Page 37 - Strategic Management

Strategic Management 7 Internal Analysis

• infrastructure:
- a broad term for such activities as finance, accounting, legal, government relations.

7.3 Definition: margin

The difference between the cost of operations and the income from sales.

7.4 Examples:

The flexible, entrepreneurial organisational structure of organisations such as 3M, where new project teams and divisions
are continually created, is a key to its growth.

An established centralised organisation with a background oriented to one country may have difficulty implementing a
diversification strategy requiring a decentralised organisation and an entrepreneurial thrust - as the UK retailer Marks
and Spencer failed in its expansion into France.

7.5 The Human resource audit

There is a problem of the measurement of quality. The points below are essentially quantitative and give little or no direct
indication of the way in which HR can be effective –such as in employee/industrial relations. Here the benchmarking of
processes in a detailed qualitative survey can help.

Typical benchmarks are:-

• Number of employees.
• Employee costs.
• Level of skills and capabilities
• Staff training and development.
• Employee motivation and morale.
• Industrial action –strikes etc
• Organisational structure.
• Recruitment and selection processes
• How the effectiveness of HR policies and procedure is monitored.

7.6 Culture:

7.6.1 Definition

‘that set of beliefs, customs, practices, and ways of thinking that they come to share with each other through being and
working together’ (Stacey, 1996).

There are two types: organisational and corporate. The former is a deep-seated unconscious patterning; the latter often
seen as four types f power and control operated through the organisational structure So the first is haerd to change the
second easier.

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