Guidelines for strategic plan implementation and organizational direction

Strategic Planning

Achieving a strategic vision in an era of globalization and increasing competitiveness from rapidly emerging economies is complex and multidimensional in scope. The notion of including an ethical component may appear to be a luxury that some companies cannot afford, yet it is something expected by more and more stakeholders, as well as the general public. Achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in an increasingly globalized marketplace demands that companies of all sizes and types take advantage of every opportunity to reduce costs and add value. For example, Sussan (2006) emphasizes that companies of all sizes and types require effective leadership in order to formulate a corporate vision and make informed day-to-day decisions. The need for leaders to integrate values and ethics in their decision making has been fueled, in part, by three global trends:

Successful leaders in all types of organization understand that ethics and values are paramount to decision making.

2. Governments and international organizations are all insisting on more rigorous ethical principles.

3. Ethics is now stakeholder expected -- globally (Burke 1999, p. 530).

When dealing with an issue like a Human Rights Campaign, there is more to the issue of tactics and strategies than with many other organizations. Like any other organization, though, there must be a measurable outcome based on a benchmark, the ability to look at the past, present and future and decide a logical implementation schemata, and most especially when dealing with a non-profit organization, understanding that the stakeholders may be quite different and have different views, expectations and even tactics.

That being said, it seems that the heart of any strategic plan dealing with human rights must focus on the clear impact of behavior, values and ethics in achieving an organization's vision in a timely and optimal manner. Fortunately, there is a name and precedent for this -- often called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a new focus on ethical and social issues. CSR leads marketers to the notion of both global and stakeholder responsibility, and an organizational system that begs for sustainability -- not just to outlast the competition, but to increase customer loyalty, presence in the global market, and a stronger unification with the political bureaucracies. There is a clear integrative framework involved that impacts the idea of sustainable marketing concepts (Maignan & Ferrell 2004). Thus, the three guidelines that would be most efficacious when dealing with the ethnical and morality of my project, and in line with CSR, would be:

Guideline

Justification

Implementation

Maintain appropriate culture for internal and external stakeholders.

"Walk the Talk," people respond best when they see consistency and a lack of hypocricy

Ensure appropriate levels of modeling behavior, documents and actions that are moral, ethical and support the message of the organization.