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Abstract
Strategic Management is a function of control, extended to long-term goals and actions of the company. Strategy Formulation (modus operandi) and its precise tools are the core of governance and an important sign of good management of the company.
Strategic management is a development and implementation of actions leading to long-term excess of the level of effectiveness of the company above the competition.
Strategy - the image of organizational actions and management approaches used to achieve organizational goals and objectives.
The five elements of the strategy (H. Mintzberg)
strategy as a plan;
strategy as the position;
strategy as a method;
strategy as a pattern of action;
strategy as a prospect.
The term "strategic management" was coined at the turn of the 60-70s of the twentieth century in order to reflect the contrast control exercised at the highest level, from the current management at the production level. In 1965, I. Ansoff questioned the old ways of long-term planning, and proposed a model of strategic planning. Although the creation of strategic management as a new discipline, contributed to numerous authors refer to the pioneers of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Philip Selcnik, Igor Ansoff and Peter Drucker. There are ten fundamentally different systems of knowledge of strategic management, bearing the name of the "School of Strategic Management":
Cognitive School - strategy formation as a mental process
Strategic Management of Apple Incorporation
According to Yoffie (2008), “Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, a pair of 20-something college dropouts, founded Apple Computer on April Fool’s Day, 1976” (p. 1)
The development of Apple's very well suited to model L. Greiner . First, in its life cycle clearly distinguished five stages:
1) The era of S. Jobs
2) Dawn D. Scully
3) Dawn M. Spindler ,
4) Dawn G. Amelio ,
5 ) The era of the "new" S. Jobs.
Professional management at Apple was established by its founders - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak . However, the final say in all decisions were always behind S.Dzhobsom . Creative personality of Steve Jobs has transformed Apple Computer in the way we present it today itself - an innovative company , always going on the leading edge of information technology . By 1980, the company has dominated the computer market , becoming the leading manufacturer of personal computers. With its transformation into a public company of its shares immediately went on the stock market . Of course there were mistakes and awkward attempt to make something out of the ordinary. For example, the model of the personal computer Apple III was working with a floppy disk drive error . The predecessor of the Macintosh line of personal computer Lisa was very expensive " toy " , which significantly tainted the reputation of the company. However, Jobs' work of art - the Macintosh in 1984 literally stunned the world with its design , construction , and the main interface. But later it closed architecture did not allow fast -rising follow the requirements of the technical parameters of personal computers ( performance, capacity, storage devices ) , and the company quickly began to surrender its market to other PC makers . In May 1985, Jobs was removed from operational matters , and in September he left the company in general , which he himself has created. A little earlier, in the beginning of the same in 1985 , the company left its other founder - Steve Wozniak. Thus, by the end of 1984 - beginning of 1985 at Apple ended the first stage of organizational development - "the era of S. Jobs " - and there comes a crisis of leadership . Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as creative people have done a lot in terms of the formation of the product , but life has shown that they were not able to cope with running a business , taking into account all the nuances of the behavior of the market.
In the days of John Sculley , who was appointed CEO of Apple in 1983 , but was able to "turn around " just after leaving the company S. Jobs, strategic decision-making began to dominate the management approach . The technical development of computers Apple, the development of production and marketing was carried out deliberately , focusing on the specific needs of the market. In D. Scully was rich marketing experience , which he received while working before joining Apple in the company of PepsiCo. He quickly discovered that it was closed architecture of Apple computers makes them less attractive to users and achieved eliminate this technical shortcoming. By 1987, Apple computer again become the " hit of the season ." In addition, Apple has begun to develop an aggressive sales strategy on a global scale , access to new geographic markets . This strategy has yielded some positive results , which primarily include Apple a strong position in the global market . However , focusing on global issues , D. Scully has lost sight of the problem of internal efficiency of the company, both on the production line , and on the control line . As a result, by 1990, Apple came up with a very expensive computer models and overly bloated administrative staff. In addition, the market appears operating in Microsoft Windows, which makes the interface on IBM PC -friendliness close to the interface of computers Apple, but the pace of technological development in the Apple with markedly slowed. In an effort to raise the company to the next wave of technological development , D. Scully puts the responsibility for the research activity of Apple, and the result is an electronic notebook Newton. This product , despite the novelty and originality of the idea , which he had to bring ( handwriting recognition information in real- time) , in practice, proved technical and marketing failure of Apple.
. This was due to the fact that the market has been imposed " unfinished " product . He collapsed on the whole avalanche of criticism, and as a result the market simply rejected it. The analysis shows that by the time Apple came in second organizational crisis - a crisis of autonomy. D. Scully created the administrative staff , which was very high degree of centralization of decision-making processes . This was justified in the early stages , when overcome by a crisis of leadership . However, now that greatly expanded the geography of business Apple, when there was an urgent need for new ideas and technical solutions , the initiative of the middle and lower levels of the early constrained top . The situation with Newton highlighted the new crisis in the company. In 1993, Apple 's Board of Directors decides to replace D. Scully as an executive director Michael Spindler .
" Dawn M. Spindler " in the Apple began with a firing 2,500 workers , which was undertaken as a first step towards a new model of a low-cost business. He then organized the production of low-cost models of Macs to activate the "home" market sales (in the U.S. ) and the smoothing of possible " irregularities " in the transition to the production of already developed by the time of promising new models of computers line processor PowerPC. However , reducing production capacity and to endure on the market promising new models of personal computers , M.Spindler , as it turned out , had underestimated the possible scale of demand, and Apple in 1995, has been unable to meet all those who want to buy its products. Fortune again turned away from the company. Became apparent loss of market share not only the desktop , but laptops. The company began to leave the top managers . The last quarter of 1995 was a financial disaster . During this period, the loss amounted to $ 69 million in the hope of lower prices and increase sales M.Spindler again went to the reduction of 1,300 employees . However , there was a new crisis - the crisis of control, out of which it was only possible to improve the coordination and cooperation of all departments of the company .
In February 1996, M. Spindler was dismissed , and the post of executive director is Gil Amelio . He is aware that the restructuring of the company in order to improve the coordination of its links will take quite a long time, and that during this reorganization can occur a significant reduction in production. Therefore, to maintain its market share of Apple computers , he decided on an unprecedented step in the history of the company - sale of licenses for the production of Mac- compatible computer , and use the operating system MacOS . This measure gives the planned effect of preservation and even increase in the computer market share of Mac- compatible computers. But at the same time , there is a side effect that makes the world community to talk about Apple's ability to survive in the modern world. If in the 4th quarter of 1996, Apple announced a profit of $ 25 million , then in 1997 at the end of the 1st quarter of its loss amounted to $ 120 million , at the end of the 2nd quarter losses were $ 708 million , by the end of 3 first quarter loss was reduced to $ 56 million , but in general, was completed in 1997 with losses of $ 161 million
What happened? To be sure, first of all , Apple sales plummeted from $ 2.3 billion in 1996 to $ 1.6 billion in 1997. The sharp drop in sales at Apple and was due to the fact that in the market there are cheaper Mac- compatible computers, which the company has sold the license , in particular computers by Power Computing. To stop this process , Apple has been forced to buy from Power Computing a license for $ 24 million , Apple announced that its losses from the activity of the computer market Power Computing Company was $ 75 million for 1997. The remaining $ 62 million of losses were related to the ongoing restructuring of the company and industry.
Gil Amelio has identified the correct development strategy Arrle in those circumstances in which she found herself : to focus all efforts on two areas - the development of radically new personal computer , beating on its main technical parameters ( amount of RAM , and performance ) model of competing firms and the creation of a fundamentally new operating system. Indeed, it is in order to find a solution , Gil Amelio and was invited to Apple. In the circle of top managers from around the world , in the days of his executive director National Semiconducter Corp. He was known as " lifeguard drowning companies." In addition, he was new to Apple , and could look at the situation with fresh eyes . While among managers Apple has long begun panic that could lead to the sale of one of its competitors - Sun Microsystems or IBM. With the arrival of Gil Amelio, any talk about the possible sale of Apple were discontinued. Furthermore, the company was purchased by Steve Jobs' NeXT. It was a very strong move . Steve Jobs and his company Apple has given not only the " new blood" to the new technical and technological solutions , which accelerated the process of creating a new generation of Macs and the new MacOS 8 , but in fact gave her strategic relationships with leading software developers.
Still, Apple's board of directors decided that , given the poor financial results in 1997 , Gil Amelio would be better to leave the post of executive director and temporarily transfer that authority to Steve Jobs.
With the return of Steve Jobs to Apple restructuring in the company's rapidly come to an end. Thing of the past intrigue, trying to find a recipe for improvement in the area of fiscal policy and personnel changes. Apple on the path on which was in its first years of existence, - the revolutionary way to find solutions in the field of information technology.
This strategy Apple has already begun to bear fruit. In early November 1997, the market appears a number of computers based on the PowerPC processor of the new generation - G3. Tests show that the performance of such computers is 20% higher than similar IBM PC based on the Pentium II 300 MHz, and 1.5 times higher IBM PC based on the -Pentium II 266 MHz. It is not only the price of the new Apple computers was lower, but the price / quality ratio is much higher, not to mention the design, usability, reliability, and so on. It suffices to compare the model Compaq Presario 4660 Pentium II 750 and PowerMac G3, and all will become clear
Many managers are used to operating indicator of price / quality whenever it comes about which food to prefer, whether for the purchase of equipment or consulting project. But today is a need for further development of this indicator - the price / (quality of the reliability of convenience). The vast majority of people are IBM PC, having worked a bit on Apple, Apple said that they like so much more because of the reliability and ease of use.
In present days, according to Fisher A., “Apple is the world's second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia.” (p. 65-67)
Sources
Yoffie, David B. Apple Inc., 2008 Harvard Business School, 9-708-480, September 8, 2008.
Leavitt, David. The Man Who Knew Too Much; Alan Turing and the invention of the computer. Phoenix, 2007.
Nag, R.; Hambrick, D. C.; Chen, M.-J (2007). What is strategic management, really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field (PDF). Strategic Management Journal. Retrieved October 22, 2012.
Lamb, Robert, Boyden Competitive strategic management, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984
Hamel, G. & Prahalad, C.K. The Core Competence of the Corporation, Harvard Business Review, May–June 1990.
Fisher, Anne, America's Most Admired Companies. Fortune 157, 2008
