Home / Summaries / Strategy and Organization / school-strategies-design

Thinking about strategy

6 important questions on Thinking about strategy

Which three aspects can be distinguished in strategic management?

- Process; where do strategies come from? How do firms develop strategies and how could they be more effectively? Week 3, 4 and 6
- Content; What are good strategies and which types are there? Week 1 and 2
- Context; How do organizational or environmental contexts affect process or content? Does a different environment requires a different strategy?

What is the 3-step process in which strategic management is done?

1. Strategic analysis --> select objectives (mission, vision, goals) and SWOT
2. Strategic choise --> generate strategic options and strategies must by accessible, suitable and feasible to stakeholders.
3. Strategic implementation (business plan, budget, measures)

What is Mintzbergs (1990) critique on the design school?

- one brain designs the strategy
- one brain should know everything
- information overload
- design school assumes that strengths and weaknesses are generally known

What is critique on the planning school?

- It generates an overload of information
- It's time consuming and inflexible (Goold and Campbell)
- It's difficult to predict the future (Cornelius)

What are the differences between Planning and Design school?

1. Planning school advocates a formal and elaborate system for development of strategy. Design school is informal and simple.
2. At the planning school, responsibility is split between CEO and planning staff, at the design school it is allocated completely to the CEO

What is the process school?

Strategy is seen as collective learning (context, implementation).
- reality is simply too complex for a purely rational planning approach (limitations in cognition)
- effective strategies develop incrementally

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Strategy and Organization

View summary