Essay on the article How Organizations Can Overbalance For my essay I read the article How Organizations Can Overbalance: Decision Overreach as a Reason for Failure by David C. Wilson, David J Hickson, and Susan Miller. This article appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist, in August 1996. In this essay I will first objectively identify the thesis and how the authors supported it, and secondly I will give a subjective interpretation of how this article affects strategic thinking, and an evaluation of this article in terms of what value it has in strategic thinking. Let us begin. The thesis that the authors used in this article was to identify what constitutes decision overreach. They concluded that there were two proponents that identified it, and they were disproportionality and irreversibility of the decision. Disproportionality was defined as “the scale of the move decided on relative to the size and scope of the organization”, especially when at least doubling the size of the activity or capacity (Wilson 999). Irreversibility is of course the inability to reverse or correct the situation. The authors also noted that both criteria must be met for decision overreach as even if the decision is disproportionate if it wasn’t irreversible they could still recover by cutting their losses, and also if it were irreversible but not disproportionate they may also be able to recover as they would have enough assets. The authors also based their arguments on two specific cases out of 55 cases that were revisited in 1990 to 1993, of which the 55 cases were a representative of one third of the 150 cases covered in the “Bradford Studies.” (Wilson 995) The two firms in which decision overreach happened were given the names of Thomson, which was a brewery, and Jacobite, an engineering factory.
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Harvard Business School case 274-116. Cooper Industries, Inc. Retrieved on August 31, 2008, from University of Phoenix, Resource, FIN/545 web site: https://mycampus.phoenix.edu/secure/resource/resource
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Thompson, Arthur A., & Strickland, Alonzo J. 2003. Strategic management: concepts and cases. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
The novel Good Strategy/ Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt was published in 2011 as a response to the lack of strategy the author witnessed around him. In the introduction, Rumelt explains that strategy is not limited to businesses, but is a course of action that all entities should be accountable for. This lack of accountability and awareness of true strategy urged Rumelt to discuss the difference between good strategy and bad strategy (hence the title), and how the ladder of the two causes inefficiency and stunted growth in all aspects of society.
• Hitt, Michael A; Hokisson, Robert E.; Ireland, RD. Strategic Management. 6th Ed., Masson, Ohio: Souht. Wester 2005.
John G. S., 2008: Strategically thinking about the subject of Strategy [e-journal] 9(4) p.2 Available through:
Throughout the global economic environment the desire to out-perform the competition is always present. In every situation, the companies who do better are the ones with superior strategy (Rothaermel, 2013). Strategic management is therefore important in every company, no matter what industry or market they operate in; and as stated by M. Carpenter and G. Sanders, 2013, is described as "The process by which a firm manages the formulation and implementation of its strategy". Strategic management is a constant topic under discussion with different schools of theorists with different beliefs and attitudes which is described as "A tense array of disagreement" (Rees, 2012).
Luthans, F. & Stewart, T. (1977), “A General Contingency Theory of Management”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 2, pp. 181 – 195.
...c management or planning presents a structure or agenda for dealing with issues and solving problems, therefore, understanding potential risks or pitfalls of strategic management and being prepared to deal with them is critical and vital to success. Strategic management not only permits top leaders and managers to be more proactive than reactive in building or developing their own potential or outlook in an organization, and it also lets them to make the first move and influence activities, consequently, executives and management can control or in charge of the company’s own future, and achieve its main goals and objectives. Overall, increasing cost-effectiveness and efficiency, improving the value for its stakeholders, and advancing customer services and management excellence are the key objectives of strategic management and decision making in an organization.
...and the liabilities increasing. Some decisions that had been taken by the former CEO made the company about to bankrupt, it seemed to be a small decision but it affects the company dramatically.
Psychology refers to the scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes. It revolves around how individuals think and how the mind works. Thus, it reflects to the behavioural of the person. The objective of this unit is to review the organizational psychology based on previous literatures and to discuss the scopes that it covers in the organizational Psychology. Furthermore, this unit also describes the history of the organizational psychology.
This indicates the importance of strategic management for organisations in making appropriate decisions and selecting strategies which will assist them to gain strategic competitiveness and as a result earn above-average returns.
Another large debate in the issues and impacts of obesity is the responsibility of employer’s. Especially for those whose obesity comes from a sedentary lifestyle. Or perhaps need the preventative measures of keeping obesity at bay. A hot topic on the rise is whether or not employers should be mandated to give employees a work-out period in their schedule. The employers could offer employee’s incentives for utilizing resources (a company gym, discounted memberships, and dietician, walking a company track) and by using the resources keep costs low. Though initially it could be costly to take on the responsibility to offer extra incentives to employee’s it could offer long term potential savings. (Villareal, Apovian, Kushner, and Klein 2005) Those whose companies offer various programs and actively engage in them express more happiness, productivity, a greater quality of life, and overall better health. Better health allows for employee’s to serve their employers better. They use less sick pay, keep insurance premiums low, and are more likely to be in tune with their daily job. So while the initial cost may be high, the long term financial gain of a happy, healthy, productive team is hard not to invest in!