Chapter 2: Strategic Concepts and the Customer-Focused, Market-Driven Supply Chain

Learning Outcomes

After reading this chapter you should:

• know and understand differences between strategic planning and strategic management, descriptive and prescriptive approaches and different levels of strategy discussed in the literature;

• know that strategy is both process and content and that levels determine the context;

• be aware that realized strategies are consequences of both planned and unplanned (emergent) strategic processes;

• know different definitions of strategy and be able to define strategy in context;

• be aware of a number of different strategic conceptual frameworks and different approaches to strategic planning and strategic management;

• know and understand why supply chain strategies are important to most modern businesses.

This chapter examines a number of important strategic concepts. It begins by examining traditional approaches to planning and strategic management. Definitions of strategy are offered and different levels of strategy are explored. Strategic thinking and learning are discussed within the context of developing competence and capabilities before establishing the importance of setting strategic objectives. In turn, setting strategic objectives requires resources being applied to implement chosen strategies and appropriate performance measures developed to evaluate strategic performance. Finally, the importance of customer-focused supply chain strategies and the concept of strategic fit are discussed within this broad framework of strategic development.