Introduction

Lecture 1

Ten different school of thought:

 informal design

 focuses more on the content (not the formation),

strategic positioning in the economic market
 the process in terms of the creation of vision by a
great leader

 would too complex (strategy emerges in small steps)

 conflict internal or with external forces

 collective and cooperative

Prescriptive how strategy should be formed (not how they necessarily do form (first three)
Descriptive describing how strategy do get made (from the fourth to the ninth)

The fi ve Ps for strategy

The general definition of strategy is “top manager’s plans to attain outcomes consistent with the organization’s
mission and goals”. But there are other five definition:

Strategy as plans and patterns

Plan: looking ahead, Patter: looking at past behavior
Intended strategy (planned), realized strategy (pattern)

Strategy as deliberate and emergent

Deliberate strategy the intentions that are fully realized (=/ unrealized)
Emergent strategy  where a pattern is realized that was not espressly intended. Actions were taken, one by one,
which converged over time to some sort of consistency or pattern (it need to be mixed  umbrella strategy: the
board outlines are deliberate, while the details are allowed to emerge).

Strategy as positions and perspective

Strategy is a position the locating of particular products in particular markets (looks out; esternal market) the
organization’s location in the imaginary landscape of the competitive environment
Strategy is a perspective  organization’s fundamental way of doing things (looks up, the grand vision of the enterprise)
the interpretation of managers of the organization and its environment.

And a fifth is in common usage too:

Strategy is a ploy  a specific maneuver intended to outwit an opponent or competitor

Advantages and disadvantages3

- Strategy sets direction
Pros: Cohesion
Cons: difficult to change in case of unexpected events
- Strategy focuses effort
Pros: coordination for activities
Cons: Groupthink arises when effort is too carefully focused (no other perspectives)
- Strategy defines the organization
Pros: understand the company and distinguish it from others
Cons: too sharply= too simply  the rich complexity of the system is lost
- Strategy provides consistency
Pros: reduce ambiguity and provide order.
Cons: reduce creativity, every strategy can have a misrepresentation of distortion in our minds.

Design school
Lecture 2
The design school proposes a model of strategy making that seeks to attain a match or fit between internal and
external possibilities. Establish fit motto.
 little attention on the actual generation of strategies
(‘creative act’).

Evaluation:
- Consistency
- Consonance (strategy must represent an adaptive
response to external environment and to the
critical changes occurring within it)
- Advantage (creation and or maintenance of a
competitive advantage)
- Feasibility (strategy must not overtax the available
resources nor create unsolvable subproblems)

Basic premises:
1. Strategy formation ad a deliberate process
Action must flow from reason tightly controlled process
of human thinking
Strategy making is an acquired skill (not natura nor intuitive)  should be learned formally.
2. One person develops strategy: CEO/Head of organization
3. Process of strategy formation should be simple and informal
4. Strategy should be on of kind
 Strategy developed to attain match or fit between internal capabilities and external possibilities (SWOT analysis, Environment
needs to be taken into account, navigated through but not interacted with)
5. The strategy design process is complete when strategy appears fully formulated as a perspective (no detailed
plan, but it is explicit)
6. This strategy is explicit
7. Implementation follows formulation and articulation

The strategist
Strategist: CEO/head of organization
• Tasks:
Gather information
Analyze information
Organize information
Formulate strategy
• Idea of CEO to be main strategist is still very much alive:
Uncommon CEO names lead to more deviating strategies (Kang, Zhu, & Zhang, 2021).
CEO’s cognitive flexibility aids the development of dynamic capabilities (Kiss et al., 2020).
CEO characteristics determine the kind of acquisitions of a firm (Chen et al., 2020).

Organizational structure
Structure follows strategy
Strategy determines long-term goals and objectives, the course of action and allocation
of resources.
 Structure is the design through which to administer the strategy.
Changes in an organization’s strategy lead to problems that require a new structure.

 no place for existing competition (every

organization will do the same, because the analysis
will look like at ours) problem

Summary

 The CEO/head of organization has complete and perfect information.

 The CEO/head of organization has the mental/cognitive capacity to accurately process all information.

 The environment can always be understood. (we can absorb and understand the changes)

 Situations and environment are predictable.

 All information is documented and available.

 Strategy is centrally formulated.

Criticism/ limitation

 Structure follows strategy: unrealistic for most organizations  inflexible

 Assumption of universality.

 The capacity to learn is ignored by analytical assessment of environment and internal capabilities.

 Promotion of inflexibility: hierarchical, centralized, and explicit strategy formulation  time consuming
process

 Detachment of thinking from acting.

 CEO/head of organization is unlikely to have all and perfect information and the capacity to process this
information.

 Economic man/Homo economicus: “Agent who has complete information about the options available for
choice, perfect foresight of the consequences from choosing those options, and the wherewithal to solve an
optimization problem that identifies an option which maximizes the agent’s personal utility.”

Contributions
 Vocabulary & tools
 Grand strategy

 Basic notion: fit between external environment and internal capabilities

 Started to promote the relevance of strategy in organizations and as a field of research

 no interaction with the environment, just navigate through