Carpio, Angel Buen A.

REACTION PAPER: CHAPTER 2

A strategist is a person who designs and plans action and policy to achieve a goal. It

can either be an individual or a collection of people. A strategist performs different tasks and

roles namely Interpersonal Roles that includes a figurehead, leader and liaison role,

Informational Roles that includes monitor, disseminator and spokesman role, and Decisional

Roles that includes entrepreneurial, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator

role. These different roles are inseparable and should be performed simultaneously by

integrating one with another.

Accordingly, anyone in the organization who controls key or precedent setting actions

can be called a strategist even the shareholders and board of directors. Shareholders are the

owners of the company and Board of Directors represents the shareholders of the company.

They are considered as strategist because the former makes very crucial decisions for the

organization and the latter share the responsibilities and activities of management with the

executives at a different level.

The diversified businesses, multi-product firms are organized into Strategic Business

Units. The head of each SBU is its chief executive if the company is structured based on the

modern principles of organization. There are corporate level planners, senior managers,

middle level managers and lower level managers. Middle level managers include immediate

subordinates to the heads of various functional managers like production manager, marketing

manager, finance manager and human resource manager, while senior level managers include

second line managers at the corporate office, divisional office, zonal office etc. These

strategists perform different duties according to their level of management.

 Decisions are classified into routine and strategic or programmed or non-

programmed. Strategic decision making have little or no precedent. It is relatively

unstructured and generally require a more creative approach. The decision maker must

develop a procedure to be followed. There are several approaches to strategic decision

making. First, is the Intuitive-Emotional Approach whereas decisions are based on intuition

which is characterized by the use of hunches, inner feelings, or the gut-feeling of the decision

maker. Second, is the Rational-Analytical Approach where decisions are made in full

awareness of all available alternatives to maximize advantages. Third, is a Satisfying

Approach where decisions are based on limited and incomplete knowledge of human

rationality. Fourth and last, is the Political-Behavioural Approach that considers all people

and organizations in making decisions.

Given the different approaches to strategic decision making, research suggest that the

process of decision making that gives rise to strategic decisions possess five steps in the

process. First, is Problem awareness that mostly occurs to employees at grass-root level and

is likely to develop through a period of incubation. Second, is Problem Diagnosis where the

managers will gather the information and define the problem that was seen by individual

employees. Third, is the Development of Alternative Solutions that could either be ready-

made or newly developed depending on its effectivity. Fourth, is the Selection of a Solution

where solutions have to be formally evaluated based on their inherent strengths and

weaknesses and also based on the environmental threats and opportunities for

implementation. Fifth and last, is the Implementation of the Decision where the selected

decision is fully implemented.

As a conclusion, strategic decisions are very crucial to make and requires the

knowledge and experience of a good strategist. And strategic decision is all about developing

and selecting the best among the alternatives.