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ISSN: 2313-6758 *B. Charles Henry

Volume 3, Issue 4
April, 2015 Organizational Strategic Plan
Pages: 220-224

Adjunct Faculty, The contemporary environmental flux prevailing within the global economic
Department of Information and political climate requires substantial flexibility and responsiveness from
Technology, University organizations wishing to survive its consequences for longevity. Enterprises
College of the Caribbean, operating within the context of such rapid change and instabilities must
Kingston, Jamaica. equip themselves to face both the risks and rewards that may accrue from its
prevailing uncertainties. Therefore, organizational leaders have a serious
challenge to make themselves aware of both the emerging possibilities and
pitfalls that may await their businesses. Meandering through the streams of
opportunities may not come easy. It requires that leaders understand the
destructive nature of globalization to include socio-cultural, technological,
and location disparities and to find ways to maximize these challenges for
positive effects. Leaders thus have a duty to be both strategic and
operational in their outlook on how they will endeavor to optimize the
benefits of globalization to their organizations’ advantage.

Email for correspondence:

henryb2000@gmail.com Keywords: Information Technology, Information Systems, Organization
Strategy, Globalization, Virtual Teams, Contemporary Business Practice,
International Business, Leadership,

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Organizational Strategic Plan
INTRODUCTION
The contemporary environment presents
organizations’ leaders with multiple challenges that
they must manage daily to operate effective businesses
(Newkirk & Lederer, 2007). Newkirk and Lederer
(2007) posited that the prevailing uncertainties that
exist within the current situation forces leaders to be
more strategic in their outlook when seeking success
for their organizations. Such conditions are not
isolated, however. These effects, both negative and
positive are often the result of globalization.
Schmidt and Weitzel (2008) proffered that
globalization is the consequence of a multiplicity of
factors including “technological advances, political
changes, and economic policy choices” (p. 8).
Schmidt and Weitzel (2008) posited that technology
contributes positively to areas, such as transportation,
communication, production, and logistics by lowering
their costs of production. The authors noted that
governments and countries that cater to liberalization
and deregulation often attract more foreign direct
investments. Schmidt and Weitzel (2008) argued that
certain political adjustments also cater to expansion
through better laws that facilitate investments and
regional trade blocs. The outcome of such actions is an
internationalization of the market.
Ardalan (2009) noted that the current wave of
internationalization is unavoidable. Ardalan (2009)
reasoned that globalization is “natural, inevitable, and
irreversible” (p. 522). This eventuality is thus an issue
for which enterprise leaders must cater when
conducting their accelerated strategic plan. Leaders’
have little chance in adapting to these demanding
realities. By its very nature, globalization requires
integration, cooperation, and collaboration (Ardalan,
2009). Therefore, think global and act local is not just a
cliché, it is a necessary step for organizations “to grow
their brands in a world that is at once becoming more
homogeneous and, in some way, increasingly
disparate (Asher, 2005, p. 20). This is by no means an
easy feat. It is both demanding and arduous, one that
is “rife with complexities and difficulties” (Asher, 2005,
p. 20). Notwithstanding, enterprise leaders cannot
escape the prevailing circumstances if they must take
their organizations to the next level of survival and
growth.
Henry, B. C.,
CHALLENGING THE PREVAILING CLIMATE
STRATEGICALLY
Although instances of opportunities and difficulties
may vary from one situation to another and from one
organization to the next, leaders should seek the best
means of advancing their enterprises. One critical
input to this grand narrative is the role that information
technology (IT) may assume within businesses.
Pimchangthong, Plaisent, and Bernard (2003) posited
that modern enterprises cannot escape the use of
technology to advance their operations.
Pimchangthong et al. (2003) opined that the current
circumstances require appropriate technology use to
maximize organizations strategic ambitions. IT is
essential to politics, law, culture, infrastructure,
economics, and skills building (Pimchangthong et al.,
2003). Kaye and Little (1996) posited that because of its
substantial influence on the rapid expansion and
integration of the global economy, the implications for
IT on cultural imperatives should not be ignored by
enterprises. Kaye and Little (1996) opined, “The
successful development and diffusion of complex
systems requires at least some reconciliation of the very
different dynamics operating at institutional levels and
at the levels at which detailed technical design
decisions must be made” (p. 30). To face such
challenges, business leaders must have an
understanding of the cultural nuances appropriate to
disparate locales. This demands that organizational
leaders create standards and procedures that are
situated within the realities of prevailing circumstances
(Kaye & Little, 1996).
If one should posit a strategic narrative about the
foregoing, one may want to consider critical inputs to
the ongoing economic instabilities, transitions, and
fluidity. Therefore, issues of concerns may include:
1. The addition of capacity to accommodate the
evolution of strategic initiatives within the
context of cultural and political diversity (Kim,
2010; Newkirk & Lederer, 2007).
2. The ability to create new skill-sets that may be
required for effective enterprise transformation
within a socio-technical organizational
leadership setting (Garman, Davis-Lenane, &
Corrigan, 2003; Newkirk & Lederer, 2007;
Strachan, 1996).
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Organizational Strategic Plan
3. The capability to incorporate policies and
procedures that may help to recognize and
distinguish customer needs within the various
and disparate market segments (Newkirk &
Lederer, 2007; Pearce & Zhang, 2010).
4. The capacity to be responsive to cultural and
political nuances, divergence, and differences
within each respective markets (Kim, 2010;
Miesing, Kriger, & Slough, 2007; Newkirk &
Lederer, 2007).
5. The competence to formulate plans and
procedures geared toward appropriate
responses for best/worst case scenarios
(Bremmer, 2014).
6. The potential to create and solidify the
enterprise’s vision and mission through
effective communication to the various
constituents across the business and with the
wider organizational stakeholders (Antelo,
Henderson, & St. Clair, 2010; Armonas,
Druteikiene, & Marcinskas, 2010; Newkirk &
Lederer, 2007).
Newkirk and Lederer (2007), for example, recognized
five important aspects to establishing and maintaining
organizational strategic advantages. The authors
noted that strategy should begin with an awareness of
ambitions and direction. Such imperatives should
include the various stakeholders extracting and
establishing planning data and objectives, setting up
operational teams, and securing the requisite
commitments from organizations top bosses. Second,
Newkirk and Lederer (2007) opined that enterprises
operate within a situational context. Enterprise leaders
should secure the appropriate rationale for advancing
their objectives within such circumstance. The authors
reasoned that at this second phase of intellectual and
practical evaluation and assessment, business leaders
should scrutinize “the current business systems,
organizational systems, information systems, and
external business and IT environments” (Newkirk &
Lederer, 2007, p. 34). Phase three should incorporate
calls for conceptualization and actions based on
information gleaned from the first two phases. In this
phase, leaders would likely want to establish
organizational objectives that may be used to fuel
advancement in IT initiatives and business
performance. The fourth stage should be used to
concretize the formulation of strategic initiatives. In
this phase, those grand ideas that would have emerged
Henry, B. C.,
in the third stage should be formulated properly. This
phase is imperative to organizational outcome because
this stage requires specific, precise, and explicit
operational ambitions (Newkirk & Lederer, 2007). For
example, the fourth phase of a strategic initiative
involve details about IT architecture to be
implemented, the projects and processes to be pursued,
the timeframe in which these objectives are to be met,
and the priorities and order in which the enterprise will
undertake each goal. The final stage of the strategic
initiative involves the plans for execution of each
project, the management necessary for each tasks, the
change management that may be required for optimal
performance, the policies and procedures for follow-
up, and the mechanisms in place to monitor and
control objectives pursued (Newkirk & Lederer, 2007).
The strategic imperatives of the aforementioned are not
in isolation of the prevailing political and cultural
mores within contemporary organizations. According
to Kim (2010), “A comprehensive framework of
international diversification indicates that antecedents
of international diversification include TMT (top
management team) characteristics, board composition,
organizational structure and size, ownership strategic
elements, and processes and resources” (p. 18).
Therefore, any strategic ambitions that an organization
may pursue will likely consider all these attributes for
the strategy to be worthwhile. Kim (2010) noted that
enterprises operating within a global context face
competitive challenges, such as lost advantages and the
creation of new disadvantages that may be the
consequence of uncertainty arising from the
internationalization of business ventures. Kim (2010)
opined that organizations operating in such a climate
have little choice but to use strategic ambitions to their
benefits. These include taking advantages of the
existing variations of disparate and heterogeneous
markets. Kim (2010) proffered that international
organizations may want to seek out benefits of
divergence and dissimilarity through existing
“national differences, scale economies, and scope
economies” (p. 18). Enterprises that place the
appropriate weight and emphasis on these three
fundamentals may be able to maximize the use of their
assets, including their human resources, to glean
attitudes and behaviors that may enhance their global
strengths (Kim, 2010).
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Organizational Strategic Plan
VIRTUAL TEAMS
If one should examine the prevailing business climate,
its diversity, and the need for timely and responsive
actions and outcome, one would not likely escape the
demand for virtual teams. The contemporary
environment is one requiring extensive
communication, rapid learning, “more collaboration,
mobility, globalization, digital media, interactive
devices and spaces, and convergence of virtual and
physical spaces and places” (Fruchter, Bosch-Sijtsema,
& Ruohomaki, 2010, p. 183). Fruchter et al. (2010)
posited that this ever changing modus operandi requires
knowledgeable workers who can respond to the
demands of cognition and behavior so that they can
amass the knowledge desired for the modern era. In
the context of internationalization, virtualization gives
each entity an opportunity to use temporal and spatial
differences effectively. “Virtual teams promise the
flexibility, responsiveness, lower costs, and improved
resource utilization necessary to meet ever-changing
task requirements in highly turbulent and dynamic
global business environments” (Jarvenpaa & Leidner,
1999, p. 791). Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999) noted that
although this means of operating businesses within the
21st century is a necessity, gaining the full potential of
group participants are not always easy. Jarvenpaa and
Leidner (1999) reasoned that for enterprises to
maximize the benefits of virtual teams realistically,
each team member must share a level of trust necessary
for collaborative effectiveness. Training team members
in trust issues are essential to worker competence.
Cummings noted three specific areas for emphasis “(a)
makes a good-faith effort to behave in accordance with
any commitments both explicit or implicit, (b) is honest
in whatever negotiations preceded such commitments,
and (c) does not take excessive advantage of others
even when the opportunity is available” (as cited in
Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999, p. 792). Swift trust in
particular can create unique challenges. This type of
trust is normally “short-lived, transient, and fleeting”
(Crisp & Javenpaa, 2013, p. 45). To overcome this
necessitates emphasizing the cognitive components
and the normative actions of swift trust, such as
managing expectations and behaviors (Crisp &
Javenpaa, 2013). Swift trust is built on assumptions
and conjectures (Crisp & Javenpaa, 2013). Crisp and
Javenpaa (2013) argued that swift trust emerges from
one set of individuals anticipating another set of
Henry, B. C.,
persons possessing the essential characteristics of
“capability, reliability, and dependability” (p. 45).
Thus, this delicate trust state must be appreciated and
managed adequately in ways that will encourage and
reinforce its strengths because of how precarious,
vulnerable, and delicate it is.
CONCLUSION
The prevailing environment presents many challenges
for enterprise leaders and managers. For organizations
to sustain and grow their existence they must endeavor
to adapt strategic operatives which are pertinent to the
existing circumstances. The strategic method
organization leaders choose is particularly pertinent
because globalization is “natural, inevitable, and
irreversible” (Ardalan, 2009, p. 522). This does not
provide enterprise leaders with much of an option but
to adapt to the contemporary realities for the sake of
their organizations’ survival.
Think global and act local may have been a cliché in the
past, but this is no longer the case. This global outlook
and outreach are essential for modern businesses “to
grow their brands in a world that is at once becoming
more homogeneous and, in some way, increasingly
disparate (Asher, 2005, p. 20). Although enduring the
rapid change synonymous with internationalization
and globalization may not be an easy feat, enterprise
leaders have to begin a concerted effort of strategically
situating their organizations visions and missions in
ways that complement the environment in which they
find themselves, otherwise they may not be able to
extract the knowledge, skills, and output necessary to
advance their organizations.
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