Strategic planning is a management activity to plan out what needs to be done, to set priorities, to strengthen the operations of the company and make sure that employees and stakeholders are working towards organizational goals. The strategies planned in respond to the changing global market environment and make adjustments to get the organization in the direction of dynamic environment. An effective strategic planning is done in order to make progress by looking over the past experiences.
The company chosen here is Oman Air, based in Muscat a flagship airline carrier of Oman. It was established in 1993 and presented a pacing growth since their establishment. Oman airlines not only outreach commuting services but provide benefits to their passengers an inflight entertainment, mobile telephony, internet facilities and duty free products exclusively (Air, 2017).
Positioned as a strategy specialist, the company have chosen Oman air an airline carrier of Oman. The reason behind choosing this company for conducting secret strategic planning is its goal of enhancing their current growth and succeed as a best airline in further years. Oman air have an effective marketing plan which lead them to fulfil their organizational goals and create an effective value set of airlines. In order to demonstrate an effective customer service they have planned their strategies in a way and kept it confidential which only includes top level executives while planning these strategies.
Oman air prefer to conduct their strategic planning in secret and the strategies are hidden from all but the high executives. The reasons behind such step are logically correct from the view point of a strategy manager who is the only responsible person for making strategies for the company and managing the whole project. Strategic manager make sure that the strategic plans are communicated to everybody who needs to be informed about such information take part in the whole planning and execution of plan made for the company. The communication channels are set that the strategy will flow according to those flow of communication channels only. It is to be ensure that the flow of communication channel is appropriate and the strategies is understood to all appropriate parties with a clear vision and if any feedback or suggestion is required that can be communicated smoothly without any obstacle (Morrison, and Mason, 2016).
The main aim behind keeping the strategies hidden from all but top level executives is to keep the strategies in secret which are of great importance and useful only for top level executives. As it is evident that Oman air is a flagship airline carrier of Oman operating globally and provide exclusive benefits to its passengers. There are many other airlines who is challenging the company by giving strong competition through their strategy. So to compete with such companies Oman air must plan out their strategy and keep them confidential to avoid any risk of leaking those plans to those who are not appropriate parties and are not related to the procedure (Li, Chen, Liu, and Peng, 2014).
As per the analysis, smaller companies can plan their strategies with all management level executives as they have a quite informal environment in their management and the accountability is not centralized. Small firms do not face challenges as compare to bigger firms so the issue of visibility and secrecy does not arise in the case of small firms. Whereas bigger firms have more complexity in their planning procedure of strategies. The wealthy competitive information cannot be shared with everyone in the organization and a proper course of action is followed to strategize their plans. The competitive analysis shown that strategies should remain secret and confidential to top managers and the required steps must be taken to ensure that such information is not dispersed beyond the circle. The strategists must perceive before planning that the strategies should be visible or open to all as it totally depends upon the organization structure and policies and those organization who follow the top-down approach. In top-down approach the top level executives are the persons who holds an expertise, acumen and responsibilities to make significant strategy decisions and they are the ones who will ensure the implementation of strategies they made. Some companies involve middle level and lower level managers in implementing the strategies to make sure the support and commitment. But the risk involve in bottom-up approach where all level of managers take part in forming strategic decisions and implement the same is of high degree as lower level and middle level managers does not carry such expertise which is required and the confidentiality cannot be maintain in such scenario. For the sake of willingness and contribution an organization cannot afford risk in this competitive environment (Grant, 2016).
Keeping strategies hidden from all excluding top level executives may be preferred by Oman air and the reason behind it are the strategies may get dispersed and can be taken advantage of by rival firms as they can use such information in their own organization or modify their own strategies to defeat their competitors. In a visible approach the parties involved in the planning may get attracted and lured away by the rival firms. Company must follow secrecy while planning as secrecy limits the criticism and guessing which is of great importance and also it limits the duplicating the organization’s strategies (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
It is concluded that the benefits of keeping strategic planning hidden from middle level and lower level management is countless but comes with its own pros and cons. The pros has been discussed above that how they are benefitting company and lead them to compete in the global market by forming unique strategies. The cons will be few as the other members in the company may feel neglected who actually wants to contribute in decisions of making strategies and the company may lose innovative ideas that other members could have been given if they were the part of the decision making process. The third party (investors, creditors and other stakeholders) holds no idea of what the company is doing and where is it going as they could have supported well in the whole planning process of strategy making (Kotler, Berger, and Bickhoff, 2016).
To deal with the complex competitive environment Oman air has followed few mechanisms to survive in such environment and include those mechanisms in their strategic objectives which are providing safety in airline, being in the first and foremost choice among customers, increasing revenue by reducing overall costs, catering growth in their 10 year plan and contribution in the development of the sultanate of Oman (Dutta, 2017).
One of the mechanism followed by the company is using less complex business model as complex models puts an immense pressure on costing methods in the competitive market where risk for such complexity in operations cannot be afforded. So Oman air follow simpler business model or a less complexity in business processes and products by keeping in mind the broad customer needs and a less costly approach to fulfill the strategic objective of increasing revenue and reducing overall costs (Fast Company, 2017). This approach help company to deal with competition in airline industry and being a large scale business a complex business model will create many difficulties in both the environment (inside and outside).
Another mechanism of the company is mounting costs by adopting the method in their business model as it is prepared on the basis of offering consumers number of destinations and flexibility which ranges from last minute arrangement in seats and providing itineraries with an option to customize the way a customer want it to be. The other benefits of special meals, in-flight entertainment and private cabins. Basically a system of doing business at a slow pace rely more on sophisticated system which accommodate continue changes with a purpose of low costs and higher productivity (Air, 2017).
Being a large service airline the new path of restructuring activities are prove to be valuable and a must in this dynamic environment of business. A competitive cost structure will tackle the fundamental cost penalties of their business models and that too without any compromise in services they provide (Kassem, and Bhatt, 2015). These fundamental changes do carry an amount of risk factor in them but a successful change will help improve productivity and market share. The operations of core airline business needs to be competitive by restructuring their cost models to low cost carriers. The step taken by company lead to newer growth in the whole industry (Holloway, 2017).
Other mechanism of the company is one of the significant one where they have embraced TBS (Tailored Business Streams), that have simplified their business policies and streamlines the existing core processes in order to address the needs of the customers. This mechanism of automating activities that help company to drastically reduce number of activities which are performed at airport and save huge amount of time and money. The automation system handles the process of reservations, changes and customization of last minute changes has benefitted company mark their success in a short span of time and they are leading well in such competitive environment. These mechanisms are helping Oman air to survive in a highly dynamic environment and will continue to do so with an ease in its business processes (Josefy, Kuban, Ireland, and Hitt, 2015).
References
Air, O. (2017). Corporate Information. Omanair.com. Available at: https://www.omanair.com/en/about-us/corporate-information [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Air, O. (2017). Strategic Objectives. Omanair.com. Available at: https://www.omanair.com/in/en/about-us/corporate-information/strategic-objectives [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Dutta, K., 2017. Organizational Identity and Strategic Decisions in a Changing Business Environment. readings BOOK, p.162.
Fast Company. (2017). 6 Strategies For Dealing With Uncertainty In Business. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/1824457/6-strategies-dealing-uncertainty-business [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.
Harvard Business Review. (2017). The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution. Available at: https://hbr.org/2008/06/the-secrets-to-successful-strategy-execution [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Holloway, S., 2017. Airlines: Managing to make money. Routledge.
Josefy, M., Kuban, S., Ireland, R.D. and Hitt, M.A., 2015. All things great and small: Organizational size, boundaries of the firm, and a changing environment. Academy of Management Annals, 9(1), pp.715-802.
Kassem, M.S. and Bhatt, B.J., 2015. Survival Strategies for State-Owned Airlines: The Case of Arabian Gulf Carriers. In Proceedings of the 1988 International Conference of Services Marketing (pp. 126-135). Springer, Cham.
Kotler, P., Berger, R. and Bickhoff, N., 2016. The quintessence of strategic management: What you really need to know to survive in business. Springer.
Li, Y., Chen, H., Liu, Y. and Peng, M.W., 2014. Managerial ties, organizational learning, and opportunity capture: A social capital perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 31(1), pp.271-291.
Morrison, W.G. and Mason, K., 2016. Low cost carriers in the Middle East and North Africa: Prospects and strategies. Research in Transportation Business & Management, 21, pp.54-67.
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