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Design School and Positioning School Strategies

This document summarizes and compares two schools of strategic thought: the design school and positioning school. The design school views strategy as a series of operations to achieve fit between an organization's internal capabilities and external possibilities. It believes managerial values and social responsibilities are important in determining strategy. The implementation of the strategic plan requires agreement from all stakeholders. The positioning school sees strategy as positioning the firm in its environment. It focuses on competitive moves and responses in the industry.

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Tharindu Weerasinghe
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27 views

Design School and Positioning School Strategies

This document summarizes and compares two schools of strategic thought: the design school and positioning school. The design school views strategy as a series of operations to achieve fit between an organization's internal capabilities and external possibilities. It believes managerial values and social responsibilities are important in determining strategy. The implementation of the strategic plan requires agreement from all stakeholders. The positioning school sees strategy as positioning the firm in its environment. It focuses on competitive moves and responses in the industry.

Uploaded by

Tharindu Weerasinghe
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Strategy Analysis

Sadler & Craig (2003) describe strategy as a long duration action plan, drafted for achieving
defined objectives. In Greek language, strategy pertains to the act of leading an army (Hax,
2009). Different types of strategies, developed for resolving day-to-day challenges, form part
of the strategic management process.

Business organizations have always been at the crossroads of options over the fundamental
strategic decisions. Corporate think tanks spend major amounts of their quality time in
debating about the decisions on the forward outlook of the organization. The decisions to
adopt an appropriate short and long term strategy for an organization had always been
debatable. The point of debate had been focused on whether the adopted strategy would result
in enhancing the shareholder value, as it is fundamental to the existence of an organization. It
has been observed that the shareholder value is a function of revenues being generated by the
organization. Thus, the strategists need to worry about whether the organization makes efforts
to reducing the bottom-line vis-à-vis increasing the top line? These questions have never been
easy to answer and the dynamic business environment has further complicated the decision
making. No amount of tactical decision making can resolve these fundamental dilemmas.
Instead, appropriate strategic thinking can enable the top leadership in determining the steer
they want to provide to the organization (Davenport, Leibold, & Voelpel, 2006).

Mintzberg, Henry, Lampel, Joseph, & Ahlstrand, Bruce (1998) explained ten business
strategies, including design and positioning schools in Strategy Safari. The following text
focuses on these two schools of thoughts in the business strategies.

Basic details of each school of strategy is followed by a discussion on the roots of each of the
strategies, risks, uncertainty & its management, influence of market structure and the
environments. The analysis concludes with the comparison between these two schools of
strategic thoughts.

Design School of Strategy


According to the design school, the strategy is described as a series of varied operations,
executed to achieve the fit between the internal capabilities and external possibilities of an
organization. The design school believes that the managerial values of the people leaders and
the social responsibilities are two important factors in determining the strategy for any
organization (Sloan, 2006). Thus, as per the design school, the preferences and the beliefs of
the people leading the organization and the perceived ethics of the environment in which the
organization operates are important contributors to determine the strategic intent of any
organization. In the design school of strategy, after the various alternative strategies have
been determined, the next step is to evaluate and make a choice on the best one. The
implementation of the strategic action plan is subject to the agreement of all stakeholders on
the final strategy. 

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