Strategy Analysis : Go Fundamentally Astray

‘Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through it’

Two basic strategies or concepts are found in part three – “Basic Strategy: How to

Mintzberg (1984, pp. 69) suggests “the notion strategy is something that should happen way up there far removed from the details of running an organisation on a daily basis and is one of the great fallacies of conventional strategic

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

Strategy formulation has been acknowledged as one of the most crucial factors of ensuring the long-term growth of the business. However, the manner in which strategy is formulated, and most importantly, the nature of the strategy chosen for the company determines its future position in the marketplace (Grant, 2005).

In the book The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs by Cynthia A. Montgomery discusses the topic of being an elusive and a rigorously effective strategist. The purpose of the author is to give us a new understanding of what a strategy really is and the components needed to be a strategist. The author through all her pages help us to understand some of the most fundamental questions that the manager must ask themselves when it comes to strategy such as what is strategy, why it is important, and what you have to do in order to effectively execute them. The final and most fundamental

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.

Rousseau (2011) defines strategy as a link connecting military power and political purpose. He emphasizes that strategy entails the use of threat and force to achieve policy objectives. Given the unfortunate centrality of war to world events, strategy becomes a significant aspect in providing a theory of success. The perennial popularity of books on military and application of works of wisdom in the use of force today is unequivocal. Particularly, books that generally focus of the theory of strategy, studies with varied meanings for all purposes, technologies, places, and times are increasingly rare. In the past 2,400 years, only 3 classic works are significant on this subject and no more than five have an enduring value (Rousseau, 2011). Sun-Tzu’s classic work on The Art of War is one such classic works basing on strategic theory that has implications for all purposes, places, times, and technologies. Sun-Tzu wrote his book in China in ca. 400 BC during the era of “Warring States, 403-221 BC” (Rousseau, 2011, p. 79). Henri de Jomini’s The Art of War that he wrote in 1838 also deserves an honorable mention.

(To make a summary of the article while answering the question, the answer directly related to the questions are highlighted )

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’.

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

Strategy is a term used in the business world when a firm has a planned process in which it wants to set out and accomplish its goals. There are numerous ‘definitions’ for strategy but each definition is different and valid in certain circumstances. Therefore, strategy is something that cannot be defined easily. However, what is clear is that strategy is used not just in the business world. Survival of a species relies heavily on strategy. For a human or an animal to survive they must grow and evolve with the world around them. A species that does not adapt with to its habitat is the species that will struggle to survive and often become extinct. The Parson’s chameleon is an example of an animal that has interpreted

Inconsistency in strategy is not only due to flaw in reasoning or logic. The primary function of strategy is to provide coordination in the organizational action. A strategy should be very clear nad explicit for the reason that it can stimulate a climate of tacit coordination that is more productive than most managerial mechanisms.

Johnson, Wittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér (2014, p. 3) defines strategy as ‘the long-term direction of an organisation’.

Strategy can be defined as a series of correlated decisions at each point of time (or steps, choices = tactics) based on the information available at each point of time (= information set) to reduce the dispersion of eventualities (variance or standard deviation) about a particular future desired outcome (mean or median).