STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, A FRILL OR A NEED - AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF ALBANIAN AND MACEDONIAN BUSINESSES
Abstract
Management experts have argued repeatedly that firms or companies should respond to environmental changes, such as increased competition, by engaging in more systematic planning to anticipate and respond to changing and unforeseen events. The reason for this argument is because formal strategic planning has been seen to enhance a firm’s performance. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the situation of implementation of the strategic management thought in two Balkan Countries in order to give valuable recommendations for improvement of these processes. In this paper, through an empirical study of both countries are given answers to the following questions: How do private businesses formulate, implement and evaluate strategies in Albania and Macedonia context? How and to what extent do contextual factors influence the action and performance of businesses? The empirical research upon which this paper is based has highlighted a number of valuable results in terms of new descriptive evidence of the levels of tool support and the top tools which are used by strategic management practitioners in Albania and Macedonia for a series of core strategic tasks.
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