Strategic Management and Organizational Behavior
Strategy connects mission and values to choices about markets, customers, and capabilities. The sequence: mission and vision, external and internal analysis (SWOT plus PESTLE for macro forces), objectives, strategy formulation at corporate (which businesses), business (how to compete), and functional (underwriting, claims, IT) levels, then implementation, measurement, and feedback.
Competitive analysis
Porter's five forces - rivalry, new entrants, substitutes, buyer power, supplier power - explains industry profitability. Generic strategies are cost leadership, differentiation, and focus; firms blurring cost and differentiation risk being "stuck in the middle." VRIO tests a resource as valuable, rare, hard to imitate, and organizationally supported.
Organization and people
Design follows strategy: functional structures build depth but slow cross-functional response; divisional structures sharpen accountability by product or territory; matrix structures balance both at the cost of dual reporting. Culture - espoused versus enacted values - often explains execution gaps better than the chart. From motivation theory: Herzberg's hygiene factors (pay, conditions) prevent dissatisfaction but do not motivate; motivators are achievement, recognition, responsibility. Expectancy theory holds that effort must credibly lead to performance and to valued rewards.
Traps
Confusing corporate with business strategy; treating strengths and weaknesses as external; labeling hygiene factors as motivators; describing transactional leadership (rewards for compliance) as transformational.
Worked example
A regional personal-lines insurer confronts price-comparison sites. A five-forces scan shows high buyer power and low switching costs, so competing on cost against national carriers is weak; differentiation through claims speed and agent relationships is the more defensible position.