Strategic Management Is An Art Or A Science? Essay

Introduction:

What is art? Art is absolutely subjective and it does not have essence. So that it is very difficult to be defined. The reasons are that art does not have logic and also that adequate and essential nature will never appear. Art is an open concept; it has new nature to join unceasingly and it is always changing.
What is science? Science is objective like logic and mathematics. It is a process of following a set of predetermined guides in order to achieve a result. If the factors in the process do not change, the result of the process will remain unchanged too.
I think that strategic management is an art and also a science. I am going to use the case of company to support my argument.


The Strategic Management Process:

It is identified by three ongoing processes – analyses, decision, and actions – that are central to strategic management. In practice, these three processes – often referred to as strategy analysis, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation – are highly interdependent. Further, these three processes do not take place one after the other in a sequential fashion in most companies.

Strategy Analysis
Strategy analysis may be looked upon as the starting point of the strategic management process. It consists of the “advance work” that must be done in order to effectively formulate and implement strategies. Many strategies fail because managers may want to formulate and implement strategies without a careful analysis of its external and internal environment. There are four steps of strategy analysis, they are: Analyzing Goals (mission and vision) and Objectives, Analyzing the External Environment of the Firm, Analyzing the Internal Environment of the Firm and Assessing a Firm’s Intellectual Assets.

Strategy formulation
A firm’s strategy formulation is developed at several levels. First, business-level strategy addresses the issue of how to compete in given business environments to attain completive advantage. Second,...