Strategic Management
Nike was founded in 1964 by a track coach named Bill Bower man and track runner Phil knight. They started with the name blue ribbon sports, and went public in 1980 with their new name NIKE, which came from the mythological winged goddess of victory. Their motto is that if you have a body, you are an […]
David McClelland and his associates proposed McClelland’s theory of Needs / Achievement Motivation Theory. This theory states that human behavior is affected by three needs – Need for Power, Achievement and Affiliation. Need for achievement is the urge to excel, to accomplish in relation to a set of standards, to struggle to achieve success. Need for power is the desire to
BCG Growth-Share Matrix The BCG Growth-Share Matrix is a portfolio planning model developed by Bruce Henderson of the Boston Consulting Group in the early 1970’s. It is based on the observation that a company’s business units can be classified into four categories based on combinations of market growth and market share relative to the largest competitor, hence the name
Competitor Analysis In formulating business strategy, managers must consider the strategies of the firm’s competitors. While in highly fragmented commodity industries the moves of any single competitor may be less important, in concentrated industries competitor analysis becomes a vital part of strategic planning.
The Experience Curve In the 1960’s, management consultants at The Boston Consulting Group observed a consistent relationship between the cost of production and the cumulative production quantity (total quantity produced from the first unit to the last). Data revealed that the real value-added production cost declined by 20 to 30 percent for each doubling of cumulative production quantity:
EST Analysis A PEST analysis is an analysis of the external macro-environment that affects all firms. P.E.S.T. is an acronym for the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors of the external macro-environment. Such external factors usually are beyond the firm’s control and sometimes present themselves as threats. For this reason, some say that “pest” is
The Value Chain To better understand the activities through which a firm develops a competitive advantage and creates shareholder value, it is useful to separate the business system into a series of value-generating activities referred to as the value chain. In his 1985 book Competitive Advantage, Michael Porter introduced a generic value chain model that comprises a sequence of activities
Turnaround Management Times of corporate distress present special strategic management challenges. In such situations, a firm may be in bankruptcy or nearing bankruptcy. Often turnaround consultants are brought into the company to devise and execute a plan of corporate renewal, assuming that the firm has enough potential to make it worth saving. Before a viable turnaround strategy
SWOT Analysis SWOT analysis is a simple framework for generating strategic alternatives from a situation analysis. It is applicable to either the corporate level or the business unit level and frequently appears in marketing plans. SWOT (sometimes referred to as TOWS) stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The SWOT framework was described in the late
Scenario Planning Traditional forecasting techniques often fail to predict significant changes in the firm’s external environment, especially when the change is rapid and turbulent or when information is limited. Consequently, important opportunities and serious threats may be overlooked and the very survival of the firm may be at stake. Scenario planning is a tool specifically designed to
