Mostafa Sayyadi, Author, Leading Between the Lines

Today‘s globalized nature of competitiveness in the markets is placing more pressure on companies to develop more effective organizational strategy. There are many studies that focus on the organizational and managerial factors that create a better workplace for employees. Organizational strategy is such an area that plays a critical role and is a prerequisite for business success in today’s hypercompetitive environment. I place a new emphasis on this organizational factor and shed light on this important organizational element to build a workplace upon managing intellectual capital within organizations.

Nowadays companies attempt to continuously innovate and create new and valuable services or products through applying new ideas and knowledge. When companies in general confront challenging situations in which they need to proactively respond to every environmental demand, an effective strategy can be a basis for responding and perhaps anticipating these emerging issues. In the absence of effective strategy, companies are not capable of effectively implementing changes at the competitive level. Executives can see organizational strategy as a sum of objectives, plans, and procedures designed to efficiently and effectively upgrade organizational capabilities and interact with their environment more effectively. Strategy in fact defines a pattern to deploy organizational capabilities and interact with both the internal and the external environment. Executives can, therefore, manage their knowledge assets to create new ideas and knowledge aimed at achieving organizational objectives. First and foremost, just as one organization is holding knowledge back from competitors they are following suit. Knowledge could be the most important component of success in this ever changing technological environment of today. Thus, organizational strategy is an internal resource affecting knowledge and in most cases, knowledge is the most strategic factor of competitive advantage.

Executives can develop an effective strategy to implement a series of basic research aimed at developing a more comprehensive vision for the future by incorporating upcoming trends in the business environment. This strategy can also play a critical role in improving performance. Firms’ strategy can be categorized into two prominent streams: the first being that research indicates that there is a strong alignment between business strategy and external environment that potentially leads to higher degrees of performance at the organizational level. Other stream sheds light on different typologies of strategies, and argues that one typology of these existing typologies can create better results for organizations when compared to others. It can be seen that these two streams have highlighted business strategy as an important enabler to improve business success. Strategy can also develop opportunities for human resources development within organizations, by assessing current situations in details. In addition, strategy has major effects on the performance of companies through focusing on analytical decision making process. Human resources development can potentially facilitate financial performance, by improving profitability for companies. Organizational strategy as a necessary requisite enhances profitability, which enhances efficiency in companies’ current positions in the hypercompetitive markets. Organizational strategy can also manifest itself in behaviors such as continuously exploring the emerging opportunities to invest, and can positively contribute to the efficiency of companies through helping them to find better opportunities for investment that potentially leads to better financial performance for companies in terms of return on investment and profitability. Further, strategy develops an effective and comprehensive vision for future, and can enable companies to identify and actively response to the changes occur in the external environment.

In conclusion, I suggest that executives should consider the critical role of strategy in improving business success, and effectively use business strategy to create a better workplace based upon developing and managing intellectual capital within organizations.

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