Strategy Safari

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Strategy Safari (FT Prentice Hall, 2002), subtitled "A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management" by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel is an overview of the full field of academic and business studies of strategy, based on a previous lecture series by Mintzberg. An online summary (not by the authors) is available here: http://www.bizsum.com/strategysafari.htm

Henry Mintzberg was previously known primarily for his advocacy of Emergent Strategy, and, subsequently, for his development of the Configuration School of strategy.

Strategy Safari is a radical departure from Mintzberg's previous position, in that it seeks to understand, categorise, and find value in the entire range of strategic thinking. With his co-authors Ahlstrand and Lampel, Mintzberg reviewed more than 2,000 texts in preparation of Strategy Safari.

In addition to an overview of existing meta-theories of strategy, including the "five Ps" (strategy as plan, ploy, pattern, perspective, position), the authors find ten separate schools of strategy, which are:

  • The environmental school
  • The cognitive school
  • The entrepreneurial school
  • The power school
  • The positioning school
  • The cultural school
  • The planning school
  • The learning (or emergent) school
  • The design school
  • The configuration (or transformation) school

The underlying thesis of the book is that the 'strategy beast' is not any one of these, but that each school represents a partial picture of what strategy is. Academics may find it convenient to examine parts of strategy, assert the authors, but managers need to be able to work with the entire, living beast.

[edit] Assessment

FT Prentice-Hall's Mastering Strategy begins with a monograph summary of Strategy Safari, written by the original authors. This underlines the importance of the contribution of Strategy Safari. A very large number of reviews and summaries of the book are available online. Common themes of these reviews include

  • The clear, often humorous, style of the authors
  • The practical nature of the authors' approach
  • The comprehensive nature of the classification
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