STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES

Phuoc D. Nguyen

ASAP (n.d.) defined a strategic alliance as a close and collaborative relationship between two or more entities that share assets, strengths, risks, rewards, and control. ASAP’s definition of strategic alliance shows strategic alliance is general management including strategic and strategic alliance management, because strategic and strategic alliance management belongs to general management, not functional management in a strategic alliance business. However, ASAP establishes alliance management job descriptions for positions of alliance manager, senior alliance or partner manager, director, or VP of strategic alliances. I think that these positions are similar to each other, they depend on the strategic alliance’s sizes of small, medium, and large and we call them exactly as alliance director, executive/managing director of the alliance, or CEO of the alliance.

“The aim of ISO 44001:2017 Standard is to establish the requirements of a strategic lifecycle framework to improve collaborative business relationships in and between organizations of all sizes” (ISO 44001, 2017, p. vii). ISO 44001:2017’s requirements of competencies and behavior included the development of competencies and behavior and the identification of key individuals’ competence and behavior. ISO 44001 encourages a corporate commitment to the careers and skills of alliance specialists defining /requiring competency development for certification (ASAP, n.d.). Strategic alliances apply ISO 44001:2017 Standard is fit about strategic alliance management competencies to establish and apply the collaborative business relationship management framework. ASAP suggests strategic alliance competencies, basic foresight competency of business sector knowledge and trends, and strategy competency of business strategy and strategic marketing.

The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP) (n.d.) establishes competencies required for strategic planning professionals (SPP) and strategic management professionals (SMP), including domains of Lead, Think, Plan, and Act. Every domain describes specific competencies, the domain of Plan included a competency of the future environmental scan. It is suggested that ASAP should integrate SPP competencies into SMP competencies because the SMP implements a strategic management cycle based on Deming’s management cycle including PDCA, reorganize and systemize domains of Lead, Think, Plan, and Act into Plan: Think and Plan, Do, Check, and Act; domain Lead is implementing throughout strategic management PDCA cycle.

Hines, Gary, Daheim, and van der Laan (2017) suggest the Foresight Competency Model with foresight competencies of framing, scanning, futuring, visioning, designing, and adapting are the center of competencies of occupations, sector, academic, personal, and workplace. Many leading doctorate programs in strategy in the world and the U.S. curricula do not mention future competencies training courses. It is suggested that future associations, higher education institutions, strategic alliance associations, and strategic management associations should coordinate with each other to complement basic foresight competencies for strategic alliance professionals and intensive foresight competencies for strategic management professionals, train foresight for engineering, technology, business, and leadership students.