Prescriptive and Descriptive Schools of Strategy - Essay Example

?Prescriptive and Descriptive Schools of Strategy: Similarities, Differences and Examples The significance and relevance of Strategy have been extremely emphasised in today’s highly competitive world. Although history books are sufficient in detailing epic and timeless ideas of people who struggled for success in war and business in the past, the present-day globalised environment has catapulted every individual to properly ‘position’ themselves and ‘plan.’ This is the gist of the book by Henry Mintzberg, et al. (1998), he theorised nine different schools in strategic thinking that are categorised into two broad schools: the prescriptive and descriptive. In this essay, the student aims to illumine the similarities and differences of the said schools of strategy, and offer insights and perspectives through an exposition of actual examples, alongside pertinent business literatures. The Prescriptive Schools Prescriptive School is primarily consists of the following distinct sub-schools: Design, Planning and Positioning (Mintzberg, et al., 1998). Here, it is imperative to explain one by one, the said strategy schools under the Prescriptive umbrella. Design School. It views strategy as being the fulfillment of a precise match between the strong and weak internal traits of the organisation and between the external threats and opportunities. Design strategists in the upper management communicate the goals and means of the organisation to the lower members of the corporate hierarchy. Thus, the staff obtains the responsibility to execute the strategy. This particular school of strategy can be linked with SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis methodology of business experts and corporate planners. As noted by Pahl and Richter (2009), SWOT is not only limited to corporate organisations and business entities, in truth it is even more applicable to government units, non-profit bodies and even to individuals who desire to succeed in certain endeavours. Planning School. With its roots in systems thinking, urban planning and cybernetics, this particular school sees strategy systems as controlled and products of conscious processes of formal planning; in a word, strategy is a cerebral and formal activity (Mintzberg, 2007). It gives heavy emphasis on the structure of the strategy: specific steps and techniques organised in checklists. In this school, responsibility heavily rests on the executive body of the organisation, yet the implementation is still at the hands of the staff. Detailed attention is given to objectives, programs, operating procedures and budgets. This particular school is popular in governmental institutions in the United States and France, where the old adage ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ is culturally embedded. While planning is generally a good idea, it has been noted that it also has its inherent weaknesses: rigidity, time-consuming and expensive. Seifert (2003) emphasised that planning has a tendency to make the whole management process inflexible and would curtail individual creativity and initiative. Positioning School. Anchored mostly on the rule of economics and advocated by Michael Porter in 1980 (influenced by the works of the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu), the positioning school believes that strategy should be based on generic positions through an analysis of industry situations and market dynamics. This is especially true to those strategists who require reliable information from research before any strategy can be developed. Expert workers, firm consultants, military officers are most inclined to follow the doctrine of this school. Specifically in business, the department called Research and Development has been of utmost significance during the past few decades. Its emergence, which can be attributed to the teachings of this school, has been precipitated by competition where trends are constantly examined. As opined by Remenyi and Williams (1998), the field of marketing is also one of the great benefactors of the ideas espoused by this school. The Descriptive Schools Mintzberg, et al. (1998) purported that practitioners of this school look at the way strategy is and seen. Developed in the past 2 decades, the Entrepreneurial, Cognitive, Learning, Power/ Political, Cultural, Environmental and Configuration schools are classified in the Descriptive strategy approach. Entrepreneurial School. According to this standpoint, the formation of strategy is a product of visionary process. In contrast to the planning school, the entrepreneurial school deems the capability of the ‘visionary leader’ to provide strategies through the mystery of intuition. Here, exact designs, plans or positions already sifted to vague visions or perspectives encapsulated in metaphoric language. Aside from politicians who appear to be visionary leaders, small businesses in Latin America and China uphold the wonder of the Entrepreneurial spirit of a leader. Wall, et al. (1994) underscored the importance for visionary leaders to be good in words and actions. Hence, communication and performance go hand in hand to ensure strategic success. This is also consistent with the teachings of Whittington (2001). True visionaries, according to them, are those who think outside the box of conventional wisdom and see broad picture and patterns. The epoch-making triumph of Ted Turner, America’s Cable News Channel founder, is seen as a consequence of visionary business acumen when he daringly created an around-the-clock international news service. Cognitive School. Strategy development is the result of mental processes. In this school, somehow recognisable with the Planning school, strategies are products of thoughts and ideas. Cognitive strategists give life to their strategies through the use of models, schema, frames, landscapes and maps. People with a penchant to psychology -- pessimists on one hand and optimists on the other -- are inclined to employ the Cognitive approach to strategising. Learning School. Also called the emergent process of strategy, the Learning School argues that the formulation and implementation of business activities are the consequences of the learning or experiences. This is popular especially in Japan and in most Scandinavian countries where knowledge and experience are hailed as the main factors for business leaders’ success. In Japan, corporate promotion is largely dependent on the seniority rubric, which according to the study of Lee (2004) is also very common in the United States. Ultimately, it can be assumed that the best approach of promotion for higher officials in business cannot be based on this strategy school because experts decree that it is the combination of seniority and merit-based criteria serves well any type of organisation, whether private or public (Werther & Davis, 1996). Power School. Strategy is the end of a negotiation process. In this angle, strategies are crafted in cognizance of the political scenario within the business. Bargaining, persuasion and confrontation are among the central themes in this school. Wheelen and Hunger (2006) noted that there are two sides of political or power consequences in the corporate world: the dichotomies of the good and bad. According to them, the use of power generates positive results in the eyes of the public, yet it may also rot the moral fibre of the individuals in the organisation. Ethics should be revisited when studying this school of strategy, even though it goes without saying that the corporate world is innately a ‘jungle’ itself. Cultural School. With roots in sociology and anthropology, culture is the main criterion for the formulation of strategies. A collective process in nature, this school studies the cultural facet of the organisation and the demographics of the environment. Very common in the United States and Western Europe, the cultural school is important in an ethnically-diverse population. Business strategies should always respond to the cultural needs and wants of people, hence a need to study their backgrounds is imperative. Environmental School. Called the reactive process of strategy, business leaders who abide by this school know exactly how to react to the events of the external environment. According to Pettigrew, et al. (2006), effective strategies are always based both on internal and external factors. In the Environmental School, the external forces that drive market activities are the central priority. Strategists who obey the dogmas of this school should at least know the fundamentals of Business Environment and Ecology. Configuration School. Where strategy is a transformation process, the Configuration School upholds the view that changes occur in the organisation. As time passes by, accordingly, a number of transformations occur within the organisation which the strategist should consider carefully before any course of action shall be taken. Hence, with these changes, adaptation is said to be the key. Yet, critics would always say that the attempt to predict future occurrences and to describe changes is a venture of trying to obscure reality. Some would also argue that configurations can sometimes appear stark and simplistic, thus the said model provide scant help to business practitioners (Akpan, 2007). Synthesis and Conclusion The study of strategies as applied in business is a very crucial matter in determining whether the business will succeed or fail. The Prescriptive Schools instruct that strategies should be based on the concept of strategy itself, while the Descriptive Schools highlight the importance of internal and external factors in crafting plans of action. To be sure, the shaping, initiating, negotiating and implementing of strategies do not only depend on the brilliance of a particular chief executive officer or business development head, instead the rest on the holistic and coherent movement by every single entity in a corporate organism. It should be acknowledged, moreover, that it is extremely difficult to say what strategy schools are the most effective in certain kinds of business establishments. What can be offered is that there are variety of ways to incorporate the positive points of each school and attempt to shy away from the negative aspects of it. And finally, no matter what strategic school is complied with and no matter how magnificent the strategies are everything still boils down to implementation and results. References Akpan, E.O., 2007. Strategic alignment: business imperative for leading organizations. London: Tate. Lee, S., 2004. Seniority as an employment norm: the case of layoffs and promotion in the US employment relationship. Socioeconomic Review, 2 (1), pp.65-86. Mintzberg, H. Ahlstrand, B. & Lampel, J., 1998. Strategy safari: a guided tour through the wilds of strategic management. New York: The Free Press. Mintzberg, H. 2007. Tracking strategies: toward a general theory. Oxford: Oxford UP. 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