Strategic management is an analytical frame of management which deals with managing plan, policy and decision for long lasting corporate operation. Top level executive puts life in strategic management of an organization. It focuses on the major long term issues that affect the organization. It involves planning, implementation and control of the organization's vision, mission, goal and objective.

Strategic management is a relatively new discipline of study and practice in Nepal. However, "Strategic management" as a term and concept is not new. The term was first used in the 1970's, and it meant that a staff of strategic planners more or less thought up "strategic programs" and then tried to sell them to decision makers. In the 1990's, the view of strategic planning and strategic management is much different. Academically, Harvard Business School introduced "Business Policy" as a subject in 1911 as an integrative course, which is known as predecessor of Strategic management now. 

Strategic management is a systems approach to identifying and making the necessary changes and measuring the organization's performance as it moves toward its vision. It has been defined as a management system that links strategic planning and decision making with the day-to-day business of operational management. (Gluck, Kaufman, and Walleck, 1982). 

Strategic management goes beyond the development of a strategic plan, which included the pre-planning and strategic planning processes. Strategic management is the deployment and implementation of the strategic plan and measurement and evaluation of the results. Deployment involves completing the plan and communicating it to all employees. Implementation involves resourcing the plan, putting it into action, and managing those actions. Measurement and evaluation consists not only of tracking implementation actions, but, more importantly, assessing how the organization is changing as a result of those actions and using that information to update the plan.

Strategic management is an integrative process by which the executives try to:

  • Assess organization's position within its environment
  • Generate and choose a set of competitive options
  • Implement the best one option
  • Review and control
  • Match organizational activities to its capabilities
  • Determine long-term direction to drive the organization.