ABSTRACT
As today’s media and telecommunication companies continue to grow and expand, the challenges of staying globally competitive become increasingly more difficult. Such competition has engendered a new competitive spirit characterized by a belief that size (and complementary strengths) are crucial to business survival. The need to be profitable and the fear of failure have made such companies vigilant in their attempts to rightsize, reorganize and reengineer their business operations. Thus, no company, large or small, can afford to be casual in their approach to business.
Strategic PlanningStrategic planning is the set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long term performance of a company or organization. The main role of strategy is to plan for the future as well as to react to changes in the marketplace. A competitive strategy is the master plan, including specific product lines and approaches to be used by the organization in order to reach a stated set of goals and objectives. In this chapter, we examine four steps involved in the strategic planning process. They include:
Environmental Scanning
Strategy Formulation
Strategy Implementation
Evaluation and Control
One of the important goals of this chapter is to understand the role of strategy and how different media and telecommunications companies engage in the strategic planning process.