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Strategy SafariChapter 1 The strategic management beast
“we are the blind people and strategy formation is our elephant” since no one has had the vision to
see the entire beast, every one ahs grabbed hold of some part or other and ‘railed on in utter
ignorance’.
The first three schools are prescriptive, more Type of school Strategy formation as..
concerned with how strategies should be formulated Design school A process of conception
than with how they necessarily do form. The six Planning school A formal process
schools that follow consider specific aspects of the Positioning school An analytical process
process of strategy formation. They have been Entrepreneurial school A visionary process
Cognitive school Mental process
concerned less with prescribing ideal strategic
Learning school Emergent process
behaviour than with describing how strategies do, in
Power school Process of negotiation
fact, get made. It will become evident, that some of
Cultural school A collective process
the schools tilt towards the art, the craft, or the
Configuration school Process of transformation
science (meaning analysis) of management.
William Starbuck has written that to discuss all aspects of organisation which are relevant to
adaption means that one could legitimately discuss everything that has bene written about
organisations. This is an understatement because the last word in the sentence should be ‘collective
systems of all kinds’. Strategy formation is not just about values and visions, competences and
capabilities, but also about the military and Machiavelli, crisis and commitment, organisational
learning and punctuated equilibrium, industrial organisation and social revolution.
The definition of strategy is in most textbooks more or less as follows: top management’s plan to
attain outcomes consistent with the organisations missions and goals’. However, we argue tat
strategy requires a number of definitions, five in particular:
1. As plans and patterns – strategy is often described as a direction, a guide or course of action
into the future, the path to get from here to there. However, strategy is one of those words
that we inevitably define in one way yet often also use in another. Strategy as a plan is the
intended strategy, while strategy as a pattern is the realized strategy. Strategy is a pattern,
consistency over time. ‘
2. As deliberate and emergent – fully intended strategies can be calles deliberate strategies.
Those that are not realized at all can be called unrealized strategies. But there is a third case,
which we call emergent strategy, where a pattern is realized that was not expressly intended.
Strategies have to form as well as be formulated.
3. As positions and perspective – to some strategy is a position, namely the locating of particular
products in particular market. Look at the sport where product meet customer (down) and to
external marketplace (out). To others strategy is a perspective, namely an organisation’s
fundamental way of doing things. Look inside the organisation (in), and to the grand vision of
the enterprise (up).
Thus we have four different definitions of strategy. A fifth is in common usage too: strategy is a ploy,
that is a specific manoeuvre intended to outwit an opponent or competitor. Combining plan and
pattern with position and perspective, as a matrix we can derive four basic approaches to strategy
formation, which corresponds to some of the schools
, Strategic process to:
Deliberate plans Emergent patterns
Tangible position Strategic planning (planning, design Strategic venturing
and positioning schools) (learning, power and
Strategy cognitive schools)
Content as: Broad perspective Strategic visioning (entrepreneurial, Strategic learning (learning
design, cultural and cognitive and entrepreneurial schools)
schools)
There is not a simple definition of strategy, but there are by now some general areas of agreement
about the nature of strategy: strategy concerns both organisation and environment; the substance of
strategy is complex; strategy affects overall welfare of the organisation; strategy involves issues of
both content and process; strategies are not purely deliberate; strategies exist on different levels; it
involves various thought processes.
For every advantage associated with strategy, there is an associated drawback/disadvantage:
1. Strategy sets direction
a. Advantage: the main role of strategy is to chart the course of an organisation in
order for it to sail cohesively through its environment
b. Disadvantage: strategic direction can also serve of blinders to hide potential danger.
Setting out on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail
into an iceberg. It is also important to look sideways.
2. Strategy focuses effort
a. Advantage: strategy promotes coordination of activity. Without strategy to focus
effort, chaos can ensue as people pull in a variety of different directions
b. Disadvantage: groupthink arises when effort is too carefully focused. There may be
no peripheral vision, to open other possibilities.
3. Strategy defines the organisation
a. Advantage: strategy provides people with a shorthand way to understand their
organisation and to distinguish it from others
b. Disadvantage: to define an organisation too sharply may also mean to define it too
simply, sometimes to the point of stereotyping, so that the rich complexity if the
system is lost.
4. Strategy provides consistency
a. Advantage: strategy is needed to reduce ambiguity and provide order. It is like a
theory: a cognitive structure to simplify and explain the world, and thereby facilitate
action.
b. Disadvantage: creativity thrives on inconsistency – by finding new combinations of
hitherto separate phenomena. It has to be realized that every strategy, like every
theory, is a simplification that necessarily distorts reality. They are not reality
themselves, only representations (or abstractions) of reality in the minds of people.
No one has ever touched or seen a streety.
Strategy absence need not be associated with organisation failure, it may use the absence of strategy
to send unequivocal signals to both internal and external stakeholders of its preference not to
engage in resource-consuming ceremony. An absence of a rigid pattern of strategic decision making
may ensure that ‘noise’ is retained in organisational system, without which strategy may become a
specialized recipe that decreases flexibility and blocks learning and adaption.
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