Aviation Strategy and Resource Management

Aviation Strategy and Resource Management

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Abstract

The information on strategic planning and management process and its relevance to the aviation context provide vital information and precise knowledge about what the strategy is and, above all, what entails strategic management and planning (Haines, 2016). Therefore, it provides all that is entailed in strategic planning processes in theory, and it states the significances of strategic planning in general. Each and everything must have advantages and limitations. We shall also base on the advantages and the disadvantages of strategic planning and management to some extent. We shall also focus on the principle results of the strategic planning and management at large in the whole paper.

Introduction

Background

There is a very long history concerning strategic planning in organizations across the world. The origin of it is believed to from the military at large where there the needs for the militaries to develop some well comprehensive ways of how they can achieve a win during wars. And the strategies were too long term ones and very strong for the war to be won as compared to the short term strategies which were not secure, and they were more limited; therefore, the tactical planning that was required to win a war was hardly available (Kerzner, 2019).

There was the use of strategic planning, which became so much prevalent in private sector organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. But in the 1980s, nonprofit organizations also became aware of the strategic planning and made use of it at large. It has become widespread across the world for the organizations to use strategic planning as both public and private sectors have fully employed it.

Strategic planning at large.

As per the chapter, we shall define what is strategic planning and management process. It merely means defining the organization’s strategy. It carries so many meanings whereby it can simply be defined as the steps in which managers choose a set of strategies for the organizations that will enhance it to achieve better performance and therefore generating positive results at large (Ali, 2018). Before any business is begun, a feasibility study is carried out to come up with the necessary procedures on how to start it and why to start it. The same applies to strategic planning and management processes as some steps and procedures are followed to make sure that everything is in line. The steps for strategic planning are as follows:

• Environmental scanning

Environmental scanning involves coming up with full information and collecting the relevant information necessary for strategic planning (Abu et al., 2017). This is very important as it helps in the analysis of the internal and external factors that affect the whole organization at large. When the analysis of the factors that affect the organization have been carried out, it is significant for the organization now to evaluate to find out how improvement can be made in the environment.

• Formulating the strategy

This implies the steps for coming up or deciding the most important activity that can be taken to accomplish the organization’s goals and, therefore, get to the purpose of the organization (Moazamnia et al., 2019). When the environment has been scanned, and a feasibility study carried out on it, the organization’s managers now have a chance to come up with corporate, business, and functional strategies.

• Implementing the strategy

This simply implies the real thing on the ground. That is making the actions by using the strategy. This has many procedures in that it is made such that its work can be observed based on how it works (Sting and Loch, 2016). The procedures include designing the organization’s full structure, the distribution of the resources, development of the process of making the decisions, and the management of the human resources.

• Evaluating the strategy

This is now the last step in planning and strategy management. It comprises various activities that include measurement of the organization’s performance, taking corrective actions, and appraising the internal and external factors that are the critical roots of the present strategies (Veno et al., 2016).

We also have the significance of strategic planning and management. We shall mention them and state how important they are to any organization. Some of the benefits of strategic planning include:

Benefits in terms of finance

Research has been done to examine how strategic planning and management are important to various organizations in terms of finance. The results came out that most firms or organizations that use strategic planning are more profitable and hence make high profits which makes them to be so much success in terms of operation and production of goods and services as compared to those that do not apply strategic planning and management measures (James, 2018). Most firms obtain control over the future only if they get involved in forwarding looking planning and appropriate evaluation of their priorities. This is very necessary as it enhances the proper growth of any firm or organization at large.

Non-financial benefits

Apart from the financial benefits that we just mentioned above, we also have the benefits which are non-financial to the organization. This simply applies to the organization’s internal and external factors and how they affect it at its operations (Bui et al., 2020). Strategic planning and management are very important as they help the organization or any firm rationalize change and actualize change and the mode of communication for the need for change in terms of the employees. It is also essential to have strategic planning and management as it leads to bringing order and discipline to the organization’s activities in both external and internal activities of the whole business at large.

Strategic planning has many benefits for the organization. The ones we have just mentioned above are the most important, but we can name others which include:

• The definition of an organization’s mission vision and future goals are determined by strategic planning.
• It leads to suitable strategies that lead to the achievement of the organization’s goals.
• It leads to the improvement of the awareness of the external and internal environmental factors and identifies the competitive benefits.
• It also leads to an increase in the manager’s full commitment to achieving the firm’s goals.
• It leads to improved coordination of the work and more efficient allocation of organization resources.
• It leads to better and efficient communication between the managers of the different levels and functional areas.
• It leads to the strengthening of the firm’s activities and performance at large.

In general, the organizations and firms that employ strategic planning are more profitable and more successful than organizations that do not use strategic planning (Kerzner, 2019). In conclusion, we can say that strategic planning has more benefits, leading to excellent performance in a business organization. Hence, it should be employed to enhance the benefits that accrue in different ways.

Strategic planning also has some various disadvantages, which include:

• Requires huge costs to engage in it: this implies that for any firm or organization to employ strategic planning and management, it is supposed to be well prepared to fund it sufficiently for it to encounter its benefit at large.
• The process of coming up with it is difficult and complex: to make strategic plans for an organization is very difficult and complicated. It requires time to come up with it successfully (Mallon, 2019).
• The level of success is not guaranteed: this implies that when you come up with the strategic plans for an organization, the benefits of success are not 100 percent guaranteed for the organization’s operation.

Literature review

An earlier literature review has revealed that strategic planning has become very much accessible, and its use in private and public sectors has led to a series of benefits in different ways. It is an essential tool as it plays the role of leadership and management in any organization. It enhances the organizations prepare for the future and make improvements in their long-term performances.

To add on this, it has come to be known that there is increased recognition that the use of strategic planning is not enough as too many strategic plans have been left aside to gather dust. This means that strong evaluations have to be carried out and done through proper leadership to develop and implement strategic plans. This led to the introduction of strategic management, which involves the full and total implementation of strategic plans and not just their development.

Also, there is another trend which is to make strategic planning short and more efficient. In the past, a procedure involved that part of the whole problem that was more formal and very much elaborative. But in this error, there is the minimal emphasis required in the implementation of the essential plans, and they generate excellent results.

Henry Mintzberg researched to examine what strategic planning entails (Nickols, 2016). He came up with the results and found a big difference between strategic planning and strategic thinking. Therefore, he suggests that strategic planning, mostly analytical, maybe antithetical in strategic thinking. He finally concludes that strategic planning is more important and most appropriate and may be relatively stable public transportation systems.

It is believed that strategic planning began in the military. Earlier literature reveals that nonmilitary use of strategic planning was mainly used in the private sectors (Larson, 2019). But as per now, its use has dominated in the public sectors and the nonprofit organizations at large. This implies that there are good sources of information on the use and performance of strategic planning procedures.

The goodness and effectiveness of strategic planning and its management require not only what the organization should do but also the complete knowledge and the practical skills required for it to do it (Elbanna, 2016). When this is kept as the priority, then the organization improvement and the full development can now be discussed as the factor which could lead to the increase of the organization’s capability to develop, design, and implement its strategic plans. This involves the development and the retaining of the workforce with the requisition of the knowledge and skills required.

In the year 1994, Mintzberg published the rise and the fall of strategic planning, which presented some very comprehensive, complex, and contrarian view of the practice of strategic planning (Wolf and Floyd, 2017). He carried out research and examined what strategic planning involves. He found that and argued that strategic planning, by its very nature, is the synthesis of strategic thinking. He observed and viewed strategic thinking as the actual creative act of synthesis and strategic planning as a process that is essentially one of analysis.

He also used the analogy of the right and the left brain where the right brain is belied to be most active and is said to be more creative and holistic, and the left brain is said to be more linear and logical. He believes that strategic planning spoils strategic thinking causing mangers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.

Analysis and results

This chapter presents the analysis and the results together with the full discussion of the findings. We focus on the demographic analysis and the analysis of the strategies to establish the positioning strategies and sustainable competitive advantage. From the research questions, we also focus on establishing how the airlines use specific public services to satisfy various consumers at large. The various consumer services include the inflight entertainment, service flight attendants, on-time performance, the loss of the luggage, the airline’s network, and the pricing and others (Atalık et al., 2019). We found that the mentioned services are essential in that they are the factors that affect the consumers. Most consumers like to be treated fairly in terms of service production at every stage. Therefore, any organization must provide excellent and quality services for the benefit of the consumers.

Also, the focus was on the competitors in the general business, which lies under the environment of the business. We came to find that every organization has its strategic plans. Therefore, there must be good strategic plans for the competition among the businesses to ensure that a business is far much better than any other, which is trying to produce the same products like it.

The size of the market is also a critical factor in any business or organization as it is the backbone for the organization (Blevins et al., 2018). This shows that for any business to grow, there must be a well-established market. In short, we are saying that most improved business organizations have well organized strategic plans which have led to well-established markets; therefore, there is an excellent performance.

We also focus on the regulations of the organizations as one of the results we obtained, which makes the organizations run under them. Every organization has got various rules and regulations which they operate upon them. The rules are the ones that determine the relationship between the managers and the employees in the business (Palmer et al., 2017). When rigid rules and regulations are placed in an organization, it leads to the spirit of fear, which makes people work under pressure, which leads to poor performance. Rules should be straightforward and easy to be understood by any stakeholder in the business for the efficient flow of activities.

Lastly, we focused on the discoveries for the organizations. When the organization finds discoveries, they must at least make a try to see the outcomes for the discovery. The innovations may have a positive impact on the general business at large as well.

Conclusion

We have dwelt on many parts as a whole in the paper. Therefore this chapter, we have provided in total what is entailed in strategic planning. From the definition of strategic planning, we looked into the key concepts at large, which involves strategic planning. We also based on the benefits of strategic planning in firms and organizations. More so, we mentioned other things to do with the advantages and disadvantages of strategic planning. Therefore we can say that the employment of strategic planning in any firm or organization is significant as it leads to the accruement of a series of benefits for the organizations at large. As we stated in the whole paper, it is essential for any organization to set up its strategic plans for the organization’s better future.

Also, the product positioning strategy is very much crucial as it leads to a positive effect on is a sustainable competitive advantage. This implies that the strategy leads to improvement in the companies’ performance as it leads to sustainable competition among the various airlines in the general business.

References

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