Q1

Strategic management has become significant, especially nowadays, because this helps
corporations lessen the risks in their performances on the path of long-term business ventures.
With this, a business will be able to assess what is currently happening in its surroundings both
intrinsic, such as the quality of resources, and extrinsic, such as the drastically changing desire
of people and the increasing level of competitors in the industry. Thus, a business will persist to
be dynamic as it will be able to plan and strategize to reach its goals, objectives, mission, and
vision. Further, this strategic plan will guide them towards a safer flight in a way that all the
details that are written down consider calculated risks, contingency plans, lower costs, higher
quality of products and/or services, and most especially, higher profits. All these being said,
strategic management is important for today’s corporations as it maximizes their competitive
advantage with critical decision-making and minimizes their disadvantage in the industry.

Q2
Strategic management evolves in a corporation among these four phases – basic
financial planning, forecast-based planning, externally oriented or strategic planning, and
strategic management. First is the basic financial planning wherein the finance department
proposes the allocation of the organization’s annual budget, meaning to say, budget for a single
year and not for the long-term. The information stated in this phase is most likely internal
considerations such as purchasing office equipment or supplies. Moving on, the second phase
is forecast-based planning which involves higher funds that will suffice the organization’s long-
term projects. Unlike the basic financial planning that is focused on annual performance, this
phase puts emphasis on the performance of an organization for five years through gathering
more data both internally and externally. The third phase is externally oriented planning or
strategic planning wherein the organization is now willing to broaden its knowledge and gather
more massive information about its target market, the desires of people, the identity of its
competitors, and even the quality of the products and services they produce. In this phase, the
organization saw the need to create a planning committee, initiated by the top-level
management, where it can consult wise decisions regarding its current techniques and
utilization of resources. Furthermore, the last and the fourth phase is strategic management in
which the organization realizes the significance of enhancing the potential of its employees from
different departments notwithstanding the organizational hierarchy. Everyone, in this phase, is
delegated various tasks and is committed to doing these tasks efficiently with the thought of
achieving its goals and objectives. From the basic financial planning up to the strategic
management, certainly, the system within organizations evolves to gain competitive advantage
while serving the needs and wants of people and creating profits for themselves.

Q3
A learning organization is an organization that is skilled in systematically solving
problems, innovating products and services, learning from experiences, and transferring
knowledge within them. In my preference, this approach to strategic management is better than
the top-down approach because learning organization entails strategic flexibility that is crucial to
the development and growth of an organization. With the interconnected movement of the
employees from the different departments, they can strategize way better since all the
information needed will be laid down easily. As the learning organization claims to transfer
knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization, everyone will be informed of the
updates and problems that needed to be solved in a particular department. As an organization
decides to make a cohesive integration of the workforce, the skills and potential of each one will
add up to innovate the operation, production, and processes happening inside. Therefore, I
conclude that learning organization is an approach to strategic management that is better than
the more traditional top-down approach where the top management, which lacks information
and idea, is the sole critical thinker and problem-solver of an organization.

Q4
Strategic decisions are different from other kinds of decisions mainly because it deals
with the long-run performance of the organization. It does not consider only the present issues
and concerns but delves more into answering what option will make an organization thrive in the
industry on its way to the future. More than that, strategic decisions are rare, consequential, and
directive. Rare in the sense that these decisions are unusual and experimental. Perhaps, these
decisions did not come up from old knowledge but from new knowledge gathered from recent
events. Also, it is consequential in a way that it needs optimum utilization of resources and a
strong commitment from the human capital. Further, it is directive as it sets a solid pillar that an
organization can hold onto for a long time without the need for other alternative surface
solutions – a concrete solution instead of a band-aid one. Now, since globalization and
modernization will never vanish and will continue to make everything more complex and riskier,
organizations utilize these strategic decisions to deal with the contemporary problems it faces in
the corporate world.

Q5
The planning mode of strategic decision-making is superior to the entrepreneurial and
adaptive modes when there is a logical way of addressing the present issues with a larger scale
of information, knowledge, and skills involved. Unlike the entrepreneurial mode which is
dependent on only one person or department and the adaptive mode that do not consider all
necessary factors in the corporate environment, the planning mode of strategic decision-making
fills up the gap and covers the shortcomings of these two aforementioned strategic planning
modes through utilizing the available resources into its optimum level while taking into account
the internal and external factors such as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats,
when making decisions.