Strategic Management - business environment - success Case Study

Strategic Management - business environment - success - Case Study Example The second section will take a look at the internal and external situation of the company through the employment of a SWOT analysis. The strategies employed by a business organisation are strongly influenced by its leaders. The strategic direction and path taken by the company is always dependent on the leadership style, personality, and experience of its decision makers. This fact is highly exemplified in the operation of Stakis Plc. Since its inception to its course of operation, the company has been run by four distinct leaders which pursued different strategies in order to take the company forward. These leaders are Reo Stakis, Andors Stakis, Sir Lewis Robertson and David Michels. Roe Stakis laid the foundation of Stakis Plc by the opening of a restaurant in Glasgow in 1947. This move during a period of "severe and continuing austerity" in an "industrial city which carried over an unattractive image from the interwar period" seems to be irrational at the moment. However, it showed the leader's Reo Stakis' optimism and the determination to offer his products in spite of the external challenges and difficulties. Reo's distinct optimism and determination fuel the growth of the company and its venture to other types of businesses. It can be seen that during his reign as the chairman of the Stakis Plc, the company has gone beyond the restaurant business into other sectors such as hotels, casinos, property and finance. The growth strategy employed by Reo can be further anlysed through the use of the Ansoff Matrix. The Ansoff's Matrix is a tool in strategic management which is utilised in order to aid in deciding the product and market growth strategy of a company. According to this tool, the strategies employed by a business organisation can be categorised according to the products offered and markets targeted. Strategies are classified as market penetration, market development, product development and diversification (Thomson and Strickland 2002). Analysing the growth strategy employed by Reo Stakis in the light of the Ansoff Matrix, it can be noted that the founder has ventured both into product development and diversification strategies. Unsatisfied as a restaurateur, he also offered lodging and recreation services to his tourists and business clients by opening hotels and casinos. This move can be described as a product development and related diversification strategy. By venturing into the leisure and hotel industries, the company is offers new products to its current market and also hopes to attract new ones. This is also evidenced by the company's rapid expansion into new geographical regions in the United Kingdom. The decision of Stakis Plc to venture into the property and financial sector is an unrelated diversification strategy. With this decision, the company moves beyond its previous business scope. It is also notable that the company's expansion strategy is often furthered through the acquisition of other firms. W ith the leadership Reo, Stakis Plc has acquired D&A Haddow and St. Ermin's Hotel. When deciding to operate in an unrelated industry, the company does not establish its own brand but seems to be more

Movie City Hall Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

City Hall - Movie Review Example Perhaps the most famed political leader, when it comes to idealism of purpose, was Cincinnatus. Long before the days when Rome was a far-flung empire, it was a republic clinging to the underbelly of what would be Western Europe. When the Aequi and Volscian tribes began to threaten Rome from the east in 458 B.C., the citizens begged Cincinnatus to take over dictatorial powers and vanquish the threat. He did so, in a mere sixteen days, and then immediately resigned his position of power, returning to his farm. This example of knowing when to yield power was cited by George Washington, after he stepped down after two terms as the first President of the United States ("Cincinnatus"). City Hall, directed by Harold Becker, is just one of a long line of works in American literature and cinema that analyze the slow erosion of an idealistic leader's credibility. One of the first works on this theme was Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, a scantily fictionalized look at the life of Louisiana's Huey Long. Willie Stark, who is Penn Warren's slightly larger-than-life Huey Long figure, and John Pappas, New York's mayor in City Hall, are two men who have risen to their current power using a similar dichotomy of private and public positioning: outwardly, both men have ridden a populist wave of sentiment to their current posts; inwardly, both men have incurred debts to the corrupt powers that control much of politics, and both ultimately have a price to pay. Both men are closely followed by idealistic staffers - Willie Stark is followed by the aptly named Jack Burden, while John Pappas is followed by Kevin Calhoun. Both of these men have bought into the message that th eir respective leaders have broadcast to the masses, and both men fervently believe in the men for whom they work. By the end of both stories, both men are disillusioned as to the true nature, and the true source, of political power. The contradictions that revolve around political power primarily have to do with the definition and application of duty. The existence of a "duty triangle" has been asserted, in that, over time, three major approaches to classifying ethical thought have arisen, and these approaches are based on virtue, principle, or consequences. In other words, people make their ethical decisions based on one (or more) of these three ideas. When one considers political leaders, it would be difficult to leave both virtue and principle out of the equation: after all, the lower rungs of political service are not sufficiently lucrative for a purely utilitarian individual to find the situation attractive. There has to be some idealistic motive behind entry into public service, even if, after time, that idealism is worn away and replaced by a jaded faade. The idea of virtue finds definitions for ethical conduct in the behaviors and qualities of the good individual. The idea of principle suggests that uni versal principles can be used to make ethical decisions. These two are very similar; however, the key difference is that the virtue-based definition uses individuals as its orientation, while the principle-based definition uses a broader base of precedent as its orientation. The idea of consequences looks at the outcomes of actions and uses those outcomes to determine whether or not an action is right or wrong - this is often called a utilitarian