Strategic Management Report: Analyzing Internal and External Factors

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the importance of internal and external factors in strategic management. It argues that effective management requires careful consideration of both internal capabilities and external market conditions, as neither can be overlooked. The report highlights how internal audits can uncover areas needing improvement within a company, leading to enhanced operations and strategic goal attainment. It also emphasizes the importance of assessing organizational resources and capabilities to gain a competitive advantage. The report uses the example of the retail clothing industry to illustrate the impact of changing customer preferences as an external factor, while also acknowledging the potential for internal innovation to drive sales and profits. Ultimately, the report stresses the need for well-established companies to maintain effective control over both internal and external factors to weather economic challenges and achieve sustainable success. Desklib offers a range of resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in their studies.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
Business

MANAGEMENT 1
Solution 1)
Not essentially. It depends on the organisation, industry and quality of its management
considering external and internal factors that impact a business firm. During strategic
planning, both internal and external factors need to give due importance. None of both can
supersede others in terms of significance.
Good management while formulating strategic plan considers all factors carefully so that later
on it does not cause any negative impact. It is also true that considering external factors is
also very important for the company. For instance, there is various difficulty for retail
clothing organisation to grow sales on contemporary marketplace. The reasons are customers
changing preference to spend more money on “life experiences” (travel and food) that on
products like clothing.
However, a firm cannot overlook internal factors during planning of strategies as they also
are important. For instance, a clothing retailer may have a concept for an in-house designer
that can lure customer with various offerings. Hence, the management needs to drive certain
strategies on timely basis son that to raise their sales and profits.
Many organisation were not well-prepared to weather the economic storm created by global
recession. This was due to internal factors like limited budgets, poor strategic planning,
untrained employees and more. In addition, combined with these factors will cause them for
downfall. On the contradictory side, well-established companies survive the global recession
as they have effective control over internal and external factors.
Solution 2)
The process of internal audit will uncover those areas in a business firm that lack the attention
of management and are not performing well. It leads to enhancement of enterprise operations
and assisting them to attain certain strategic goals. The process of internal audit also helps the
management to monitor internal procedures established and controlled in an effective way.
The process of an internal audit is roughly the same as external audit. It is all concerned with
gathering information about enterprise operations. After that, the information is integrated
and evaluated. Internal audit considers six internal functional areas of organisation i.e.
operations-production, R&D, financial accounting, marketing and information system.

MANAGEMENT 2
With help of internal audit, an organisation can also explore their strengths as they become
less employee dependent and focus on more process oriented. It will give them a different
perception to look upon lacking areas or departments needs immediate supervision or control.
In addition, for identifying the strengths, it is necessary for the strategic decision makers to
assess organisation resource and capabilities with extent to different enterprise elements and
functions. Armed with this information processed by internal audit, the strategic decision
makers can build, implement and monitor strategies necessary to gain potential competitive
advantage.