Question

What type of corporate-level, divisional-level, organizational-level, and unit-level strategies should be used to address a specified weakness such as a lack of healthcare professionals/ providers or the need to expand services?

Answer 1

Strategic planning is a very important part in the successful operation of any organisation. A plan helps the organisation find out its current status and also its future goals very clearly. Once the organisation identifies its weaknesses then its time to start acting on them and for that there should be a proper strategy at every level so that all the people and departments involved can be roped in before going for any change. If we talk about weakness such as expansion of services then we should have a proper strategy at every level.

Corporate level strategy:-

Corporate level strategy includes the overall decision making and planning for an organisation by the top management and is at the highest level in the planning process. It may include strategies like :-

• Expansion of services locally or globally.
• Through mergers or alliances with organisations that provide the services which are required for expansion.
• Merging with businesses that have a diverse or unrelated portfolio of services.

Divisional level strategy:-

After corporate strategy come the division level strategy which involves planning at divisional level, means the divisions within the organisation are directed as per the strategy guidelines. It may include different divisions within the organisation, like:-

• Sales division need to undergo strategic change in order to expand services because sales division is directly associated with customer dealing.
• Similarly research and development division would need to strategise on the kind of services need to expand and how they should be designed.
• Finance division need to strategise on funds required for expansion.

Organisation level strategy:-

It includes the overall strategy adopted by any organisation. It has effect on overall business of the organisation. Like the changes in the marketing strategy required at the organisation level for expansion of services, addition of human resource required for the planned expansion, type of advertising needed for the expansion of services.

Unit level strategy:-

Such strategy is guided by the overall corporate strategy. It will involve relatively restricted plan providing objectives for specific function or allocation of resources among different operations within that functional area and coordination between them for optimal contribution to the achievement of the corporate-level objectives. For example overall strategy can be broken into pricing, distribution, availability to customers etc.