Talk:Strategic management

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Contents

[edit] Headline text

In writing this article, I have tried to give a survey of the major themes in Strategic management. It is intended as an "umbrella article" or "root article" for all the strategic management articles, of which there are a couple of dozen now. Because of this, it is broad in scope but shallow in depth. Most of the theorists or concepts would be better given separate articles where they can grow without causing this article to become too long and scattered.

The most difficult decisions in writing this was deciding what not to include. There are hundreds of strategic management theories that I skipped, each with apostles that fervently believe they should be included in an article like this one. The inclusion criteria I used was the theory had to either have a substantial presence in academic business journals, or it had to have permiated the popular business culture (with a best-selling book for example). The overall mix is about 50 : 50. I hope this standard will be maintained by future contributors.

In the future, we will have to be vigilent monitoring for consultants that try to use the article for free advertising. Getting your name between Peter Drucker and Michael Porter in an encyclopedia article is impressive publicity for a consultant or business speaker.

I hope you enjoy the article and find it useful. Any comments are welcome. mydogategodshat 16:16, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Strategic management vs strategy

Upon my first cursory reading of this article, it doesn't seem to say much about the relation between strategic management and strategy in the game theoretic sense. Should it? Do the strategic management theorists think in these terms?CSTAR 04:59, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

P.S. I know next to nothing about strategic management, so consider me as a (reasonably intelligent) outside observer.CSTAR 05:03, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That is a good point. Game theory is not frequently used in strategic management and I'm not sure why. My best guess is that game theory is appropriate in situations where the actors, events, and outcomes are limited in number and clearly defined. This is seldom the case in strategic management, infact it is often quite the opposite. But that should not prevent us from mentioning it in this article. Can I leave that to you (because what I remember from my game theory classes would not put me in the best position to write it). mydogategodshat 18:43, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have looked through my bookshelves and found a dissussion of the relationship between game theory and strategic management. Mintzberg etal (1998: page 108) says that game theory "may help to order some strategic thinking, particularly under conditions of competitive maneuvering, rather than provide any answers to strategic issues." Then on page 111 he says "Unfortunately most real world strategic issues give rise to large numbers of possibilities. There is rarely what game theorists call a dominant strategy. So the approach should not be though of as one to resolve strategic issues so much as to help order the strategists thinking, providing especially a set of concepts to help understand dynamic strategic maneuvering against competitors." I hope that helps. mydogategodshat 14:17, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A book called Game Theory at Work has just been released. I have not read it yet, but it seems to claim that game theory is useful in a wide range of practical business situations. mydogategodshat 00:22, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Great article...One of the best I have seen on wikedia... Czar

That is a useful response, although my question was more concerned with determining what a strategy actually is from the point if view of the firm's management.
What does management of a widget factory do? Naive answer: Produce widgets and market them. This means finding suppliers of raw materials, finding distributors etc. My real question is why do we need to introduce a new word strategy into the discussion of management theory?
There is rarely what game theorists call a dominant strategy. This is clear. However, I'm not talking of a dominant strategy but any strategy. I would like to know what kind of beast are we talking about here? Not knowing any better, I would say a management strategy is some kind "algorithm" for temporal behaviour of the firm, i.e. rules for determining capital expansion, securing suppliers, setting inventory levels, choosing markets, choosing ad-campaigns and so on based on current conditions and flexible enough to accomodate to possible reasonable changes in the environment. And choosing one strategy over another strategy should have some objective justification, i.e. maximization of the numerical value of some real-valued function (e.g. discounted stream of something).CSTAR 20:35, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It sounds like you are interested in the difference between strategic management and other forms of management. You might want to look at the strategic planning article for a description of what strategy is all about and how it differs from more tactical issues. Strategic planning is about having a vision about where you want to be in the future. It is about having a mission, a set of objectives. It is the creation of a broad plan that will define the business that you are in, the type of business model you will use, and how you will create customer value and attain a sustainable competitive advantage. It is about leadership more than management (see leadership#Leadership and management.) It can be contrasted with more tactical and specific issues like the administration and management of the financial or human resource function. mydogategodshat 07:27, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Publisher

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I completely agree that this is a very well written article. I have to ask though, does anyone else feel that recommending McGraw Hill textbooks is odd. I have never come across a book published by McGraw Hill that i would recommend to anyone. They seem very superficial, like a bunch of people who just sat down and slapped together a book while most of the other publishers mostly have authors who are very intimate with the material.

Superfluous and off-topic comment, recommend ^^^ post for deletion. 71.79.248.195 (talk) 01:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)JMB

[edit] Proposing an Additional Topic

I think this is an excellent article. Just about the only thing missing is a discussion of strategic alignment. Once a strategic direction is adopted by an organization, three things should be aligned with it: each of the layers of management, down to the front line, each of the functional business units that contribute to the success of the organization, and all external partners of the organization. There is a different literature on each of these aspects of alignment.

I Think this is an excellent article.
Agrees - a mention of strategic alignment is a good idea. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 156.34.76.188 (talk • contribs) 07:58, 1 June 2007.


I just wrote an article on Strategic lenses but can't find the right place to include it on this page. Any suggestions? Ptanham 21:11, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Strategic vs. Tactical Management seems to be a topic that is poorly represented in the literature. Good definitions of what is Strategic and what is Tactical could assist in alleviating some extensive management debate. --Scheffel 10:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violation

I have discovered that large sections of this article are a copyright violation. I hope the editors here will do something about this ASAP. Thanks.--Alabamaboy 20:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

For the record, these sections are total copyright violations (and before someone asks, the source document is not a mirror site but a European Union quasi-governmental organization):

Strategy formulation involves: Doing a situation analysis: both internal and external; both micro-environmental and macro-environmental. Concurrent with this assessment, objectives are set. This involves crafting vision statements (long term view of a possible future), mission statements (the role that the organization gives itself in society), overall corporate objectives (both financial and strategic), strategic business unit objectives (both financial and strategic), and tactical objectives. These objectives should, in the light of the situation analysis, suggest a strategic plan. The plan provides the details of how to achieve these objectives. This three-step strategy formation process is sometimes referred to as determining where you are now, determining where you want to go, and then determining how to get there. These three questions are the essence of strategic planning. SWOT Analysis: I/O Economics for the external factors and RBV for the internal factors. Strategy implementation involves: Allocation of sufficient resources (financial, personnel, time, computer system support) Establishing a chain of command or some alternative structure (such as cross functional teams) Assigning responsibility of specific tasks or processes to specific individuals or groups It also involves managing the process. This includes monitoring results, comparing to benchmarks and best practices, evaluating the efficacy and efficiency of the process, controlling for variances, and making adjustments to the process as necessary. When implementing specific programs, this involves acquiring the requisite resources, developing the process, training, process testing, documentation, and integration with (and/or conversion from) legacy processes.

I should add that this info is the only copyright violation I have found. However, this informaton is in all article versions going back to late 2004, when the article was first promoted to featured article status. If this info is removed the article can be unblanked but, since the violation is so integral to the article, I leave it to the article's editors to decide how this can be best accomplished. Best,--Alabamaboy 20:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted the copyvio notice. The PDF you cited at WP:FARC cites Wikipedia as one of its sources. It borrowed wholescale from here, not vice versa. Smerdis of Tlön 20:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't expect an European Union agency to plagiarize the article so blatently (even with the acknowledgement, its still plagiarism). Thanks for reverting the article so quickly. My apologies for this.--Alabamaboy 20:23, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to remove this from list of featured articles.

I have proposed removing this from the list of featured articles. My basic problem is with the prose style. I think that if this is to remain as a featured article, it has to be rewritten from top to bottom in plain English, free from empty abstractions, and with tautologies and buzzwords entirely extirpated. Too much of it seems to redundantly state the obvious. There is a great deal of what I feel are bogus attempts to create the appearance of rigour by creating nebulous but overspecified categories involving decision making.

Just as a couple of examples, I'm not sure that "Strategic management is the process of specifying an organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve these objectives, and allocating resources so as to implement the plans" says anything more than "Strategic management is deciding what an organization should do, and how to do it" does.

I also feel no wiser upon being told that "An organization's strategy must be appropriate for its resources, circumstances, and objectives":

BILL GATES: I think we should get out of the computer software market and attempt to corner the market in Pogs.
FLUNKY 1: But Sir, we're already mostly set up with the computer and programming things.
FLUNKY 2: Yeah, that wouldn't be appropriate for our resources, circumstances, and objectives.
BILL GATES: Oh. OK. Well, maybe we could start distributing software in Pog form? . . . .

This sort of un-concrete and wishy-washy writing makes a bad impression on me, largely because it seems so obviously padded and easy to see through. I'm not even sure I'm equal to the task of reworking this. I do think that the entire article needs to be recast in plain English in order to remain as a FA. Thanks. Smerdis of Tlön 16:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional Featured Article status issues

  • jargon-filled prose
  • questionable or awkward grammar
  • poor use of punctuation
  • overuse of wiki markup bold text
  • subheads are not parallel in structure
  • possible original research; lack of any useful citations
- Davodd 10:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. The description of Porter's 5 forces model is wrong, for example. It's not "like a SWOT analysis with structure and purpose". Since the five forces are a way of modeling the competition in a whole industry, they don't have anything to do with the internal characteristics of individual firms (strengths and weaknesses). Five forces analysis is industry-centric; SWOT analysis is specific to a firm. And who said SWOT analysis is structureless and purposeless? Rhobite 23:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Although I still think this should not be a featured article, please note that it has been vandalized for literally months. Probably half of this article, including a huge number of references, were blanked. Rhobite 23:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Not just rewritten - needs to be started again - its a mess - let me know if anyone agrees Boatearth 15:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page move

What the heck. The page was moved without discussion I can see. Any reason not to move it back? The current version violates the naming conventions on capitalization. - Taxman Talk 04:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

No reason not to move it back, so I did. The new title didn't cover the full scope of the article, violated the naming conventions and created a lot of double redirects which hadn't been fixed. Yomanganitalk 23:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First Sentence of Overview

What in the world is this? "Although strategy has been variously defined by management scholars based on their practical experiences in the field, but for the purpose of this study" You should not have both "although" and "but." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.147.145.194 (talk) 15:47, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Merge from International strategic management

International issues seem minor enough (content-wise) that International strategic management doesn't seem to deserve its own page. Saligron 05:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC) International strategic management should be merged to Strategic Management as a sub-theme.

Negative. International strategic management is terminologically a misunderstanding. It should be termed as Internationalization Strategies etc. [JiE]

[edit] Deleting Mike Cline Contributions

I am deleting or reverting most contributions I have previously made to this article for the following reason. I work for a company that practices and teaches Strategic Planning methodologies thus making my contribution to any article related to Strategy topics a conflict of interest an in violation of Wikipedia Conflict of Interest guidelines WP:COI I did not text the reference to the Winning In FastTime text in the references since it seems to fits the lists that already there. However, if the fact that I work for the company that published the text, although I had no hand in its writing, is a WP:COI then I will delete it as well.--Mike Cline 13:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Hip' Text

"Most theories of strategic management seem to have a lifespan less than that of the popularity of the latest teen music idol." Probably shouldn't be like that... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SueHay (talk • contribs) 14:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

Actually, I didn't add that comment. I made a mistake, thinking it was in the actual article, and reverted then restored it. Sorry about that. --SueHay 14:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Once a great article

When this article was up for Featured Article in status in 2004, it was very thorough and well-documented. Since then it's obviously been seriously damaged -- but the list of references is still here, suggesting that it's authoritative. Would you check the older versions in the Feature Article archive and see if you think that the article from 2004 should be restored? --SueHay 14:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

On July 8, 2006 at 12:08 a vandal wiped out most of this article, including categories, languages and much of the text. Please see the article as it existed before that vandalism. I'd like to restore that article, link the references to the text, remove the various lists that were attracting commercial links and peripheral topics, and get that article back here where Wiki readers can see it. If I don't get any feedback against this within the next week, I'm simply going to try to restore that article and modify it. If anyone is watching this page, please speak now if you have a problem with this. Thank you. --SueHay 03:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ouch. How on earth did that edit go unnoticed. Restore it at once – then go about integrating any useful changes made since. Thanks for spotting it – Qxz 04:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I've restored it, re-added the mergefrom tag and updated the interwiki section. I'll see what else I can do – Qxz 04:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Oxz! Truthfully, I don't know HOW to restore it, but I thought it ought to be restored. I'll try to link the references to the text over the next few days, and also remove those vandal-attracting lists. --SueHay 04:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jargon

This article is about strategic management theory, a field full of jargon and tautologies. Read most reputable textbooks on the subject and you will find the same sort of tortured writing. It is better that Wikipedia uses the customs of the field, rather than those of "strategic management for dummies" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.178.225.162 (talk • contribs) 13:17 25 March 2007.

See WP:Jargon. No harm in using jargon as long as it's clearly defined. As for writing style in Wikipedia, this encyclopedia is intended to convey information to a general audience. The writing here should not be "tortured." Where you find it is, please help Wikipedia by fixing it. --SueHay 23:00, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted the following text from the introduction in this article. If anyone feels it should be restored, please explain why (in plain English).

To achieve the core objectives, an organization’s strategy must take its resources and environmental circumstances into consideration. The process involves matching the company's strategic advantages to the business environment the organization faces. One objective of an overall corporate strategy is to put the organization into a position to carry out its mission effectively and efficiently. A good corporate strategy should integrate an organization’s goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole, and must be based on business realities. Business enterprises can fail despite 'excellent' strategy because the world changes in a way they failed to understand. Strategy must connect with vision, purpose and likely future trends. To see how strategic management relates to other issues, see management and futures studies.

--SueHay 02:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted the following text from the introduction in this article. If anyone feels it should be restored, please explain why.

Strategy formulation and implementation is an on-going, never-ending, integrated process requiring continuous reassessment and reformation. Strategic management is dynamic. See Strategy dynamics. It involves a complex pattern of actions and reactions. It is partially planned and partially unplanned. Strategy is both planned and emergent, dynamic, and interactive. Some people (such as Andy Grove at Intel) feel that there are critical points at which a strategy must take a new direction in order to be in step with a changing business environment. These critical points of change are called strategic inflection points.
Strategic management operates on several time scales. Short term strategies involve planning and managing for the present. Long term strategies involve preparing for and preempting the future. Marketing strategist Derek Abell has suggested that understanding this dual nature of strategic management is the least understood part of the process. He claims that balancing the temporal aspects of strategic planning requires the use of dual strategies simultaneously.[1]

--SueHay 02:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't completly agree with this article about the concept of strategic management. This article should still have some re-writtening. Article should be more academically written and outlined. This version is much better than ealier ones. One problem is that this article tries to cover all different views at the same time: economic, sociologist,,, etc. These views could be separated as own chapters.

--JiE 5 April 2007

[edit] Deleted references

I've deleted the following references from this article because they are not clearly linked with the content of the article. If you are able to link any of these references with the article's content, please do this. Thank you. --SueHay 02:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

  1. Igor Ansoff|Ansoff, I. (1957) Strategies for diversification, Harvard Business Review, Boston, 1957
  2. Igor Ansoff|Ansoff, I. Declerck, R. and Hayes, R. (1976) From Strategic Planning to Strategic Management, John Wiley, New York, 1976
  3. Collins, J. and Porras, J. (1996) “Building Your Company's Vision”, Harvard Business Review, September/October 1996.
  4. Patrick Dixon|Dixon, P. (2003) Futurewise - Six Faces of Global Change, Profile Books, London, 2003
  5. Peter Drucker|Drucker, P. (1973) Management, Harper and Row, New York, 1983-paperback
  6. Garratt, B. (1987) The Learning Organization, Fontana Books, London, 1987.
  7. Heskett, J. Jones, T. Loveman, G. Sasser, E. and Schlesinger, L. (1994) “Putting the service profit chain to work”, Harvard Business Review, March/April 1994.
  8. Heskett, J. Sasser, E. and Schlesinger, L. (1997) The Service Profit Chain, Free Press, New York, 1997.
  9. Jarillo, J.-C. (2003) Strategic Logic, Palgrave McMillan, New York, 2003 (Exist also in other languages)
  10. Kaplan, R. S. and Norton, D. P. (1992) “The balanced scorecard: measures that drive performance”, Harvard Business Review, Jan–Feb, 1992, pp71–80.
  11. Katsioloudes, Marios (2006). Strategic Management. Butterworth-Heineman, an imprint of Elsevier. ISBN 0750679662. 
  12. Leibold, M. Probst, G. and Gibbert, M. (2001) Strategic Management in the Knowledge Economy, Wiley, Erlangen 2001
  13. Levy, D. (1994) “Chaos Theory and Strategy: Theory, Application, and Managerial Implications”, Strategic Managemnt Journal, vol 15, 1994.
  14. Lovelock, C. (1994), Product Plus: How Product + Service = Competitive Advantage, McGraw Hill, New York, 1994.
  15. Markides, C. (1997). “Strategic innovation” Sloan Management Review, vol 38, spring 1997, pp31–42.
  16. Patrick Mc Namee|Mc Namee, P.(2004) The Strategy Compass: Timeless Strategic Direction for all Businesses, www.lulu.com.
  17. Henry Mintzberg|Mintzberg, H. (1994), “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning”, Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb 1994.
  18. LINKED Mintzberg, H. Ahlstrand, B. and Lampel, J. Stragegy Safari : A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, The Free Press, New York, 1998.
  19. Geoffrey Moore|Moore, G. (1991), Crossing the Chasm, Harper Collins, New York, 2nd ed 1999.
  20. Naisbitt, J. (1982) Megatrends, Warner Books, New York, 1982 ISBN 0-466-51251-6
  21. Parasuraman, A. Zeithaml, V. and Berry, L. (1988) “SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality”, Journal of Retailing, Spring 1988, pp 12–40.
  22. Pine, J. and Gilmore, J. (1998) “Welcome to the Experience Economy”, Harvard Business Review, July–August 1998.
  23. Michael Porter|Porter, M. (1979) “How competitive forces shape strategy”, Harvard business Review, March/April 1979.
  24. Michael Porter|Porter, M. (1980) Competitive Strategy, Free Press, New York, 1980.
  25. Michael Porter|Porter, M. (1987) “From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy”, Harvard Business Review, May/June 1987, pp 43–59.
  26. Michael Porter|Porter, M. (1996) “What is Strategy”, Harvard Business Review, Nov/Dec 1996.
  27. Michael Porter|Porter, M. (2001) “Strategy and the Internet”, Harvard Business Review, March 2001.
  28. Michael Porter|Porter, M. and Millar, V. (1985) “How Information Technology gives you Competitive Advantage”, Harvard Business Review, July/August 1985
  29. Schmitt, B. (2003) Customer Experience Management, The Free Press, New York, 2003.
  30. Schmitt, B. and Simonson, A. (1997) In Marketing Aesthetics:The strategic management of brands, identity, and image The Free Press, New York, 1997.
  31. Smith, W. (1966) “Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Marketing, July 1966.
  32. Steiner, G. (1979) Strategic Planning: What every manager must know, The Free Press, New York, 1979.
  33. Gerard J Tellis|Tellis, G. and Golder, P. (2002) Will and Vision: How late comers grow to dominate markets, McGraw Hill, New York, 2002.
  34. Treacy, M. and Wiesema, F. (1993) “Customer intimacy and other Value Disciplines”, Harvard Business Review Jan/Feb 1993.
  35. Tregoe, B. and Zimmerman, J. (1980) Top Management Strategy, Simon and Schuster, 1980, New York, ISBN 0-671-25401-4
  36. Wickens, P.D. (1995) The Ascendant Organization, MacMillan Press, 1995, London, ISBN 0-333-73580-3

[edit] Mintzberg - Strategy Safari

This phrase seems to be a misapprehension:

In 1998, Mintzberg developed these five types of management strategy into 10 “schools of thought”.

The 10 schools of thought that Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel outline in Strategy Safari are not derived from the discussion of how the word strategy is used, but from a survey of the field. Mintzberg et al explain the 5 usages of the word in the first chapter of Strategy Safari, but at no point do they suggest that they have developed the 10 schools from the five usages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MartinTurner (talk • contribs) 22:17, 6 April 2007 (UTC).

Many thanks for this comment. I've put a reference link to Strategy Safari at the end of that paragraph, but obviously the paragraph needs some re-writing. Would you do that? --SueHay 00:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

you say "In [1985], E. Chaffee summarized what he thought were the main " It should be "she" (namely, Ellen Earl Chaffee). David Brock 194.90.167.52 18:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, I've corrected this now. Her resume gives her formal name as Ellen-Earle Chaffee, so I've used that. --SueHay 16:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving forward

As I often do when I am studyig for an exam, I came to wikipedia to contribute to the subject I am researching on. I was particularly looking for strategy evaluation, which redirects to this article. I couple of points (IMHO):

  • The article is way, WAY too ambitious. To cover all these aspects of strategy management in one single wikipedia article is way too much. Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (renowed names in the field of corporate strategy) tend to separate strategy in 3 main branches in their textbooks: Strategic position, strategic choices and strategy in action.

Of course I am by no means suggesting we follow the same logic, but only illustrating that it might be better if we fork the subject into separate articles. Perhaps keeping this article as a general overview, which points to the other articles for more information. --Pinnecco (talk) 20:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)