Systems Approach to Strategic Management - Book Report/Review Example

Download file to see previous pages... Strategists and analysts over the time have taken up the issue of business strategy from various angles. The differences in their thinking can be analyzed from a huge range of basic disciplines on which these strategic arguments are based upon. Any system of classification puts a certain danger mark. The danger mark comes up due to the fact that an effort to put up the individual concepts and ideas in a certain fixed number of boxes leads to the oversimplification of this idea.
Henry Mintzberg proposed nine schools of thought which dominate the present strategic thinking in organizations. These schools of thought try to provide diversity as to how strategic thinking is developed, formulated, improved and finally implemented in organizations. These schools were made keeping in mind the basis behind their thinking. The ten schools of thought are as follows-
Mintzberg divided these nine schools of thought into two groups namely, the perspective and the descriptive schools. The Design, positioning and planning school constitute the prescriptive school and the other schools namely, Cognitive, entrepreneurial, Political, learning, environmental and cultural schools constitute the descriptive school of thought. The difference has been made on the basis of the main theme behind each of these schools of thought.
The field of strategic planning was also studied by Whittington. Whittington proposed a strategic matrix in which he made four divisions namely, classical management, Evolutionary management, Systemic and process. He stated that the proponents of each of these theories focused on different beliefs and measures that must be analyzed while framing a strategy. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More