What internal and external issues impact on the firm’s ability to achieve its mission (strategic issues)?

What is strategy?

Drawing upon the work of several scholars (Ansoff, 1965; Learned et al., 1969; Andrews, 1971; Porter, 1980, 1985; Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991), for this paper, strategy is concerned with understanding and addressing issues that impact on a firm’s ability to achieve its mission, so that products/services can be produced to meet the needs of the markets it serves through effective resource configuration, in order to build and sustain competitive advantage. Thus, strategy is conceptualized as: (1) What is a firm trying to achieve in the long-term (mission)? (2) What internal and external issues impact on the firm’s ability to achieve its mission (strategic issues)? (3) Which markets should a firm compete in (markets)? (4) What products/services are needed to offer customers in the chosen markets (customer needs)? (5) What internal resources (assets, skills, competencies, relationships, finance, and facilities) are necessary in order to compete (resources)? (6) How can a firm perform better than the competition (competitive advantage)? In this paper, the interest is in exploring how CSR fits into these six fundamental dimensions of strategy, for the overall purpose of weaving CSR into the strategy making function of the firm