WEEK 3

Week 3 (3/13/2013)

1. Strategy making is like a science because strategies are made with extensive analysis and with unbiased and uncontaminated judgment and opinion. Strategy maker only use the logical facts and delivers the rational decisions to the organization. Before making any strategy managers also understand the each and every detail like scientists and they also follow definite steps which are used also used for the scientific research.

 Strategy making is also like the art and craft because to create a good strategy a                    mutual team work, creativity and knowledge to tackle problems is needed. And to get perfection in those things, many years of practice is needed.

2. Intended strategy is planned or intended course of action which is used for achieving a predetermined goals of the organization. Simply, we can understand the intended strategy as strategy that an organization hopes to execute. when a strategic plan is created for a new venture, it is called a business plan. To some extent we can also state intended strategy as a deliberate strategy. It is well structured and formal kind of strategy.

Content of a strategy is basically an exposition of the current position of the company and the desired status the management would like to attain at the end of the plan period. It is nothing but a detailed brief of where it is now and the broad steps to be taken to reach where it intends to. The context part of a strategy deals in detail with the internal and expected external environment of an organization and in effect undertakes an extensive SWOT analysis to ensure that the organization can reach the set targets with least effort. The process part of a strategy actually lays down the timing of different actions and clearly defines who would take part in the actions directly and who would remain in indirect support thus ensuring unity of action and streamlining of efforts to prevent efforts getting wasted by working at cross purposes or overlapping and repetitive actions. But, this analysis of strategy into various components only goes on to further emphasis the basic nature of intended strategy – it is pre-planned and depends entirely on the quality of forecasts available with the management. (McGee, John; Thomas, Howard and Wilson, David, 2005)

An emergent strategy is an unplanned strategy that is made in order to tackle the unexpected opportunities and challenges. In emergent strategy it’s all about exploring rather than analyzing. It is unstructured and informal kind of strategy in organization. It basically helps to deal with the things which occur in the market and falls out the range of intended strategy.

 Henry Mintzberg was the first expert who coined the word ‘emergent’ while describing the continuous evolution of corporate strategy of an organization as it not only strived to keep pace with but also attempted to overtake the external environment to reach the pre-determined targets. The emergent strategy however, is not a brainwave of one person or a group of persons at the helm of affairs of a company. It is not a flash of individual brilliance or motivation but a learning process where the entire corporate entity absorbs facts and figures from external environment and evaluates the changes in external (and internal) environment and proceeds to formulate a proper and relevant answer in the form of a revised strategy. (Mintzberg, The Strategy Concept 1: Five Ps for Strategy, 1987) 

Figure 1.3 A Model of Intended, Deliberate, and Realized Strategy

3. School of strategy:

Ø  The entrepreneurial school:

 This school takes strategy making as a visionary process. Basically the visionary process starts with the mind of the CEO or the leader of the company. Their intuition, judgment, wisdom and experience makes the strategy worthy. simply, we can say that CEO'S are the an architect of strategy. If company is leaded with the good visionary CEO than it will perform good in any kind of situation.

For example:

GE is the very good example of this school. GE claims that it has produced more CEO's than Harvard. When Jalk Welch took over the leadership he dismantled the way the organization was functioning under Jones and same was the case when Jeff took over Jack.(www.nickpelling.com)

Ø   The learning school:

This school takes strategy formation as emergent process. The management continuously see the time to find out what things work and what doesn't. They will apply the learning to their plan for action. this school thinks that learning all in one time is very difficult in this complex world so, step by step learning is good idea. this school helps to deal with the complexity and unpredictability in process of strategy making. 

For example:

Arvind Eyecare Hospital has an objective to provide affordable eye care to poor people. the skill was obtained when a large number of operations were performed which helped the organization in identifying the bottlenecks and removing them which was possible because of continuous learning.(www.academia.edu)

References:

(n.d.). Retrieved from liu.diva-portal.org: http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:21644/FULLTEXT01.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from www.nickpelling.com: http://www.nickpelling.com/dissertation/chapter4.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from www.academia.edu: http://www.academia.edu/4493694/Different_schools_of_thought_on_Strategy