Strategic Management is the art and science of formulation, implement and evaluation
cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objective. Strategic
Management has changed to meet the challenges of each decade of business development and
has been significantly impacted by globalization. Organizations using strategic management
are more successful than organizations that do not employ this central process.
Strategic Management is often referred to as strategic planning in the business arena,
but is referring to the entire process as strategic management is more encompassing than the
planning phase. Strategic planning is a management tool. As with any management tool, it is
used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a better job - to focus its energy, to
ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and
adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic
planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and
guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.
The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way to respond to the
circumstances of the organization's environment, whether or not its circumstances are known in
advance; nonprofits often must respond to dynamic and even hostile environments. Being
strategic, then, means being clear about the organization's objectives, being aware of the
organization's resources, and incorporating both into being consciously responsive to ...