Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases

The provided assignment is a collection of text and cases related to strategic management. It includes various readings and sources on topics such as critical success factors in m-learning, global strategic management, environmentally friendly export business strategy, and operational strategy optimization in smart microgrids. The assignment also covers implementation theories, models, and frameworks, as well as key performance indicators and strategic advertising management. Additionally, it touches on global corporate strategy and trade policy, digital publishing technology using an ANP approach, and four logics of corporate strategy. The summary provides a brief overview of the content and topics covered in the assignment.

Running Head: Strategic Management
Amazon
Strategic Management

Strategic Management 1
Executive Summary
Strategic management is the procedure of managing organizational functionalities in a systematic
manner in order to accomplish organizational tasks in an effective manner so that organization
could move towards sustainable growth and development. Concept of strategic management is
determining the key functionalities that an organization could impose for gaining appropriate
outcomes. Aims and objectives set up by the managers in relation with organizational owners
involves under the strategic management. Primarily, it focuses over the available resources with
the organization along with assessing the internal and external factors which affects
organizational performance. These factors need to be considered while making organizational
strategies as it has direct link with the success of the organization (Al-Aali & Teece, 2013).
This report will explore the key approaches to strategic management in relation with the Amazon
Inc. Amazon Inc. is an American companies and it is one of the largest online retailing e-
commerce based organizations across the globe. Being a multinational corporation, it is required
for the organization to identify all the challenges and issues while making strategies in relation
with enhancing organizational performance. The approaches which will be analysed in this
report in relation with strategic management of Amazon are resource based view, market based
view and industrial/organizational view. Further, the report will also focus over types of
strategies in relation with the organizational operations. These strategies are operational strategy,
corporate strategy and business strategy. Apart from this, report will focus over the suitability of
these approaches in relevance with the organizational performance following to the challenges
and issues of these approaches. Implementation of the strategies and recommendation towards
enhancing organizational capabilities will be discussed in the last phase of the report.

Strategic Management 2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Current strategies.............................................................................................................................3
Corporate Strategy.......................................................................................................................3
Business Strategy.........................................................................................................................4
Functional/operational strategy....................................................................................................4
Implementation of Strategy (Hubbard Model)................................................................................6
Key issues........................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Amazon Inc. is an American e-commerce and cloud computing company headquartered in
Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and today, company has gained the
position of the largest internet retailer across the globe in terms of revenues and market
capitalisation. In terms of total sales, organization stands on second position after Alibaba Group.
Amazon.com initially started as the online book seller and with the passing time, Jeff Bezos,
founder and current CEO of the organization diversified its products offerings and started selling
videos downloads, streaming, MP3, software, games, food items, toys, etc. Jeff Bezos once
dreamt of selling all items over internet and today, Amazon is dealing in millions of products and
services. Their target market segments have been increased with wide range of products. Apart
from this, organization has attained the peak position in terms of cloud infrastructure services
which includes IaaS and PaaS). Amazon also sells certain low-end products under its in-house
brand AmazonBasics. Company surpassed Walmart in 2015 as being the most valuable retailer
in the United States by market capitalisation (Amazon, 2018).
Organizational success could be determined with its strategies, policies and benchmarks. Apart
from this, the major component which affects organizational success is its effective and efficient
human resources. Amazon relies on its employees and the same is expected by them in terms of
effective performance which could match up with the expectations of the organization. Along
with this, strategic management plays vital role in organizational success and development. Since
1994, Amazon has expanded its business in various parts of the globe and the main reason
behind this is the selection of strategic management approaches and the strategies adopted to
accomplish the desired goals and objectives (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014).
Current strategies
Amazon has adopted set of effective strategies in relation with accomplishing their operations in
an effective manner. Strategies adopted by Amazon are effective as well as efficient and these
are developed on the basis of organizational standards, policies and benchmarks. With the help
of these strategies, organization has enhanced its efficiency and management also believes in
innovation and creative strategies in order to enhance organizational performance. For this,

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employees are provided with all resources which are required to think out of the box as well as to
gain competitive advantage in the dynamic and competitive business environment (Wheelen,
Hunger, Hoffman & Bamford, 2017). Following are some of the current strategies adopted by
organization:
Corporate Strategy
Corporate strategy is the medium of ascertaining crucial factors for attaining competitive
advantage in the business environment in which company operates. In relation with Amazon’s
operations, corporate strategy helps the organization to determine effective factors through which
competitive advantage could be attained along with enhancing organizational performance. This
strategy concerns every facet of business in relation with adding more than the sum of all other
business units (Lasserre, 2017). There are four generic strategies which are included in a
corporate strategy which is as follows:
 Portfolio management: This is an essential part of corporate strategy and it is used by
most of the organizations. Main motive of this strategy is based on diversification
strategy through acquisition. However, acquisitions could be done completely in new
markets and corporate managers will focus over their own personal expertise rather
focusing on new markets. New acquired firms should be run on autonomous basis so that
the teams could focus over their own work. Amazon Inc. has various sub units whose
operations are completely different from each other and for every unit, separate team
performs its functions and these teams are rewarded on the basis of unit results (Michael,
Storey & Thomas, 2017).
 Restructuring: This element is dissimilar to the portfolio management as it involves
overall restructuring of the business. Corporate manager acquire a new business unit in
order to restrict the overall business with the objective of attaining positive outcomes.
This strategy is useful and generates positive outcomes when underperforming companies
are acquired which are going through threat of liquidation. Amazon has acquired various
companies which were suffering from low or negative profits and soon they were going
towards liquidation. Audible, Zappos, etc. are certain companies acquired by Amazon
and it is cheap mode of acquisition and it will help the organization towards growth and
development (Luthans & Doh, 2018).

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 Transferring skills: Above two strategies are majorly dependent over acquisition and
restructuring of companies in order to expand organizational business in other areas
which has not relevance with organizational main business operations. With the help of
transferring skills, interaction develops amongst the sub-units of the organization so that
they could get inter connected with each other (Fitzroy, Hulbert & O'Shannassy, 2016).
Business Strategy
It is an effective approach which is implemented within workplace for attainment of desired
goals and objectives. In addition to this, a business strategy is adopted for minimum 3-5 years in
order to enhance organizational performance and it encompasses three generic strategies i.e.
retrenchment, growth and globalisation. Globalisation and growth, both strategies focus over
expansion of business operations at domestic as well as at international level. Apart from this,
retrenchment strategy acts as defensive strategy for organization through which the acquired
position in the competitive business environment could be defended along with generating
further opportunities to gain the leading position (Percy & Elliott, 2016). Main objective of
business strategy is attainment of competitive advantage and in relation with this, business
strategies has various ways which are used by Amazon to gain competitive advantage such as
lowering down the prices of products, implementing differentiation strategies, etc. Business
strategy is different from corporate strategy and it invites employees to provide views in decision
making process.
Functional/operational strategy
This strategy is adopted by Amazon so that it could sustain for a longer period of time in the
dynamic and competitive business environment. Every business’ primary objective is to sustain
for a longer period of time so that it could establish its effective position in the target market.
There are five key attributes which are main objective of operational strategy to attain:
 Cost: This is the ability of an organization of producing at low rates.
 Quality: Ability of the organization to produce with appropriate specifications and as per
quality standards (Rugman & Verbeke, 2017).
 Speed: This is the ability of an organization to meet its target customer’s needs in
appropriate time period.

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 Dependability: This means what organization shows, it delivers the same. As per
promises made to the customers, organization delivers the same products.
 Flexibility: It is an organizational capability to amend its operations as per changing
trends and dynamic business environment.
These strategies are suitable as per Amazon’s operations because it is continuously expanding its
operational area in different business areas. There are numerous factors which have great impact
over organizational performance such as environmental risk management, Stakeholder’s
involvement and support, human capital, intellectual capital, organizational learning,
performance measurements, strategic integration of human resources, etc. (Sull, Turconi, Sull &
Yoder, 2018). In a study on impact of human resources over supply chain management and
organizational performance, it has been found that supply chain management has direct influence
on supply chain management outcomes and it has indirect influence on organizational
performance of Amazon. Apart from these success factors, following are crucial and critical
success factors behind Amazon’s continuous growth and development in different parts of the
globe:
 Management: It is one of the critical success factors for Amazon’s performance. In
organizational success, vital role is played by the organization’s CEO Jeff Bezos and by
his management team. Bezos is known for his unique leadership style and effective
business understating. With these capabilities, organization has attained immense success
in various big parts of the globe. Jeff Bezos believes in work life harmony which is
significantly different and entirely new concept in comparison to work life balance.
Work life balance is more of a deliberating term whereas; work life harmony
encompasses the entire aspects of personal and professional life (Johnson, 2016).
 Innovation: Amazon is not the first online retailing company but it is one of the most
innovative companies and this is the major factor behind organizational success and
growth. Amazon started its operations by selling books but it does not stay that way
only. They focused on diversifying their product offerings and soon or later, Amazon
becomes “the everything store” which was the dream of company’s founder. Amazon
has invented various innovative products and Kindle is one of them. It is sure that the
organization does not break other e-readers to market, but it became one of the most

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popular brands. Amazon Prime, drone, Alexa, firefly, Amazon web services, etc. are
some of the great innovations made by the Amazon which has lead the organization
towards sustainable growth and development (Leonidou, Fotiadis, Christodoulides,
Spyropoulou & Katsikeas, 2015).
 Customer service: Amazon constantly ranks on the leading position in terms of
customer satisfaction because Jeff Bezos believes that happy customers will be the major
success factor for the organization. He believes in special treatment with customers and
for the same reason organization has kept customers on peak position. Apart from this,
he believes in focusing over customers and their demand rather focusing over
competitors and their strategies. Main motive behind putting customer satisfaction on top
of the list is that happy customer become positive brand advocates for the brand, they
spread positive word of mouth about the company not only to their peers, colleagues and
families, but also help the brand to garner positive sentiments on the social media
(Moradi, Eskandari & Hosseinian, 2015).
 Execution: Organization has focused over implementing right decisions at right time.
Organization has always focused over delivering the products as per target customer’s
demands. In relation to this, organization has set up their distribution centres in all parts
where they operates and this helps the organization to fulfil its customer’s needs and
wants on quick basis. Apart from this, they have adopted several strategies to make
vendor relations effective and efficient through which they could provide discount offers
to their target customers. Apart from this, organization is also focusing over brick and
mortar stores in order to make their physical presence. With regards to the physical
appearance, organization has opened their first store in New York City (Parmenter,
2015).
 Diversification: Jeff Bezos always wanted to make Amazon “the everything store” and
from selling to books in initial period, now Amazon delivers everything from soup to
nuts. According to research, it has been found that while searching for soups, more than
3,000 results revealed for vegetable soup. Company deals in various product categories
such as electricity, music, health and beauty, grocery, clothing, etc. Organizational
success depends upon the risk taking capacity and Jeff Bezos has taken all possible risks
in order to make Amazon as the largest retailer as e-commerce company. Organization

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has faces several critical challenges and issues but they have also adopted effective
strategies to deal with those issues in an appropriate manner along with gaining positive
outcomes (Sunley & Martin, 2017).
Implementation of Strategy (Hubbard Model)
In order to implement the strategies in business operations, it is required to manage critical
factors such as leadership, people, culture and capabilities in an effective and appropriate
manner. All these factors are essential and have a great impact on strategic management process.
Especially these factors affects in determination of organizational vision and mission. Further,
these strategies facilitate organization to execute these strategies along with attaining vision of
the organization (Zou, Kumaraswamy, Chung & Wong, 2014).
Implementing corporate, business and operational strategy requires team efforts along with an
effective and efficient team leader. Every member of the change management is responsible for
its own actions, thus, it is necessary for the organization to understand the role of leadership in
strategy implementation process in relevance with making delegating responsibilities more
effective (Shieh, Yeh & Yeh, 2016).
 Involvement: When a new policy or strategy is being implemented within the workplace,
participation from all departments of organization is required in order to enhance the
efficiency of organization. Team and the leaders are required to identify that what teams
will be affected through the implementation of new policies so that representatives could
be hired from each department which will be affected by the implementation of strategy.
Representatives of each group will share their views while implementing the strategy so
that the desired goals could be attained in an effective and appropriate manner. A
structure requires to be created by management which could identify various group
leaders, their responsibilities and the accountability system which will effectively meet
up with the requirements of the organization in relevance with the implementation of new
strategy (Krotov, 2015).
 Interest: While implementing a new strategy or while adopting change management,
involvement from every employee should be recognised along with consent from them.
In relevance with getting consent from all employees towards implementation of new

Strategic Management 9
policy or change management, leaders play vital role in explaining the significance of
new strategy in the workplace to employees (Chen, Schütz, Kazman & Matthes, 2016).
 Monitoring: While implementing new strategies, it is necessary for the management to
analyse dynamic business environment in order to meet the goals of the organization.
Leader and the other team members are responsible for implementing monitoring system
so that as per the requirement of implementation system, necessary changes could be
made in order to enhance the efficiency of implementation system (Labes, Hanner &
Zarnekow, 2015).
Culture also plays vital role in the strategic management, thus, Amazon has adopted dynamic
strategies so that while implementing new strategies, organizational culture could align with the
requirements of the strategy. This will help the organization to enhance its efficiency along with
developing effective culture within the workplace. Strategic management is considered as the
planning process and in this process; company leaders formulate strategies in order to
accomplishing goals and objectives. This has mainly four basic elements i.e. environmental
scanning, strategy implementation, strategy formulation and strategy evaluation (Ritchie,
Kirchner, Parker, Curran, Fortney, Pitcock & Kilbourne, 2015). With the help of these four steps,
leaders determine organizational current situation, analyse strategies, implementation of
strategies and review their effectiveness. In relevance with this, organizational culture is most
influencing tool for company’s success and failure. An effective and strong organizational
culture is one of the most suitable competitive strategies for an organization. Organizational
culture includes workplace values, methods adopted by organization and the policies of
organization for doing things. These attributes contribute towards enhancing organizational
performance along with imposition of organizational strategies in an effective manner (Hubbard,
Rice & Galvin, 2014).
Organizational culture has unique advantage in making strategic management efficient and
effective, thus, Amazon has also given culture an effective place while developing and
implementing strategies. This helps the Amazon to match up with the requirements of the new
strategies in relevance with the cultural factors. For example, if organization will not amend its
culture as per the current environmental conditions, organization will not be able to attain its
desired goals and objectives. Apart from the organizational culture, Amazon also focuses over its

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external as well as internal strategies in support with the culture and to make balance between
external as well as internal strategic elements. Corporate missions and visions have direct link
with the strategic management, thus, balancing these attributes with organizational culture is
necessary element for enhancing organizational performance (Hettema, Ernst, Williams &
Miller, 2014).
People and capabilities are the most crucial elements for an organization. These two elements are
effective in relation with attaining goals and objectives. Amazon hires people with customer
centric approaches and in relation with the organizational standards and policies. Company’s
primary mission and vision is to satisfy customer’s needs and with the help of customer centric
approach, organization has made an effective image in the e-commerce industry. While
implementing the new strategies, organization does not find many issues and challenges because
their capabilities and people are efficient enough to gain positive outcomes for the organization.
Amazon’s strengths and weaknesses could be determined with these attributes and in relation
with this; organization could attain its desired goals and objectives in accordance with the
strategic management (Yashin, Andreeva, Serebrjakov & Bagautdinova, 2015).
Key issues
While implementing strategies, organization faces several challenges which affect organizational
performance. This leads to generate gaps between expectation of the organization and actual
performance attained. Following are certain issues in relation with implementation of strategies:
 Resistance from employees: This is the greatest challenge for an organization. If
implementation of strategies requires adjusting employees, resistance to change will takes
place. In order to overcome from these issues and challenges, it is required for the
managers to involve employees in the decision making process in order to gain positive
outcomes. For example: In the initial period, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos took a decision
in relation with diversifying its product offerings and the decision was to sell toys. For
this, huge stock of toys was purchased from wholesales and toys manufacturers in order
to deliver toys directly to consumers. Under this decision, advisory experts were also not
involved by Jeff Bezos and later on this decision lead the organization towards huge
losses (Chang, 2016).

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 Communication gap: If top level management will implement strategies without taking
consent from employees or without informing employees prior to the implementation of
strategies, employees will not be able to cope up with the expectations of the
organization. Thus, it will lead to generate disputes amongst the organization which could
also affect organizational performance in negative manner. In order to gain positive
outcomes, it is necessary for the organization to communicate and provide relevant
information to the employees so that expected outcomes could be attained (Nilsen, 2015).
 Sufficient time to implement strategy (overnight implementation): If organization
will implement strategy without providing sufficient information to the employees,
desired outcomes will not be generated. Overnight implementation of strategies always
affects employees’ mind-sets. In order to obtain positive outcomes from the implemented
strategies, organization is required to provide appropriate training and development
programs so that efficiency of employees could be enhanced in relevance with
organizational goals and objectives (Galliers & Leidner, 2014).
Recommendations
Every organization should consider certain policies and standards in relevance with the
implementation of strategies so that the goals and objectives could be attained in an effective
manner. Amazon believes in taking their employees up with themselves. Thus, they are required
to adopt certain effective measures so that positive outcomes could be originated with the
implementation of strategies. Following are recommendations to the organization through which
implementation of strategies could be enhanced:
 Communicating with employees: Before implementing strategies, organization could
ask from the employees and the departments which will be affected through
implementation of strategies. This will help the organization to gather consent from
employees regarding implementation of new strategies at workplace.
 Providing training and development programs: It has been recommended to the
employees that before implementing the new strategies, it is necessary for the
organization to provide appropriate training and development sessions to the employee
who will be affected by the implementation. This will help the employees to cope up with

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the requirements of organization which will ultimately help the organization to gain
positive outcomes.
 Adopting effective measures for making efficient workplace: In order to implement
new strategies at workplace with the objective of upliftment of organizational
performance. Effective workplace environment leads to build appropriate and effective
relation with the employees through which team bonding, interaction amongst team
members, etc. could be developed at the workplace. Organization will be able to enhance
its performance along with making its employees effective and efficient.
Conclusion
From the aforesaid information, it can be concluded that strategic management plays vital role in
uplifting organizational image at workplace. In relation with making strategic management
process effective and efficient, it is required for the organization to analyse certain aspects such
as internal and external business environmental factors, organizational standards and policies,
etc. These analyses will help the organization to gain its desired goals and objectives along with
making their strategies effective as well as efficient. In this report, current strategies of Amazon
have been discussed along with the suitability of organizational strategies in relevance with the
goals and objectives. Further report also concludes implementation of the strategies and the key
issues faced by the organization while implementing strategies.

Strategic Management 13
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