health Fruits Company's business strategy because of their role in determining the competitive strength and position of the company. These tests provide valuable information regarding the company's strength, position and potential performance vis-a-vis the various competitors in the market. The information is then utilized in strategy formation to help in creating a strategic direction that is geared towards enhancing the firm's competitiveness in an industry that is characterized by intense rivalry.

A Goodness of Fit Test is used to examine the link between an organization's internal and external factors and its own capabilities and objectives. Based on this test, Healthy Fruits Company has the capabilities of becoming a market leader in this industry largely because of its unique handmade fruit candy and chocolate products as well as focus on healthy alternatives. The other capabilities of the company relative to its strategy include a strong brand name and position, suitable distribution channels, and a wider geographic scope. With regards to external factors, the company is operating in a market characterized by intense competition and faces the need to expand into other markets in order to enhance its profitability. Healthy Fruits Company has competitive strengths over its rivals in the market because of its unique products and has the capacity to expand into new markets in Europe and Asia. A competitive advantage test is usually carried out to examine how a strategy can generate a competitive edge over rivals (Barnat, 2014). In this regard, the company's strategy provides a competitive edge over its rivals since it focuses on ensuring customer satisfaction, which is a crucial factor for business success. A strong performance test helps indicate whether the company's strategy contributes to gain in profits and/or strengthening its competitive strength and position. For Healthy Fruits Company, the strategy contributes to the achievement of both performance improvement elements. As the company continues to provide unique products and expand into new markets, profitability is enhanced. Additionally, by ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and expanding into new markets, Healthy Fruits Company enhances competitive strength and position.

Detailed SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Healthy Fruits Company include unique products such as handmade fruit candy and chocolates, a dedicated and committed management team, knowledgeable employees, committed-long time employees, and mail order catalog sales. The other strengths include a strong brand name and position because the company has been operating since 1918 and tourism through local store front. On the contrary, the weaknesses of this business organization include high fixed expenses, resistance to change because the business has been in operation since 1918, health conscious attitude of the public, has a small factory that cannot compete with large scale operations, and expensive packaging or shipping suppliers.

Despite these weaknesses, the company has several opportunities including new markets in countries in Europe and Asia that can be served through mail order, the need for healthy alternatives i.e. fruit bars, and the likelihood of the company to go small and focus on high end specialty market. The other opportunities include large internet market, increasing internet sales, and younger more competitive sales, management. The threats to the firm include intense competition in the market, health conscious market, which decreases sales for candy, extensive and expensive food industry labeling requirements, and increased minimum wage.

SWOT analysis impacts the company's strategic decisions and planning by providing information regarding internal and external factors of the business. This information is utilized to develop and implement strategies based on the internal capabilities of the business, opportunities in the market, and dealing with threats to success. For instance, the company develops strategies towards enhancing its competitive advantage based on its internal resources and external factors in the business environment that could affect its operations. During this process, the strategy also focuses on addressing factors and issues that could threaten its long-term operations and success. The current strategy of being a leader in this industry while focusing on maximum customer satisfaction is based on the company's internal strengths of unique products, strong brand name and position, and suitable distribution channels. Additionally, this strategy is based on opportunities that exist in the current market i.e. expansion to European and Asian markets as well as dealing with the threat of a health-conscious public through focusing on healthy alternatives.

Based on this analysis, some of the changes that could be made by the business include internal realignment, streamlining labor intensive jobs, focusing on healthy alternatives, and expansion into new markets in Europe and Asia. This can be achieved through eliminating old salaried employees who are past their retirement age, establishing new computer system, and more advertising. Internal realignment will help in reducing the costs of operations through reducing the number of employees who are past their retirement age and ensuring less fixed expenses. Since the current computer system in the company is a double entry system that has been in use for more than three decades, the adoption of a new computer system will help streamline operations by making them less labor intensive and providing job consolidations.

Plan for Maintaining Sustainable Competitive Advantage

According to Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson (2008), sustainable competitive advantage is achieved through formulating and implementing a value-creating strategy. In this case, the strategy incorporates integrated and coordinated measures that focus on exploiting the company's core competencies and resource capabilities (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008). The creation of such a strategy that competitors are seemingly unable to duplicate contributes to sustainable competitive advantage that enhances the competitive strength and position of a company. In addition to the formulation of a value-creation strategy, the process of developing a plan for sustainable competitive advantage may also involve conducting a test. VRIN tests are the most commonly used tools for developing sustainable competitive advantage since this test defines the requisite characteristics resources to promote the realization of competitive advantage (Talaja, 2012).

Healthy Fruits Company has valuable resources and capabilities such as strong brand name and position brought by its rich history of operations since 1918, a team of competent committed long-term employees, and dedicated and committed management. These characteristics resources are sources of greater value to the company since they enable effective operations at relatively lesser costs while enhancing profitability. Secondly, the company has rare resources with regards to the products it manufactures and sells to customers. The rare resources are the unique products i.e. handmade fruit candy and chocolate products. Third, the company's unique products and rich history of operations are inimitable, which enhances competitive advantage. Additionally, Health Fruits Company's resources are non-substitutable because it produces healthy fruit items to a public that is becoming more health-conscious. As the company becomes more health-conscious, there are no other products that can act as functional substitutes to healthy food and/or fruit items.

The VRIN test demonstrates that Healthy Fruits Company has strong internal resources and capabilities that are tied into the strategic plan as they act as sources of sustainable competitive advantage. The company can utilize these resources and capabilities towards sustainable competitive advantage. In this case, the first step in the plan for sustainable competitive advantage is continuous focus on healthy food items and alternatives. The company should not only rely on its existing unique products but constantly focus on healthy alternatives and incorporate them into its product line. The second step in this plan is to capitalize on the rich history of operations to expand into new markets and focus on high end specialty market. This would entail embracing technology into current operations to help improve operations through streamlining work processes. The third step for sustainable competitive advantage based on the company's resources and capabilities is to increase internet sales and mail order sales, which are brought by expansion into new markets.

Implication of Competing in International Markets

International markets provide an opportunity for businesses to expand their operations and enhance their competitive advantages, profitability, and success (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008). In light of increased globalization and technological advancements, companies in the modern business environment are faced with the need to expand into new markets, especially international markets. Healthy Fruits Company is an example of a business that faces the need to expand into international markets since they provide opportunities for enhanced profitability and competitive strength and position. As shown in the SWOT analysis, Healthy Fruits Company should expand into international markets, especially in Europe and Asia. However, such expansion initiatives have some implications for the company.

One of the advantages of competing internationally for this company is improved competitive strength and position. An evaluation of this industry shows that businesses are increasingly expanding into overseas markets. Additionally, countries in Europe and Asia provide numerous opportunities for growth because of the huge potential customer base as the public has become more health-conscious. Healthy Fruits Company will enhance its competitive strength and position through expanding internationally and reaching out to this huge potential customer base. Secondly, competing internationally will enhance the firm's profitability because of the huge customer base in these markets. Third, international markets could provide an opportunity and mechanism for the company to lower costs of operations because of cost advantages generated by these markets. The reduced costs of operations are brought by increase in sales volumes and economies of scale that reduce the overall and average costs of production. The other advantage of competing internationally is diversification of business risk through diversified operations across several countries.

Despite these advantages, Healthy Fruits Company is likely to face some challenges when competing internationally. The disadvantages of competing internationally for this company include political, economic, and cultural risks. The political risks are probable interference with business by the government of the host country, which could negatively affect operations. Economic risks are economic policies and conditions in a host country that could affect the company's operations within that country. Cultural risks are differences in norms, language, customer preferences, and customs that are likely to harm a firm's operations. While these risks pose significant threats to business operations, Healthy Fruits Company should expand into international markets. However, the expansion initiatives should be preceded by comprehensive evaluation of a country's political, economic, social, environmental, technological, and legal factors.

Diversification Strategy

Diversification strategy is implemented by businesses to help enhance shareholder value based on the premise that a diversified group of businesses perform better when under a single entity than when operating independently (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008). Diversification strategy is usually considered by businesses that seek to enhance their operations and profitability through enhancing performance benefits. However, such decisions usually involve determining whether an organization's entry into the business can pass the better-off test, attractiveness test, and the cost-of-entry test (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008).

Since Healthy Fruits Company has a small factory that cannot compete on large scale operations and seeks to expand internationally, a diversification strategy would be beneficial in enhancing shareholder value and improving the firm's competitiveness. The most suitable diversification strategy for this business is related diversification, which has numerous potential benefits for this firm. Some of the potential benefits of related diversification for Healthy Fruits Company include enhanced competitive advantage and enhanced value chain activities that are brought by strategic-fit relationships. Related diversification is a suitable strategy to enhance the company's ability to compete on large scale operations because the strategic-fit relationships brought by such diversification will improve value chain activities by providing a bigger factory for production processes. This diversification strategy will help enhance value chain processes of Healthy Fruits Company towards effective international operations. When utilizing this strategy, the company should create value chain relationships with the other company. The value chain relationships with the other company should be geared towards enhancing cost-saving efficiencies and improving organizational resource strengths and capabilities. For example, through related diversification, Healthy Fruits Company will leverage on the supply chain processes of the sister business and incorporate them into its current factory and value chain. The related diversification strategy should involve acquisition, which is the most commonly used approach for diversification (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008). Through acquisition, Healthy Fruits Company will enhance its capability for large scale operations through acquiring the other firm's factor, supply chain network, and value chain.

Ethical Consideration of the Strategy

Strategy formulation and implementation requires ethical considerations since businesses need to be socially responsible across all operations. Actually, there are some ethical considerations that have been established for companies, especially those that operate in international markets. Business manager and leaders are required to incorporate these ethical considerations when developing and executing business strategies as well as across organizational activities and processes. Adhering to ethical considerations and standards helps in development of a sound business strategy, which contributes to customer satisfaction and loyalty and enhanced organizational operations and performance. The negative costs of ethical wrongdoings include litigation costs brought by lawsuits, decreased profitability due to bad reputation, and negative impacts on operations.

One of the ethical of Healthy Fruits Company's business strategy is customer relations, which is crucial for success. This ethical consideration is evident in the emphasis on customer satisfaction as the premise for enhancing the company's competitive strength and position. In this case, the strategic planning process for formulating and implementing this business strategy entailed focusing on business aspects that would enhance customer satisfaction. An increase in customer satisfaction would in turn contribute to repeat business, which translates to customer loyalty. The benefits of the firm's fruit products are not exaggerated while customers' needs, preferences, and demands are taken into consideration during production. Generally, Healthy Fruits Company prioritizes 100% customer satisfaction as the basis for operations more than its market or competitive position.

The other important ethical consideration of the firm's strategy and operations is social responsibility. Social responsibility is an ethical consideration that entails finding the balance between economic responsibilities, legal responsibilities, ethical responsibilities, and philanthropic responsibilities (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008). A company is considered socially responsible if it finds the right balance between these various responsibilities in its operations. Social responsibility is important for the business because it helps ensure that while the company maximizes profits, it complies with relevant laws in its operations and abides by moral and just social while contributing to the betterment of the society and community. In essence, social responsibility is important for a business because it helps maximize shareholder value while taking care of the society.

Planned Execution of Strategy

The execution or implementation of a business strategy is a process that entails a series of steps because it's an operation-driven activity. The multi-faceted nature of the execution of a business strategy is because the process is impacted by corporate culture, staffing, management, and management philosophy. In this regard, the execution of a strategy requires establishing a suitable corporate culture, ensuring the company has the right number of employees who are provided with adequate resources, establishing the right management philosophy, and ensuring the management leads the process. Similar to strategy formulation, the execution of a strategy requires the whole management team to get involved as the strategy is pushed into functional areas and operating units of the company (Thompson, Strickland III & Gamble, 2008).

For Healthy Fruits Company, the execution of the crafted strategy will involve a series of steps that are centered on the balance between management philosophy, corporate culture, staffing, and management. First, the organization's management will develop policies and procedures that promote the execution of the strategy. Once the strategy has been crafted, the senior management will examine current organizational policies, processes, and resources. These policies and processes will be reviewed and changed to reflect the new business strategy and promote its smooth implementation. Once the review has been carried out and right policies and processes instituted, the next step in this process will be to staff the company with managers and employees who are capable of executing this strategy well. In this case, a small strategy team comprising of members from the senior management team and departmental managers will be constituted to help with ensuring implementation of the strategy throughout the organization. The strategy team will mandated with the task of overseeing the implementation process and reporting to the whole management team regarding progress. Additionally, the company will lay off older employees who are past their retirement age and hire new young competent employees who can execute the strategy. The older employees will be laid off because they are past their retirement age and may not execute the strategy well.

Third, all departmental leaders will be required to conduct an evaluation and provide feedback regarding the required resources in their respective units for execution of the strategy. The senior management will examine the capabilities of existing resources to help in smooth and effective implementation of the strategy. This will entail examining whether the current computer system can help in effective strategy execution. The information will be used to create a budget for purchasing, installing, and maintaining a new computer system as well as integrating it with the current system. Once this is carried out, the company will develop a new computer system throughout all operating units as part of installing suitable information and operating systems to enable the personnel carry out their strategic roles proficiently. The strategy team will work with leaders of the operating units and functional areas to ensure the new system works effectively and better than the current double entry system.

The new system will be continuously evaluated and improved as part of continuous improvement in strategy execution activities. The improvements will be made to support large internet sales given the large internet market, lessen the costs of packaging, and enhance mail order catalog sales. Employees will be given monthly incentives and bonuses for enhanced profitability and customer satisfaction as part of tying rewards and incentives to strategy execution. These continuous improvements and rewards will be part of creating a strategy-supportive corporate culture and organizational capabilities for successful strategy execution. The strategy team, which will work in collaboration with the senior management and leaders of functional areas or operating units, will be part of a strategy-supportive organizational structure.

Using Return on Investments and Cost-Benefit Analysis

The formulation, execution, and analysis of this strategy will be impacted by return on investments (ROI) and cost-benefit analysis. During the strategy formulation and execution process, a cost-benefit analysis will be carried out to determine whether the strategy generates significant benefits for Healthy Fruits Company relative to its costs. Information from the cost-benefit analysis will be utilized to determine whether the strategy will be suitable for the company with regards to the costs of development and implementation versus its benefits. The cost-benefit analysis will generate information regarding the required resources and costs for strategy development and execution in comparison to the current organizational capabilities and resources. The potential benefits of the strategy in relation to improved operations and profitability will also be determined through the cost-benefit analysis, which in turn impacts the strategy by demonstrating whether it's suitable for the business. On the other hand, return on investment calculations will help show whether the strategy is generating the projected or anticipated benefits shown in the cost-benefit analysis. This information is utilized to make any necessary improvements on the strategy or the working environment to enhance the effectiveness of the strategy and increase revenue.

In conclusion, Healthy Fruits Company is a medium-sized company that seeks to become a leader in the specialty candy industry and is committed to 100% customer satisfaction through the values of honesty, integrity, and quality. The company's business strategy is to become a leader in its industry through production of unique quality products that guarantee customer satisfaction. The main ethical consideration for this business strategy is customer relations given the focus on customer satisfaction as the premise for successful operations and enhanced profitability. The execution of this strategy will entail a series of steps that are managed by the whole management team. This will entail providing unique handmade fruit candy and chocolates, utilizing a strong brand name and position to enhance competitive strength, and utilizing several distribution channels to market these unique products.

References

Azhar et al. (2013, September). The Role of Leadership in Strategy Formulation and Implementation. International Journal of Management & Organizational Studies, 1(2), 32-38.

Barnat, R. (2014). Strategic Management: Formulation and Implementation. Retrieved January 13, 2017, from http://www.strategy-formulation.24xls.com/en317

Blevins, B. (2015, January 15). 5 Ways to Align your Organizational Strategy and Culture. Retrieved January 13, 2017, from https://gothamculture.com/2015/01/15/5-ways-align-organizational-strategy-culture/

Downey, J. (2007, October). Strategic Analysis Tools. Retrieved January 13, 2017, from http://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/ImportedDocuments/cid_tg_strategic_analysis_tools_nov07.pdf.pdf

Hawthorne, M. (n.d.). The Purpose of Mission and Value Statements in Strategic Planning. Retrieved January 13, 2017, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/purpose-mission-vision-statements-strategic-planning-13161.html

Hitt, M., Ireland, R.D. & Hoskisson, R. (2008). Strategic management: competitiveness and globalization, concepts (8th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

Richards, L. (n.d). How Does the Use of a SWOT Analysis & Five Forces Analysis Enrich the Strategic Planning Process? Retrieved January 13, 2017, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-swot-analysis-five-forces-analysis-enrich-strategic-planning-process-23739.html

Talaja, A. (2012, November 29). Testing VRIN Framework: Resource Value and Rareness as Sources of Competitive Advantage and Above Average Performance. Management, 17(2), 51-64.

Thompson, A., Strickland III, A.J. & Gamble, J. (2008). Crafting and executing strategy: the quest for competitive advantage: concepts and cases (17th ed.). Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill.