Business strategy a guide to effective decision making pot

[...]... half of the 20th century, introduced a scientific-management approach to production department work; and Peter Drucker can be categorised as a classical administrator, at least in his approach to strategy development and decision- making The classical approach really took hold once entrepreneurs, such as Henry Ford, realised that they needed to focus on the productivity of their new manufacturing plants... Intellectual capital is a combination of human capital – the brains, skills, insights and potential of those in an organisation – and structural capital – things like the processes wrapped up in customers, processes, databases, brands and systems It is the ability to transform knowledge and intangible assets into wealth-creating resources, by multiplying human capital with structural capital This is... efficiency, managing risk, motivating, leading and empowering Much has been learnt about the role and application of technology, but more remains to be learnt about what it can do and, in particular, how to use it As Marchand says: Information can be used to develop and sustain competitive advantage, it is the way people in organisations express, communicate and share their knowledge with others, to accomplish... Morita, Harold Geneen, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher and Bill Gates But today charismatic business leaders are less able to influence the business environment To some extent they 26 01 Business Strategy 11/3/05 12:15 PM Page 27 SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND COMMERCIAL FORCES can set the agenda, focus and direct, but they are much more vulnerable to internal and external factors Charismatic leaders... co-author with Robert Kaplan of The Balanced Scorecard,3 believes that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” Donald Marchand, co-author of Making the Invisible Visible,4 takes this view further: “You cannot manage what you cannot measure, and you cannot measure what you cannot see.” Marchand’s research conducted at imd, a business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, has identified a link between investments... structural capital, that which remains in the organisation; and customer capital, that deriving from the relationships the company enjoys with its customers Customer capital is often seen as a subset of structural capital The aim of Skandia’s measures is to track whether intellectual capital is increasing or decreasing, focusing the organisation’s culture and thinking on increasing its intangible assets... the ascendancy of the highly trained, intelligent managerial professional, who understands his own worth and contribution to the organisation Knowledge work is highly specialised and can therefore splinter organisations Consider the range and depth of skills and knowledge needed to manage a chain of retail stores, a hospital, a university, an automotive manufacturer or a financial services business As... leadership that have emerged during the past century Decision- making approaches The classical administrator The classical administrator is the most traditional model of the decisionmaker or strategist Henri Fayol is recognised as a founding father of this model, known as the classical school of management, which came into its own around 1910 He developed a set of common activities and principles of management,... monitoring that everything works as planned, making adjustments where necessary and feeding this information back so that it can be of value in future The classical-administrator approach to decision- making is largely concerned with measuring and improving internal competencies in organisations It is characterised by hierarchy, usually in the form of top-down planning and control, formal target setting and... CULTURAL AND COMMERCIAL FORCES source of competitive advantage Financial management is changing Traditionally, financial management has been largely about producing the figures required for business decisions to be made and establishing and enforcing financial controls Recent years have seen a rise in the significance and influence of the chief financial officer (cfo) to the point where virtually no major decision . ensure effective action. Yet the amount of information available these days is overwhelming, with the potential for “paralysis by analysis”. Again, traditional leadership values are important, and. 8 Asia, Latin America and central Europe were ready sources of cheap labour and potentially profitable new markets. However, globalisation has made companies aware that in these countries there are. world marching to war as they did twice in the 20th century – and not just because the nature of warfare has changed. In the work- place, social change has necessitated an ability to manage change,