Strategic Management: Prescriptive and Emergent Approaches, SWOT Analysis, and Impact of Environment

This essay discusses the prescriptive and emergent approaches to strategy, the use and limitations of SWOT analysis, and the impact of environment on business. It compares and contrasts the two approaches to strategy, analyzes the issues and limitations of SWOT analysis, and explores the impact of political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors on businesses. The essay provides examples from organizations such as Marks and Spencer to illustrate the concepts discussed.

Strategic Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
SECTION 1......................................................................................................................................3
Compare and contrast the application of “prescriptive” and “emergent” approaches to
strategy...................................................................................................................................3
SECTION 2......................................................................................................................................6
Use and application of SWOT analysis is “burnt tool”. Critique this statement appraising
issues, along with limitations.................................................................................................6
Two theoretical approaches available to managers to analyse the impact of environment....7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:..............................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Strategic Management can be defined as an ongoing thinking, monitoring, assessment
and examination of all the requirements a business requires to meet its aims and long term goals.
As the business environment is dynamic in nature, changes always take place so business
requires to constantly analyse their tactics for success (Agha and Dixon, 2021). The process of
strategic management assists companies take stock of their existing situation, chalk out their
plans and tactics, distribute them, along with assess the effectiveness of the enforced
management tactics. This also involves the identification as well as description of the tactics that
managers can carry so as to attain better performance as well as a competitive benefit for the
business. It contains a bundle of choices and acts which a manager proceeds and which decides
the outcome of the organizational performance. The following essay will be based upon the
topics related with the strategic management. In section 1 of this essay will be based on the
comparison and contrast the application of prescriptive and emergent approaches associated to
business tactics. With the help of organizational examples, the role of those approaches will be
described in the delivery of their objective. In section 2, the use and application of SWOT
framework will be analysed as “burnt tool”. It will determine its issues and limitations connected
with its application and use. Lately, in order to analyse the impact of business environment, two
models will be applied which are available to managers.
SECTION 1
Compare and contrast the application of “prescriptive” and “emergent” approaches to strategy.
Strategy can be defined as a long term direction of a business as it tries to attain
competitive benefits amidst resource constraints, changing business environment and diverse
stakeholder expectations. This justifies that strategic manager or seniors of the organisation must
assess internal environment in order to know their strong and weak points, along with external
environment with an intent to identify different opportunities and threats that affects the
business. Strategic planning defines as a process in which an organisation’s internal and external
business environment are analyse and explored in a systematic way to make its business static. It
acts as a long range planning (Omelyanenko and et.al., 2020). Such a strategic planning of an
organisation can be done utilising to approaches prescriptive approach and emergent approach.

Prescriptive approach, under this approach to strategic planning business vision, mission,
together with its core values are mentioned and business objectives are explained before strategy
implementation begins. This justify that the business will intentionally plan and execute intended
or rational strategy according to priorities as well as purposes of the senior level authorities. This
approach follows top to down structure of the organisation and use authoritative management
style. The process of this approach is linear; from strategy assessment to development of tactic
and then its implementation. Therefore, it is signified as a rational, orderly, systematic and
deterministic process appropriate for stable business environment. It has several advantages to
the business. Long term or strategic thinking, since the entire goals will be set to attain the
business vision as well as mission and managers will be inspired to determine the influence of
their decisions, inactions and actions on the business long range performance (Nazarova and
et.al., 2019). This demotivates short term termism since the targets of performance will be
tracked as per the long term objectives. Learning from each other is another advantage as the
process of making strategy will contain harmonizing different thoughts and opinions
demonstrated in the business plans before they are combined into an organisational plan. This
involves a learning process. It also has disadvantages to strategic planning such as paralysis by
analysis, a company can be highly engrossed in assessing the internal and external business
environment and miss utilizing opportunities that rise in the way. This justifies that unchecked
analysis can paralyse the operations of business. Lack of information, it is impossible to have all
the data and facts required to carry out a strategic analysis in a systematic way. For instance,
information about rivalries steps is stable and confidential and what is publicly exposed may not
be what is really done. Limited rationality, it is another disadvantage that it is not possible to
make decisions rationally all the time. Some business choices are taken brusquely relying on
prevailing situations as well as cognitive restrictions do not let senior authorities to make rational
choices and follow a linear trend as anticipated from prescriptive approach (Siegel and Leih,
2018). This makes every intended or deliberate strategy be also and outcome of some features of
emergent approach.
Emergent approach to strategic planning involves all the plans or tactics appear as managers
make operational and strategic decisions on regular basis, hence, resulting into a few pattern.
This justifies that the business recognised strategy will not be out of deliberate planning from
senior but emerging from actions and decisions taken, complex interactions at lower levels and

interpretations of events. Strategy making is an incremental, interactive and unplanned process
which enables adaptation and flexibility as the environment of business modifies and alters.
However, when the plan of tactic develops from the pattern of choices and decisions it can be
recognized in the way of strategic plans or annual reports. It is important that it should not be
muddled with deliberate strategy acquiring from prescriptive approach (Stephen 2018).
Additionally, this approach is short term in nature and new knowledge and experiences acquired
in adapting strategy. This signifies that this approach involves learning school of strategy
evolution because strategies evolve, develop or emerge and strategic change happens as
managers at bottom levels acquire new experience, take risks and challenges as well as learn new
methods of doing things. This ability to shift and learn strategies swiftly as situations define
make the approach appropriate for the rapidly changing, unpredictable, turbulent as well as
uncertain business environment
There are many advantages and disadvantages of emergent approach. One of the benefits of
this approach is higher chances of strategic success, through experimenting, learning, trial and
error, strategic options are verified as strategy develops. This justifies that learning that comes
from errors or experience can be a major source of competitive benefits and strategic success of
the business. This is particularly possible since development of tactic is synchronized with
implementation of strategy, hence, allowing readjustment and flexibility as the environment
modifies. Motivation of employees, since the thoughts and perspective can develop from bottom
level authorities, employees feel respected in the business and makes higher contribution to the
entire direction of the organisation. Such feeling can inspire and motivate workers to work
towards the satisfaction of business needs and goals (Wunder, 2019). On the other side, some of
the disadvantage of this approach is possibility of short termism, that says that without a formal
strategic plan, authorities or managers are possibly to concentrate on short term performance
rather than long term performance of the business. For instance, managers may concentrate on
yearly earnings growth not where the business will be in 5 or 7 years’ time. This can make the
business fail to attain constructively in f uture as it doubtfully focuses on surviving in present
time. Another disadvantages that pure emergent approach is not practical in nature, which says
that a business that follows this approach to strategic planning has unclear direction and
authorities or managers may feel out of control. for instance, it becomes challenging to justify
their decisions or actions without set aspirations.

SECTION 2
Use and application of SWOT analysis is “burnt tool”. Critique this statement appraising issues,
along with limitations.
SWOT analysis is the strategic management tool which is exploited to assess the
organisation's competitive position and to create strategic thinking or planning. It analyses
internal and external factors, along with existing and future potential (Ansoff and et.al., 2018).
The major objective of this approach is to support the organisations in order to be aware of all
the factors involved in making a rational business choices of decisions. SWOT framework may
be simple and handy to use in comparison with other forms of strategic planning tool, but, it is
not perfect to use as it can lead to wrong path and which can act as an “burnt tool” for the
business. If the SWOT is not used in a proper way, then it can provide misleading outcomes and
consumes lots of time and money as well. There are many issues and limitations of this
framework or model which can lead business to not attain their goals or aims for the growth.
Reliance on information quality, when the pros and cons of the SWOT model is explored the it
has been found that the quality of the information of the data exploited in a SWOT analysis can
have a huge impact on the quality of the assessment (Barney, 2018). If the data or information
about the business' strengths and weaknesses is wider or shows the opinion of only certain
members then it will be quite challenging to make a meaningful analysis of the business goals.
Another disadvantage is that information exploited in this framework can show the present views
of people in the organisation and those opinions or thoughts may not be accurate. SWOT
analysis pitfalls from oversimplification, this is another drawback of this framework is that it can
oversimplify the extent or type of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the
organisation. It neglects some of the key strengths and weaknesses of other organisations that
could impact the business. There may be the times in which the company's situation does not fit
into the four segments of the SWOT. Hence, it will be difficult to separate the situation, as
threats or opportunities or strengths or weaknesses, relying on the circumstances. SWOT
framework also has drawback of identifying the four elements. For instance, a threat or an
opportunity may be challenging to identify. Other limitation is that something that shows to one
person as a strength, may really be a weak point. It can be better understood with an example of
Tesco such as an executive may think that the HRM department of the business is strength, but
they may not be aware of the issues or challenges in the domain, or may not understand that a

competing organisation has much groovy HR department (Drobyazko and et.al., 2019). Lack of
prioritization, a SWOT framework can be overpowering if the leaders are unclear on what they
are going prioritise. The approach itself does not do this in an automatic way, so it can be hard to
decide what to address first. This tool is created to address appropriate issues, so seniors may feel
ironed to manage everything at once. SWOT analysis becomes impossibly subjective without the
right information, it is important for the organisation to make business choices based on relevant
and reliable information. It most of the cases, this signifies utilising facts and information from
authentic sources. As the SWOT analysis also categorised with weaknesses of the business and
in most of the cases almost every person is uneager to admit their weaknesses. It is even
challenging during the assessment because after analysing the strong areas, the business is now
on high. Also, no one likes to demonstrate their weaknesses in front of other players or in
market. Nevertheless, underestimating the weak areas or points can be dangerous than reckoning
the strengths. Therefore, this has been concluded that SWOT is important tool in the strategic
planning for the business, if it done and used in proper way (Godina and et.al., 2018). Although,
this act as a burnt tool for the business and its strategy making process as it is categorised with
weaknesses and threats as well and no one wish to open up their weaknesses in front of their
customers, employees, suppliers or in whole marketplace. Moreover, to this, threats are taken as
a negative influence on the business which can affect the business for a long term period and it is
external in nature. Identifying threats is essential for the business in order to combat and convert
them into opportunities.
Two theoretical approaches available to managers to analyse the impact of environment.
Pestle analysis defines as a strategic model that is mainly used to assess the impact of
macro environment factors such as political, economic, social, technological and lately, it
expands with two more factors that are legal and environmental. This model is used by managers
for their strategic planning processes, together with enterprise risk management planning. Marks
and Spencer will be used as an example to analyse different factors of business environment.
Political factors involves government influences, tariff policy, environmental regulations, tax
policy, political stability, trade restrictions so on. In addition to M&S, Brexit has created both
negative and positive influences on the business such as it creates trade restrictions due to which
the business face difficulties in importing and exporting their goods, whereas, it has created
many employment opportunities for the people living in UK. Economic factors contains inflation

rates, exchange rates, cost of living and so on (Hamid, Muzamil and Shah, 2022). It is found that
the chosen organisational example faced financial crises which leads to fall in demand of their
luxury items and simultaneously affected their profitability which has made the company to cut
off their jobs in the nation. Social factors mainly involve tastes and preferences of the customers,
religion, beliefs and much more. In respect to M&S, the company serves their goods and services
by keeping the tastes and choices of all kinds of customers whether they are young, old or
anyone. Technological factor encompasses research, innovation or developments in technologies.
Technology Transformation Programme has been launched by M&S which delivers diversified
customer experience. Legal factors include all the laws and legislations imposed by the
government bodies and which supports business to run their operations smoothly. M&S need to
adhere all the laws and regulations which is meant for their employees such as Health and Safety
Act 1974 in order to provide safe and healthy workplace to the workers. Environmental factors
include disposal laws, energy consumption regulations and environment protection laws. Green
policy has been launched by M&S in order to give positive impact on the communities, well-
being and on the earth (Ho and Chuah, 2019). This approach has certain merits and demerits to
assess such factors in the environment. Some of the merits are it gives better and wider concept
of the business environment. It also encourages enterprises to make strategic and external
thinking. Also, it enables business to identify key opportunities and to capitalise on them. On the
other side, some drawbacks are it works on assumptions which creates risk of being erroneous.
The pace of change makes it challenging to understand the development and this may influence
the business in the long run.
Porter's five forces is a strategic approach that analyses and identifies five main
competitive forces that forms every sector or industry and assists consider the strengths and
weaknesses of an industry. In order to analyse the competitive position in the business
environment, Tesco is taken into account as an example. Threat of new entrants UK is found as
very low due to the need of high capital requirements (Mariina and Tjahjadi, 2020). Hence,
Tesco does not to concern about any new entrants and can enjoy their economies of scale while
having its core competencies in the market. Threat of substitutes, the chosen example gives a
broader range of goods and services to its customers and also merchandise substitutes of majority
of the items in their outlets. Hence, this threat is also quite low to the company and can gain
competitive benefits very easily. Rivalry in retailing industry is quite high which creates barriers

to the Tesco. It has many key competitors such as Morrisons, Sainsbury, Asda and many more.
All those companies spend high amount on advertising and other marketing strategies.
Bargaining power of customers, Tesco facilitates its goods and services to millions of consumers
through its online and offline stores. The bargaining power of buyer is found as low as this
organisation is highly organised in order facilitate its goods and services to its customers (Kunc,
2018). Bargaining power of suppliers is identified as low in UK as there are countless number of
suppliers in the country who supplies raw materials and other things to the business entities.
Therefore, Tesco can easily negotiate with the suppliers to rise their profit margins. One of the
major benefits that the company gains is to gauge the competition exist in the industry in which
the business is running because if the organisation is running in that industry in which the rivalry
is low then it can have high pricing power which results in the business generating groovy
profits. On the other hand, some main drawbacks are it only take into consideration only earlier
mentioned factors and it avoid other factors which may have bearing on the business
surroundings in which the business is running (Li, 2020). Other disadvantage is that it cannot be
applied to every kind of industry, thus, for instance, if this approach applies to sectors such as
fashion or technology where apart from mentioned forces such as consumer tastes, technology
and many more possesses a big role than this may not deliver the wanted outcomes.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded that strategic management involves ongoing planning for the business
in order attain long term objectives and to gain long term sustainability in the competitive
business environment. It is important for the managers to understand different frameworks and
models that is used in the strategic planning and thinking such as SWOT, PESTLE, Porter’s five
force model and many more.

REFERENCES
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strategy management of corporations. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 18,
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of Innovational Development of Socio-Economic System. In International Conference
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Hamid, Z., Muzamil, M. and Shah, S.A., 2022. Strategic human resource management.
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