Strategic Alternatives: The Divine Life Ventures - Case Study Example

Strategic Alternatives The paper analyses the organization ‘The Divine Life Ventures’ and puts forward strategic alternatives for the company’s growth. Furthermore, the general strategies which the company should integrate are mentioned in the essay. Introduction The name of my entrepreneurial organization is The Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures for short. This is a non-profit organization that serves those who are physically disabled, specifically those that are blind or low vision impaired. The mission of TDL Ventures is to develop the mental, spiritual, and physical being of the physically handicapped so that each client can lead healthy, independent lifestyles. TDL Ventures will focus on several services to carry out its mission, but will launch with a transportation service, leadership training and personal development, and healthy living training. As a person born legally blind, it is my personal belief that these three areas are a foundation for a person to live as independently as possible. My dream is that TDL Ventures will open both the minds and spirits of its clients to new heights, and help them reach new levels of success in every area of their lives. Alternatives to Realize Growths The best alternative design strategy involves the steps – 1. Generating a comprehensive set of all the alternative design strategies. 2. Selecting the strategies which are likely to perceive the designed information system in the given economic and technical constraints of the organization. A non profit organization should design its strategies considering the three – 1 Support of people, welfare and communal support. 2 Build up reputation, goodwill to get support of customers, employers, local leaders and government agencies. 3 Competitive strategy of the non profit organization should be able to promote growth. Alternative to realize growth are as follows: 1 Select the best grantee – A non-profit organization will have to select the effective grantees in a field, although, it is not easy to find grantees. The organization will have to campaign and build reputation to get grantee. 2 Design and produce innovative product - The Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures should take up research work and it should collaborate with R & D cooperates, which can donate resources, devices such as Braille, canes or equipments or provide it at discount rate. Tie ups with cooperate leaders should be developed to improve performance in one field. 3 Improve competitiveness - Cooperation will also provide information to examine and compare the functioning of the organization to communities across the world. Competitive advantage is sustained when the advantage resists erosion by competitors who fail to duplicate the strategy (Barney, 1991). Innovation and competitive advantage processes are interconnected (Lengnick-Hall, 1992). 4 Create value for society to improve the performance of grantees recipients – Corporate can provide assets and expertise to grantees to provide non-monetary assistance which is less expensive and sophisticated, while the corporate can make long term commitment to the operating communities. 5 Working in multiple geographical regions – The Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures should operate in multiple geographical regions to facilitate the movement of knowledge and to improve its performance in different regions and countries. Identifying the Best Value Discipline, Generic Strategy, and Grand Strategy Value Discipline Theory of value discipline - It is based on the concept that the organization cannot provide services to all market segments .There are three different value disciplines identified for the Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures - 1 Product leadership – Providing products and services in the new way and providing technologically advanced service through constant research and innovation helps in building up product leadership. 2 Customer intimacy – For every individual client personalised service should be provided to develop customer intimacy. 3 Operational excellence – Operational excellence helps an organization to deliver products and services at a low cost in less time as compared to competitors. Generic Strategies Ideas and technology cannot substitute good character and experience and only by luck it may enhance the limits of character or experience (Moore, 1995), which means, strategy cannot be developed on its own, and managers should take stance to improve themselves and their skills. The generic strategies of the organization are built on competitive contests in each geographical location. The organization will have to develop close focus to promote innovation, growth, productivity and competitiveness. Competitive strategies should be designed and improvement should be made in various areas to established competitive advantage. Porter’s Five Forces Analysis - Michael porter designed the 5 forces analysis, the value chain, generic strategies and clusters. The five forces which shapes a firm’s strategic environment are – 1 Bargaining power of suppliers 2 Bargaining power of buyers 3 Threat of new entrants into the industry 4 Threat of substitutes 5 Positioning of traditional intra-industry rivals Three generic strategies of Porter - The three generic strategies of Porter for achieving proprietary advancement are – cost effectiveness, differentiation and focus. 1 A non profit organization has to win over the limited budget and changing economic conditions can have strong impact on financial capacity of such organization. Hence, increased customer focus helps rather than increasing costs (Homes and Chand, 1995). 2 Inputs such as cost, resource, culture and skills should be able to deliver quality to customer (Mathur, 1992). Strategic positioning refers to the competitive strategy in which the organization deliberately chooses activities to deliver a mix of values (Porter, 1996). Generic Strategies for Divine Life Ventures 1. For a non profit organization strategic positioning is very challenging and the organisation has to reconcile operational costs along with managing a strategic positioning. 2. Generic strategies of Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures should help to develop leadership skills, and skills should be mobilized strategically. 3. Effective strategy requires the formation of strategic management group which is made by chief executives, key executive members and managers (Porter, 1996). 4. Low level of trust and friction amongst employees may result in poor decision making and it will also hamper innovations (Sonnesberg, 1994).Hence, the leader of the organization should be capable to handle conflictions and resolve friction amongst employees. Grand Strategies Grand strategies should be based on vertical integration, joint ventures and concentric diversification to establish strong competitive solution. It should be based on strong leadership and clear vision - 1 Managers have to capitalize on non-profit values. Leaders should have a clear perception and they should refrain from getting captured in single event. The leader should be able to strike a balance (Bryson, 1995). 2 Non-profit organizations are mostly service provider and the manager has to act significantly and the leader of non-profit organization should have the conscious to act as a social architect. 3 There will be political and social needs which the organization may have to fulfil (Bryson, 1995). 4 The company should build up strategies which enables it to benefit through charities. 5 Short term and long term relationships with corporate should be build up to promote growth. Recommendations Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures plans to provide - 1 Specialized transportation facilities to physically handicapped people to help them to have easy and free movement. 2 Leadership training to empower the person to seek job and succeed in workplace. 3 Personal training to help them to improve communication and interpersonal skills. Personal training can also be used to identify a career and to build up confidence. 4 Healthy living training because many people who are newly blind find it difficult to adjust to the changed circumstances. Healthy living training helps them to learn new things in a short time such as Braille, cane travel, home management, using technology and searching for a job. Strategic planning and combination of strategies Strategic planning of a non profit organization should not be based on emotions like you care for people, and it should have a practical purpose and a way to handle the harsh situations which is faced when you run such an organization. Public sector information is function of collective wisdom and individual rationality (Lane, 1995). The strategic plan of a non-profit organization should include 1 A strong and imposing mission statement 2 A goal 3 Objectives which includes its activities 4 Assessment of resources 5 Strategic analysis The term strategic management is used interchangeably with “business policy” and “corporate planning” (Luffman et al., 1996) and it is a new introduction of non-profit organisations. Strategic analysis using SWOT has strong implication on public and non-profits organizations (Goldsmith, 1997). Recommended strategies for Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures - 1. Planning to depict the basic nonprofits ideas Personal development and leadership training can be utilized by the organization to provide employment opportunities to handicapped in the organization. The organization should see opportunities by assessing its existing potential, assets, knowledge and funders. In context of a non-profit organization, the “public market“differs from the market based on demand, price and purchasing power (Pierre, 1995). 2. Identification of groups and individuals for success of organization Divine Life Ventures or TDL Ventures will have to identify individual or groups which are important for the success of the organization. Stakeholders may include local people, employee, pressure groups etc. Various elements and demands should be addressed and there is no one rule for assessing the performance of the groups or individuals (Goldsmith, 1997).Volatility related to stakeholder should be handled effectively. 3. Promote non profit organization to donors What a non-profit organization delivers – it either increases the potential of a person or reduces suffering of people. The non-profit organization should make reliable partnerships and develop a reputation to attract donors and it should develop and research innovative technology and approaches to help physically disabled. Corporate strategies should take into account the interests of customers, employees and shareholders (Ascher & Nare, 1990). 4. Designing the Mission of non profit organization A well defined mission helps in getting tax exempts and supporters. Non profit organization require to raise money and the mission statement should ensure the decision makers of the organization have a role in deciding the mission. If there are some unresolved questions regarding the mission and if there is any doubt regarding the work – initially, a narrow mission should be formulated. While speaking to people about the organization, the board and leading members of the organization should be able to talk about the mission to funders, government and donors. The mission statement should be clear and simple to understand. 5. Evaluation of key issues How strategies are identified and created (Hamel, 1996)? The organization should effectively handle development and promotional projects. To design strategic planning the manager need to answer a number of questions - reliability of formal strategic planning – is it too rigid or slow to respond? Will it work against creativity (Olsen and Eadie, 1994)? 6. Effective Leaderships and Risk management For good leadership a synthesis of human and non-human factors is required and the leader has to create visions as the visions are needed to implement a change (Carnal, 1991). As the organization expands the strategic planning may become complex due to changes in goals, budget and resources but the basic plan should remain simple. Transforming an organization with endemic problems requires completely new dimension of actions (Moore, 1995).The manager should have strong risk management approach and should be able to restructure the hierarchical line to cope with challenges and changing practices and modes of organisational practices. References Barney, J. B. (2007). Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Holmes, M. and Shand, D., October 1995, `Management Reform: Some Practitioner Perspectives on the Past Ten Years’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 8/4, pp. 551-578. Hughes, Olsen and Eadie in Owen E., 1994 Public Management and Administration: An Introduction, Basingstoke: MacMillan. Harper, J. D. (1996). “Risk Pooling in New York City: The Anatomy of an Award-winning Innovation”, International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 19, No. 7, pp. 1193-1197 Pearce, J. A., II, & Robinson, R. B. (2011) Strategic management: Formulation, implementation Porter, M. E. (1985), Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Free Press. Read More