Strategy Implementation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Strategy Implementation - Essay Example This paper compares and contrasts the roles for strategy implementation, identifies the resources required for its implementation and assesses what measures and timescales can be used to achieve this strategy implementation for British Airways. Strategy Direction Defining and determining strategic direction involve specifying the images, structures and characters that the firm thinks to develop over time. As Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2008, p. 350) pointed, strategic direction is normally framed within the contexts of the conditions like opportunities and threats that strategic leaders expect their organization to face in its near future. Daft (2009, p. 58) has also put forward almost similar view that strategy direction is a process that typically begins with the assessment of opportunities and threats in the external environment, including change, uncertainty, resources available etc. Matha, Boehm and Silverman (2008, p. 47) found that strategy direction is based on how employees hear about the strategy and how they do involve in it. A firm with long-term strategic direction probably will have to consider two basic elements, they are core ideology and an envisioned future. The first one is to motivate its people through the organization al culture and company’s heritage, and the second one encourages them to draw out of their expectations of accomplishments (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2008, p. 350). As depicted in the figure above, managing a firm’s resource portfolio, maintaining organizational culture and emphasizing ethical practices are highly critical factors affecting determining of the strategic direction. Roles and Responsibilities of strategy implementation Strategy implementation is connected with creating a portfolio of the strategic programs and secondly it involves attracting, allocating and managing all the necessary resources to deliver these strategic programs. Strategy implementation represents a specific pattern of decisions and actions that are intended to carry out a particular plan in an organization. When it comes to the case of British Airways, the company is widely known for effective corporate strategies like technology and business innovation, customer-enabled business strat egy or customer focus (Egger and Buhalis, 2008, p. 272), supreme customer services, service orientation etc. At British Airways, once the strategy has been determined, the management team responsible for the strategy implementation must translate the strategy program in to appropriate tactical plans, processes, programs and budgets. Operating plans and programs for each function are to be developed in this stage. In implementing the strategy of customer focus or innovation, the management of the British Airways prepares a plan including timetables, milestones and details of the organization’s risk management as well (Atkin and Brooks, 2009, p. 22). As compared to this, the strategy implementation in Virgin Atlantic is mainly influenced by the strategic vision of its top management and quality and entrepreneurial drive of the management teams (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000, p. 34). The strategy implementation in Virgin Atlantic is thus closely linked to the top managementâ₠¬â„¢s vision and it takes those steps that the management instructs. A strategy is planned and developed mainly