Conveniencing the Family In Agri-Based Processing Enterprise

of future opportunities or threats or (c) their ambitions in shaping the future. At times, strategic issues and tasks are ambiguous and poorly understood, so that managers find them difficult to express, address or execute them (Ansoff, 1980).

Some of the strategic issues faced by strategic leaders in SMEs relate to survival, completion of mission, growth, and direction in a competitive environment. SMEs, like most other firms operate in an external environment that may typify (a) volatility (rate of change of situation and information), (b) uncertainty, (c) complexity, and (d) ambiguity (VUCA) (Thompson et al., 2004:3). The forces in the environment surrounding an organisation can be characterised by changeability (degree to which there is likely change) and predictability (the degree to which such changes can be predicted) (Lynch, 2003:90).

The classical view of strategy upholds that strategic leaders grapple firstly with the question of “Where are we now?” Secondly, there is the question of “Where do we go to?” The final question relates to “How we will get there?”(Louw, 2006). Other scholars add the question of “How are we doing?” (Louw and Venter, 2006: xi). Scholars advocating the classical notion of strategy are somehow naive when they suggest that strategic leaders continuously think and plan around three key questions, which influence organisational leadership, strategies, and organisational architecture (Thompson et al., 2004:3).

Strategy is not only influenced by the internal capacity of the organisation to move on its course into the desired future. The inward focus of strategy demonstrates a limited understanding of the external business environment which is necessary to develop a logical choice of direction, and execution of response to environmental changes. As such, it is important that SMEs are adept at creating value, based on the fit between internal resources and strategy, to mitigate the cost implications of misalignment between internal resources and the external environment. It is against this background that SMEs conceive and undertake strategic actions every day, whether or not they would use the term strategy to describe what they do (i.e. develop a vision, decide on a product range and lines, respond to competition, design organisation structure, manage supplier relations, etc.).

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