CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVE, MISSION AND VISION Strategy, in general, covers the following aspects:

1. Exploring and determining the vision of the company in the form of a vision statement. 2. Developing a mission statement of the company that should include statement of methodology for achieving the objectives, purposes, and the philosophy of the organization adequately reflected in the vision statement. 3. Defining the company profile that includes the internal culture, strengths and capabilities of an organization.

4. Critical study of external environmental factors, threats, opportunities etc.

5. Finding out ways by which a company profile can be matched with its environment to be able to accomplish mission statement.

6. Deciding on the most desirable courses of actions for accomplishing the mission of an organization. 7. Selecting a set of long-term objectives and also the corresponding strategies to be adopted in line with vision statement. 8. Evolving short-term and annual objectives and defining the corresponding strategies that would be compatible with the mission and vision statements. 9. Implementing the chosen strategies in a planned way based on budgets and allocation of resource, outlining the action programs and tasks.

10.Installation of a continuous compatible review system to create a controlling mechanism and also generate data for selecting future course of action.

Elements In Strategic Management Process

Each phase of strategic management process can be viewed to be consisting of a number of elements, which can be clearly defined with input and output relationships. The steps have logical connectivity and hence these are sequential which can be considered as comprehensive.
1. Defining the vision of the company

2. Defining the mission of the company

3. Determining the purposes or goals 4. Defining the objectives 5. Environment scanning 6. Carrying out corporate appraisal

7. Developing strategic alternatives 8. Selecting a strategy 9. Formulating detailed strategy

10. Preparing a plan

11. Implementing a strategy 12. Evaluating a strategy

Vision of The Company

Vision of a company is rather a permanent statement articulated by the CEO of the company who may be Managing Director, President, Chairman, etc. The purpose of a vision statement is to: 1. Communicate with the people of the organization and to those who are in some way connected or concerned with the organization about its very existence in terms of corporate purpose, business scope, and the competitive leadership.
2. Cast a framework that would lead to development of interrelationships between firm and stakeholders viz.employees, shareholders, suppliers, customers, and various communities that may be directly or indirectly involved with the firm. 3. Define broad objective regarding performance of the firm and its growth in various fields vital to the firm.

FEATURES OF STRATEGY: 1. Strategy relates the firm to its environment

Strategy relates particularly the external environment in all actions whether objective setting, or actions and resources required for its achievement. This definition emphasizes on the systems approach of management and treats an organization as part of the society consequently affected by it.

2. Strategy is the right combination of factors

It is a combination of both external and internal factors.

In relating an organization to its environment, the management must consider the internal factors like its strengths and weaknesses, to take various courses of action.

3. Strategy is relative combination of actions The combination is to meet a particular condition, to solve certain problems, or to attain a desirable objective.

It may take any form; for every situation it varies and, therefore, requires a somewhat different approach.

4. Strategy involves contradictory action Since strategic action depends on environmental variables, a manager may take an action today and revise or reverse his steps tomorrow depending on the situations. 5. Strategy is forward looking It has orientation towards the future. Strategic action is required in a new situation.

Nothing-new requiring solutions can exist in the past, and so strategy is relevant only to the future.

Strategy and Tactics

The major difference between strategy and tactics is that strategy determines what major plans are to be undertaken and allocates resources to them, while tactics, in contrast, is means by which previously determined plans are executed.

Distinction between Strategy and Tactics

1. Level of Conduct

Strategy is developed at the highest level of management either at the headquarter or at major divisional offices and related exclusively to decisions in the province of these levels.
Tactic is employed at and relates to lower levels of management.

2. Periodicity

The formulation of strategy is both continuous and irregular. The process is continuous but the timing of decision is irregular as it depends on the appearance of opportunities, new ideas, crisis, management initiative, and other non-routine stimuli.
Tactics is determined on a periodic basis by various organizations. A fixed timetable may be followed for this purpose, for example, preparation of budgets at regular intervals.

3. Time Horizon

Strategy has a long-term perspective; especially the successful strategies are followed for quite long periods. In occasional cases, it may have short-term duration. On the other hand, time horizon of tactics is short-run and definite. The duration is uniform, for example budget preparation.

4. Uncertainty

Element of uncertainty is higher in the case of strategy formulation and its implementation. In fact, strategic decisions are taken under the conditions of partial ignorance.
Tactical decisions are more certain as these are taken within the framework set by the strategy. Thus, evaluation of tactics is easier as compared to evaluation of a strategy.

5. Information Needs

The total possible range of alternatives from which a manager can choose his strategic action is greater than tactics. A manager requires more information for arriving at strategic decision.

Tactical information is generated within the organization particularly from accounting procedures and statistical sources.

6. Subjective Values

The formulation of strategy is affected considerably by the personal values of the person involved in the process. For example, what should be the goals of an organization is affected considerably by the personal values of the persons concerned.
On the other hand, tactics is normally free from such values because this is to .be taken within the context of strategic decisions.

7. Importance

Strategies are most important factors of organization because they decide the future course of action for the organization as a whole. On the other hand, tactics are of less importance because they are concerned with specific part of the organization. This difference, though seems to be simple, becomes important from managerial action point of view.

8. Type of Personnel Involved in Formulation

Generally separate group of managerial personnel are involved in strategy and tactics formulation and their implementation.
As discussed earlier, strategic decisions are never delegated below a certain level in the managerial hierarchy. Tactical decisions can be taken by personnel at lower levels because these involve minute implementation of strategic decisions.
Though these differences between strategy and tactics are there, often the lines of demarcation between these two are blurred both conceptually and operationally.
At the one extreme end, the differences are crystal clear, as discussed above. But these differences may not always hold true because tactics is generated by strategy and may rightly be called sub-strategy. What is one managers strategy is another managers tactics and viceversa.

Policy

The term policy has more precise definition as compared to strategy.

It has been derived from the Greek word politeia meaning citizen and Latin word politis meaning polished, i.e., clear. According to New Webster Dictionary, policy means the art of manner of governing a nation, the line of conduct which rulers of a nation adopt on a particular question specially with regard to foreign countries, the principle on which any measure or course of action is based. While these descriptions of policy relate to any field, policy in management context is defined by Weihrich and Koontz as follows: Policies are general statements or understandings which guide or channel thinking in decision making.

Kotler has defined policy more elaborately as follows: Policies define how the company will deal with stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, distributors, and other important groups. Policies narrow the range of individual discretion so that employees act consistently on important issues. We may define the policy as follows: A policy is the statement or general understanding, which provides guidance in decision making to members of an organization in respect to any course of action.

FEATURES OF A POLICY

1. A policy provides guidelines to the members of the organization for deciding a course of action and, thus, restricts their freedom of action. Policy provides and explains what a member should do rather than what he is doing. Policies, when enforced, permit prediction of roles with certainty. Since a policy provides guidelines to thinking in decision- making, it follows that it must allow some discretion; otherwise it will become a rule.
2. Policy limits an area within which a decision is to be made and assures that the decision will be consistent with and contributive to objectives. A policy tends to pre-decide issues, avoid repeated analysis, and give a unified structure to other types of plans, thus permitting managers to delegate authority and still retaining control of action. For example, if the organization has framed a policy that higher positions in the organization will be filled by internal promotion, the managers concerned can deal with the situation in this light whenever a vacancy at higher level arises.

3. Policies are generally expressed in qualitative, conditional, or general way. The verbs most often used in stating policies are to maintain, to continue, to follow, to adhere, to provide, to assist, to assure, to employ, to make, to produce, or to be. Such prescriptions may be either explicit or these may be interpreted from the behavior of organization members, particularly at the top level. When such a behavior is interpreted as policy guideline, it is normally known as precedent that is what has happened in the past on a particular issue if there is no clearly specified declaration. Policy formulation is a function of all managers in the organization because some form of guidelines for future course of action is required at every level. However, higher is the level of a manager, more important is his role in policy making. Similarly, policies may exist in all areas of the organization from major organizational policies to minor policies applicable to the smallest segment of the organization.

Policy and Strategy: A Comparison

Strategy is now the more common term for what used to be called policy, though there is no consensus on this also. For example, some writers make distinction between the two referring as the general or grand strategy as policy and competitive; strategy as the strategy used in military sense. The situation is, therefore, still confusing. Steiner has observed that for some years and after much travail, the term policy was fairly understood.
Then the game theorists began to use the term strategy with re result that management literature now is thoroughly confused about its meaning and relationship to policy. However, in this text, two terms have been used with fairly different meaning and based on that, the difference between the two can be identified.

A distinction between policy and strategy is made on the basis that former is a guideline to the thinking and action of those who make decisions while the latter is concerned with the direction in which human and physical resources are deployed in order to maximize the chances of achieving organizational objectives in the face of environmental variables. Ansoff makes difference between policy and strategy by putting that policy is a contingent decision whereas strategy is a rule for making decision. A contingent event is recognized because it is repetitive but the specific occurrence cannot be specified. For such repetitive events, it is not worthwhile to decide every time what to do when such a contingency arises. It is better to decide in advance what ill be done in such a case.