Strategic approaches

Strategic approaches

1. Rational Planning

   • Too rigid
   • No strategy can be formalised in advnace
   • Managers declare strategy after the event
   • organisations cannot set objectives - only the people within
   • strategy is not a rational process

2. Emergent strategy

   • Mintzberg (1987)
   • Intended strategies
     • Deliberate strategies
       • Realised strategies
     • Unrealised
   • Patterns of behaviour
     • Emergent strategies
       • Realised strategies
   • Key skills for manager
     • Manage stability
     • Detect discontinuity
     • Know the business
     • Manage patterns
     • reconcile change and continuity

3. Logical incrementalism

   • Lindblom (1959)
     • Strategic drift
     • No radical changes
   • Quinn (1978)
     • Incremental change
     • Manager's role
       • Be attuned to the issues faced by organisation
         • Network with stakeholders
       • Develop strategic vision when needed
       • Build political support for the strategy
       • Obtain commitment by initial trials
       • Allow concensus to build and implement change incrementally

4. Positioning View

   • "Outside-in" view
   • High market share
   • Differentiated products
   • Low costs
   • Criticisms
     • Competive advantage not sustainable
     • Environments change too fast
     • Easier to change the environment than the organisation

5. Resource-based view

   • "Inside-out" view
   • Stalk et al (1992)
     • Advantage based on process not product
     • Success converts processes into "value-add" activities
     • Requires group-wide investment in capabilities
     • CEO needs to champion group-wide approach
     • Competitive advantage comes from
       • Speed
       • Consistency
       • Acuity
       • Agility
       • Innovativeness
   • Kay's Architecture
     • Internal architecture - employees
     • External architecture - suppliers/customers
     • Network architecture - group of collaborating firms
   • Barney (1991)
     • Valuable
     • Rare
     • Imperfectly imitable
     • Substituability