Strategic Management of Health Care Organization - Essay Example

4) How is strategic management different from health policy?

Strategic management is different from health policy because it considers the latter in how it analyzes, formulates, and implements strategic plans, while health policy can also have its own sense of strategic management approach.  In other words, a country’s health policy shapes strategic management, although the latter is also part of the former.

8) What are the major activities of strategic management? How are they linked together?

The three main activities of strategic management are strategic thinking, strategic planning, and managing the strategic momentum. Strategic thinking is the mindset or way of thinking that guides strategic planning, strategic planning provides the strategies that affect strategic momentum while managing the strategic momentum means that the management implements, evaluates, and improves strategic plans.

Chapter 2

2) Why is environmental analysis important for an organization?

Environmental analysis is important for an organization because it helps understand what is happening in the environment, how it affects the organization, and how the organization can respond to it using its strengths. It will also help firms in becoming more marketing-oriented, improve forecasting and planning efforts, and enhance strategic planning’s ability to manage competition and surprises in the environment.

5) What are the specific goals of environmental analysis?

The goals of the environmental analysis are to determine and examine current issues, identify and understand possible emerging issues, hypothesize on future issues, classify and prioritize the order of issues, determine organizational critical success factors, offer organized information for planning, and encourage more strategic thinking for the management.

8) How does the scanning process create a "window" to the external environment? How do the window concept help in understanding organizations and the types of information they produce?

The scanning process creates a "window" to the external environment because it views what is external to the organization by determining and analyzing trends and issues and collecting information about the outside world and how it affects the organization. The window concept helps in understanding organizations and the kinds of information they produce because it shows what information is available and this information connects the external environment to organizations.

Chapter 3

1) What is entailed in service area competition analysis? why should health care organizations engage in competitor analysis? Should not - profit organizations perform competitor analysis?

Service area competition analysis entails discussing and evaluating the management’s assumptions about the organization’s capabilities, market position, and competition, determining market niches discontinuities and boosting the management’s awareness of and responsiveness to important competitors that their organizations should be mindful of. Health care organizations should engage in competitor analysis because it will help them survive surprises from competitors and ensure that they can offer something more or different than competitors. Not-for-profit organizations should still perform competitor analysis because they also have competitors that they must respond to in order to be different from them and to survive the service area and because it helps them become aware of the markets they serve and can serve and develop their marketing strategies better.

5) Explain the steps or logic of service area competitor analysis.

The logic of service area competitor analysis begins with service categories because it is part of knowing what the organization is doing in terms of its services and target markets, defining the service area because it shows the extent of services that are offered, creating a service area profile because it understands characteristics of the service area more, examining the structural analysis to analyze the threat of new entrants to the market and level of rivalry among competitors, conducting competitor analysis to know the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, mapping strategic groups to know the characteristics of organizations competing in one service area, and synthesizing the analyses because it summarizes key issues and trends and how they impact the organization and because the organization then applies to learn to strategic thinking and planning.

9) What are identification and evaluation of competitor strengths and weaknesses and the determination of strategy essential in service area competitor analysis?

The identification and evaluation of strengths and weaknesses refer to knowing what they are with respect to two or more dimensions for easy analysis and evaluation. The determination of strategy essential in service area competitor analysis refers to finding the best strategies that are aware of and respond to what competitors are doing.