Business Policy and Strategic Managment

This material is about decision making which determines whether a firm excels, survives, or dies. This decision process is called "strategic management." The job of strategic managers is to make the best use of a firm's resources in a changing environment.
The material is designed to help you integrate the functional tools you have learned. These include the analytical tools of production operations management, marketing management, financial management, accounting, physical distribution and logistics, and personnel and labor relation. All of these provide help in analyzing business problems. The material provide you with an opportunity to learn when to use which tools and how to deal with trade-offs when you cannot maximize the results or preferences of all the functional areas simultaneously.
Understanding a company's strategy and effectiveness is not easy. It requires that you look at how the company has come to grips with the challenges and opportunities facing it. It requires that you make judgments about whether the business or other organization is well run and how to improve its operations and results. This is a challenging job, the job of top managers of divisions or companies. It will provide you with a new understanding of how companies succeed or fail. More...