,Inhoud
Introduction to this document ............................................................................................................3
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Organization and Environment .................................................................3
Chapter 2 – The design school.............................................................................................................4
Chapter 3 - The planning school ..........................................................................................................6
Chapter 4 – Positioning school ............................................................................................................7
Chapter 5 - Entrepreneurial school......................................................................................................9
Chapter 6 - Cognitive school ............................................................................................................. 10
Chapter 7 - Learning school ............................................................................................................... 13
Chapter 8 – The Power school ........................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 9 – Cultural school ............................................................................................................... 18
Chapter 10 - The environmental school ............................................................................................. 20
Chapter 11 – Configuration school .................................................................................................... 22
Chapter 12 – Meet the whole beast .................................................................................................. 28
Extra theory: Network school ............................................................................................................ 30
Q&A 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 33
Q&A 2 ............................................................................................................................................... 34
About the exam 2020 ....................................................................................................................... 35
Article 1 – Creating employee networks… ......................................................................................... 36
Article 2 – Resilience of information… ............................................................................................... 37
Article 3 – Fishing in troubled waters? .............................................................................................. 38
Article 4 – Cultural molding, shielding and shoring… ......................................................................... 40
Bonus bijlage: Een boodschap voor jou – een actueel verhaal. .......................................................... 42
,Introduction to this document
This document is a summary of everything that has been discussed during the course Organization
and Environment, including the articles. It includes everything of the lectures, book and articles.
Everything is exam material. The author of this document attended 100% of the video lectures and
red the entire book and all the articles.
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Organization and Environment
Who is really making the strategy? Visionaries, humans, power, or imitating what others do?
We would like to teach you perspectives.
Prescriptive = Design, planning, positioning
Descriptive = Entrepreneurial, cognitive, learning, power, cultural, environmental, configurationally,
network.
The different approaches to strategy formation:
- Strategy planning
- Strategy visioning
- Strategy venturing
- Strategy learning
The advantages to have a strategy:
- Strategy gives the organization a direction
- Strategy gives the organization a focus
- Strategy gives the organization a definition
- Strategy gives the organization consistency
,Chapter 2 – The design school
Key words: ADAPT & FIT, CONCEPTION
Key mindset: Fit between the internal organization with the external environment. Strategy is
unique, CEO has central role. Deliberate. Strategy is a process of conception. Order and simplicity,
reduce ambiguity. Useful in relative stable environment.
Prescriptive
Spider: Carefully designing the web.
Steps:
Plan (Internally focused, how we are going to do it)
Ploy (a manoeuvre to outwit an opponent –being different from the competitor)
Pattern
Position
Perspective
Three groupings
- Prescriptivism (Top-Down): Planning, Design, Positioning school.
- Descriptivism (Not concerned with ideal behaviour, but describing how strategies do,
actually, get mate).
- Configurative: Adapt to the situation, combine.
Is strategy deliberate or emergent?
Deliberate = Based on a planning
Emergent = Spontaneous
Four basis approaches to strategy formation:
Central question with the design school: Why are some organizations better at adapting on shock?
Am I resilient, or fragile?
Design school - Premises
1. Strategy formation is as deliberate as possible, and is a process of conscious thought
2. Attain internal and external possibilities
3. Responsibility for strategy rests with the CEO
4. The strategy formation must be simple and informal
5. Strategies should be unique
6. Separation of formulation from implementation – This is also heavenly criticized.
7. It must be first formulated and then implemented. Structure comes after strategy.
Strategy is Grand conception, Grand strategy, Unique.
,Harman, Intel, Starbucks. A crisis is a rational thing.
Some shocks are negative, some are opportunities
- Resilience: Survival, how do we adapt?
- Agility
Process
Analysis -> Creation -> Evaluation -> Implementation
“Structure follows strategy” -> Until we know the new strategy we cannot begin to specify the
appropriate structure – Andrews.
SWOT analysis.
Critique: That we do not do too much with the implementation.
Assumptions of the design school
1. The CEO has complete information and is absolutely informed
2. The CEO has the capacity to process all information
3. The environment can always be understood
4. Situations and environments are predictable
5. All information is documented and available
6. Strategy is centrally formulated
Criticize:
- Inflexibility
- Detaching thinking form acting
- Learning is ignored
- Assumption that you know everything
What does the design school like? Vocabulary and tools, Grand strategy, Good tools, one of the first
schools, brought the field of strategy in.
! Strategy is Unique
Design: Strategy formulation as a process of conception.
Clear and unique strategy.
This process takes the internal and external environment into account.
Simplification distort reality.
,Chapter 3 - The planning school
Key words: PLANNING, FORMALIZE
Key mindset: Strategy formation as a formal process. Future is stable. Rationality and control.
Responsibility is with the CEO. Planning school goes for generic strategy. Enables firm resource
allocation, control. Static long term commitments, group think.
Prescriptive
Squirrel: Carefully gathers and plans the resources to survive the future.
Long term commitment.
Planning is a formalized procedure to produce articulated results by using an integrated system of
decisions.
Can you plan in the future? It assumes that the future is stable.
The planning school started in the military. Difference: Competition, and in business there is not
always an conflict. Operational planning is also part of the planning school, so they are doing
something with the implementation.
It is a reactive school. Long term commitment.
Process
Rational approach (Science), regularities, taylorism, like rationality and control.
Like an machine, responsibilities are split up. Planning and implementation are two different steps.
1. Set objective
2. Analyze
3. Create scenarios/ Evaluation
4. Operationalize
5. Schedule
Premises
Premises are the same as by the design school except for:
1. Strategy is not simple, but complex.
2. Process is like a machine, components are produced and it is later assembled.
3. CEO must approve plans, instead of developing them by themselves.
Responsibility for the overall process with the CEO, Responsibility for its execution rests with staff
planners in practice. They like everything to be very explicit.
Critique
- Not flexible
- Planning staff took over the strategic formation process
- Planning focussed less on core business development
- Cultural and organizational characteristics are not taken
into account.
Thinkers
Ansoff: Corporate Strategy. Predicting and preparing.
For example, what is happening with the product.
! Uniqueness doesn’t matter for the planning school.
Problems and limits
- Predetermination: There are disruptive things.
- Detachment (manage by control)
- Formalization
, - Strategy planning -> Strategy planning is not a substitute for synthesis. Planning stops new
strategies.
- So: Lack of efficiency, commitment, flexibility, sense of reality. “Garbage in – garbage out”
paradigm.
The fallacies of strategic planning
- The fallacy of predetermination
- The fallacy of detachment
Detaching the doers from the thinkers does not work at all.
- The fallacy of formalization
Strategy making is about creativity and intuition.
- The grand fallacy of “Strategic planning”
Just to formal.
Planning school summary
Strategy as a rigorous set of steps taken, from analysis of the situation to the execution. Strategy as a
machine, predictions form an ivory tower (that you get disconnected from the floor).
Chapter 4 – Positioning school
Key words: Attack, Analyze, Facts.
Key mindset: Strategy formation as an analytical process. Strategy must be defended against
competitors. Controlled, conscious and deliberate strategy. Close selection of generic strategy. CEO
and analysist have prior role. Matching strategy to conditions. Focus on competitive advantage,
useful in stable context. Economics, industrial organizations and military (Porter, Tzu). Calculate
rather than commit. There is a certain range of strategies desirable in given the industry and
situation.
Generic strategies
Prescriptive
Water buffalo: An animal who carefully selects it position and then just sits there
Ploying. “Outwit on strategic maneuver.”
You take a tangible position fitted to context.
M&A: Mergers and Acquisitions.
It is all about that the strategies can be defended against competitors.
But also the positioning school is about: controlled, conscious and deliberate strategies. However,
more focus on calculation, or close selection of generic strategies.
The positioning school – still is driving an massive industry.
Key players:
The CEO has the prior role, while analysist more provide information.
Question:
What do we need to do with the fintech unicorns?
Premises
- Generic strategies. Economic and competitive. Generic strategies.
- Not unique and tailor made
- CEO is still the strategist, however the planner gest a more improatn role.
- Set of analytic tools
- Matching strategy to the conditions
