Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 2: Theories of Strategy by Richard Whittington
Chapter 2: Theories of Strategy by Richard Whittington
Below is the summary of Chapter 2 from Section of the book strategy for
Business done by Dr. John Jackson, Training Director of OU, UK
Page1
B300 AOU Spring 2008 Part 2/S1/Chap2 prepared by Dr. Chadli Belarbi / Wednesday 7 May 2008
The other perspectives deviate from the purely rational, logical approach. This is an
important distinction as bounded rationality (see the processual perspective) is still
a rational intention see Miller et al, Reader One.
In exploring Whittingtons chapter, you will see that this shows how the Processual
perspectives developed within the turbulent 70s oil crises in the West, coal miners
strikes in the UK and the general incursion of Japanese manufactured goods, such
as cars and motorcycles. The processual perspective is about politics and
negotiation it is about satisficing.
The Evolutionary perspective developed during the market led 80s, which was
about survival letting the environment do the selecting, not the managers
(Whittington, Reader, p. 41). In the UK, de-regularisation, and privatisation were
taking place, as well as withdrawal of subsidiaries for struggling industries, such as
the car and steel industries. Similar initiatives were taking place in the USA. This was
the time of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA, leading to
the economic approaches called Thatcherism and Reaganomics. In the UK, it was
the end of socialist government
In the 90s, with the acceleration of globalisation, supported by the rapid
development of electronics and telecommunications and the power of the computer,
large organisations started to think global, act local.
To be successful or to survive in the evolutionary, processual and systemic
approaches, there is perhaps more importance attributed to the firm-specific,
resource based view than the classical perspective.
The Evolutionary and Processual perspectives seem to be more appropriate to
industries which are in flux or are in the early growth stage see the Industry Life
Cycle (Grant, Reader, pp. 109/110). These are considered to fall into the process
aspect of strategy, i.e. they state HOW strategy is developed or emerges.
The Systemic perspective has aspects of both classical and processual approaches
and it also has a process characteristic, i.e. strategy is developed by concentrating
on local needs and culture.
In real life, organisations do NOT make decisions based on a particular strategic
perspective based on Whittingtons categorisations. They do not sit around the Board
Room saying they will use this particular strategic approach.
When researching a particular organisations strategic approach, you may find they
have a tendency towards a particular one depending on the industry they are within,
e.g. stable, turbulent, highly competitive, etc. However, you may well find aspects of
ALL four perspectives in their strategic formulation.
John Jackson
17th January 2008
Page2
B300 AOU Spring 2008 Part 2/S1/Chap2 prepared by Dr. Chadli Belarbi / Wednesday 7 May 2008