I. Overview: Prepare and present a report and contribute to a discussion that demonstrates mastery of the course material and its relevance to the following specializations:1.

The purpose of this report is a final synopsis of finding of the Finish Line Team’s evaluation of the broader implications for successful implementation of strategy and strategic decision-making. The Finish Line team is comprised of students specializing in Financial Management, Human Resource Management, and Acquisition and Supply Chain Management.

Strategic Management

Strategic management refers to the process of developing capabilities that enables a company to create value for its shareholders, society, and customers while performing its business activities. The strategic management process involves analyzing the business competitors, creating objectives, evaluating the internal organizations, identifying the strategies and ensuring those strategies are presented across the organization. When an organization’s strategies and objectives are not properly formulated, it has a negative impact on the overall organizational performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Similarities

The team discovered a common trend between all specializations: strategic management decisions affect the department decision-making process. Internal and external forces affect all specializations, albeit the types of forces shift from specialization to specialization. The concept of strategic fit requires that management strategies within an organization are aligned to the goals of the organizations (Chopra and Meindl, 2013). The management strategies for Human Resources, Financial Management and Acquisition/Supply Chain Management must roll into the overall organization’s strategic management goals. It is a balancing act between the departments to find the best approach and strategies that supports the organization’s greater strategic management goals. No one single department is more important than the other departments.

There were no real differences as all specializations deal with internal and external strategies and are fed from and feed into the overall strategy of an organization. For example, Human Resources Management has targets to achieve and encompasses all dealings of the employees of the organization working to achieve those targets. The employees are the key components to the organization. Having a strong workforce opens many opportunities for the organization in terms of growing day to day business leading the organization to become sustainable in today’s competitive world.

Financial management includes corporate finance, investment and financial accounting (Laegried, 2007). Through the specialization of financial management, the company is able to evaluate essential strategic corporate, investment and accounting decisions as well as understand the capital market from the financial perspective. Financial management enables the company to develop a fundamental framework based on financial decision-making. Specialization in financial management is linked to the diversification policies and evaluation of securities portfolios, investments, merger strategies, analyzing of exchange rates, and financial accounting decisions and it is necessary for a company to deal with the financial issues directly in order for the organization to achieve its goals (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014).

Acquisition and supply chain management is the management of all supply chain and procurement processes and functions. “Supply chain decisions have a large impact on the success or failure of each firm because they significantly influence both the revenue generated and the costs incurred” (Chopra and Meindl, 2013, p. 17). Acquisitions and purchasing encompasses an organization’s contracting strategies, vendor agreements, and how organizations interface internally with its departments as well as externally with customers, vendors and suppliers. Supply chain management includes decisions regarding network design, warehousing and transportation decisions. Network design decisions revolve around facility locations, what the facilities will do and what their capacities will be. Warehousing and transportation decisions decide the movement of goods from those locations, inventory and facilities impacts. Joining strategic management and acquisition and supply chain management is key for an organization to meet its objectives. As organizational environments become more and more global these decisions become even more important.

Conclusion

There are more similarities than differences between the importance of the implementation of strategy and strategic decision making on the team members’ chosen degree specializations. Strategic management decisions impact all subsequent decisions of an organization and help to develop competitive advantages between one another. Successful human resource management, supply chain management and financial management decisions are possible with the balancing of an organization’s overall strategic management plan and decisions. Likewise, a strategic management plan that is crafted and includes inputs from key players from those specialized departments will result in a greater chance of overall success for an organization.

References

Chopra, S. & Meindl, P. (2013). Supply Chain Management (5th edition). Pearson: Boston.

Hill, C. W. L, Jones, G. R. & Schilling, M. A . (2014.). Strategic Management: Theory: An

Integrated Approach. Canada: Cengage Learning

Laegried, P. (2007). Transcending New Public Management: the transformation of public sectors

reforms. London: Routledge.