Dissertation Topics in Perspectives in Strategic Management
Literature Review Help on Perspectives in Strategic Management
Research Papers and Thesis Proposal on Perspectives in Strategic Management
Researchers in strategic management have tried to categorize various streams of thought in this field into few groups for better assimilation. Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel is one of the outstanding books in this area which coalesces strategic thinking from 1960s into ten broad schools of thought. The purpose of this article is to critically analyze this book and to delve deeper so as to gain further insights in different streams of business strategy. Further, the article also compares different streams of thought presented by different authors along with the thought process presented in the book.
Researchers in strategic management have tried to categorize various streams of thought in this field into groups for better assimilation (Porter, 1980; Christensen et al., 1982; Schwenk, 1988; and Mintzberg, 1994). Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel (1998) is an outstanding work in this area which coalesces strategic thinking from 1960s into 10 broad schools of thought. Henry Mintzberg is considered as one of the premier management thinkers.
He is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University and professor of organization at institut européen d'administration des affaires (INSEAD) in France. He is the author of several seminal books, like, Mintzberg on Management and The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Bruce Ahlstrand is a Professor of Management at the Trent University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of The Quest for Productivity and co-author of Human Resource Management in the Multi-Divisional Company. Joseph Lampel is the founding member of the Institute for Research on Emergent Policy Processes, and a senior Research Fellow of the International Project in Management of Engineering and Construction.
He is also a Professor of Strategy at City University Business School, London. The purpose of writing this book was two-fold: to provide a broad view of the process of strategy formation as the authors narrowly focussed themselves on a single perspective and to facilitate a guide which will help both the scholars as well as the practitioners, in understanding distinct points of view in the area of strategy formation. This book is well conceived and attempts to arrive at consolidated picture comprising all the aspects of strategy formation. According to them, a strategy is a plan, a pattern, a position, a perspective and a ploy. In this book, the authors have also justified the significance of strategic planning for any organization. According to them, setting up of direction, focussing of effort, defining the organization and providing consistency are the main contributions that strategic planning makes for an organization.
In this book, the authors have looked at the process of strategy formation from 10 different angles (each termed as a school of thought). Each angle has a unique perspective that focuses on one major aspect. In addition, the book has been categorized into three parts. The first three schools are considered as ‘prescriptive’ schools that discuss how a strategy needs to be formulated, next six schools (4-9) are concerned with a specific aspect of strategy formation rather than prescribing an ideal strategic behavior, whereas, the configuration school alone constitutes the third group that integrates the various elements of strategy formation. The authors have first discussed the various elements in each of the above schools and then critiqued them by bringing out their pros and cons.
The objective of this paper is to critically analyze the 10 schools of thought as espoused in this classic book and compare it with similar books in the domain of strategic literature.
The Design School
Strategy formation, is all about establishing a fit between strength and weakness of an organization and the opportunities available in its external environment. Christensen et al. (1982) are among the major proponents of this school. This school proposes a model of strategy formation that seeks to attain a fit between an organization’s internal capabilities and possibilities external to the organization, i.e., the need to bring together the organization’s internal state with its external expectations. The above model places primary emphasis on the appraisals of the external and internal situations, the former uncovering the threats and opportunities in the environment while the later revealing strengths and weaknesses of the organization. The external environment, includes technological, economic, social and political aspects of a company’s environment and issues of forecasting and scanning. This school also considers the role played by managerial values and social responsibility as important in the process of strategy making. Rumelt (1997), one of the proponents of this school, proposed a framework to evaluate strategy making. According to his framework, a strategy formulated should be consistent in terms of its goals and policies and must be adaptive to the changes in the organization’s environment, must provide and maintain competitive advantage in selected areas of activity and should be feasible. He also suggested a series of steps using which an organization can evaluate various alternatives available to it and hence, can select one which fits its internal strength and weakness with
the opportunities in the environment.
The Icfai University Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. VI, No. 2, 2009
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