Organisational Strategy and Leadership

Organisational strategy and leadership (MAN508)
[Type the document subtitle]
4/30/2019
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Introduction:
Strategic Management is the process of formulating, implementing and later, evaluating
those functional decisions of the organization which help it to achieve its objective. It is
an art as well as a science (Jurevicius, 2013). It is a continuous process and its main
aim is to combine all the forces of the organization in order to achieve a high degree of
precision and a superior performance. Strategic planning in an organization helps to
form collaborations and understand things from a broader perspective. The strategic
planning and analysis of an organization involves these steps – goal setting, analysis,
strategy formation, strategy implementation and monitoring (Clayton, 2019). The
purpose of this report is to assess the strategic dimensions of our organization and
critically explain the generic business strategy, the organization culture and the formal
organizational structure of the company. Further, linkages and consistencies need to be
identified within these three dimensions of the organization in order to further
understand the important aspects of the strategic analysis and management of the
company.
The company which has been chosen for the purpose of this paper is AffordMore
Clothing. It is a new company the focus of which is to sell affordable yet high quality and
fashionable clothing items. One thing I have noticed is the lack of apparel stores in the
locality catering to the student demographic. High end clothing stores are more
commonly found with items that cannot be afforded by the student class. The reason for
this name spells out very clearly in the name itself. By spending less, you can afford to
buy more clothes.This company is a private company and it is essential to understand
the strategic dimensions of the company for the purpose of better understanding the
needs and requirements of those working for the company.
Relevant theories have been used in order to understand and assess the relevance of
the three dimensions – generic business strategy, organizational culture and the
organizational structure – in relation to AffordMore Clothing. Also, the impact of all these
dimensions have been understood and explained in this paper so as to assess the links
between them. The report and its various components are presented as under:
I. Generic Business Strategy

Business strategies are those which are responsible for guiding the
company’s action in a particular direction and describe what the company will
provide, who will it provide it to and at what terms and conditions will it
provide at (Ingram, n.d.). The most commonly used business strategies are
quality focus, cost focus, value focus, niche focus and filling up the necessary
market space. These strategies help outline the most important options
available to a business when it wants to enter and sustain in a market. The
generic business strategies have been explained in detail by Michael Porter.
Porter has discussed three different types of generic business strategies in
his book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior
Performance” which was first published in 1985 (“Porter’s Generic Strategies
– Choosing Your Route to Success”, n.d.). Porter has named his strategies as
– Cost Leadership, Differentiation and Focus (further divided into Cost focus
and Differentiation focus).
AffordMore Clothing, as its name suggests, uses Cost Leadership as its
generic business strategy. This strategy employs the technique of selling
products at the lowest cost in the market and becoming a leader by gaining
the highest market share. This strategy can be implemented only by gaining
experience and careful monitoring of production costs (Valipour, Birjandi and
Honarbakhsh, 2012). Cost Leadership, in this case, can be implemented in
two ways:
1. Increasing profits by reducing costs
2. Increasing market share by charging lower price, while still earning a
reasonable profit on each sale.
The main aim of AffordMore Clothing is to increase its customer base by
selling at a lower price than its competitors. Therefore, its use of Cost
Leadership includes increasing market share by selling at a lower price than
most, and still earning a reasonable profit on every item of clothing sold. For