Discuss the differences between intended and emergent strategies (Essay Sample)

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INTENDED AND EMERGENT STRATEGIES by [Name] Course Professor’s Name Institution Institution Location Date of submission Differences Between Intended and Emergent Strategies An intended strategy refers to the deliberate plan that a firm attempts to implement (Laquinto, 2011). It is usually described in detail and included in the company’s strategic plan. Strategic plans that are made for new organisations are referred to as business plans because they guide the management and employees in achieving a common goal (Hebegger, 2010). On the other hand, an emergent strategy refers to an unexpected tactic that arises in response to unforeseen challenges or opportunities in the company. Emergent strategies can be driven by innovations that a firm adopts to conquer opportunities that exist in the industry. Intended strategies are always planned prior to the commencement of business operations while emergent strategies arise due to several factors after the start of the firm’s activities. The first factor is a change in the market structure where a company experiences an unexpected increase in demand. In this situation, the firm must prepare emergent strategies that can be useful in addressing the specified market changes. Another cause of emergent strategies is a new idea that arises in the course of business operations. For instance, an employee can suggest a new procedure that can be useful in saving time or improving the quality of production. According to Porter’s ‘Five forces’ model, an intended strategy remains the same throughout the business operations unless it is completely redone (Grundy, 2006). A new intended strategy renders the previous one obsolete. This shows that intended strategies are not reliable in the evolving reality in situations where the external factors of a firm change frequently. Contrary, emergent strategies keep changing because they arise due to the current situations of a business. They are reliable in solving minor challenges in the course of business operations. However, they do not provide long-term planning within an organisation. This leads to problems such as objective clashes and the misplacement of resources within internal departments. Therefore, emergent strategies are not reliable for long-term planning. They should be only considered in dealing with short-term business challenges. Organisations should consider intended and emergent strategies for competing successfully in their specific industries. According to Balogun (2005), real-world business strategies should be mixed for a firm to operate effectively. For this reason, a firm should start with a deliberate strategy and end up with another depending on the business needs. Examples from real-life organisations Microsoft established Xbox Kinect device as an emergent strategy that could enable it to adapt to the changing external business environment (Boulos and Yang, 2013). The Xbox could capitalise on the changing social/cultural environment that involved more people that were health conscious. Xbox Kinect provides a good substitute that could provide a competitive advantage against rival firms in the gaming market. The device contained a motion sensor for gaming support. It provided a natural user interface that could allow users to interact automatically without intermediary devices like controllers (Clark et al., 2015). Shell is among the supermajor companies with a common intended strategy for dealing with the distribution of gas and oil. It is a multinational company with the head office in London. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Shell company has been affected by foreign business policies, cultural exchange, liberalisation, and globalisation (Norouzi et al., 2020). The company has opted for emergent strategies that involve the use of skills and available resources to maintain its competitive advantage. Due to the energy crisis that is hitting the petroleum industry, Shell has been restructuring its services and selling its assets to boost its revenue. Asda is a British supermarket that was established with the intended strategy of being a leader in e-commerce and food discounting experience (Doole, 2012). The intended strategy was part of the business objectives. For this reason, it was implemented through a top-down approach to management. Employees could only work according to the stipulated orders by the management. After experiencing poor returns on sales in consecutive trading periods. The executive of the firm resolved to undertake several emergent strategies. One of the strategies was to assign employees the task of researching more about consumer needs. The strategy was effective because employees were at the bottom of the management and closer to consumers. Thus, employees were in the best position of understanding the needs of consumers. They could also assess whether the customers were satisfied with the services provided by the company or not. In this case, the emergent strategy resulted from the information that was collected from the lower to higher management levels. The financial performance of the company improved gradually after the CEO had utilised the knowledge from workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. LTD Global carrier is among the international delivery experts in the UK that have applied emergent strategies in their business operations. In 1980, LTD Global carriers diverged from its intended strategy of focusing on package delivery to exploit an emerging technology of fax machines (Prowse, 2000). The company established a new service called ZapMail through which documents were sent and received electronically via fax machines. The executives of the company believed that ZapMail would reduce the time of delivering documents. This could be better compared to the traditional approach that took between one and three days to deliver letters to various destinations. The last example of intended strategy is expressed by the Facebook owner. Mark Zuckerberg the ...