A Review of ‘Strategy as Stretch and Leverage

Strategy is not easily defined and furthermore the term is not exclusively related to just the business world. We can confidently say strategy is key to survival, not only in business but also in the animal kingdom. All animals under go a process of constant change in their physical appearance and in their behaviour. These changes take place over millions of years and the species that survive, do so because throughout their evolution they have perfected certain strategies that have enabled them to develop more successfully in the environment they inhabit. One such case of this successful development is the great hammerhead shark.

Barney, J. (2004). Firm resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Strategy: Process Content Context: an international perspective, de Wit & Meyer , 285-292.

In the article Mintzberg (1984, pp. 66) argues that companies are incorrectly planning strategy through rationale control, the analysis of competitors and markets, and of companies strengths and weaknesses, and combining all of this information to create their “full-blown strategies”. Inkpen & Choudhury (1995) believed that organisations that relied on strict set routines and focused on consistency would then be unable to become innovative and be able to experiment.

According to Slack et al. The corporate strategy or business strategy is the guide lines for the whole corporation’s businesses in relation to its markets, customers, and the competitors (2007). In the same context, the same authors discussed the link between the corporate strategy and

reviewed. This is analysed by putting the article in to a wider debate about strategy, then

A competitive strategy, or business-level strategy, is the way a business used to successfully enter and penetrate into a market (Eastwood et al, 2006), and also, to succeed in this chosen market against its competitors (Johnson et al, 2014). A company needs to develop and apply appropriate strategy to help the company to generate distinctive competences (David, 2007). Compared with the strategies implemented in other levels of operation, competitive strategy is more focused on the competition against other competitors and strategic choices to better attain market share (Harrison and St. John, 2009). According to

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.

Compare and contrast the market-based approach and the resource-based view as approaches to competitive strategy. To what extent are they rival or complementary views?

Applying our knowledge about Economics of Strategy, we know that there are different ways to create additional value:

OE is not sufficient to explain and define strategy. Company and managers confuse OE for competition and run into trouble by only trying to focus and maximize OE. Firm’s loose their competitive advantage by focusing on growth and forget to focus on core competencies that gave them their competitive advantage in the first place. Companies should focus on strategy and the important contents of strategy. This starts at core

This strategy emphasizes the use of an organization’s resources and capabilities to achieve a core competence that cannot be imitated by competitors. Furthermore, the resource based school argues that if an organization distinctively improves its internal capability; that is being able to have effective inside machinery to deliver products and services to customers, the organization will enjoy a massive advantage in the market. This school also argues that in order to have a competitive advantage, an organization must have resource and capabilities that are sophisticated to those of competitors (QuickMBA,

To begin with, heterogeneity of capabilities and resources of firms, which is explained as “enduring and systematic performance differences among relatively close rivals”, provides a foundation of the resource-based view (Song, et al.,2006). The implication of this assumption is that core competence conveys the valuable and unique feature of products to customers. The RBV disagrees with the opinion that the resources are homogeneous; if homogeneity is assumed to be essential to develop a proper strategy, the strategy can be easily copied by competitors, which will ultimately result in the dissipation of above-normal rents. Conversely, the unique and fixed resources on hand will lead to outstanding performance and ultimately turn to be a competitive advantage, under the circumstances that sustainable competitive advantage is achieved in an environment where competition does not exist.

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

 Strategy formation as a process of transformation  Asserts that the most appropriate of the preceding