Limitations of Strategic Management:

Strategy and its implementation is a long term process.  It leads to changes in organization hierarchy or otherwise, which leads to resentment and dissatisfaction among employees.  Some groups in the organization consider themselves responsible for profits and hence make unreasonable demands on the management.  This in turn puts a kind of limitations of strategy management as such.  A few of the reasons are:-

Time Consuming:

An analysis of internal and external environment, forecasting, interaction with officers and employees take considerable amount of time.  This leads to limiting the strategic management`s success .

Ignorance of Managerial functions:

The times are changing fast globally affecting organizations performance.  This itself `limits` strategic programming in strategic management process.  Strategic management is possible to apply only if certain stable conditions prevail.  But these are becoming rare.

These conditions, if not to limit strategy, have to be inter-related and supportive for strategic management.

Stability:  Organization that operates in predictable environment free from major unexpected shocks.

Simplicity:  Organization that is not complex, but simple enough to understand what the right strategy that is most appropriate for strategic management.

Industry Maturity:  Mature markets are required to overcome `limitations to strategic management`, so that managers have past experience to draw on.

Capital Intensity: If heavy investment to capital equipment is done in an organization, it is an incentive for managers to adhere to strategic management to overcome limitations to strategic management.

Powerful External Control:  When outside forces tightly control an organization, it has a built-in motivation to follow strictly the strategic management process.

Diminishing Viability.

`Externally` global competition is limiting active competitors to adjust to fragmenting markets that need greater flexibility in adapting to emerging requirements, and mechanistic organizations ten to adopt to changes slowly.

`Internally` knowledge-workers empowered by advances in information technology encourage organizations to get more people involved in planning and decision-making, so that planning becomes inter-twined with `doing.

Problems with strategic planning:  This is useful in bringing about incremental change with the organization, but does not promote radical changes in strategy management or organizational transformation.

Every manager should overcome limitations to make strategic management part of his job.  Change should be within the strategic management process.