Strategic Choices Made in the Modern Corporate

¶ … strategic choices made in the modern corporate world today are what separate success and failure for most companies. The importance of strategic efficiency and its regular evaluation can never be overestimated in the context of modern competition. This paper will hence focus on numerous potential strategic approaches that an organization can take in order to not only attain success but also sustain and increase it in the long run. The paper will focus on four primary strategic domains, which are: generic, value-based disciplines, grand or macro and multi-business strategies. Each of these strategic domains is discussed below.

Potential Generic Strategies

The generic strategy of a company is primarily its 'core idea'. In other words, the generic strategy of a company forms the basis for any and all grand strategies, long-term goals and image that it wants to project onto the market. The generic strategies also help identify the specific target clientele that the company aims to serve in the short and long run (Pearce and Robinson, 2011a). Some of the basic potential generic strategies that organizations must employ include the following:

Implement 'Low-Cost' Leadership: Good leadership is vital for the success of any and all organizations. When we talk about low-cost leadership, we simply mean innovative leadership that employs unique skills in different situations in order to assert an edge over its competitors. Such skills could include a wide variety of aspects like having a trusted and secure network of shareholders/suppliers or find ways to reduce expenses and increase profits (Pearce and Robinson, 2011a).

Penetrate target market using differentiations techniques: using differentiation techniques allows the products to have a USP and thus allow the marketing department to promote it within a specified niche (Pearce and Robinson, 2011a).

The use of focus strategy: the focus strategy will allow the organization to further utilize two aforementioned aspects (low-cost leadership and differentiation) in a much more specific and target-oriented structure (Pearce and Robinson, 2011a).

Potential Value Disciplines

The value discipline is an alternative to the structure of the generic strategy and presents a modern approach to penetrating the market by placing the customer at the top of the tier as opposed to management which is at the top in the traditional setup of the organizations. The values disciplines that a modern contemporary organization must at all times try and adopt include: operational supremacy, customer intimacy and product leadership.

The main aim of these three variables is the same: sustained profits. In order to attain a sustainment of profits, these variables thus focus on certain functions i.e. organizational supremacy mainly deals with designing and producing reliable products in a timely manner and promoting them in the right way to the right audience. Similarly, customer intimacy deals with the focus on understanding their unique demands and behavioural preferences/trends and product leadership then deals with fulfilling these demands by providing the customers with top-of-the-line products that compete with other premium products. Hence, the critical aspect of values disciplines is an organization can only find sustained success and profits if and when all three variables work together and in a cohesive and complementary manner (Pearce and Robinson, 2011a).

Potential Grand strategies

The grand strategies very simply put are those strategies that are employed at the macro level of the organization. These are formed on the foundations of the generic strategies or the core idea of the organization. The interesting thing to note here is that grand strategies are merely an extension of the generic and value discipline strategies aforementioned. The grand strategies are, however, much more extensive e.g. The customer intimacy variable as a value discipline focuses on customer demands only but as a grand strategy it includes the following aspects as well: market concentration, releasing time of product, technological development and integration. Hence, the overall focus of grand strategies is both internal and external and primarily focuses on reducing the overall weaknesses and loopholes of the production process while simultaneously improving the strengths and opportunities of the business structure and image amongst the target market. Some of the strategies included in the grand strategies include: vertical and horizontal integration of the organizational structure, liquidation, market development, product development, concentric diversification, strategic alliances, shareholder networking, etc. (Pearce and Robinson, 2011b).