What is strategic management?

Typically in many strategic management textbooks, International and Global Strategy appear as one of the chapters alongside many others – for example, it’s chapter 19 in my book.

An example from Blackberry

Take the Blackberry RIM range of mobile phones. This Canadian company has been very successful, so far, in terms of its international and global strategy. But it began by using the basic principles of strategic management – customer focus on the business customer, competitive advantage through its focus on the easy email access, resource-based analysis based on its patented technology – rather than anything specific to global strategy. But then Blackberry RIM added a global strategy – for example, its co-operation with the Reliance mobile network in India shown right – to add to the basic strategy. 

What this means is that many of the basic principles of Strategic Management are also fundamental to the development of International and Global Strategy. These include customer focus, competitive advantage, resource-based analysis, etc. In the articles below, we summarise the two main strategic processes – prescriptive and emergent – and mention some of the background theories that underpin them. There is also a selection of videos to help walk you through key aspects of this.