Mba Management 689

1. In what circumstances would companies with multiple businesses find the portfolio approach to strategic analysis and choice useful? In which would they not?  

How to allocate resources is always the main issue for multiple-business company. If they constantly face questions in allocating limited resources to various businesses, the portfolio approach to strategic analysis and choice will help them deal with the resources allocation. However, all these are based on the assumption that each business is independent from others so that it could use portfolio techniques. In other words, if companies’ multiple businesses are related to others, the portfolio approach to strategic analysis and choice will not be useful anymore.

2. Which important functions do leaders perform which are different from managers? Why are they important? Provide an example of each function not in the text.

Good organizational leadership involves three considerations: clarifying strategic intent, building an organization, and shaping the organization’s culture.

1.  Clarifying strategic intent, is important, because it gives a clear sense of how managers/leaders want to lead the company to and what results they expect to achieve (Pearce & Robinson, 2014). There are two issues of the strategic intent: vision and performance.  

(1) Vision is important, because a leader needs to figure out what the business needs to become in order to keep growing and developing.

Example of the vision: Oxfam: A just world without poverty (Top Nonprofits). Although the vision of Oxfam is simple with only 5 words, it directly figures out what Oxfam needs to become.

(2) Performance is also important; because the clear performance expectations standard can help the company move forward to the vision.

Example of the performance: Lancaster Landmark Hotel Group, have used key Performance Indicators to help the company assess how effectively their strategy is being executed in order to align with their vision.

2. For building an organization, it’s important because leaders need to shape and refine their organizational structure and make it function effectively to accomplish strategic intent, furthermore, leaders are attempting to embrace change so that they have to rebuild or remake their organizations to fit the demands of new environment (Pearce & Robinson, 2014). There are three good ways to build an organization: education, perseverance, and principles. (1) Education is important, because it can give an effective understanding and the skills to future leaders. (2) Perseverance is the capacity to see a commitment through to completion long after most people would have stopped trying. (3) Principles are important because they are the fundamental personal standards that guide leader’s sense of honesty, integrity, and ethical behavior so that they can make leaders more effective (Pearce & Robinson, 2014).