Forest

In today's world of business, everything has changed. Globalization, the internationalization of markets and corporations, has changed the way modern to business (Wheelen and Hunger, 2006). To reach the economies of scale necessary to achieve the way low costs, and thus thee low prices, needed to be competitive, companies are now thinking of a global (worldwide) market instead of a national market. Strategic Management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determines the long-run performance of a corporation (Wheelen and Hunger, 2006). It includes environmental scanning (both external and internal). strategy formulation (strategic or long-range planning), strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. The study of strategic management, therefore, emphasizes the monitoring and evaluating of external opportunities and threats in light of a corporation's strengths and weaknesses.

Many of the concepts and techniques that deal with strategic management have been developed and used successfully in many businesses. To deal with a better changing world, managers uses these four phases in strategic management.

Phase 1. Basic financial Planning.

Phase 2. Forecast-based planning.

Phase 3. Externally oriented (strategic) planning.

Phase 4. Strategic Management: Realizing that even the best strategic plans are worthless without the input and commitment of lower-level managers, top management forms planning groups of managers and key employees at many level.

Researcher has revealed that organizations that engage in strategic management generally out perform those that do not.

A survey of nearly 50 corporations in a variety of countries and industries found the three most highly rated benefits of strategic management to be:

*Clearer sense of strategic vision for the firm.

*Sharper focus on what is strategically important.

*Improved understanding of a rapidly changing environment.

As more industries become global, strategic management is becoming an increasingly important way to keep track of international development

...