Relationship Between Systems Thinking, Projects, and Corporate Strategy

Relationship Between Systems Thinking, Projects, and Corporate Strategy

The Connection between Systems Thinking, Projects, and Corporate Strategy

According to Schmidt (2021), systems thinking is a broad, holistic view that places projects in the larger setting in which they operate by considering how a project impacts and is impacted by the organization, setting, or system in which it operates. On the other hand, corporate strategy is the arrangement of major purposes, objectives, goals, and policies or plans for accomplishing those goals specified in a way that defines the businesses that the company engages in or intends to engage in (Pidun, 2019). The corporate strategy mainly focuses on an organization’s ambitions, direction, resources, and how it interacts with its environment. Systems thinking influences an organization’s corporate strategy, thus influencing the choice of projects it invests in. For example, systems thinking may be applied in determining how an organization’s services affect its customers and the overall performance of an organization and how business environmental factors such as technology could be impacting its ability to satisfy customers and meet performance expectations. Weissenberger-Eibl et al. (2019) argue that the systemic approach is required to deal with the limits in decision-making and processing information by reducing biases that may arise when developing an organization’s strategy. Therefore, system thinking can be applied in generating corporate strategy and projects by enabling the organization to consider facts during strategy development based on the information gathered about the business environment.

The concept of strategy-environment fit also demonstrates the relationship between systems thinking, projects, and corporate strategy. De Florio (2014) asserts that system-environment fit indicates that an organization’s internal components, such as resources and capabilities, must be an ideal fit for the external factors in the organization’s environment, such as political requirements and customer demand. Therefore, organizations can adjust their corporate strategy and projects to meet customer needs and create a competitive advantage. The scenario technique also demonstrates the connection between systems thinking, projects, and corporate strategy. The technique enables managers to broaden their views from short to long-term, drawing attention from existing clients to other potential clients and future needs and encouraging the organization to consider various possible futures by comparing various scenarios, thus preventing bias in decision-making through systematic consideration of different options (Lange, 2023). The future may include adopting a specific corporate strategy based on the organization’s current state. The main corporate strategies that can be considered include growth, re-invention, retrenchment, and stability. The strategy should be selected based on the resources needed to implement it and the organization’s ability to acquire them.

How An Event Can Grow Into a Vision or Strategy by Using Feedback, Loops, and Labels

Feedback, loops, and labels are essential in an organization’s decision-making. Organizations use employee feedback for continuous improvement. It is vital to embrace positive and negative feedback to facilitate organizational growth. Negative events like customer complaints can grow into a vision or strategy. For example, suppose an organization conducts a survey on customer satisfaction by focusing on specific attributes such as work environment and relationship with leaders and receives negative feedback. In that case, the conclusion that will be made from the survey results is that the employees are not satisfied with their work environment and how they relate with their leaders. Such feedback is considered to be negative feedback. According to Kim & Kim (2020), negative feedback exposes gaps that need to be filled, thus creating an opportunity for innovation. Therefore, the organization can use negative feedback from employees to create a vision of increasing employee satisfaction by improving the work environment and the relationship between the employees and leaders.

References

De Florio, V. (2014). On the behavioral interpretation of system-environment fit and auto-resilience. 2014 IEEE Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century (21CW). https://doi.org/10.1109/norbert.2014.6893945

Kim, Y. J., & Kim, J. (2020). Does negative feedback benefit (or harm) the recipient’s creativity? The role of the direction of feedback flow. Academy of Management Journal, 63(2), 584–612. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.1196

Lange, N. (2023). Scenario technique. Future Perspectives for Higher Education, 209–239. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40712-4_8

Pidun, U. (2019). Corporate growth strategy. Corporate Strategy, 95–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25426-1_5

Schmidt, T. (2021). Strategic Project Management made simple: Solution tools for leaders and teams. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Weissenberger-Eibl, M., Almeida, A., & Seus, F. (2019). A systems thinking approach to corporate strategy development. Systems, 7(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

Use this source as well as four others: Schmidt, T. (2021). 1-3. Strategic Project Management made simple: Solution tools for leaders and teams. Essay, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The purpose of this assignment is to examine the relationship between systems thinking, projects, and corporate strategy.

Reflect upon the relationship between corporate strategy, projects, and systems thinking. Using the “Levels of Perspective” framework discussed in the “Introduction to System Thinking” article by Kim, located in the Topic Resources, I composed a 500-750-word paper demonstrating the value of systems thinking in developing corporate strategy, including the following:

Relationship Between Systems Thinking, Projects, and Corporate Strategy

Describe the connection between systems thinking, projects, and corporate strategy.
Describe an example of how an event, negative or positive, can grow into a vision or strategy by using feedback, loops, and labels.
Minimum of five outside resources. Sources must be authoritative and not from a Wikipedia-type source.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.