Strategy and Practice 1 - Introduction

• The what of strategy - decisions, goals objectives
• The how of strategy - who was involved, continuous or discontinuous, the drama and the story
• The strategy context - factors, environment, culture, markets, nationalities

• Mintzberg - Crafting Strategy - thr process of strategy is more important the planned part of strategy
• Mintzberg - Organigraphs - rich pictures rather than traditional M-form etc
• Mintzberg - Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning - Emergent practiced-based strategy
• Mintzberg - Strategy Safari - We can identify many streams of though and we should understand all of them
• Whittington - Strategy as Practice - The state of strategy at the end of the 20C -
• Cummings Angwin The Future Shape of Strategy
  • The clasical - rationality and analysis
  • Evolutionalry - unpredictability of environment
  • Processual - pragmatic approach adapting and learning
  • Systemic - importance of culture and affects on the conceptualization of the strategy process

• [Design School] Classical - looking at rhe ointernal strenghts and weaknesses of the org. Formulating clear stratgeies based on rational thought
• [Planning School] Design school plus check lists and frameworks such as [Porter's Five Forces]
• [Positioning School] Classical prescriptive using [Boston Box], [GE Attractiveness]
• [Environmental School]- Implicit and explicit influence of business environment is taken into account. Managers have far less [Agency Theory]
• [Learning School] - Strategy emerging over time. Other influencing factors, questioning assumptions. Interwining strategic formulation and implementation
• [Cognitive School] Understanding the mental processes in the head of the stratgeist - [Ohmae - The Mind of the Strategist]
• [Consensus School] Strategy development coming form emerging consensus of strategists as they learn frm each other
• [Power School] - Strategy as power, co-ercion, politics, bargaining and Macro Power - JV's, Network Organizations
• [Cultural School] The influence of corporate, regional and national culures to explain strategy
• [Entrepreneurial School] - Visions and perspectives embodied in entrepreneurs
• [Process School] - Senior management control the processes by which strategy is developed leaving determinatoin to others - parenting in a disionalized organization
• [Configuration School] - sees oprganizations as clusters of resources and characteristics and behaviours that are mapped and configured

Mintzberg........................................Mintzberg/Waters........................................Whittington Planning Design Postioning.......................................Intended......................................................Classical

Environmental..................................Unrealised..................................................Evolutionary

Learning Cognitive Consensus.....................................Learning.....................................................Processual

Power Cultural Entrepreneurial Process..........................................Emergent..................................................Systemic

Themes in strategy and practice

• Increasing pace of change and uncertianty
• Increasing inability to rely on best practice and more on corporate intangibles
• Movement away from one best way and a focus of the conext of the org
• Away from simple either or ie local or global to paradoxical can we be local and gloabl big and nimble

De Wits strategic tensions or paradoxes

• • Intended v emergent
  • Profitiability v reponsibility
  • Global v local

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