Strategic Management: Concepts, Skills, and Practices - Assignment Example

Q2. No, all businesses do not have the same functional areas. The functional areas of a business would depend on the size and need (Singla, 2009). With variation in size, larger organizations tend to have more independent functional areas such as marketing and sales, production, customer service, and human resources than their smaller counterparts. For example, Apple Inc., a technological firm, has an information and technology department to undertake its ICT functions (Apple Inc., 2015). However, a small-scale fisherman would not have such a functional area as the business does not need to leverage information technology to execute its functions.

Q3. At Apple Inc., functional areas are interdependent, with Design relying on Human Resources to attract the rightful personnel to undertake its mandate and Finance dependent on Sales to meet the financial obligations of the corporation among others (Apple Inc., 2015). Thus, for a consultant, there would be a need to understand all the various functional areas of the organization before offering the needed services. This follows the argument by Srivastava and Verma (2012) that such a consultant would have to consider a problem from the perspective of the organization as a whole, factoring in the interest of all functional areas to reach a solution.