STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT – HRM 3138
LECTURE NOTES 2AGEM
Strategic management deals with the managerial aspect of strategy. A number of concepts that are often confused will have to be considered, namely, strategic decisions, strategy, and strategic management.
1. Strategic Decisions
These are the decisions that affect the long-term well-being of the organisation. Such decisions involve major resource commitments and are difficult to reverse, implying a long-term commitment. Decisions that are regarded as strategic may occur at all levels of the organisation.
There are usually two levels of decisions – corporate and business.
Corporate-level decisions are those that affect the entire organisation or firm, whereas Business-level decisions affect the particular business or division. If there is only one business in the firm, then both the corporate and business levels are identical.
2. Strategy
This is the common theme underlying a set of strategic decisions. The strategy may be to change the scope of the firm or become global, and the decision to acquire a particular firm is part of that strategy. Strategy is about the firm’s relationship with the environment and developing the capabilities and competencies to enable it attain success. It must be borne in mind that all firms have a strategy and that this strategy may be explicit or implicit, developed with extensive analysis or not. An organisation or firm’s strategy can generally be expressed in relatively simple terms, although this may hide complexity within it. When considering strategy, it must be realised that nothing about the firm is fixed; everything is variable. The strategy may change a firm or the organisation’s scope, its culture, its structure, its vision, or even all the above-stated factors. When developing strategy, it is incumbent upon us, therefore, to be creative in our thinking