Strategic Management Assignment: Reflection on Issues of Microsoft
Question
Task: Write a self-reflection report on strategic management assignment discussing the strategic issues and decision making process of Microsoft.
Answer
Introduction
Strategic management is one of the integral parts of business when it plans to operates in international markets. This is because strategic management helps in business in planning and taking better strategic decision that can help them earn potential positive outcomes. Strategic management can be defined as a process of planning, monitoring and analyzing the requirements of the business to meet its goals and visions (Laamanen et al. 2017). Businesses go under constant change when face with international environment and this makes it important to assess their strategies for success and take new strategic decisions to overcome barriers. This is because strategic decisions act as a contributing factor to move towards successful operational business development. Moreover, international businesses also face strategic issues that contribute to their failure in the international markets (Samba et al. 2018). The purpose of the essay is to critically analyze the process of completing assignment one that is the strategic issue faced by Microsoft and the impact it had on the stakeholder of the business by including the theory of strategic decision making and stakeholder theory. the paper will discuss the theme of strategic decision making and issues and the ways I adopted to complete the assignment.
The assignment has helped me learn about strategic issues and decision-making processes effectively and the impact it has on international organization.
Discusses
The assignment 1 that I got involved in I expected to learn about the importance that strategic decisions holds in an international businessand the way such decisions lead to strategic issues that has a direct impact on the stakeholders. As a part of the assignment, I chose Microsoft as the company to learn about the way strategic decisions lead to issue in business and the way such decisions have strategic impacts on the business and the stakeholders. While choosing the company I expected to learn the strategic business issue that Microsoft is facing in its environment while operating in the international market. Microsoft is one of the known names in the information technology industry and learning about the strategic issue they are facing and the way their stakeholders are being impacted was one of the most interesting things that I wanted to learn from the assignment. The assignment was a great opportunity to learn about different areas of strategic management and its application seen in real world business.
The most important concept that the assignment taught me was about strategic issue that refers to the challenges that arise from inefficient decision making that makes the business lose its future directions. From the completion of the assignment, I learnt about the kinds of strategic issues a business can face. Laamanen et al. (2017) has stated that businesses face strategic issues related to various areas such as marketing, recruitment, management and resource availability. It is seen that businesses implement various strategies and they face challenges or failure in successful implementation of such strategies because of various factors.
For example, an organization plans foronline marketing strategy in the firm and lack of technical knowledge creates issue in the implementation of the planned strategy. Thus, the assignment helped me gain a complete insight into different kinds of strategic issues and the ways such issues arise. Moreover, I learnt that a business face number of strategic issues and the importance of the issue depends on its characteristics and the role it plays in the growth of the business. In case of Microsoft, it is seen that the organization has been facing number of strategic issues such as cloud security, incident response system and othersGaus (2020). From the research I analyzed that challenges in incident management system was the most crucial issue that was impacting their reputation and financial losses.
Moreover, from the analysis of Microsoft case study it is seen that the poor incident response system has caused huge customer loss to the company due to extensive cyber-attacks (Microsoft2020a). Thus, I learnt that strategic issues in an organization cause huge impact on the business in various operational areas. My learning from the task did not end here as I gathered understanding that strategic issues arise in business from poor strategic decisions that are responsible for both short- and long-term strategy.
For example, Microsoft faced issue in their incident response process due to bottlenecks in the human resource, the company has taken decision in making the system highly human centered and this has caused lengthy incident handling process and loopholes in managing complex incidents. Thus, the case of Microsoft helped me learn that strategic decisions lead to weak performance of the firm because of poor relationship and communication.Additionally, I gained knowledge about various implication of strategic issues on the organization and on the stakeholders such as poor financial performance, rising cost, reputation damage, sales reduction and high organizational risk.
Moreover, strategic issues also have different impact on internal and external stakeholders of the business such as it increases pressure on the board members and the employees and increases risks and frustration among the customers, suppliers and investors. Chapleo and Simms (2010) has stated that rising business issue led to the creation of zero trust environment among the customers. From the completion of the assignment, I realized that I have strong secondary research skills and has effective researched into relevant theories and information regarding Microsoft. This is because I engaged in researching various secondary sources such as articles, news and company website to learn about the issue the company is facing.
Even though the assessment helped me learn many new things about the theories of strategic decision making and secondary research method, however, I faced time management issue while completing the task. Truong (2020) has stated that time management forms an important part of every research activity because it helps in taking advantage of learning opportunities and lowers the stress level.
However, in completing the assignment it is seen that I was unable to manage time and keep within my stipulated time. This is because I did not engage in time planning activity while planning my tasks.Thus, I aim at completing such tasks in future with proper time planning process. this means when planning my different stages of assignment in future I would also form effective timeline that will include different stages of activity from choosing the organization, planning to implementing the task. The timeline will be formed days wise in which it will consist of completing a particular task within the stated days. For example, one day will be planned for choosing the organization and selecting the strategic issue and I will finish the planned task within the stated one day. In addition to this, I have also failed to recommend on the ways in which businesses can handle the strategic issues that arise from time to time. thus, I aim to look forward in ending such assignments differently in future.
This means that I will address the conclusion followed by recommendations of solving the identified business issue. In doing so I would take the action of researching ways in which businesses can reduce their strategic issues so that the assignment is completed in an efficient way. In doing so I would take the step of analyzing multiple methods and choose the most effective method of solving the identified strategic issue.
Conclusion
From the above analysis it can be concluded that the process of completing the assignment was highly beneficial because it not only helped me gain knowledge about strategic issues, strategic decision making and kind of stakeholders, however, it also helped me learn the importance of secondary research and the way to conduct effective secondary research.
Moreover, I was able to effectively apply the theories I learnt in class in relation to an international company. I am now aware about various strategic issues that take place in which and the factors that causes such issues. However, there are still certain areas that I feel I have not worked efficiently and need to work differently in future such as time management and recommending future actions. Thus, in doing so, I plan to act different in future and take new steps such as forming timeline for each stages of the assignment so that I can accomplish the task in time. this is because I failed to complete the assignment in time and failed to manage time while researching and analyzing secondary sources.
Moreover, I also aim to analyze various methods of solving strategic issues in the business and state effective recommendation when concluding the assignment. This shows that the essay has effectively argued the areas that I learnt from the completion of the assignment on strategic issue in Microsoft and the areas that needs further actions in future. Moreover, I would plan to learn through self-reflection even in future on my practices through the course to identify the areas that need more attention and the areas that I have gain knowledge during the learning process and assignments. Overall, the assignment was of great help in my course as it allowed me to learn critical aspects of business.
References
Chapleo, C. and Simms, C., 2010. Stakeholder analysis in higher education: A case study of the University of Portsmouth. Perspectives, 14(1), pp.12-20.
Gaus, A., 2020. Microsoft's 3 Biggest Challenges for 2020. [online] The street. Available at: < https://www.thestreet.com/investing/microsoft-3-biggest-challenges-2020> [Accessed 27 December 2020].
Laamanen, T., Maula, M., Kajanto, M. and Kunnas, P., 2017. The role of cognitive load in effective strategic issue management. Long Range Planning, 30, p.1e15.
Microsoft., 2020a. 5 threat management challenges and opportunities. [online] Microsoft. Available at:
Samba, C., Van Knippenberg, D. and Miller, C.C., 2018. The impact of strategic dissent on organizational outcomes: A meta?analytic integration. Strategic Management Journal, 39(2), pp.379-402.
Truong, N.T.T., 2020. THE ROLE OF TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS IN FULFILLING ASSIGNMENTS OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY SUBJECT OF SENIOR STUDENTS–A CASE STUDY AT TRA VINH UNIVERSITY. The Scientific Journal of TraVinh University, 1(37), pp.69-77.
