What is Strategic Management?

A brief introduction to the field of strategic management, including basic concepts and scope. Excerpt UVA-S-0166 January 11, 2010 WHAT IS STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT? Corporate strategy is the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals its objectives, purposes, or goals, produces the principal policies and plans for achieving those goals, and defines the range of business the company is to pursue, the kind of economic and human organization it is or intends to be, and the nature of the economic and noneconomic contribution it intends to make to its shareholders, employees, customers, and communities. —Kenneth Andrews All the classic definitions of strategy, of which this is one, highlight its complex nature. Strategic management encompasses several different sets of considerations whose relative emphasis by business strategists, consultants, and academic researchers has changed over time, as ideas have evolved about the application of competitive thinking to the collective enterprise of value creation. . . .