Strategic

management

In the field of management, strategic

management involves the formulation and
implementation of the major goals and
initiatives taken by an organization's
managers on behalf of stakeholders,
based on consideration of resources and
an assessment of the internal and external
environments in which the organization
operates.[1][2][3][4] Strategic management
provides overall direction to an enterprise
and involves specifying the organization's
objectives, developing policies and plans
to achieve those objectives, and then
allocating resources to implement the
plans.[5] Academics and practicing
managers have developed numerous
models and frameworks to assist in
strategic decision-making in the context of
complex environments and competitive
dynamics.[6] Strategic management is not
static in nature; the models can include a
feedback loop to monitor execution and to
inform the next round of planning.[7][8][9]
Michael Porter identifies three principles
underlying strategy:[10]

creating a "unique and valuable [market]

position"
making trade-offs by choosing "what not
to do"
creating "fit" by aligning company
activities with one another to support
the chosen strategy

Corporate strategy involves answering a

key question from a portfolio perspective:
"What business should we be in?" Business
strategy involves answering the question:
"How shall we compete in this
business?"[11][12]

Management theory and practice often

make a distinction between strategic
management and operational
management, with operational
management concerned primarily with
improving efficiency and controlling costs
within the boundaries set by the
organization's strategy.

Application
 Strategic management processes and activities

Strategy is defined as "the determination

of the basic long-term goals of an
enterprise, and the adoption of courses of
action and the allocation of resources
necessary for carrying out these goals."[13]
Strategies are established to set direction,
focus effort, define or clarify the
organization, and provide consistency or
guidance in response to the
environment.[14]
Strategic management involves the related
concepts of strategic planning and
strategic thinking. Strategic planning is
analytical in nature and refers to
formalized procedures to produce the data
and analyses used as inputs for strategic
thinking, which synthesizes the data
resulting in the strategy. Strategic planning
may also refer to control mechanisms
used to implement the strategy once it is
determined. In other words, strategic
planning happens around the strategic
thinking or strategy making activity.[15]

Strategic management is often described

as involving two major processes:
formulation and implementation of
strategy. While described sequentially
below, in practice the two processes are
iterative and each provides input for the
other.[15]

Formulation

Formulation of strategy involves analyzing

the environment in which the organization
operates, then making a series of strategic
decisions about how the organization will
compete. Formulation ends with a series
of goals or objectives and measures for
the organization to pursue. Environmental
analysis includes the:
Remote external environment, including
the political, economic, social,
technological, legal and environmental
landscape (PESTLE);
Industry environment, such as the
competitive behavior of rival
organizations, the bargaining power of
buyers/customers and suppliers, threats
from new entrants to the industry, and
the ability of buyers to substitute
products (Porter's 5 forces); and
Internal environment, regarding the
strengths and weaknesses of the
organization's resources (i.e., its people,
processes and IT systems).[15]
Strategic decisions are based on insight
from the environmental assessment and
are responses to strategic questions
about how the organization will compete,
such as:

What is the organization's business?

Who is the target customer for the
organization's products and services?
Where are the customers and how do
they buy? What is considered "value" to
the customer?
Which businesses, products and
services should be included or excluded
from the portfolio of offerings?
 What is the geographic scope of the
business?
What differentiates the company from
its competitors in the eyes of customers
and other stakeholders?
Which skills and capabilities should be
developed within the firm?
What are the important opportunities
and risks for the organization?
How can the firm grow, through both its
base business and new business?
How can the firm generate more value
for investors?[15][16]

The answers to these and many other

strategic questions result in the
organization's strategy and a series of
specific short-term and long-term goals or
objectives and related measures.[15]

Implementation

The second major process of strategic

management is implementation, which
involves decisions regarding how the
organization's resources (i.e., people,
process and IT systems) will be aligned
and mobilized towards the objectives.
Implementation results in how the
organization's resources are structured
(such as by product or service or
geography), leadership arrangements,
communication, incentives, and monitoring
mechanisms to track progress towards
objectives, among others.[15]

Running the day-to-day operations of the

business is often referred to as
"operations management" or specific
terms for key departments or functions,
such as "logistics management" or
"marketing management," which take over
once strategic management decisions are
implemented.[15]

Definitions
In 1988, Henry
Strategy has been
Mintzberg described practiced whenever
the many different an advantage was
definitions and gained by planning
perspectives on the sequence and

strategy reflected in timing of the

deployment of
both academic
resources while
research and in
simultaneously
practice.[18][19] He taking into account
examined the the probable
strategic process capabilities and
and concluded it behavior of
was much more fluid competition.

and unpredictable Bruce Henderson[17]

than people had
thought. Because of
this, he could not point to one process that
could be called strategic planning. Instead
Mintzberg concludes that there are five
types of strategies:

Strategy as plan – a directed course of

action to achieve an intended set of
goals; similar to the strategic planning
concept;
Strategy as pattern – a consistent
pattern of past behavior, with a strategy
realized over time rather than planned or
intended. Where the realized pattern was
different from the intent, he referred to
the strategy as emergent;
 Strategy as position – locating brands,
products, or companies within the
market, based on the conceptual
framework of consumers or other
stakeholders; a strategy determined
primarily by factors outside the firm;
Strategy as ploy – a specific maneuver
intended to outwit a competitor; and
Strategy as perspective – executing
strategy based on a "theory of the
business" or natural extension of the
mindset or ideological perspective of
the organization.

In 1998, Mintzberg developed these five

types of management strategy into 10
"schools of thought" and grouped them
into three categories. The first group is
normative. It consists of the schools of
informal design and conception, the formal
planning, and analytical positioning. The
second group, consisting of six schools, is
more concerned with how strategic
management is actually done, rather than
prescribing optimal plans or positions. The
six schools are entrepreneurial, visionary,
cognitive, learning/adaptive/emergent,
negotiation, corporate culture and
business environment. The third and final
group consists of one school, the
configuration or transformation school, a
hybrid of the other schools organized into
stages, organizational life cycles, or
"episodes".[20]

Michael Porter defined strategy in 1980 as

the "...broad formula for how a business is
going to compete, what its goals should
be, and what policies will be needed to
carry out those goals" and the
"...combination of the ends (goals) for
which the firm is striving and the means
(policies) by which it is seeking to get
there." He continued that: "The essence of
formulating competitive strategy is relating
a company to its environment."[21]
Some complexity theorists define strategy
as the unfolding of the internal and
external aspects of the organization that
results in actions in a socio-economic
context.[22][23][24]

Michael D. Watkins claimed in 2007 that if

mission/goals answer the 'what' question,
or if vision answers the 'why' questions,
then strategy provides answers to the
'how' question of business
management.[25]

Historical development

Origins
The strategic management discipline
originated in the 1950s and 1960s. Among
the numerous early contributors, the most
influential were Peter Drucker, Philip
Selznick, Alfred Chandler, Igor Ansoff,[26]
and Bruce Henderson.[6] The discipline
draws from earlier thinking and texts on
'strategy' dating back thousands of years.
Prior to 1960, the term "strategy" was
primarily used regarding war and politics,
not business.[27] Many companies built
strategic planning functions to develop
and execute the formulation and
implementation processes during the
1960s.[28]
Peter Drucker was a prolific management
theorist and author of dozens of
management books, with a career
spanning five decades. He addressed
fundamental strategic questions in a 1954
book The Practice of Management writing:
"... the first responsibility of top
management is to ask the question 'what
is our business?' and to make sure it is
carefully studied and correctly answered."
He wrote that the answer was determined
by the customer. He recommended eight
areas where objectives should be set, such
as market standing, innovation,
productivity, physical and financial
resources, worker performance and
attitude, profitability, manager
performance and development, and public
responsibility.[29]

In 1957, Philip Selznick initially used the

term "distinctive competence" in referring
to how the Navy was attempting to
differentiate itself from the other
services.[6] He also formalized the idea of
matching the organization's internal
factors with external environmental
circumstances.[30] This core idea was
developed further by Kenneth R. Andrews
in 1963 into what we now call SWOT
analysis, in which the strengths and
weaknesses of the firm are assessed in
light of the opportunities and threats in the
business environment.[6]

Alfred Chandler recognized the importance

of coordinating management activity under
an all-encompassing strategy. Interactions
between functions were typically handled
by managers who relayed information
back and forth between departments.
Chandler stressed the importance of
taking a long-term perspective when
looking to the future. In his 1962 ground
breaking work Strategy and Structure,
Chandler showed that a long-term
coordinated strategy was necessary to
give a company structure, direction and
focus. He says it concisely, "structure
follows strategy." Chandler wrote that:

"Strategy is the determination of

the basic long-term goals of an
enterprise, and the adoption of
courses of action and the
allocation of resources
necessary for carrying out these
goals."[13]

Igor Ansoff built on Chandler's work by

adding concepts and inventing a
vocabulary. He developed a grid that
compared strategies for market
penetration, product development, market
development and horizontal and vertical
integration and diversification. He felt that
management could use the grid to
systematically prepare for the future. In his
1965 classic Corporate Strategy, he
developed gap analysis to clarify the gap
between the current reality and the goals
and to develop what he called "gap
reducing actions".[31] Ansoff wrote that
strategic management had three parts:
strategic planning; the skill of a firm in
converting its plans into reality; and the
skill of a firm in managing its own internal
resistance to change.[32]
Bruce Henderson, founder of the Boston
Consulting Group, wrote about the concept
of the experience curve in 1968, following
initial work begun in 1965. The experience
curve refers to a hypothesis that unit
production costs decline by 20–30% every
time cumulative production doubles. This
supported the argument for achieving
higher market share and economies of
scale.[33]

Porter wrote in 1980 that companies have

to make choices about their scope and the
type of competitive advantage they seek to
achieve, whether lower cost or
differentiation. The idea of strategy
targeting particular industries and
customers (i.e., competitive positions)
with a differentiated offering was a
departure from the experience-curve
influenced strategy paradigm, which was
focused on larger scale and lower cost.[21]
Porter revised the strategy paradigm again
in 1985, writing that superior performance
of the processes and activities performed
by organizations as part of their value
chain is the foundation of competitive
advantage, thereby outlining a process
view of strategy.[34]

Change in focus from production to

marketing
The direction of strategic research also
paralleled a major paradigm shift in how
companies competed, specifically a shift
from the production focus to market
focus. The prevailing concept in strategy
up to the 1950s was to create a product of
high technical quality. If you created a
product that worked well and was durable,
it was assumed you would have no
difficulty profiting. This was called the
production orientation. Henry Ford
famously said of the Model T car: "Any
customer can have a car painted any color
that he wants, so long as it is black."[35]
Management theorist Peter F Drucker
wrote in 1954 that it was the customer
who defined what business the
organization was in.[16] In 1960 Theodore
Levitt argued that instead of producing
products then trying to sell them to the
customer, businesses should start with the
customer, find out what they wanted, and
then produce it for them. The fallacy of the
production orientation was also referred to
as marketing myopia in an article of the
same name by Levitt.[36]

Over time, the customer became the

driving force behind all strategic business
decisions. This marketing concept, in the
decades since its introduction, has been
reformulated and repackaged under
names including market orientation,
customer orientation, customer intimacy,
customer focus, customer-driven and
market focus.

Nature of strategy

In 1985, Ellen Earle-Chaffee summarized

what she thought were the main elements
of strategic management theory where
consensus generally existed as of the
1970s, writing that strategic
management:[11]
Involves adapting the organization to its
business environment;
Is fluid and complex. Change creates
novel combinations of circumstances
requiring unstructured non-repetitive
responses;
Affects the entire organization by
providing direction;
Involves both strategy formulation
processes and also implementation of
the content of the strategy;
May be planned (intended) and
unplanned (emergent);
Is done at several levels: overall
corporate strategy, and individual
 business strategies; and
Involves both conceptual and analytical
thought processes.

Chaffee further wrote that research up to

that point covered three models of
strategy, which were not mutually
exclusive:

1. Linear strategy: A planned

determination of goals, initiatives,
and allocation of resources, along the
lines of the Chandler definition above.
This is most consistent with strategic
planning approaches and may have a
long planning horizon. The strategist
 "deals with" the environment but it is
not the central concern.
2. Adaptive strategy: In this model, the
organization's goals and activities are
primarily concerned with adaptation
to the environment, analogous to a
biological organism. The need for
continuous adaption reduces or
eliminates the planning window.
There is more focus on means
(resource mobilization to address the
environment) rather than ends
(goals). Strategy is less centralized
than in the linear model.
 3. Interpretive strategy: A more recent
and less developed model than the
linear and adaptive models,
interpretive strategy is concerned
with "orienting metaphors
constructed for the purpose of
conceptualizing and guiding individual
attitudes or organizational
participants." The aim of interpretive
strategy is legitimacy or credibility in
the mind of stakeholders. It places
emphasis on symbols and language
to influence the minds of customers,
rather than the physical product of
the organization.[11]

Concepts and frameworks

Concepts and frameworks
The progress of strategy since 1960 can
be charted by a variety of frameworks and
concepts introduced by management
consultants and academics. These reflect
an increased focus on cost, competition
and customers. These "3 Cs" were
illuminated by much more robust empirical
analysis at ever-more granular levels of
detail, as industries and organizations
were disaggregated into business units,
activities, processes, and individuals in a
search for sources of competitive
advantage.[27]

SWOT analysis
 A SWOT analysis, with its four
elements in a 2×2 matrix.

By the 1960s, the capstone business policy

course at the Harvard Business School
included the concept of matching the
distinctive competence of a company (its
internal strengths and weaknesses) with
its environment (external opportunities and
threats) in the context of its objectives.
This framework came to be known by the
acronym SWOT and was "a major step
forward in bringing explicitly competitive
thinking to bear on questions of strategy".
Kenneth R. Andrews helped popularize the
framework via a 1963 conference and it
remains commonly used in practice.[6]

Experience curve

The experience curve was developed by

the Boston Consulting Group in 1966.[27] It
reflects a hypothesis that total per unit
costs decline systematically by as much
as 15–25% every time cumulative
production (i.e., "experience") doubles. It
has been empirically confirmed by some
firms at various points in their history.[37]
Costs decline due to a variety of factors,
such as the learning curve, substitution of
labor for capital (automation), and
technological sophistication. Author
Walter Kiechel wrote that it reflected
several insights, including:

A company can always improve its cost

structure;
Competitors have varying cost positions
based on their experience;
Firms could achieve lower costs through
higher market share, attaining a
competitive advantage; and
An increased focus on empirical
analysis of costs and processes, a
 concept which author Kiechel refers to
as "Greater Taylorism".

Kiechel wrote in 2010: "The experience

curve was, simply, the most important
concept in launching the strategy
revolution...with the experience curve, the
strategy revolution began to insinuate an
acute awareness of competition into the
corporate consciousness." Prior to the
1960s, the word competition rarely
appeared in the most prominent
management literature; U.S. companies
then faced considerably less competition
and did not focus on performance relative
to peers. Further, the experience curve
provided a basis for the retail sale of
business ideas, helping drive the
management consulting industry.[27]

Importance-performance matrix

Completion of an importance-performance
matrix forms "a crucial stage in the
formulation of operations strategy",[38] and
may be considered a "simple, yet useful,
method for simultaneously considering
both the importance and performance
dimensions when evaluating or defining
strategy".[39] Notes on this subject from
the Department of Engineering at the
University of Cambridge suggest that a
binary matrix may be used "but may be
found too crude", and nine point scales on
both the importance and performance
axes are recommended. An importance
scale could be labelled from "the main
thrust of competitiveness" to "never
considered by customers and never likely
to do so", and performance can be
segmented into "better than", "the same
as", and "worse than" the company's
competitors. The highest urgency would
than be directed to the most important
areas where performance is poorer than
competitors.[38]
The technique is also used in relation to
marketing, where the variable "importance"
is related to buyers' perception of
important attributes of a product: for
attributes which might be considered
important to buyers, both their perceived
importance and their performance are
assessed.[40][41]

Corporate strategy and portfolio

theory

Portfolio growth–share matrix

The concept of the corporation as a
portfolio of business units, with each
plotted graphically based on its market
share (a measure of its competitive
position relative to its peers) and industry
growth rate (a measure of industry
attractiveness), was summarized in the
growth–share matrix developed by the
Boston Consulting Group around 1970. By
1979, one study estimated that 45% of the
Fortune 500 companies were using some
variation of the matrix in their strategic
planning. This framework helped
companies decide where to invest their
resources (i.e., in their high market share,
high growth businesses) and which
businesses to divest (i.e., low market
share, low growth businesses.)[27] The
growth-share matrix was followed by G.E.
multi factoral model, developed by General
Electric.

Companies continued to diversify as

conglomerates until the 1980s, when
deregulation and a less restrictive antitrust
environment led to the view that a portfolio
of operating divisions in different
industries was worth more as many
independent companies, leading to the
breakup of many conglomerates.[27] While
the popularity of portfolio theory has
waxed and waned, the key dimensions
considered (industry attractiveness and
competitive position) remain central to
strategy.[6]

In response to the evident problems of

"over diversification", C. K. Prahalad and
Gary Hamel suggested that companies
should build portfolios of businesses
around shared technical or operating
competencies, and should develop
structures and processes to enhance their
core competencies.[42]

Michael Porter also addressed the issue

of the appropriate level of diversification.
In 1987, he argued that corporate strategy
involves two questions: 1) What business
should the corporation be in? and 2) How
should the corporate office manage its
business units? He mentioned four
concepts of corporate strategy each of
which suggest a certain type of portfolio
and a certain role for the corporate office;
the latter three can be used together:[43]

1. Portfolio theory: A strategy based

primarily on diversification through
acquisition. The corporation shifts
resources among the units and
monitors the performance of each
business unit and its leaders. Each
unit generally runs autonomously,
 with limited interference from the
corporate center provided goals are
met.
2. Restructuring: The corporate office
acquires then actively intervenes in a
business where it detects potential,
often by replacing management and
implementing a new business
strategy.
3. Transferring skills: Important
managerial skills and organizational
capability are essentially spread to
multiple businesses. The skills must
be necessary to competitive
advantage.
 4. Sharing activities: Ability of the
combined corporation to leverage
centralized functions, such as sales,
finance, etc. thereby reducing
costs.[43]

Building on Porter's ideas, Michael Goold,

Andrew Campbell and Marcus Alexander
developed the concept of "parenting
advantage" to be applied at the corporate
level, as a parallel to the concept of
"competitive advantage" applied at the
business level. Parent companies, they
argued, should aim to "add more value" to
their portfolio of businesses than rivals. If
they succeed, they have a parenting
advantage. The right level of diversification
depends, therefore, on the ability of the
parent company to add value in
comparison to others. Different parent
companies with different skills should
expect to have different portfolios. See
Corporate Level Strategy 1995 and
Strategy for the Corporate Level 2014

Competitive advantage

In 1980, Porter defined the two types of

competitive advantage an organization
can achieve relative to its rivals: lower cost
or differentiation. This advantage derives
from attribute(s) that allow an
organization to outperform its competition,
such as superior market position, skills, or
resources. In Porter's view, strategic
management should be concerned with
building and sustaining competitive
advantage.[34]

Industry structure and profitability

A graphical representation of Porter's Five Forces

Porter developed a framework for

analyzing the profitability of industries and
how those profits are divided among the
participants in 1980. In five forces analysis
he identified the forces that shape the
industry structure or environment. The
framework involves the bargaining power
of buyers and suppliers, the threat of new
entrants, the availability of substitute
products, and the competitive rivalry of
firms in the industry. These forces affect
the organization's ability to raise its prices
as well as the costs of inputs (such as raw
materials) for its processes.[21]

The five forces framework helps describe

how a firm can use these forces to obtain
a sustainable competitive advantage,
either lower cost or differentiation.
Companies can maximize their profitability
by competing in industries with favorable
structure. Competitors can take steps to
grow the overall profitability of the
industry, or to take profit away from other
parts of the industry structure. Porter
modified Chandler's dictum about
structure following strategy by introducing
a second level of structure: while
organizational structure follows strategy, it
in turn follows industry structure.[21]

Generic competitive strategies

 Michael Porter's Three Generic Strategies

Porter wrote in 1980 that strategy target

either cost leadership, differentiation, or
focus.[21] These are known as Porter's
three generic strategies and can be applied
to any size or form of business. Porter
claimed that a company must only choose
one of the three or risk that the business
would waste precious resources. Porter's
generic strategies detail the interaction
between cost minimization strategies,
product differentiation strategies, and
market focus strategies.

Porter described an industry as having

multiple segments that can be targeted by
a firm. The breadth of its targeting refers
to the competitive scope of the business.
Porter defined two types of competitive
advantage: lower cost or differentiation
relative to its rivals. Achieving competitive
advantage results from a firm's ability to
cope with the five forces better than its
rivals. Porter wrote: "[A]chieving
competitive advantage requires a firm to
make a choice...about the type of
competitive advantage it seeks to attain
and the scope within which it will attain it."
He also wrote: "The two basic types of
competitive advantage [differentiation and
lower cost] combined with the scope of
activities for which a firm seeks to achieve
them lead to three generic strategies for
achieving above average performance in
an industry: cost leadership, differentiation
and focus. The focus strategy has two
variants, cost focus and differentiation
focus."[34]

The concept of choice was a different

perspective on strategy, as the 1970s
paradigm was the pursuit of market share
(size and scale) influenced by the
experience curve. Companies that pursued
the highest market share position to
achieve cost advantages fit under Porter's
cost leadership generic strategy, but the
concept of choice regarding differentiation
and focus represented a new
perspective.[27]

Value chain

Michael Porter's Value Chain

Porter's 1985 description of the value
chain refers to the chain of activities
(processes or collections of processes)
that an organization performs in order to
deliver a valuable product or service for
the market. These include functions such
as inbound logistics, operations, outbound
logistics, marketing and sales, and service,
supported by systems and technology
infrastructure. By aligning the various
activities in its value chain with the
organization's strategy in a coherent way, a
firm can achieve a competitive advantage.
Porter also wrote that strategy is an
internally consistent configuration of
activities that differentiates a firm from its
rivals. A robust competitive position
cumulates from many activities which
should fit coherently together.[44]

Porter wrote in 1985: "Competitive

advantage cannot be understood by
looking at a firm as a whole. It stems from
the many discrete activities a firm
performs in designing, producing,
marketing, delivering and supporting its
product. Each of these activities can
contribute to a firm's relative cost position
and create a basis for differentiation...the
value chain disaggregates a firm into its
strategically relevant activities in order to
understand the behavior of costs and the
existing and potential sources of
differentiation."[6]

Interorganizational relationships

Interorganizational relationships allow

independent organizations to get access
to resources or to enter new markets.
Interorganizational relationships represent
a critical lever of competitive
advantage.[45]

The field of strategic management has

paid much attention to the different forms
of relationships between organizations
ranging from strategic alliances to buyer-
supplier relationships, joint ventures,
networks, R&D consortia, licensing, and
franchising.[46]

On the one hand, scholars drawing on

organizational economics (e.g.,
transaction costs theory) have argued that
firms use interorganizational relationships
when they are the most efficient form
comparatively to other forms of
organization such as operating on its own
or using the market. On the other hand,
scholars drawing on organizational theory
(e.g., resource dependence theory)
suggest that firms tend to partner with
others when such relationships allow them
to improve their status, power, reputation,
or legitimacy.

A key component to the strategic

management of inter-organizational
relationships relates to the choice of
governance mechanisms. While early
research focused on the choice between
equity and non equity forms,[47] recent
scholarship studies the nature of the
contractual and relational arrangements
between organizations.[48]

Researchers have also noted, although to

a lesser extent,[49] the dark side of
interorganizational relationships, such as
conflict, disputes, opportunism and
unethical behaviors. Relational or
collaborative risk can be defined as the
uncertainty about whether potentially
significant and/or disappointing outcomes
of collaborative activities will be
realized.[50] Companies can assess,
monitor and manage collaborative risks.
Empirical studies show that managers
assess risks as lower when they external
partners, higher if they are satisfied with
their own performance, and lower when
their business environment is turbulent.[51]

Core competence
Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad described
the idea of core competency in 1990, the
idea that each organization has some
capability in which it excels and that the
business should focus on opportunities in
that area, letting others go or outsourcing
them. Further, core competency is difficult
to duplicate, as it involves the skills and
coordination of people across a variety of
functional areas or processes used to
deliver value to customers. By outsourcing,
companies expanded the concept of the
value chain, with some elements within the
entity and others without.[52] Core
competency is part of a branch of strategy
called the resource-based view of the firm,
which postulates that if activities are
strategic as indicated by the value chain,
then the organization's capabilities and
ability to learn or adapt are also
strategic.[6]

Theory of the business

According to Peter Drucker, business

theory refers to the key points and
strategies of a company, which are divided
into three parts:

1. The external environment (society,

technology, customers, and competition).

2. The goal of an organization.

3. Guidelines essential to achieving the
mission.

This business theory has four

differentiations:

1. Hypotheses maintain that mission and

guidelines must be reality focused.

2. Thoughts must have agreement.

3. The business theory must be notable

and interpreted by the members of the
organization.

4. Business theory must be continuously

analyzed.
Companies have difficulties when the
assumptions of such a theory do not align
with reality, Peter Drucker took as an
example large retail premises, his goal
was that people who wanted to buy in
large commercial premises do so, but
many consumers rejected commercial
premises and preferred retailers (which
focus on one or two categories of
products and own their own premises)
time was essential in shopping instead of
profits . This theory is classified as an
assumption and a discipline, which
focused on the elaboration of systematic
diagnoses, monitoring and testing of the
guidelines that make up the business
theory in order to maintain competition. [53]

Strategic thinking
Strategic thinking involves the generation
and application of unique business
insights to opportunities intended to create
competitive advantage for a firm or
organization. It involves challenging the
assumptions underlying the organization's
strategy and value proposition. Mintzberg
wrote in 1994 that it is more about
synthesis (i.e., "connecting the dots") than
analysis (i.e., "finding the dots"). It is about
"capturing what the manager learns from
all sources (both the soft insights from his
or her personal experiences and the
experiences of others throughout the
organization and the hard data from
market research and the like) and then
synthesizing that learning into a vision of
the direction that the business should
pursue." Mintzberg argued that strategic
thinking is the critical part of formulating
strategy, more so than strategic planning
exercises.[28]

General Andre Beaufre wrote in 1963 that

strategic thinking "is a mental process, at
once abstract and rational, which must be
capable of synthesizing both
psychological and material data. The
strategist must have a great capacity for
both analysis and synthesis; analysis is
necessary to assemble the data on which
he makes his diagnosis, synthesis in order
to produce from these data the diagnosis
itself--and the diagnosis in fact amounts
to a choice between alternative courses of
action."[54]

Will Mulcaster[55] argued that while much

research and creative thought has been
devoted to generating alternative
strategies, too little work has been done
on what influences the quality of strategic
decision making and the effectiveness
with which strategies are implemented. For
instance, in retrospect it can be seen that
the financial crisis of 2008–9 could have
been avoided if the banks had paid more
attention to the risks associated with their
investments, but how should banks change
the way they make decisions to improve
the quality of their decisions in the future?
Mulcaster's Managing Forces framework
addresses this issue by identifying 11
forces that should be incorporated into the
processes of decision making and
strategic implementation. The 11 forces
are: Time; Opposing forces; Politics;
Perception; Holistic effects; Adding value;
Incentives; Learning capabilities;
Opportunity cost; Risk and Style.

Classic strategy thinking, and vision have

some limitations in a turbulent
environment and uncertainty. The
limitations relate to the heterogeneity and
future-oriented goals and possession of
cognitive capabilities in classic definition.
Strategy should not be seen only from the
top managerial hierarchy visions. The
newer micro foundation framework
suggests that people from different
managerial levels are needed to work and
interact dynamically to result in the
knowledge strategy.[56][57]
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is a means of
administering the formulation and
implementation of strategy. Strategic
planning is analytical in nature and refers
to formalized procedures to produce the
data and analyses used as inputs for
strategic thinking, which synthesizes the
data resulting in the strategy. Strategic
planning may also refer to control
mechanisms used to implement the
strategy once it is determined. In other
words, strategic planning happens around
the strategy formation process.[15]
Environmental analysis

Porter wrote in 1980 that formulation of

competitive strategy includes
consideration of four key elements:

1. Company strengths and weaknesses;

2. Personal values of the key
implementers (i.e., management and
the board)
3. Industry opportunities and threats;
and
4. Broader societal expectations.[21]

The first two elements relate to factors

internal to the company (i.e., the internal
environment), while the latter two relate to
factors external to the company (i.e., the
external environment).[21]

There are many analytical frameworks

which attempt to organize the strategic
planning process. Examples of
frameworks that address the four
elements described above include:

External environment: PEST analysis or

STEEP analysis is a framework used to
examine the remote external
environmental factors that can affect
the organization, such as political,
economic, social/demographic, and
technological. Common variations
include SLEPT, PESTLE, STEEPLE, and
STEER analysis, each of which
incorporates slightly different
emphases.
Industry environment: The Porter Five
Forces Analysis framework helps to
determine the competitive rivalry and
therefore attractiveness of a market. It
is used to help determine the portfolio
of offerings the organization will provide
and in which markets.
Relationship of internal and external
environment: SWOT analysis is one of
the most basic and widely used
 frameworks, which examines both
internal elements of the organization—
Strengths and Weaknesses—and
external elements—Opportunities and
Threats. It helps examine the
organization's resources in the context
of its environment.

Scenario planning

A number of strategists use scenario

planning techniques to deal with change.
The way Peter Schwartz put it in 1991 is
that strategic outcomes cannot be known
in advance so the sources of competitive
advantage cannot be predetermined.[58]
The fast changing business environment is
too uncertain for us to find sustainable
value in formulas of excellence or
competitive advantage. Instead, scenario
planning is a technique in which multiple
outcomes can be developed, their
implications assessed, and their likeliness
of occurrence evaluated. According to
Pierre Wack, scenario planning is about
insight, complexity, and subtlety, not about
formal analysis and numbers.[59] The
flowchart to the right provides a process
for classifying a phenomenon as a
scenario in the intuitive logics tradition.[60]
 Process for classifying a
phenomenon as a scenario in the
Intuitive Logics tradition.

Some business planners are starting to

use a complexity theory approach to
strategy. Complexity can be thought of as
chaos with a dash of order.[61] Chaos
theory deals with turbulent systems that
rapidly become disordered. Complexity is
not quite so unpredictable. It involves
multiple agents interacting in such a way
that a glimpse of structure may appear.

Measuring and controlling

implementation
 Generic Strategy Map illustrating four
elements of a balanced scorecard

Once the strategy is determined, various

goals and measures may be established
to chart a course for the organization,
measure performance and control
implementation of the strategy. Tools such
as the balanced scorecard and strategy
maps help crystallize the strategy, by
relating key measures of success and
performance to the strategy. These tools
measure financial, marketing, production,
organizational development, and
innovation measures to achieve a
'balanced' perspective. Advances in
information technology and data
availability enable the gathering of more
information about performance, allowing
managers to take a much more analytical
view of their business than before.

Strategy may also be organized as a series

of "initiatives" or "programs", each of which
comprises one or more projects. Various
monitoring and feedback mechanisms
may also be established, such as regular
meetings between divisional and corporate
management to control implementation.

Evaluation
A key component to strategic
management which is often overlooked
when planning is evaluation. There are
many ways to evaluate whether or not
strategic priorities and plans have been
achieved, one such method is Robert
Stake's Responsive Evaluation.[62]
Responsive evaluation (https://submission
s.scholasticahq.com/supporting_files/248
937/attachment_versions/249177)
provides a naturalistic and humanistic
approach to program evaluation. In
expanding beyond the goal-oriented or pre-
ordinate evaluation design, responsive
evaluation takes into consideration the
program's background (history),
conditions, and transactions among
stakeholders. It is largely emergent, the
design unfolds as contact is made with
stakeholders.

Limitations
While strategies are established to set
direction, focus effort, define or clarify the
organization, and provide consistency or
guidance in response to the environment,
these very elements also mean that
certain signals are excluded from
consideration or de-emphasized.
Mintzberg wrote in 1987: "Strategy is a
categorizing scheme by which incoming
stimuli can be ordered and dispatched."
Since a strategy orients the organization in
a particular manner or direction, that
direction may not effectively match the
environment, initially (if a bad strategy) or
over time as circumstances change. As
such, Mintzberg continued, "Strategy [once
established] is a force that resists change,
not encourages it."[14]

Therefore, a critique of strategic

management is that it can overly constrain
managerial discretion in a dynamic
environment. "How can individuals,
organizations and societies cope as well
as possible with ... issues too complex to
be fully understood, given the fact that
actions initiated on the basis of
inadequate understanding may lead to
significant regret?"[63] Some theorists
insist on an iterative approach, considering
in turn objectives, implementation and
resources.[64] I.e., a "...repetitive learning
cycle [rather than] a linear progression
towards a clearly defined final
destination."[65] Strategies must be able to
adjust during implementation because
"humans rarely can proceed satisfactorily
except by learning from experience; and
modest probes, serially modified on the
basis of feedback, usually are the best
method for such learning."[66]

In 2000, Gary Hamel coined the term

strategic convergence to explain the
limited scope of the strategies being used
by rivals in greatly differing circumstances.
He lamented that successful strategies
are imitated by firms that do not
understand that for a strategy to work, it
must account for the specifics of each
situation.[67] Woodhouse and Collingridge
claim that the essence of being "strategic"
lies in a capacity for "intelligent trial-and
error"[66] rather than strict adherence to
finely honed strategic plans. Strategy
should be seen as laying out the general
path rather than precise steps.[68] Means
are as likely to determine ends as ends are
to determine means.[69] The objectives
that an organization might wish to pursue
are limited by the range of feasible
approaches to implementation. (There will
usually be only a small number of
approaches that will not only be
technically and administratively possible,
but also satisfactory to the full range of
organizational stakeholders.) In turn, the
range of feasible implementation
approaches is determined by the
availability of resources.
Strategic themes
Various strategic approaches used across
industries (themes) have arisen over the
years. These include the shift from
product-driven demand to customer- or
marketing-driven demand (described
above), the increased use of self-service
approaches to lower cost, changes in the
value chain or corporate structure due to
globalization (e.g., off-shoring of
production and assembly), and the
internet.

Self-service
One theme in strategic competition has
been the trend towards self-service, often
enabled by technology, where the
customer takes on a role previously
performed by a worker to lower costs for
the firm and perhaps prices.[10] Examples
include:

Automated teller machine (ATM) to

obtain cash rather via a bank teller;
Self-service at the gas pump rather than
with help from an attendant;
Retail internet orders input by the
customer rather than a retail clerk, such
as online book sales;
 Mass-produced ready-to-assemble
furniture transported by the customer;
Self-checkout at the grocery store; and
Online banking and bill payment.[70]

Globalization and the virtual firm

One definition of globalization refers to the

integration of economies due to
technology and supply chain process
innovation. Companies are no longer
required to be vertically integrated (i.e.,
designing, producing, assembling, and
selling their products). In other words, the
value chain for a company's product may
no longer be entirely within one firm;
several entities comprising a virtual firm
may exist to fulfill the customer
requirement. For example, some
companies have chosen to outsource
production to third parties, retaining only
design and sales functions inside their
organization.[10]

Internet and information availability

The internet has dramatically empowered

consumers and enabled buyers and sellers
to come together with drastically reduced
transaction and intermediary costs,
creating much more robust marketplaces
for the purchase and sale of goods and
services. The Internet has enabled many
Internet-based entrepreneurs to tap
serendipity as a strategic advantage and
thrive.[71] Examples include online auction
sites, internet dating services, and internet
book sellers. In many industries, the
internet has dramatically altered the
competitive landscape. Services that used
to be provided within one entity (e.g., a car
dealership providing financing and pricing
information) are now provided by third
parties.[72] Further, compared to traditional
media like television, the internet has
caused a major shift in viewing habits
through on demand content which has led
to an increasingly fragmented audience.
Author Phillip Evans said in 2013 that
networks are challenging traditional
hierarchies. Value chains may also be
breaking up ("deconstructing") where
information aspects can be separated
from functional activity. Data that is readily
available for free or very low cost makes it
harder for information-based, vertically
integrated businesses to remain intact.
Evans said: "The basic story here is that
what used to be vertically integrated,
oligopolistic competition among
essentially similar kinds of competitors is
evolving, by one means or another, from a
vertical structure to a horizontal one. Why
is that happening? It's happening because
transaction costs are plummeting and
because scale is polarizing. The
plummeting of transaction costs weakens
the glue that holds value chains together,
and allows them to separate." He used
Wikipedia as an example of a network that
has challenged the traditional
encyclopedia business model.[73] Evans
predicts the emergence of a new form of
industrial organization called a "stack",
analogous to a technology stack, in which
competitors rely on a common platform of
inputs (services or information),
essentially layering the remaining
competing parts of their value chains on
top of this common platform.[74]
Sustainability

In the recent decade, sustainability—or

ability to successfully sustain a company
in a context of rapidly changing
environmental, social, health, and
economic circumstances—has emerged
as crucial aspect of any strategy
development. Research focusing on
sustainability in commercial strategies has
led to emergence of the concept of
"embedded sustainability" – defined by its
authors Chris Laszlo and Nadya
Zhexembayeva as "incorporation of
environmental, health, and social value into
the core business with no trade-off in price
or quality—in other words, with no social or
green premium."[75] Their research showed
that embedded sustainability offers at
least seven distinct opportunities for
business value and competitive advantage
creation: a) better risk management, b)
increased efficiency through reduced
waste and resource use, c) better product
differentiation, d) new market entrances, e)
enhanced brand and reputation, f) greater
opportunity to influence industry
standards, and g) greater opportunity for
radical innovation.[76] Research further
suggested that innovation driven by
resource depletion can result in
fundamental competitive advantages for a
company's products and services, as well
as the company strategy as a whole, when
right principles of innovation are
applied.[77] Asset managers who
committed to integrating embedded
sustainability factors in their capital
allocation decisions created a stronger
return on investment than managers that
did not strategically integrate sustainability
into their similar business model.[78]

To achieve genuine sustainability and

these associated benefits, corporations
have historically relied on a variety of
mechanisms that can be integrated into
their management strategy. Timothy
Galpin in his chapter of “Business
Strategies for Sustainability: A Research
Anthology” discusses four “Internal
Strategic Management Components” to
build sustainability. They are as follows:[79]

Mission: Defines the purpose and

priorities of the organization, ultimately
providing critical signals to
organizational stakeholders regarding
the aims of the firm.
Values: Refers to the expectations of
internal stakeholders, and
communicates the organisation’s belief
system to various external stakeholders
 Goals: Provides a roadmap of the firm’s
organisational activity and a basis for
which to measure progress and
performance.
Capabilities and resources: The
development of patterns of activity and
investment decisions that facilitate
sustainable business practices.

To fully utilise these strategic

management components, a firm’s
mission, values, goals, resources, and
capabilities need to be functioning in
alignment with one another. This develops
consistency across management and
employee behaviour. Research has
indicated that this alignment has led to
improved firm performance.[80]

Following the embedding of sustainability

in a firm’s strategic management plan, to
fully reap the benefits the agenda must be
communicated effectively to internal and
external stakeholders. Doing so satisfies
stakeholder theory, whereby the firm
maintains ‘trustful and mutually respectful
relationships with the various
stakeholders’. In the past, this has
consisted of advertising and disclosing
sustainability information and reports.
Firms are available to promote their
superior sustainability performance and
ultimately possess higher market
valuations in comparison to firms that do
not provide sustainability reporting.[81]

The amalgamation and alignment of these

key internal strategic management
components, in conjunction with thorough
communication of the firm’s sustainability
agenda, is required to achieve these
associated benefits and is the reason
many firms are pursuing such tactics more
frequently.

Strategy as learning

Learning organization
In 1990, Peter Senge, who had
collaborated with Arie de Geus at Dutch
Shell, popularized de Geus' notion of the
"learning organization".[82] The theory is
that gathering and analyzing information is
a necessary requirement for business
success in the information age. To do this,
Senge claimed that an organization would
need to be structured such that:[83]

People can continuously expand their

capacity to learn and be productive.
New patterns of thinking are nurtured.
Collective aspirations are encouraged.
People are encouraged to see the
"whole picture" together.
Senge identified five disciplines of a
learning organization. They are:

Personal responsibility, self-reliance, and

mastery – We accept that we are the
masters of our own destiny. We make
decisions and live with the
consequences of them. When a problem
needs to be fixed, or an opportunity
exploited, we take the initiative to learn
the required skills to get it done.
Mental models – We need to explore our
personal mental models to understand
the subtle effect they have on our
behaviour.
Shared vision – The vision of where we
want to be in the future is discussed and
communicated to all. It provides
guidance and energy for the journey
ahead.
Team learning – We learn together in
teams. This involves a shift from "a spirit
of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry".
Systems thinking – We look at the whole
rather than the parts. This is what Senge
calls the "Fifth discipline". It is the glue
that integrates the other four into a
coherent strategy. For an alternative
approach to the "learning organization",
see Garratt, B. (1987).
Geoffrey Moore (1991) and R. Frank and P.
Cook[84] also detected a shift in the nature
of competition. Markets driven by
technical standards or by "network
effects" can give the dominant firm a near-
monopoly.[85] The same is true of
networked industries in which
interoperability requires compatibility
between users. Examples include Internet
Explorer's and Amazon's early dominance
of their respective industries. IE's later
decline shows that such dominance may
be only temporary.

Moore showed how firms could attain this

enviable position by using E.M. Rogers' five
stage adoption process and focusing on
one group of customers at a time, using
each group as a base for reaching the next
group. The most difficult step is making
the transition between introduction and
mass acceptance. (See Crossing the
Chasm). If successful a firm can create a
bandwagon effect in which the momentum
builds and its product becomes a de facto
standard.

Integrated view to learning

Bolisani & Bratianu (2017) [86] have defined

knowledge strategy as an integration of
rational thinking and dynamic learning.
Rational planning contains a three-step
process where the first step is to collect
information, the second step is to analyze
the information and the third step is to
formulate goals and plans based on
information. Emergent planning also
contains three steps to the opposite
direction starting from practical
experience, what is analyzed in the second
step, and then formulated to a strategy in
the third step. These two approaches are
combined to the “integrated view” with the
Bolisani and Bratianu research
implications. To start the planning process
for knowledge and KM strategy creation,
company can prepare a preliminary plan
with the basis of rational analysis from
internal or external environments. While
creating rational and predictive plans,
company can similarly utilize practical
adapted knowledge for example learning
from the ground. The idea behind the
integrated view is to combine the general
visions of knowledge strategy with both
the current practical understanding and
future ideas. This model will move the
decision-making process in a more
interactive and co-creative direction.

Strategy as adapting to
change
In 1969, Peter Drucker coined the phrase
Age of Discontinuity to describe the way
change disrupts lives.[87] In an age of
continuity attempts to predict the future by
extrapolating from the past can be
accurate. But according to Drucker, we are
now in an age of discontinuity and
extrapolating is ineffective. He identifies
four sources of discontinuity: new
technologies, globalization, cultural
pluralism and knowledge capital.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler in Future Shock

described a trend towards accelerating
rates of change.[88] He illustrated how
social and technical phenomena had
shorter lifespans with each generation, and
he questioned society's ability to cope with
the resulting turmoil and accompanying
anxiety. In past eras periods of change
were always punctuated with times of
stability. This allowed society to
assimilate the change before the next
change arrived. But these periods of
stability had all but disappeared by the late
20th century. In 1980 in The Third Wave,
Toffler characterized this shift to relentless
change as the defining feature of the third
phase of civilization (the first two phases
being the agricultural and industrial
waves).[89]
In 1978, Derek F. Abell (Abell, D. 1978)
described "strategic windows" and
stressed the importance of the timing
(both entrance and exit) of any given
strategy. This led some strategic planners
to build planned obsolescence into their
strategies.[90]

In 1983, Noel Tichy wrote that because we

are all beings of habit we tend to repeat
what we are comfortable with.[91] He wrote
that this is a trap that constrains our
creativity, prevents us from exploring new
ideas, and hampers our dealing with the
full complexity of new issues. He
developed a systematic method of dealing
with change that involved looking at any
new issue from three angles: technical and
production, political and resource
allocation, and corporate culture.

In 1989, Charles Handy identified two

types of change.[92] "Strategic drift" is a
gradual change that occurs so subtly that
it is not noticed until it is too late. By
contrast, "transformational change" is
sudden and radical. It is typically caused
by discontinuities (or exogenous shocks)
in the business environment. The point
where a new trend is initiated is called a
"strategic inflection point" by Andy Grove.
Inflection points can be subtle or radical.
In 1990, Richard Pascale wrote that
relentless change requires that businesses
continuously reinvent themselves.[93] His
famous maxim is "Nothing fails like
success" by which he means that what
was a strength yesterday becomes the
root of weakness today, We tend to
depend on what worked yesterday and
refuse to let go of what worked so well for
us in the past. Prevailing strategies
become self-confirming. To avoid this trap,
businesses must stimulate a spirit of
inquiry and healthy debate. They must
encourage a creative process of self-
renewal based on constructive conflict.
In 1996, Adrian Slywotzky showed how
changes in the business environment are
reflected in value migrations between
industries, between companies, and within
companies.[94] He claimed that recognizing
the patterns behind these value migrations
is necessary if we wish to understand the
world of chaotic change. In "Profit
Patterns" (1999) he described businesses
as being in a state of strategic
anticipation as they try to spot emerging
patterns. Slywotsky and his team identified
30 patterns that have transformed industry
after industry.[95]
In 1997, Clayton Christensen (1997) took
the position that great companies can fail
precisely because they do everything right
since the capabilities of the organization
also define its disabilities.[96] Christensen's
thesis is that outstanding companies lose
their market leadership when confronted
with disruptive technology. He called the
approach to discovering the emerging
markets for disruptive technologies
agnostic marketing, i.e., marketing under
the implicit assumption that no one – not
the company, not the customers – can
know how or in what quantities a
disruptive product can or will be used
without the experience of using it.
In 1999, Constantinos Markides
reexamined the nature of strategic
planning.[97] He described strategy
formation and implementation as an
ongoing, never-ending, integrated process
requiring continuous reassessment and
reformation. Strategic management is
planned and emergent, dynamic and
interactive.

J. Moncrieff (1999) stressed strategy

dynamics.[98] He claimed that strategy is
partially deliberate and partially
unplanned. The unplanned element comes
from emergent strategies that result from
the emergence of opportunities and
threats in the environment and from
"strategies in action" (ad hoc actions
across the organization).

David Teece pioneered research on

resource-based strategic management
and the dynamic capabilities perspective,
defined as "the ability to integrate, build,
and reconfigure internal and external
competencies to address rapidly changing
environments".[99] His 1997 paper (with
Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen) "Dynamic
Capabilities and Strategic Management"
was the most cited paper in economics
and business for the period from 1995 to
2005.[100]
In 2000, Gary Hamel discussed strategic
decay, the notion that the value of every
strategy, no matter how brilliant, decays
over time.[67]

Strategy as operational
excellence

Quality

A large group of theorists felt the area

where western business was most lacking
was product quality. W. Edwards
Deming,[101] Joseph M. Juran,[102] Andrew
Thomas Kearney,[103] Philip Crosby[104] and
Armand V. Feigenbaum[105] suggested
quality improvement techniques such total
quality management (TQM), continuous
improvement (kaizen), lean manufacturing,
Six Sigma, and return on quality (ROQ).

Contrarily, James Heskett (1988),[106] Earl

Sasser (1995), William Davidow,[107] Len
Schlesinger,[108] A. Paraurgman (1988), Len
Berry,[109] Jane Kingman-Brundage,[110]
Christopher Hart, and Christopher Lovelock
(1994), felt that poor customer service
was the problem. They gave us fishbone
diagramming, service charting, Total
Customer Service (TCS), the service profit
chain, service gaps analysis, the service
encounter, strategic service vision, service
mapping, and service teams. Their
underlying assumption was that there is no
better source of competitive advantage
than a continuous stream of delighted
customers.

Process management uses some of the

techniques from product quality
management and some of the techniques
from customer service management. It
looks at an activity as a sequential
process. The objective is to find
inefficiencies and make the process more
effective. Although the procedures have a
long history, dating back to Taylorism, the
scope of their applicability has been
greatly widened, leaving no aspect of the
firm free from potential process
improvements. Because of the broad
applicability of process management
techniques, they can be used as a basis
for competitive advantage.

Carl Sewell,[111] Frederick F. Reichheld,[112]

C. Gronroos,[113] and Earl Sasser[114]
observed that businesses were spending
more on customer acquisition than on
retention. They showed how a competitive
advantage could be found in ensuring that
customers returned again and again.
Reicheld broadened the concept to include
loyalty from employees, suppliers,
distributors and shareholders. They
developed techniques for estimating
customer lifetime value (CLV) for
assessing long-term relationships. The
concepts begat attempts to recast selling
and marketing into a long term endeavor
that created a sustained relationship
(called relationship selling, relationship
marketing, and customer relationship
management). Customer relationship
management (CRM) software became
integral to many firms.

Reengineering
Michael Hammer and James Champy felt
that these resources needed to be
restructured.[115] In a process that they
labeled reengineering, firm's reorganized
their assets around whole processes
rather than tasks. In this way a team of
people saw a project through, from
inception to completion. This avoided
functional silos where isolated
departments seldom talked to each other.
It also eliminated waste due to functional
overlap and interdepartmental
communications.

In 1989 Richard Lester and the researchers

at the MIT Industrial Performance Center
identified seven best practices and
concluded that firms must accelerate the
shift away from the mass production of
low cost standardized products. The
seven areas of best practice were:[116]

Simultaneous continuous improvement

in cost, quality, service, and product
innovation
Breaking down organizational barriers
between departments
Eliminating layers of management
creating flatter organizational
hierarchies.
Closer relationships with customers and
suppliers
 Intelligent use of new technology
Global focus
Improving human resource skills

The search for best practices is also

called benchmarking.[117] This involves
determining where you need to improve,
finding an organization that is exceptional
in this area, then studying the company
and applying its best practices in your firm.

Other perspectives on
strategy

Strategy as problem solving

Professor Richard P. Rumelt described
strategy as a type of problem solving in
2011. He wrote that good strategy has an
underlying structure called a kernel. The
kernel has three parts: 1) A diagnosis that
defines or explains the nature of the
challenge; 2) A guiding policy for dealing
with the challenge; and 3) Coherent actions
designed to carry out the guiding
policy.[118]

President Kennedy outlined these three

elements of strategy in his Cuban Missile
Crisis Address to the Nation of 22 October
1962:
1. Diagnosis: "This Government, as
promised, has maintained the closest
surveillance of the Soviet military
buildup on the island of Cuba. Within
the past week, unmistakable evidence
has established the fact that a series
of offensive missile sites is now in
preparation on that imprisoned
island. The purpose of these bases
can be none other than to provide a
nuclear strike capability against the
Western Hemisphere."
2. Guiding Policy: "Our unswerving
objective, therefore, must be to
prevent the use of these missiles
against this or any other country, and
 to secure their withdrawal or
elimination from the Western
Hemisphere."
3. Action Plans: First among seven
numbered steps was the following:
"To halt this offensive buildup a strict
quarantine on all offensive military
equipment under shipment to Cuba is
being initiated. All ships of any kind
bound for Cuba from whatever nation
or port will, if found to contain
cargoes of offensive weapons, be
turned back."[119]

Active strategic management required

active information gathering and active
problem solving. In the early days of
Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dave Packard and
Bill Hewlett devised an active management
style that they called management by
walking around (MBWA). Senior HP
managers were seldom at their desks.
They spent most of their days visiting
employees, customers, and suppliers. This
direct contact with key people provided
them with a solid grounding from which
viable strategies could be crafted.
Management consultants Tom Peters and
Robert H. Waterman had used the term in
their 1982 book In Search of Excellence:
Lessons From America's Best-Run
Companies.[120] Some Japanese managers
employ a similar system, which originated
at Honda, and is sometimes called the 3
G's (Genba, Genbutsu, and Genjitsu, which
translate into "actual place", "actual thing",
and "actual situation").

Creative vs analytic approaches

In 2010, IBM released a study summarizing

three conclusions of 1500 CEOs around
the world: 1) complexity is escalating, 2)
enterprises are not equipped to cope with
this complexity, and 3) creativity is now the
single most important leadership
competency. IBM said that it is needed in
all aspects of leadership, including
strategic thinking and planning.[121]

Similarly, McKeown argued that over-

reliance on any particular approach to
strategy is dangerous and that multiple
methods can be used to combine the
creativity and analytics to create an
"approach to shaping the future", that is
difficult to copy.[122]

Non-strategic management

A 1938 treatise by Chester Barnard, based

on his own experience as a business
executive, described the process as
informal, intuitive, non-routinized and
involving primarily oral, 2-way
communications. Bernard says "The
process is the sensing of the organization
as a whole and the total situation relevant
to it. It transcends the capacity of merely
intellectual methods, and the techniques
of discriminating the factors of the
situation. The terms pertinent to it are
"feeling", "judgement", "sense", "proportion",
"balance", "appropriateness". It is a matter
of art rather than science."[123]

In 1973, Mintzberg found that senior

managers typically deal with unpredictable
situations so they strategize in ad hoc,
flexible, dynamic, and implicit ways. He
wrote, "The job breeds adaptive
information-manipulators who prefer the
live concrete situation. The manager works
in an environment of stimulus-response,
and he develops in his work a clear
preference for live action."[124]

In 1982, John Kotter studied the daily

activities of 15 executives and concluded
that they spent most of their time
developing and working a network of
relationships that provided general insights
and specific details for strategic
decisions. They tended to use "mental
road maps" rather than systematic
planning techniques.[125]

Daniel Isenberg's 1984 study of senior

managers found that their decisions were
highly intuitive. Executives often sensed
what they were going to do before they
could explain why.[126] He claimed in 1986
that one of the reasons for this is the
complexity of strategic decisions and the
resultant information uncertainty.[127]

Zuboff claimed that information

technology was widening the divide
between senior managers (who typically
make strategic decisions) and operational
level managers (who typically make
routine decisions). She alleged that prior
to the widespread use of computer
systems, managers, even at the most
senior level, engaged in both strategic
decisions and routine administration, but
as computers facilitated (She called it
"deskilled") routine processes, these
activities were moved further down the
hierarchy, leaving senior management free
for strategic decision making.

In 1977, Abraham Zaleznik distinguished

leaders from managers. He described
leaders as visionaries who inspire, while
managers care about process.[128] He
claimed that the rise of managers was the
main cause of the decline of American
business in the 1970s and 1980s. Lack of
leadership is most damaging at the level
of strategic management where it can
paralyze an entire organization.[129]

According to Corner, Kinichi, and Keats,[130]

strategic decision making in organizations
occurs at two levels: individual and
aggregate. They developed a model of
parallel strategic decision making. The
model identifies two parallel processes
that involve getting attention, encoding
information, storage and retrieval of
information, strategic choice, strategic
outcome and feedback. The individual and
organizational processes interact at each
stage. For instance, competition-oriented
objectives are based on the knowledge of
competing firms, such as their market
share.[131]

Strategy as marketing

The 1980s also saw the widespread

acceptance of positioning theory. Although
the theory originated with Jack Trout in
1969, it didn't gain wide acceptance until Al
Ries and Jack Trout wrote their classic
book Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind
(1979). The basic premise is that a
strategy should not be judged by internal
company factors but by the way
customers see it relative to the
competition. Crafting and implementing a
strategy involves creating a position in the
mind of the collective consumer. Several
techniques enabled the practical use of
positioning theory. Perceptual mapping for
example, creates visual displays of the
relationships between positions.
Multidimensional scaling, discriminant
analysis, factor analysis and conjoint
analysis are mathematical techniques
used to determine the most relevant
characteristics (called dimensions or
factors) upon which positions should be
based. Preference regression can be used
to determine vectors of ideal positions and
cluster analysis can identify clusters of
positions.

In 1992 Jay Barney saw strategy as

assembling the optimum mix of resources,
including human, technology and suppliers,
and then configuring them in unique and
sustainable ways.[132]

James Gilmore and Joseph Pine found

competitive advantage in mass
customization.[133] Flexible manufacturing
techniques allowed businesses to
individualize products for each customer
without losing economies of scale. This
effectively turned the product into a
service. They also realized that if a service
is mass-customized by creating a
"performance" for each individual client,
that service would be transformed into an
"experience". Their book, The Experience
Economy,[134] along with the work of Bernd
Schmitt convinced many to see service
provision as a form of theatre. This school
of thought is sometimes referred to as
customer experience management (CEM).

Information- and technology-driven

strategy
Many industries with a high information
component are being transformed.[135] For
example, Encarta demolished
Encyclopædia Britannica (whose sales
have plummeted 80% since their peak of
$650 million in 1990) before it was in turn,
eclipsed by collaborative encyclopedias
like Wikipedia. The music industry was
similarly disrupted. The technology sector
has provided some strategies directly. For
example, from the software development
industry agile software development
provides a model for shared development
processes.
Peter Drucker conceived of the "knowledge
worker" in the 1950s. He described how
fewer workers would do physical labor,
and more would apply their minds. In 1984,
John Naisbitt theorized that the future
would be driven largely by information:
companies that managed information well
could obtain an advantage, however the
profitability of what he called "information
float" (information that the company had
and others desired) would disappear as
inexpensive computers made information
more accessible.

Daniel Bell (1985) examined the

sociological consequences of information
technology, while Gloria Schuck and
Shoshana Zuboff looked at psychological
factors.[136] Zuboff distinguished between
"automating technologies" and
"informating technologies". She studied the
effect that both had on workers, managers
and organizational structures. She largely
confirmed Drucker's predictions about the
importance of flexible decentralized
structure, work teams, knowledge sharing
and the knowledge worker's central role.
Zuboff also detected a new basis for
managerial authority, based on knowledge
(also predicted by Drucker) which she
called "participative management".[137]
Maturity of planning process

McKinsey & Company developed a

capability maturity model in the 1970s to
describe the sophistication of planning
processes, with strategic management
ranked the highest. The four stages
include:

1. Financial planning, which is primarily

about annual budgets and a
functional focus, with limited regard
for the environment;
2. Forecast-based planning, which
includes multi-year budgets and more
 robust capital allocation across
business units;
3. Externally oriented planning, where a
thorough situation analysis and
competitive assessment is
performed;
4. Strategic management, where
widespread strategic thinking occurs
and a well-defined strategic
framework is used.[27]

PIMS study

The long-term PIMS study, started in the

1960s and lasting for 19 years, attempted
to understand the Profit Impact of
Marketing Strategies (PIMS), particularly
the effect of market share. The initial
conclusion of the study was unambiguous:
the greater a company's market share, the
greater their rate of profit. Market share
provides economies of scale. It also
provides experience curve advantages.
The combined effect is increased
profits.[138]

The benefits of high market share naturally

led to an interest in growth strategies. The
relative advantages of horizontal
integration, vertical integration,
diversification, franchises, mergers and
acquisitions, joint ventures and organic
growth were discussed. Other research
indicated that a low market share strategy
could still be very profitable. Schumacher
(1973),[139] Woo and Cooper (1982),[140]
Levenson (1984),[141] and later Traverso
(2002)[142] showed how smaller niche
players obtained very high returns.

Other influences on business

strategy

Military strategy

In the 1980s business strategists realized

that there was a vast knowledge base
stretching back thousands of years that
they had barely examined. They turned to
military strategy for guidance. Military
strategy books such as The Art of War by
Sun Tzu, On War by von Clausewitz, and
The Red Book by Mao Zedong became
business classics. From Sun Tzu, they
learned the tactical side of military
strategy and specific tactical
prescriptions. From von Clausewitz, they
learned the dynamic and unpredictable
nature of military action. From Mao, they
learned the principles of guerrilla warfare.
Important marketing warfare books
include Business War Games by Barrie
James, Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and
Jack Trout and Leadership Secrets of Attila
the Hun by Wess Roberts. The marketing
warfare literature also examined
leadership and motivation, intelligence
gathering, types of marketing weapons,
logistics and communications.

By the twenty-first century marketing

warfare strategies had gone out of favour
in favor of non-confrontational
approaches. In 1989, Dudley Lynch and
Paul L. Kordis published Strategy of the
Dolphin: Scoring a Win in a Chaotic World.
"The Strategy of the Dolphin" was
developed to give guidance as to when to
use aggressive strategies and when to use
passive strategies. A variety of aggressive
strategies were developed.

In 1993, J. Moore used a similar

metaphor.[143] Instead of using military
terms, he created an ecological theory of
predators and prey(see ecological model
of competition), a sort of Darwinian
management strategy in which market
interactions mimic long term ecological
stability.

Author Phillip Evans said in 2014 that

"Henderson's central idea was what you
might call the Napoleonic idea of
concentrating mass against weakness, of
overwhelming the enemy. What Henderson
recognized was that, in the business world,
there are many phenomena which are
characterized by what economists would
call increasing returns—scale, experience.
The more you do of something,
disproportionately the better you get. And
therefore he found a logic for investing in
such kinds of overwhelming mass in order
to achieve competitive advantage. And
that was the first introduction of
essentially a military concept of strategy
into the business world. ... It was on those
two ideas, Henderson's idea of increasing
returns to scale and experience, and
Porter's idea of the value chain,
encompassing heterogenous elements,
that the whole edifice of business strategy
was subsequently erected."[144]

Traits of successful
companies
Like Peters and Waterman a decade
earlier, James Collins and Jerry Porras
spent years conducting empirical research
on what makes great companies. Six years
of research uncovered a key underlying
principle behind the 19 successful
companies that they studied: They all
encourage and preserve a core ideology
that nurtures the company. Even though
strategy and tactics change daily, the
companies, nevertheless, were able to
maintain a core set of values. These core
values encourage employees to build an
organization that lasts. In Built To Last
(1994) they claim that short term profit
goals, cost cutting, and restructuring will
not stimulate dedicated employees to
build a great company that will endure.[145]
In 2000 Collins coined the term "built to
flip" to describe the prevailing business
attitudes in Silicon Valley. It describes a
business culture where technological
change inhibits a long term focus. He also
popularized the concept of the BHAG (Big
Hairy Audacious Goal).
Arie de Geus (1997) undertook a similar
study and obtained similar results.[146] He
identified four key traits of companies that
had prospered for 50 years or more. They
are:

Sensitivity to the business environment

– the ability to learn and adjust
Cohesion and identity – the ability to
build a community with personality,
vision, and purpose
Tolerance and decentralization – the
ability to build relationships
Conservative financing
A company with these key characteristics
he called a living company because it is
able to perpetuate itself. If a company
emphasizes knowledge rather than
finance, and sees itself as an ongoing
community of human beings, it has the
potential to become great and endure for
decades. Such an organization is an
organic entity capable of learning (he
called it a "learning organization") and
capable of creating its own processes,
goals, and persona.[146]

Will Mulcaster[147] suggests that firms

engage in a dialogue that centres around
these questions:
Will the proposed competitive
advantage create Perceived Differential
Value?"
Will the proposed competitive
advantage create something that is
different from the competition?"
Will the difference add value in the eyes
of potential customers?" – This question
will entail a discussion of the combined
effects of price, product features and
consumer perceptions.
Will the product add value for the firm?"
– Answering this question will require an
examination of cost effectiveness and
the pricing strategy.
See also
Balanced scorecard
Business analysis
Business model
Business plan
Concept-driven strategy
Cost overrun
Dynamic capabilities
Enterprise risk management
Financial risk management § Corporate
finance
Integrated business planning
Marketing
Marketing plan
Marketing strategies
Management
Management consulting
Military strategy
Morphological analysis
Overall equipment effectiveness
Outline of management
Real options valuation
Results-based management
Revenue shortfall
Six Forces Model
Strategy (game theory)
Strategy dynamics
 Strategic planning
Strategic Management Society
Strategy map
Strategy Markup Language
Strategy visualization
Value migration

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Further reading
Cameron, Bobby Thomas. (2014). Using
responsive evaluation in Strategic
Management (https://submissions.schol
asticahq.com/supporting_files/248937/
attachment_versions/249177) .Strategi
c Leadership Review 4 (2), 22–27.
David Besanko, David Dranove, Scott
Schaefer, and Mark Shanley (2012)
Economics of Strategy, John Wiley &
Sons, ISBN 978-1118273630
Edwards, Janice et al. Mastering
Strategic Management- 1st Canadian
Edition (https://opentextbc.ca/strategic
management/) . BC Open Textbooks,
2014.
Kemp, Roger L. "Strategic Planning for
Local Government: A Handbook for
Officials and Citizens," McFarland and
Co., Inc., Jefferson, NC, USA, and
London, England, UK, 2008 (ISBN 978-0-
7864-3873-0)
Kvint, Vladimir (2009) The Global
Emerging Market: Strategic Management
and Economics Excerpt from Google
Books (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=mb5n8O9y6YIC&q=Vladimir+Kvin
t%2F)
Pankaj Ghemawhat - Harvard Strategy
Professor: Competition and Business
Strategy in Historical Perspective (http
s://ssrn.com/abstract=264528) Social
Science History Network-Spring 2002
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to
Strategic management.
Media related to Strategic
management at Wikimedia Commons
Institute for Strategy and
Competitiveness at Harvard Business
School (http://www.isc.hbs.edu/resourc
es/Pages/publications.aspx?HBSForma
t=Print) – recent publications
The Journal of Business Strategies (htt
p://cdm2635-01.cdmhost.com/cdm/se
arch/collection/p263501coll9) – online
library
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