Strategic Management

Strategic planning for company management has gotten more complex over the years. As times have changed, so have the various factors that a company may face throughout the years. Many things have changed, such as ethical concerns or issues, diversity issues, global nature concerns, and technological advances and innovations. Strategic managers have to be able to adapt their company to the constantly changing factor that the company may face. Strategic managers have to know what ethical concerns or issues the company is facing, the diversity issues in the workplace of the company, global concerns and technological innovations the company will face to shape their strategic plan for the company.

Ethical Issues

There are many major ethical concerns and issues that strategic managers are confronted with constantly. Companies have to meet a standard of being ethical by creating a strategy that entails actions that can pass the scrutiny of the public morals. A company should focus on what it “should be doing” rather than focusing on what they “should not be doing.” By passing the scrutiny of morals, the company can be more ethical in its function. Even though it is hard to determine whether a company is ethical or not, a company can strive to be the best it can, ethically.

Strategic managers have to come up with a strategy that is ethical for the company. For the strategy to be considered ethical, it must contain two major points. The first point that a strategy must contain is that the strategy doesn’t imply actions that are crossing the line of what the company “should do” and “should not do.” If a company continuously focuses on what they “should not be doing” they will never see what the company could be capable of and could still be considered unethical. Ethical decisions can be made by figuring out what a company should be doing. Moral scrutiny will define a company’s strategy. If a company has any kind of shadiness, unconscionable or injury to other companies, it may be deemed unethical.

The second point that a strategy must contain is that it grants management to accomplish its ethical responsibilities in a way that considers the legitimate interest of the stakeholders of the company. If a company does not consider its stakeholder’s interests, it could be operating in an unethical way. The stakeholders include the company’s owners and shareholders, employees, customers, supplies and the community as a whole around the company. Again, the stakeholders can scrutinize the company morally. If the company is scrutinized morally it can be deemed unethical and lose business.

Determining how ethical the company behaviors are can be difficult. Most strategies can fall into an unclear area about how ethical it is. A company whose strategic plan is in the unclear area, the plan is deemed ethical or unethical by one main determinant. The main determinant