Development of Strategies for Enterprises - Essay Example

Factors that might convince an organization to adopt the emergent approach include a need to change according to the changing environment and context, advancement of technology paving the way for new channels of communication and operation, unexpected and abrupt increase or drop in the value of the currency, and stakeholder influence. Factors influencing the emergent approach and optimising an organization’s tendency to stick to the intended process include the commitment to the organisation's original vision and mission and the resource constraints.

Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student and founder of Facebook, provides a perfect example of an emergent approach. Zuckerberg’s intended path in 2003 after being dumped by his girlfriend was to create the website “FaceMash” as a platform where the beauty of young women would be voted on. The website first evolved into Thefacebook online social network meant exclusively for Harvard students. But the surprising and growing popularity of the website caused Zuckerberg to morph it into Facebook open to everybody in the world. “Ironically, Facebook’s emphasis on connecting with existing and new friends is about as different as it could be from Zuckerberg’s original mean-spirited concept” (Ketchen and Short, 2013). It can be stated without doubt that the emergent and realized strategies used by Zuckerberg proved much nobler for him than the intended strategy with which he had initially started his entrepreneurship.

An excellent example of an intended approach to developing strategy is the deliberate strategy of General Electric (GE) in the latter half of the 20th century, in the form of a direction from Jack Welch, the then CEO of the company, that all units of business were supposed to be number one or number two in their market or industry; or had a reasonable likelihood of becoming number one or number two. This strategy was partially credited for GE's success under Jack Welch's management (Iaquinto, 2011).

Certain factors make one approach more attractive than another. Most of these factors are generally related to the stability of the environment. In a stable and predictable environment, an organization finds it more helpful to stick to the intended approach. On the other hand, an unstable and unpredictable environment imparts the need to modify the strategy according to the rising demands of the hour and thus adopt the emergent approach. Environmental factors whose predictability and stability matters include but are not limited to the currency's value, stakeholder influence, advancement of technology, and interests of consumers.