Critique of Hew Strachan's "The Lost Meaning of Strategy" Introduction In his essay, "The Lost Meaning of Strategy," Hew Strachan examines the historical roots of strategy and how the use of the term has become commonplace by political leaders who want sound decisive during uncertain times. In support of his assertions that policy actually precedes strategy as tools for effecting governmental aims, Strachan cites several examples from the historical record to demonstrate how the concept of strategy evolved over time to refer to the conduct of war only, and how these original meanings have been changed over time to include a wide range of social and business contexts as well. This paper provides a critical review of Strachan's essay, "The Lost Meaning of Strategy" to identify its strengths and weaknesses, followed by a summary of the essay and important findings in the conclusion. Review and Analysis Freedom and strategy are not synonyms, but that has not stopped government spin artists from trying to use them interchangeably. For example, Strachan reports that, "Strategy is a military means; freedom in this context is a political or even moral condition. Strategy can be used to achieve freedom, but can freedom be a strategy in itself?" (p. 33). Indeed, Strachan argues that the use of the word "strategy" by government authorities has become essentially synonymous with "policy" through overuse. In fact, this is one of the most relevant points made by the author in
‘Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through it’
It will then assess the strengths and weaknesses of the viewpoints presented in this article. And lastly, author’s personal thoughts on strategy will be terminated alongside the conclusion of the entire essay.
Chapter 6 – Strategy Formulation: Situation Analysis and Business StrategyChapter 7 – Strategy Formulation: Corporate StrategyChapter 8 – Strategy Formulation: Functional strategy and Strategic Choice
Strategy refers to the plan or action taken to achieve organizational goals. When Ellen took over Tufts-NEMC, the hospital was struggling with payroll and scale. Ellen had to focus on meeting payroll, a short-term strategy, and could not focus entirely on the longer term. She took some immediate measures to help cut cost
The second strategic tool is economics. Economics is underutilized as a strategic policy; its role is also not understood in success in war. First businesses should always be able to profit, even during times of
Chandler (1977) believes strategy is about using the necessary recourses so the organizations are able to carry out their long-term goals and aims. Which relates to Johnson (1987, pp. 4-5) who states, “Strategic decisions occur at many levels of managerial activity and will be concerned with the long-term direction”.
This article presents is a critical analysis of the article “Strategy as Revolution” published by Gary Hamel (1996) in Harvard Business Review. The article clarifies the position of the article within the wider debate about the processes of strategy and highlights the main strengths and weaknesses associated with the article.
Michael Porter’s article, “What is strategy?” sets to explain that both operation efficiency (OE) and strategy are required for reaching superior performance, but further clarifies and emphasizes the misnomer that OE is not strategy.
After reading what precisely the article expounds and analyses, revolution stays as the core of strategy. 'The article 'Strategy as Revolution' clarifies the role revolution plays in the markets and declared ten principles to help a company discover revolutionary strategies and put into practice. All the third kinds of companies mentioned in the article have opportunities to reach what they want, however, the different roles determine the market hierarchy. 'In a growing number of industries, innovation is increasingly disrupting existing patterns of competition(Andersen & Strandskov, 2008),' just like what Gary Hamel (2000) said, the simple phrase, 'Familiarity is the enemy'(Chris Lauer , 2008).
The fourth step into the creation of executable strategies relies in the alignment of resources, purposes, and strategical thinking contemplations into reality. The rationale of this step is to create
There are various schools of strategy that have been vigorously debated on and after a consolidated effort; three schools of strategy were produced. They are the planning school, the positional school, and the resource based school of strategy (Ritson, 2013). All these strategies will be described with examples to buttress each.
Alfred Chandler(1963) defines strategy as ‘ the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals’. And Michael porter(1996) sees it as ‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’.
Strategy can be defined as being different from one’s competitors, finding the race to operate and accomplished it. According to Michael Porter (1996), while becoming better at what you do is desirable, it will not benefit you in the long run because it is something other competitors can also do. Strategies for organizations are originally developed by Michael E. Porter in 1979 by introducing the five forces model. A company can identify the industry profitability and attractiveness by analyzing the five forces of Porter (Johnson et al., 2008). And then a reasonable strategy can be set up in line with the strengths and the weakness of an organization is able to create a plan for a stronger position for the organization within its
In the book “Good Strategy and Bad Strategy”, Richard Rumelt illustrates examples of success and failure of business management to explain the true meaning of the strategy, and tells companies how to develop a correct strategy and adhere to core of management strategy. He also emphasizes the central role of strategic management as to remind the readers to understand the huge difference between a good strategy and bad strategy. This book has three sections: good and bad strategy, sources of power, and thinking like a strategist. I will be evaluating strengths and weaknesses under these topics. After finish reading the book, I had gained a better understanding of what a good strategy means to the success of a company. According to Rumelt, a good strategy is coherent, where companies pursue multiple objectives that are connected with each other. Rumelt points out that a good strategy consists of three elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action. (71) First, diagnosis means to define the obstacles and challenges that the companies are facing, and guidelines help the people to overcome the obstacles. Lastly, coherent action is the activities or actions that company did to be consistent with its guiding policy. Today, many of us lost the focus of the strategy, which results in the downward of businesses and organizations. Rumelt has defined the strategy as acknowledging the main problems and take coherent action to overcome the problems. Moreover, he illustrates
Johnson, Wittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér (2014, p. 3) defines strategy as ‘the long-term direction of an organisation’.