College 1: Introduction Perspectivistic thinking
- This course will focus on the different perspectives of how strategy is formed in organizations.
- Strategy is formed by humans: Biases in strategic decision-making: Attention and intuition.
Chapter 1
- Schools:
1. Design School: Strategy formation as a process of conception.
2. Planning School: Strategy formation as a formal process.
3. Positioning School: Strategy formation as an analytical process.
4. Entrepreneurial School: Strategy formation as a visionary process.
5. Cognitive School: Strategy formation as a mental process.
6. Learning School: Strategy formation as emergent process.
7. Power School: Strategy formation as a process of negotiation.
8. Cultural School: Strategy formation as a collective process.
9. Environmental School: Strategy formation as a reactive process.
10. Configuration School: Strategy formation as a process of transformation.
- Prescriptive Schools: First three schools. More concerned with how strategies should be
formulated than with how they necessarily do form.
- Descriptive Schools: Six schools that follow. How strategies do, in fact, get made.
- The last school is a combination of other schools: configuration. This school clusters the various
elements of the beast (strategy-making process, content of strategies, structure of the
organization and its context) into distinct stages or episodes.
- 5 p’s of strategy:
o Strategy as a plan: Direction, guide, course of action. This is the intended strategy.
o Strategy as a pattern: Consistency in behaviour over time. This is the realized strategy.
Deliberate strategy: Intentions that are fully realized.
Emergent strategy: Where a pattern is realized that was not expressly intended.
o Strategy as a position: The locating of particular products in particular markets.
o Strategy as a perspective: An organization’s fundamental way of doing things.
o Strategy as a ploy: A specific ‘manoeuvre’ intended to outwit an opponent or competitor.
- For every advantage associated with strategy, there is an disadvantage:
o Strategy sets direction:
Advantage: Chart the course in order to sail cohesively through the environment.
Disadvantage: Set of blinders to hide potential dangers.
o Strategy focuses effort:
, Advantage: Strategy promotes coordination of activity.
Disadvantage: There may be no peripheral vision to open other possibilities.
o Strategy defines the organization:
Advantage: People understand their organization and can distinguish it from others.
Disadvantage: Sharp definition can be a too simple definition.
o Strategy provides consistency:
Advantage: Strategy is needed to provide order.
Disadvantage: Creativity thrives on inconsistency.
College 2: Design School
- What is strategy?
o Plan: Consciously intended direction, guide, or course of action to move from a present
state to a (desired/imagined) future state.
o Ploy: A manoeuvre to outwit an opponent.
o Pattern: Recognizable similar actions that emerge (intended or unintended) over time.
o Position: The organization’s location in the imaginary landscape of the competitive
environment.
o Perspective: The interpretation of managers of the organization and its environment.
- Design School:
o Strategy formation as a deliberate process of conscious thought.
o One person develops the strategy (CEO/Head of organization).
o Process of strategy formation should be simple and informal.
o Strategy should be one of a kind: Strategy is developed to attain a match or fit between
internal capabilities and external possibilities (SWOT analysis).
o Environment needs to be taken into account, navigated through but not interacted with.
o The strategy design process is complete when strategy appears fully formulated as a
perspective.
o Strategy is explicit.
o Implementation follows formulation and articulation
- Strategist (CEO/Head of organization): Gathers information, analyses information, organizes
information and formulates the strategy.
- Structure follows strategy: Strategy determines long-term goals and objectives, the course of
action and allocation of resources. Structure is the design through which to administer the
strategy. Changes in an organization’s strategy lead to problems that require a new structure.
- Assumptions of the design school:
o Complete and perfect information.
o CEO has the mental/cognitive capacity to accurately process all information.
o Environment can always be understood.
o Situations and environment are predictable.
o All information is documented and available.
o Strategy is centrally formulated.
- Process of the Design School:
1. Analysis: External (SW) and internal analysis (OT).
2. Formulation: Creation and evaluation (Social responsibility and managerial values).
3. Implementation
- Criticism/limitations of the Design School:
o Structure follows strategy: Unrealistic for most organizations.
, o Assumption of universality.
o Capacity to learn is ignored by analytical assessment of environment and internal
capabilities.
o Promotion of inflexibility: hierarchical, centralized, and explicit strategy formulation
o Detachment of thinking from acting..
o Unlikelihood of perfect information and capacity to process this information.
o Economic man / Homo economicus : Agent who has complete information about the
options available for choice, perfect foresight of the consequences from choosing those
options, and the wherewithal to solve an optimization problem that identifies an option
which maximizes the agent’s personal utility.
o Bounded rationality: Rationality is limited and individuals make imperfect decisions:
Difficulty of the problem, boundaries to cognitive capabilities, limited time.
- BASIC NOTION: Fit between external environment and internal capabilities.
Chapter 2
- Alternative strategy have to be determined and evaluated on:
o Consistency: Strategy must not present mutually inconsistent goals and policies.
o Consonance (harmonie): Strategy must represent an adaptive response to the internal
environment and to the critical changes occurring within it.
o Advantage: Strategy must provide in creation and maintenance of a competitive advantage.
o Feasibility: Strategy must neither overtax available resources nor create problems.
College 3: Planning School
- Planning: Establishment of goals, policies, and procedures for social or economic unit.
- Planning (in strategy): A formalized procedure to produce articulated results by using an
integrated system of decisions.
- The Planning School origins in military.
- Difference: Organization strategy assumes competition, military strategy assumes conflict.
- Strategy as a result of:
o Formal procedure
o Formal training
o Formal analysis
o Numbers
- Planning School:
o Strategy is driven by insights into regularities.
o Strategy formulation is a conscious, formal, and controlled process.
o Strategy is decomposed into district steps.
o Strategy formation is supported by checklists and analytical techniques.
o Rational and systematic approach to strategy making – affected by scientific management.
o Organizations are like machines
o Organizations have a clear-cut system of values, competencies, and reward system. These
are easy to recognize.
o Responsibilities are divided.
o Planning and implementation are separate, consecutive steps.
o The environment is stable and predictable.
- Scientific management:
o Theory that focuses on increasing economic efficiency, based on a logic of science.
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