In 1974, Berliner Foods Corporation (Berliner), pursuant to an oral contract, became a distributor for Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Over the next decade, both parties flourished as the marketing of high-quality, high-priced ice cream took hold. Berliner successfully promoted the sale of Häagen-Dazs to supermarket chains and other retailers in the Baltimore–Washington, DC, area. In 1983, the Pillsbury Company acquired Häagen-Dazs. Pillsbury adhered to the oral distribution agreement and retained Berliner as a distributor for Häagen-Dazs ice cream. In December 1985, Berliner entered into a contract and sold its assets to Dreyer’s, a manufacturer of premium ice cream that competed with Häagen-Dazs.

Dreyer’s ice cream had previously been sold primarily in the western part of the United States. Dreyer’s attempted to expand its market to the east by choosing to purchase Berliner as a means to obtain distribution in the mid-Atlantic region. When Pillsbury learned of the sale, it advised Berliner that its distributorship for Häagen-Dazs was terminated.

Berliner, which wanted to remain a distributor for Häagen-Dazs, sued Pillsbury for breach of contract, alleging that the oral distribution agreement with Häagen-Dazs and Pillsbury was properly assigned to Dreyer’s. Who wins? Why?

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you assume the role of a forensic investigator for the DigiFirm Investigation Company. One of your clients is a small music production company. One day you receive a phone call from Andrea, the owner and president of the music company.

Andrea believes one of her employees, a sound technician, has been stealing intellectual property from the company. She thinks he is copying original music scores and then selling them to upstart musicians, claiming that he wrote them. Andrea checked the employee’s computer the previous night and thinks he has been deleting the files to cover his tracks.

Andrea’s employee uses a Macintosh computer. There are several tools available for recovering files that have been deleted from a Mac, including:

1-Read and Make a summary of the author paper– no less than 125 words

What you agreed with, did not agree with and why – no less than 125 words

Minimum of 2 sources from the literature in addition to course

This discussion will begin with a brief explanation of why organizations need a strategic direction. Next, the process of developing, executing and maintaining a strategic direction is discussed. The advantages of strategic thinking are included with an example. The decision models utilized throughout these processes are included as well as the benefits.

Globalization has created additional and enhanced competition amongst organizations (Kaplan & Norton, 2006). This additional competition requires top organizational management to establish a clear strategic vision for the company. The strategic vision is an organizational management activity that is utilized to establish an overall direction. A strategic vision requires an organization to focus time and resources, strengthen operations/logics, ensure that the workforce and stakeholders are collaborating and actively moving toward goals and evaluates and refines the organization’s direction in response to ever changing environments (pp. 101-109).

Process

Developing a strategy that provides organizational direction is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, defines the customers it serves, what it produces and why it does it, while focusing on the way forward. This means, the effective articulation of the organizational strategy provides direction as well as the progressive actions needed to move toward defined success.

This process is similar to the project management lifecycle. In the following paragraph both the strategic process development and project management lifecycle are synthesized. These processes follow similar routes through initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control (Kenny, 2003). Linking the lifecycle and strategic process assists with explaining this discussion topic.

Setting the organization’s direction through strategic planning begins with the following generalized steps. First, the organization needs to initiate an open and honest analysis or assessment with the goal of understanding the current/future of internal and external environmental factors (Kenny, 2003; Rumelt, 2011). Next, strategy formulation occurs when a high-level strategic outline is developed as well as a basic plan is documented (Rumelt, 2011). At this point, the strategy execution takes place. This is when the high-level strategic outline is translated into an operational plan with action items. Finally, evaluation and sustainment is undertaken. This is conducted through monitoring and controlling strategic processes. This means conducting continuous refinements and evaluations of organizational performance, culture, communications and other strategic management areas (pp. 97-105).

Advantages of Strategic Thinking

The processes assist with the creation of a strategic vision, which provides multiple advantages to an organization. Firstly, the organizational vision provides a broadly shared sense of organizational direction and meaningful purpose (Rumelt, 2011, p. 113). The importance of providing direction is because few organizations have achieved success by being all things to all customers/stakeholders. Meaningful purpose challenges the organization as a whole to achieve a market leadership position by adopting a vision greater than resources and competencies would normally allow. This results in the establishment of a framework for the missions that require the organization to reach for higher and higher goals.

Without an organizational vision, the individual business branches could pursue isolated goals in which some employees do not identify or understand. For instance, goals such as attaining a 15% increase in customer satisfaction scores would not be a goal shared by the research and development (R & D) branch. Also, without a vision, an organizational goal could be interpreted differently by individual stakeholders.

A clear and concise strategic vision connects goals to the organization’s underlying values and will make it more understandable about how to achieve each particular goal. Therefore, a strategic vision is vital for developing a strategically focused organization and direction within the entity (Kaplan & Norton, 2006). Finally, a clear and concise organizational direction leads to enhanced com­munication, participation and commitment by the workforce.

Decision Model

There are several decision models that aid this process of developing a strategic vision. For the initial/assessment phase, the Rumsfeld matrix and the Black Swan Model assists with developing the known and unknowns, which could be opportunities (Krogerus, Tschäppeler, Piening, & Earnhart, 2017, pp. 84 & 112). In the planning phase of vision development, the Pareto principle assists with focusing efforts toward the majority of the challenges (p. 104). In the execution phase, the Black Box Model may seem to be an odd choice. However, during execution, the strategic direction is focused on accomplishing the goals, so the organization just needs to move toward the strategic vision. The complexities of the development are no longer as important (p. 118). Finally, the monitoring and controlling phase decision model is the Hard Choice Model. This is the process of evaluating processes and making refinements based on information provided (p.74).

Using multiple decision models throughout a process are both useful and harmful. It is useful in that the decision models are specific to the situation being addressed. This aids in focusing a team’s efforts to developing a decision. On the other hand, multiple decision models hinder the process. This is because the team can be easily confused by which model to use and when. To overcome this, communication and clear instruction are required.

Conclusion

A clear and concise strategic vision is utilized to establish an overall direction for an organization. The development is similar to the project management lifecycle of a project, which is defined as the initiation, planning, execution and monitoring/control process groups. In this developmental process, fundamental decisions and actions shape and guide what an organization is, defines the customers it serves, what it produces and why it does it, while focusing on the way forward. This requires several decision models to initiate, plan, execute and monitor the impacts brought on by the strategic direction that will affect the organization. When accomplished properly, an organizational vision provides direction and meaningful purpose to the entire entity.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (2006). How to implement a new strategy without disrupting your organization. Harvard business review, 84(3), 100.

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