Strategic Management & Strategic Competiveness

Strategic Management and Strategic Competitiveness

Strategic Management and competitiveness are major factors in a company's success. In order to withstand challenges and to be successful a company must have strategic management styles and a plan to remain competitive in the industry. This paper will focus on Campus Crest Group, which is a student housing company. We will assess how globalization and technology changes have impacted Campus Crest. Using the industrial organization model and the resource-based model, we will be able to determine how Campus Crest could earn above-average returns. This paper will also take a look at how Campus Crest vision statement and mission statement influence its overall success. Finally, we will evaluate how each category of stakeholders impact the overall success of Campus Crest. This paper will give us the insight we are looking for in how Campus Crest manages and competes in this industry.

Globalization and technology changes have impacted Campus Crest in many ways. Due to the growing demands for student housing around the world, Campus Crest has taken on a new initiative well as advanced its technology. Working first hand with this company, I have seen it go from no directives regarding globalization and technology to pushing to ensure that they are up to date with globalization and technology. Campus Crest recently purchased a building in Canada and has been working towards purchasing other properties internationally. With them becoming such a diverse company, Campus Crest realizes the need to make culturally sensitive decisions in its strategic management process. The move to operate student housing internationally has led Campus Crest to a higher performance standard and has become more competitive as they are the first student housing company to go internationally. Campus Crest has adopted the NEXT Initiative which is the "company's bold commitment to the triple bottom line: a business philosophy that balances economic success with social and environmental stewardship" (www.campuscrest.com).

With the growth of Campus Crest in the past 3 years Technology has been another challenge for Campus Crest. Over the past two years, Campus Crest has been reviewing the current technology being used and has realized that it is no longer feasible to utilize the software and database they are currently operating on. Campus Crest has incorporated the help of a major software company and developers and has created their own database to keep up with the ever changing needs of Campus Crest. Technology has become such a vital asset to the corporation as their technology department three (3) years ago consisted of only two (2) IT techs and today the department consist of seven (7) full time IT tech employees, three (3) IT interns and an outsourcing group.

There are two models that we will review to see whether Campus Crest can earn above-average