Strategising the Future of Business: A Case Study Approach

I had made an attempt to write a few research papers some time back. Some were presented, published and appreciated; some didn’t either due to me not meeting the required deadlines or my boss not being interested. I take the opportunity to share some of the abstracts with my readers here. .

In this paper, I have elaborated on the strategic management process from the Indian as well as from the Western organisations. Case studies from India and abroad have been discussed to see how strategic leaders in the current business environment have envisioned the future and the respective companies have done extremely well. They possessed the necessary leadership skills, developed winning strategies and have been able to sustain them.

Learning, design and execution are the pattern in any successful business and the better they are their regularity is conspicuous. Leadership in a crisis situation shows how good the strategic leader is. The determination of the strategist is best perceived when handling a crisis. Crisis handling skills are a rarity and are the hallmark of a strategic leader. They transform such a situation into an opportunity by looking at the problem from all possible scenarios and assess all possible consequences. This leads to effectiveness and efficiency in productivity, human resources, marketing, customer satisfaction, awareness of corporate social responsibility, all stakeholders’ satisfaction, increased earnings and maximization of shareholders wealth.

A few cases have been illustrated to see how strategists have turned around companies. The cases discussed include effective marketing strategies like proper market segmentation, franchising and distribution, designing functional strategies, globalization strategies, realization of synergies and proper design of strategies to counter capacity under-utilisation and labour problems. These strategies paved the way for their continued success. This study could not be completed without studying what successful American and Indian companies have been doing. Most of the cases pertain to the period post liberalization. For this purpose I have studied several organisations and had a discussion with the executives to know their views about strategy and what the future has in store for them and draw the right conclusions on the topic.

We will begin by reviewing some strategic management concepts, the reasons for a strategy, how they are applicable to organisations, strategy formulation, operational effectiveness and organisational change. The end objective is manage business properly so that ultimately it can reach the zenith and provide the best service to their customers and ultimately to the society at large. We will conclude with managerial implications.