Best and Worst Companies for Me

Best: APPLE

Apple is a market leader in the smart phones, music players and computer
hardware and software industries. Despite the lower prices and same quality of
technology offered by its competitors, Apple still has its own loyal customers. The main
reason might be its product is user friendly and easy to understand.

Unlike other companies that are busy in counting their profit, Apple always strive
to invest in research and development to produce an original and unique product that
will suit the changing needs of consumers in the years to come. (Hodgkin, 2010)

Additionally, Apple was able to retain its talented key members and the company
invests in the talent of the future generations.

Worst: NOKIA

Doz (2017) elaborates the fall of Nokia from the mobile industry. According to
him, the decline of the said company can be resulted from the lack of flexibility, too
much conservatism, dysfunctional organizational structure, and poor management
decision. In simple words, Nokia’s strategic management process did not become
effective.

Nokia’s peak financial performance is in the early years of 2000. However, with
the sudden growth of Nokia at that time, the whole company is pressured on
maintaining its growth but unfortunately, were unable to dedicate time and resources to
innovation.

Nokia also has a history of reorganization in 2004 when important leadership

roles were poorly implemented. This led for the key members of the executive team of
Nokia to leave, making the strategic decisions worse.

As what I have learned on my readings on Chapter 1 of the course resources,

strategic management enable to company to adopt to changes. However, even though
Nokia found its own weakness, and tried new things such as its own Symbian OS,
which is no longer known today, the company still failed to maintain its peak and
prevent the rise of different mobile companies making its strategic management process
ineffective

My Own Key Takeaway for Chapter 1

Strategic management is very important in every organization to become

successful in achieving their goals amidst the dynamic and competitive environment
where they are. The main reason is because by doing the strategic management
process, it will enable the company to have an analysis on the external, competitive,
and internal environments which in return will help the organization strategize the steps
it will take to walk forward toward its vision. Specifically, strategic management
measures how people’s action and any events will have an impact in the firm’s success
or failure.

Strategy includes goals and objectives that an organization needs to achieve to

be successful in the marketplace. It also provides the direction which the organization
must take. Meanwhile, the development of strategy requires a strategic management
process to be done correctly and thoroughly.

Additionally, it is important for every organization to know the importance of

intended, emergent, and realized strategies. These strategies will help the organization
to cope up with change in the market environment. Intended strategies are the steps
that an organization originally plan to take. Meanwhile, because of some unexpected
events, an organization need to alter some parts of the plan which will result in
emergent strategies. Then, the combination of the intended strategy and the emergent
strategy which used by the organization to become successful is what we called
realized strategy. On the other hand, some parts of the intended strategy that the firm
did not apply is what we refer to as unrealized strategy.

Consequently, the history of strategic management is very important to

appreciate the value of strategy and to avoid committing the same mistakes but rather
learn from them. Strategy is already in existence even in the time of Moses in guiding a
One million people and in other era such as Sun Tzu, Virgil, and King Arthur. Their
strategies are used by the well-known brands today such as Apple, Toshiba, Acer, and
Lenovo, maybe the reason how they became successful.

One major Critique is most strategies are built on specific beliefs about the
future. Unfortunately, the future is deeply unpredictable. However, we should always
remember that strategic management is a process that will enable the company to
adopt to changes.

Reference List

Doz, Y. (2017). The Strategic Decisions That Caused Nokia’s Failure.

https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/the-strategic-decisions-that-caused-
nokias-failure-7766

Hodgkin, A. (2010). What is Apple’s mission statement?

https://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-is-apples-mission-
statement.html

Kennedy, Reed. (2020) Strategic Management. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech

Publishing. https://doi.org/10.21061/strategicmanagement CC BY NC-SA 3.0