Role of Chief Executive Officer in Strategic Management

Process
Chief executive officer is the most important figure in strategic management
process. S/he plays many roles in an organization. Planning, organizing,
leading, and controlling are the major parts of management activities that a
manager performs. Actually, strategic management is the top-level
management. It covers all the management functions because it starts from
planning such as environmental analysis and strategic choice, associated with
organizing and leading in implementation phase, and lastly also evaluates and
controls the results. Similarly, CEO also uses his or her conceptual, human
relation, and technical skills in strategic management process.
CEO is the head of employees and major executive representative of board of
directors. He or she plays vital role to make amicable relationship with
customers, competitors, suppliers, and other stakeholders on the behalf of
organization. Generally there are many other titles used for this position such
as managing director, executive chairman, vice chairman, and executive
director.
Generally, chief executive performs general management functions namely
planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It is a never ending and cyclic
process. Chief executive requires various types of skills such as conceptual,
human relation, and technical skills. Top-level managers require more
conceptual skills whereas bottom level employees require more technical
skills. Nevertheless, a CEO requires all the skills to be an effective manager.
Mintzberg listed role of CEO in ten points and grouped them into three. A CEO
generally plays many roles such as figurehead, leader, and liaison as the
interpersonal role. S/he collects information, circulates information, and
provides information to media as the part of informational role. Further, s/he
also takes part in decision making, negotiating, disturbance handling and
resources allocation as the part of decision-making role.
A CEO not only attends many ceremonies being a figurehead but links
insiders with outsiders and guides his or her followers. Informational role is
related to monitoring information, collecting information, and disseminating
information. A CEO regularly verifies what is going on outside and inside.
Similarly, s/he gathers all the useful and relevant information. If required, CEO
also supplies information to the insiders and publicize the information officially
to the outsiders.
In this context, it is necessary to review role of CEO in strategic management
process. Strategic management is top-level management that covers all the

functional areas. Strategic management defines vision, mission, objective, and

strategies. It analyzes environment to find strength, weakness, opportunities,
and threats so that various alternatives could be developed and one best
strategic option could be selected for implementation. Getting the real
outcome and comparing the same with the targeted standard to is the major
step for feedback process.
Once we search the role of CEO in strategic management process one can
find the role of CEO in each and every step. Setting vision, mission, objective,
and strategies are the major roles of a chief executive officer. It is top-level
management that focuses into these areas. It is the task of defining what
organization is about, what the organization stands for, whom the organization
supports, and uses what sort of means. Therefore, setting strategies includes
vision, mission, and goals setting. It can be an integral part of managerial
functions listed in entrepreneurial role by Henry Mintzberg.
Analyzing environment to search internal strength and weakness as well as
external opportunity and threats is another major role of a CEO. Information
collection and its analysis is the major function that is also listed by Mintzberg
in his list of managerial role. Finding the real situation and to report the
situation into the profile or report can be the another function that a CEO
should perform.
A CEO searches various alternative strategies, evaluates them, and chooses
the best alternative for implementation. This role is very similar to decision
making role described by Mintzberg. Selected strategy requires effective
implementation that is to design effective resources, leadership, and
organizational structure. A CEO not only implements strategies in his or her
leadership but also allocates resources, defines organizational structure, and
operationalizes the strategic elements. The CEO also removes disturbing
factors and activates the process of evaluation, control, and feedback.
Therefore, a manager performs many multiple roles in an organization in the
various stages of strategic management process.
The CEO is at the top-level in organizational hierarchy and formulates not only
strategy but also implements. Mobilizing resources, guiding other members,
and overcoming the disturbances are other important tasks of a CEO. Hence,
the role of CEO is very important and vital in strategic management process to
make organization effective and efficient.