Bba350 : Strategic Management : Assessment Answer

Answer:

The definition of the strategic management is versatile and as per the Mintzberg (1987), there are more than thirty definition of the strategic management and defines the different philosophy of different field. As it can be seen from the military perspective, then strategic management defines the drafting of the war plan and shaping the individual campaign through deciding the individual engagements. If the Game theory is concerned, then it can be seen that strategic management is a complete plan that specifies the choices in every possible situation. In case of the management studies, it can be seen that strategic management is unified, integrated and comprehensive plan to ensure the basic objective of the enterprise need to achieve. Under this scenario, this essay is aimed to discuss, whether the military history and neoliberalism idea has contradicted each other while forming the strategic management or not.

The very idea of the strategic partnership came into existence with the form of alliance, which is greatly influenced by the neoliberalism and history itself. As it can be seen from the study of Knights and Morgan (1990), neoliberalism gave birth to the governmental failure in case of maximising the social welfare and argued against the governmental control on the market. It is defying the political and governmental movement today with its assumption that government cannot produce economic growth or fails to source social welfare to broader region. Neoliberalism has argued that government rather through its social welfare programs rather than helping the poor peoples within its geographical boundary enhanced the discrimination. As Bockman (2013) argues, government makes them richer who are already rich and makes the poor poorer through abnormal allocation of the resource. Neoliberalism, contrary to this has argued that privatisation of the public sector units and allowing more private firms to operate within an economic framework of the state, allows to have higher amount of economic growth and comparatively lower biased distribution of the resources. As per the findings of the Joseph Stieglitz, it can be seen that this unrestricted form of the market economy is not good for the states as it creates an uncontrollable market, where the privately owned firms can do whatever they wish to do so as to enhance their profit margin. On other hand, if the firms faces lower amount profit, they can even shut down their operation in one zone letting the employees unemployed. This will further create problematic situation for the domestic economy, and the government will have nothing to do in this scenario.

Though, with the rise of the idea of the neoliberalism, it has shaped the national and local level strategies, however, if the long run impact of the same is compared, then it can be seen that, it provides short run benefit to the economy only. During long run, an economy become highly unstable and lacks in case of the strategic management that makes the neoliberalism a substandard idea of economic as well as social growth. During the early 20^th century it has been argued by the Georges Clemenceau that war has much serious matter to be entrusted to the military and during 21^st century it become a profitable business around the world (Wickramasinghe, 2015). History sharpen itself through the US-led military operation in the Iraq and Afghanistan, where the private military contractors played an crucial role and provided wide range of services varied from providing private security to wide profile war services, which used to be previously done by the state security forces. Today, through the power in the free market scenario, military power has become one of the crucial parts of the every economy and privatisation has influenced the growth of the same and presently it is one of the main stream tool for the strategy implementation for the western economies (Ball, 2016). Now, coming to the fore frontal war between the neoliberalism idea of social welfare and classical approach of the same, it is highly dubious to select anyone, however, when it comes to the strategic management, then it can be seen that both the military history and political history influenced by the different ideas of growth has impacted the strategic management.

As per the research of Ettinger (2011), it can be seen that discourse of strategy can be traced in the case of the business organisation and military organisation too. Within the organisation and military, strategy perform as the political and ideological function in order to reproduce the existing power relations while disabling the oppositional views of reality. various academic texts has showcased that strategic management under the military influence has greatly been influenced during the present days as the privatisation came into existence through the prevalence of the idea of neoliberalism and it has reduced the performance of the strategic management power (Smart, 2016). Both the neoliberalism and military power has performed in a same trace to shape the strategic management whereas, political views and jeopardising of the state has influenced and acted as the accelerator of the process. As per the finding of the Ball (2016), it can be seen that strategy serves as the social function within the different groups and parts of the organisation in order to enhance the operation parameters and performance parameters of the same. It has largely been influenced by the military power because their strict strategic management and improvisation techniques has sharpen the strategic management process of the 21^st century. As per the Connell (2016), it can be seen that sociologist imputes of strategic management thinking has also influenced the same throughout the 19^th century, however, with the rise in the impact of the military inclusion and neoliberalism has fine-tuned the strategic management ideologies.

To conclude, it can be stated that, though the idea of the military power and the neoliberalism may have different ideologies towards the strategic management, yet, they have helped each other to foster within the forum of strategic management. Rather than demeaning each other, military power has emphasised the idea of neoliberalism within the strategic management, and the other one has given rise to the impact of the military power on the strategic management.

Reference:

Ball, S. J. (2016). Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education, 14(8), 1046-1059.

Bockman, J. (2013). Neoliberalism. Contexts, 12(3), 14-15.

Connell, R. (2016). Masculinities in global perspective: Hegemony, contestation, and changing structures of power. Theory and Society, 45(4), 303-318.

Ettinger, A. (2011). Neoliberalism and the rise of the private military industry. International Journal, 66(3), 743-764.

Knights, D., & Morgan, G. (1990). The concept of strategy in sociology: a note of dissent. Sociology, 24(3), 475-483.

Mintzberg, H. (1987). The strategy concept I: Five Ps for strategy. California management review, 30(1), 11-24.

Smart, B. (2016). Military-industrial complexities, university research and neoliberal economy. Journal of Sociology, 52(3), 455-481.

Wickramasinghe, D. (2015). Getting management accounting off the ground: post-colonial neoliberalism in healthcare budgets. Accounting and Business Research, 45(3), 323-355.