The Use of Strategic Management Tools and Techniques

For the senior leadership of firms this creates something of a problem. On the one hand they need guidance. After all, nothing is more important 

This chapter seeks to address this problem for senior managers by, first, analysing just how scientific, as a function, business strategy actually is. The chapter seeks to answer this question by first asking how frequently business managers use management tools, in which industries and for which activities Second, the objectives behind the use of tools and techniques and their performance are analysed. Finally, we address the question of whether or not the current strategy tools and techniques appear to be used appropriately or not. 

The discussion that follows provides a description of the general use of strategy tools and techniques in total, and across the 7 business activities outlined earlier in chapter 1. The analysis then focuses on the use of tools and techniques across the 16 industry sectors and the 6 industry sector groupings also outlined in chapter 1. 

Discounted Cash Flow Analysis 26 5.44 Growth Share Matrix 5 1.06 

E-Business-Seller Side Software 17 3.56 Manpower Planning 3 0.62 

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Conclusions The appropriateness of the use of tools and techniques for strategic management... 

Table 9.5 provides an overview of the general objectives behind the use of tools and techniques by the managers surveyed. The Table summarises the respondents overall views about why any particular tools or technique was used by making an initial broad distinction between strategic (defined as a choice from the development of uniquely differentiated products, cost leadership advantages or to assist with competitive market repositioning for the firm as a whole) and operational (all other functional process and transactional improvement) objectives. 

If procurement and supply tools and techniques do not provide much scope for strategic influence within firms it is still important to imderstand what the functional objectives are for introducing them operationally in the first place. Table 9.6 provides findings about this issue. Survey respondents were asked to explain the primary purpose for which they used tools and techniques based on whether they used them to improve the functional performance of their departments their departmental costs of operations to improve communication and information flow management to provide a more flexible and responsive service to others in the business to improve staff skill sets and, to increase departmental... 

This is indicated clearly both overall and by function in the data presented in Table 10.7. The strategy function has the highest recorded average use of tools and techniques (5.51) in those industry sectors where not managing the strategic function well is a high risk to corporate... 

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