Discussion 1: Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ posts in a substantive manner and provide recommendations to extend their thinking. Support your position by using information from the w

Discussion 1: Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ posts in a substantive manner and provide recommendations to extend their thinking. Support your position by using information from the week’s readings, or examples from current events and/or other scholarly or credible resources. Properly cite any references. Thomas Strategic management is what companies do to ensure they achieve long term success. They are not interested in short gains, because short gains only sustain the company for so long until competitors pass them. According to Abraham (2012), strategic management is "deciding the direction in which the company should go, what the company should produce, and hence in what idustry it competes." (para.1) It also requires leadership to know and combat what the competiors are doing and what their company needs to do to beat the competiors, while also ensuring they are making products that customers what to buy. One example of a company that failed to strategically manage their company is Toys R Us. Toys R Us could not keep up with competitors. Companies like "Amazon, Walmart, and Target," were able to mark down toys in order to get customers to buy from their stores because they could make up the profits with other products. (Bomey, 2018, para. 19) Toys R Us could not afford to mark toys down because that was their only market. Another reason why they failed is the timing of their bankruptcy. Most of Toys R Us's buisness came around the holiday season and "Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy in September instead of shortly after the holiday season," (Bomey, 2018, para.10) When they did this, shoppers got scared as well as retailers, and neither wanted to do business with them. Had they waited, they may have incured some profits and probably could have rode out the bankruptcy while still attracting business. Abraham, S. (2012).Strategic management for organizations. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/(Links to an external site.) Bomey, N. (2018) 5 reasons Toys R Us failed to survive bankruptcy. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/03/18/toys-r-us-bankruptcy-liquidation/436176002/ Beverly Strategic Management is important in any organization, to me this is the job that leaders show how they create and implement goals in order to make sure that it is running promptly and effectively assuring that goals and objectives are met for the long-term goals of the organization. There are four elements in Strategic Planning “There are four key elements of the strategic management process: environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation”. (B. Jeremy, 2017). The most important thing to always remember in strategy is a scene of directions. A prime example is Schlitz Brewing Company, remember when CEO Robert Uihlein was is in such a hurry to make a better business for himself, and he started replacing ingredients into his beer, and customers noticed that the taste was different. “Because of this, each beer had thick sediment which was compared with mucous. Schlitz was forced to make a secret recall of 10 million bottles of beer costing over USD $1.4 million”. (P. Neil, n.d.). He also had to lay off many of his employees trying to make fast money and this cost him over a million of U.S. dollars because of the complaints against customers knowing that there had been an enormous change in the beer until it was much noticeable to many of his purchasers. The strategy of a business we are to is when management or shall I say upper management plan goals for the business for the long term hall of an organization to stay ahead of competitors, there are a lot of managements that struggles with strategy but this deals with aligning decision-making for the business. “A business model is a framework for how a company will create value. Ultimately, it distills the potential of a business down to its essence. It answers fundamental questions about the problem you are going to solve, how you will solve it and the growth opportunity within a given market”. (Aha! Labs Inc., 2020). The business model is the key strategy to making money, this is how they create different things to create and capture value to their customers, this is something that will capture value in the eye of the buyers and the competitors. References: Aha! Labs Inc., (2020). What are some business model examples? Retrieved from https://www.aha.io/roadmapping/guide/product-strategy/what-are-some-examples-of-a-business-model(Links to an external site.) Jeremy, (2017). What are the Key Elements of the Strategic Management Process? Retrieved from https://bizfluent.com/info-8233994-key-elements-strategic-management-process.html(Links to an external site.) Neil, (n.d.). 7 Spectacular Business Strategy Failures, Schlitz Brewing Company – The Customer Knows Best. Retrieved from https://www.bridgepointgroup.com.au/7-spectacular-business-strategy-failures/ Interactive activity Cody The company I chose is JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan Chase is a large global financial services firm that provides banking and investment services to clients worldwide(Mahtani, 2018). Most commonly referred to as Chase Bank in the United States, JPMorgan has a substantial impact on the global financial world and has expanded their influence to nearly every country in the world. When evaluating an area of concern for the company, as with all financial institutions, the legal and regulatory roadblocks and concerns they have are substantial. JPMorgan is regulated by two major regulatory agencies, the consumer financial protection bureau and the securities and exchange commission. Regulatory impacts have seen somewhat of an up and down trend over the last 15 years. After the 2008 financial crisis many regulations were enacted to ensure that banks retained more capital to be able to handle economic downturns more effectively. Other laws, such as the Volker rule and the Dodd Frank Act had significant impacts on the banks impact profitability. Currently the company operates effectively within the rules of it's regulators. In the past they had significant issues with compliance which led to large lawsuits after the bank was found to be complacent and not effectively overseeing operations of Bernie Madoff, they have also had other lawsuits and fines from their regulators but have since effectively changed course and have complied with all consent orders that dictated specific changes in the business operations. Forecasting is difficult in regulatory arenas as much of this can be impacted by the political climate. The current administration has scaled back some Dodd Frank rules which have allowed the company to expand it's lending and become more profitable, however, with a possible change in political environments during an election year this could quickly revert back to prior. Overall JPMorgan is operating soundly and complies with all capital ratio requirements and has ample cash on hand to withstand any economic downturns or regulatory changes. Nowell Middlefield Banc corp has shared space on American Bankers list of the top 200 publicly traded community banks. The banc is located in Middlefield, Ohio. It operates as a holding company for banks and had reported assets in 2017, to be over $1,071.5 million . The challenges faced by Middlefield and other banking institutions are, according to the text , "future trends or factors affecting the banking industry and, specifically, the financial operations, markets and products..."(Middlefield Banc Corp.5 C.E., January 2017). The category of analysis that I chose was not the typical for a bank. I did not wish to simply focus on economics but rather I chose sociocultural analysis. The text explains this as "category focuses on broader changes in society and the extant culture and becomes important only if societal or cultural changes might affect the business"(Abraham, S. 2012). It has noted that Middlefield has improved in many areas that specifically speak to social expectation. The text says there have been improvements made that are consistent with a global human awareness and effort to support home grown and grass roots business. Middlefield has" improved scope, and strong organic loan growth "(Middlefield Banc Corp. 5 C.E., January 2017). Entrepreneurs and those looking for support for start up businesses will seek out the Middlefield's of the world as we are experiencing an upswing in these types of business. Middlefield will only grow in support from more acquisitions from smaller banks, while increasing the banks overall footprint in the region. I would however, be remiss not to mention the perspective challenge that Middlefield will face due to our recent global crisis that certainly effects the way people and banks will further do their business. Keeping in mind that one of the challenges that I mentioned earlier was "financial operations". In spite of the more obvious changes that will occur in service, either on location or wireless thru the use of the internet and apps, there perhaps can be larger hurdle for the banc. Global Pandemic coupled with Global Violence will affect most global industry. I suspect people will soon change their perspectives on the safety of their finances just as much the start up business will need to secure a source for finances. This is an impending opportunity for this and other industries to look at what is happening more critically and improve our strategies and business models going forward. Reference: Middlefield Banc Corp. (5 C.E., January 2017). Middlefield Banc Corp. Ranks 85th in American Banker’s Annual List of the Top 200 Publicly Traded Community Banks. Business Wire Abraham, S. (2012). Strategic management for organizations. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/