Abstract
Since many decades the corporate world has experienced significant changes. In order to remain competitive, companies must adapt themselves to the new changes. Strategic management is one of key success for competitiveness. To achieve the company's goals, strategic management models have been created. In the 1960s, strategic management models had started to become popular within US companies. Lot of economists and analysts have contributed to the popularity of certain models. Indeed, models are good tools to encourage managers to evaluate the situation of their businesses. They are also a good way for communicating with business partners because they encourage dialogue. Anybody from different a department of a company is able to plot information into models as they are simple to use. So, everyone can bring new ideas and solutions that can help the final decision-maker in his decision-making process. However, managers cannot make decisions only from an analysis based on one or several models. As models are not perfect, they need to be combined with other models because they focus their analysis on a few specific features. For instance, the PESTEL analysis enables to structure and study the different features of the business environment. This model can be matched with a SWOT analysis and also with other models like the Ansoff Matrix or Portfolio analysis which do not take into account the external analysis of a company.
