Market Entry Strategies of Foreign Telecom Companies in India

2 Strategic management and its purpose (p. 19-20)

Strategic management is a sub-set of management and is concerned with the general direction and long-term policy of a business, which is distinct from its day-to-day operations. A decision concerning the long-term policy of a business is referred to as strategy.1 In simple words, what an organization is trying to achieve is called its objectives and how the organization is going to achieve it is called strategy. To determine the strategy of an organization is only one of the functions of management but it is the most significant area of management decision-making. To give a better understanding of strategic management, section 2.1 discusses the various tasks of strategic management and section 2.2 discusses the main purpose of strategic management.

2.1 Tasks of strategic management

The various tasks of strategic management can be broadly classified into strategic planning, strategic implementation and strategic control. They are discussed below in detail.2 The process by which strategies are produced is called strategic planning. Strategic planning is run independent of the day-to-day business but determines the way the day-to-day business is to be run -and that is done by the other two tasks, strategic implementation and strategic control process. Hence strategic planning forms the basis for the other two tasks.

The production of successful strategy is therefore the core of strategic management.3 Strategic implementation is the realization of strategies at the level of market offer and resources as well as the complementary measures at the personnel level. The most important realization measures, such as the development of new products, the reduction or increase in the number of production facilities, the outsourcing of production, the building up of foreign markets and so on clearly do not relate to the personnel in an organization. So, the most common cause of strategy failure is improper implementation at the personnel level.

That is why strategic implementation cannot be successful without realization measures at the personnel level.4 Strategic control consists of three elements namely strategic monitoring, strategic scanning and strategic realization checking. After the strategy is formulated, strategy monitoring begins. Strategy monitoring begins right after strategy formulation. It builds up and maintains an early warning system. However, risk due to unexpected developments cannot be ruled out. The role of strategic scanning is to put systems in place in order to minimize the risk, merely intuitive observation of the environment. Finally, strategic realization checking helps to ensure that strategic measures are realized.5 The above-mentioned tasks of strategic management form three stages of a single process.

The first stage, strategic planning, sets long-term goals and gives an indication of direction to achieve these goals. It also forms the basis of the second stage, which is strategic implementation. In this stage the implementation of the strategies planned during the first stage takes place. The third stage, strategic control has two functions. First, it provides information about how the strategies are to be realized. Second, it highlights any deviation from the actual strategic planning and strategic implementation. So that if the deviation is too large then the strategic planning must begin once again. Though the three stages form a single process, they do not take place consecutively.