1965 to 1990: Five discoveries at Shell - Three competing paradigms in strategic management

6 important questions on 1965 to 1990: Five discoveries at Shell - Three competing paradigms in strategic management

Which three paradigms in strategic management are there?

1. The rationalist.

2. The evolutionary.

3. The Processual School

What are the underlying assumptions of the Rational School listed by Mintzberg (1990)?

  1. Rat. School codifies thought & action seperately.
  2. There is one best solution.
  3. Predictable, no interference from outside.
  4. Clear intentions.
  5. Implementations follows formulation (thought independent of action)
  6. Full understanding throughout the organisation.
  7. Reasonable people will do reasonable things.

What are the underlying assumptions of the Evolutionary School?

  1. Ev. School emphasises the complex nature of org. behaviour, beyond the realms of rationalist thinking. --> emergent field: "Complexity theory".
  2. A winning strategy can only be articulated in retrospect, interpreting the behaviour as it proved the fittest in the evolutionary process of the business environment.
  3. The evolutionary approach has little predictive power. Managers do not use this approach very often because of this lack of predictiveness.
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What does the "Complexity Theory" of the emergent field mean?

This holds that when studying any situation involving many independent agents overall system behaviour may become fundamentally indeterminate and emergent. Strategy is nothing more that a perspective on such emergent behaviour.

What are the underlying assumptions of the Processual School?

  1. The Processual School takes the middle position between the Rationalist and Evolutionary Approach.
  2. When it is not possible to work out optimal strategies through a rational thinking process alone, managers can create processes in organisations that will make them more flexible and adaptable, and capable of learning from mistakes.
  3. It looks for succesful evolutionary behaviour of the organisation as the ultimate test of a succesful process. But it believes that this can be influenced. --> "Manifestation of the Management of Change".

Which metaphores are there for the paradigms  (Morgan, 1986).

Machine metaphor: Rat. Appr.

Ecology metaphor: Evol. Appr.

Living organism metaphor: Proc. Appr.

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