Strategy, Business Information, and Analysis - Coursework Example

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Strategy is one of the most critical elements that a business requires in order to address business challenges in the modern world. This paper reviews three aspects which include what is strategy, importance of strategy for business, and different ways that a business plans in order to develop a comprehensive, effective and efficient strategy. The essay concludes that consultants and theorists have still failed in arriving to a uniform answer to these three aspects of the study. INTRODUCTION Strategy is the core of every business. The importance of the strategy can only be ascertained from the fact that success or failure of an organization largely depends on the strategy development and its execution. With the incremental and critical importance attributed to the strategy, practitioners, experts, consultants, theorists and management gurus and the whole community of management discipline has not been able to come up with a unified theory about three critical elements. The referred three critical elements of what is strategy, importance and role of strategy in organization and way to effectively develop a strategy are still under constant debate with a contrasting view (David, 2007). Interestingly, a review in the states that dominant persons who have defined the basic pillar of the strategy, Michael Porter and Henry Mintzberg, have influenced the strategy mainly for the clarity in writing down their relevant ideas only (Moore, 2011). Moreover, there is debate on the discipline of strategy, and it is yet to be agreed upon whether strategy is a science, art, humanity or management. Hence, this essay takes into account the debate related to the contrasting views about the elements of strategy, its role and overall process of crafting strategy in the business. SECTION 1 – WHAT IS STRATEGY Strategy is the system that enables individuals and businesses to arrive at the planned objective. This simple definition of strategy has been widely addressed by various practitioners and consultants from different perspectives who have presented their own views. This very core element of business is yet to be decided whether strategy is a new or the oldest discipline of management science (Grant, 2010). Various perspectives about what is strategy are depicted in the image below: Hence, with so many perspectives about strategy, as defined, it can be safely stated that not one of the practitioners who put forward the above definitions clearly knows what actually the definition of strategy is? With this well left behind, the next section takes into account some of the widely known views about strategy: A) MINTZBERG’S 5Ps In the year 1987, Mintzberg put forward the definition of strategy that was based on 5 Ps. These five Ps were encapsulated into five different dimensions that strategy is presumed to take into account. Though being different, the five perspectives are found to be interrelated. The five Ps of strategy are as follows (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2008): 1. Plan: towards a certain action 2. Ploy: A mere intent-led action to outpace a competitor 3. Pattern: a defined set of actions taken in a particular pattern 4. Position: To ascertain the certain position of a company 5. Perspective: Not only position but a position as a result of perspective that the company derives from its external environment. The above view of strategy from Mintzberg was based on the criticism that it posed to earlier definitions of strategy. According to Mintzberg, traditional definitions of strategy were widely driven by idea of control and the required level of direction (Mintzberg and Waters, 1998). The role of Mintzberg in the defining strategy is critical as it was based on the long research of 10 years about ways with which strategy is formed in the company (Shrapnel, 2000). Though Mintzberg contradicted to the idea of control in defining strategy, however, the definition put forward by Mintzberg is itself not unidirectional. For example, the strategy as a plan tends to be something for the long terms while ploy requires it to adapt every time a move from a competitor is expected or noted. Similarly, a consistent pattern may not always bring business success while the painstaking exercise of strategy is undertaken to win success in a competitive environment. For example, consistent stream of actions from Microsoft has taken the company from a position of leader in technology to a position where a company is striving for survival. Hence, the definition from Mintzberg is a self-contradictory definition. Contrary to this fact, the flexibility that Mintzberg has offered to the strategy has opened a wider playing field for strategy development. B) EVOLUTION It is still contrasting to say that strategy is an oldest and the newest field of management science. Elfring & Volberda (2001) had stated that discipline of management sciences has become a widely attended research topic in addition to attention from managers, since last few decades. The distinction that strategy evolution has noted in comparison with other disciplines is the fact that strategy has evolved in multiple dimensions. Therefore, unlike other disciplines that are intended to improve their lacking areas, strategy has kept on adding dimensions to its portfolio while retaining differences. For example, the book entitled, “Handshakes across the Sea: Cross-cultural Negotiating for Business Success” is developed to assess the differences between the strategies on Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans (Edward, Bowman, & Thomas, 2001). The evolution of strategy to-date is being characterized into ten different schools of thoughts. Evolving school of thoughts are following the direction where strategy  is moving from planned and controllable approach from an external perspective and towards unpredictable one and towards natural from rational aspect from the internal perspective (Freeman, 2010). Mintzberg has defined the overall evolution of strategy under 10 schools of thoughts which are as follows (Weigl, 2008): (Weigl, 2008) Each school of thought has taken its defining pillar from a different basis ranging from biology to anthropology and psychology. Therefore, strategy has leveraged its basis from diverse discipline that has contributed in difficulty to arrive at a unified definition. Moreover, each school of thought has contributed a valuable idea to define and craft a strategy though the fact remains that each idea is also faced with the certain limitations.  C) SCHOOLS OF STRATEGIC THINKING – INSIDE OUT / OUTSIDE IN In 1980s, the era of competition and entrepreneurship, strategic thinking took a shift from an inside-out approach to the outside-in due to the rising role and impact of external environmental factors.  This divergence in the school of thought is also determined as the Dynamic Capability School. The outside in approach focussed importance on the environment while the inside-out approach believed that constantly changing environment can only be dealt with strengthened internal capabilities (Elfring & Volberda, 2001).   Evaluation and Critical Analysis In an attempt to define strategy, the various schools of strategies were reviewed. Each school of thought defining strategy was found to have its own role as well as the implication. For instance, though Mintzberg contradicted to the idea of control in the defining strategy, however, the definition put forward by Mintzberg is itself not a unidirectional one. For example, the strategy as a plan tends to be something for the long term while ploy requires it to adapt every time a move from a competitor is expected or noted. Similarly, a consistent pattern may not always bring business success while the painstaking exercise of strategy is undertaken to win success in a competitive environment (Kay, McKiernan, & Faulkner, 2006). For instance, Apple Inc has won the position of leading technology player in the world. The strategy of the company has not followed the development perspective aspect discussed in the Mintzberg School of though. Apple followed its plan to change the industries and won the battle. Company transformed music industry that was once led by Sony” Walkman by introducing iPod. On the other hand, Samsung focused on external environmental factors and pursued the strategy under the impact of the external environment. Moreover, Farjoun (2001) held view that that contradicts the idea of Mintzberg. Farjoun (2001) put forward view that though the strategy and strategy management is widely developed with the theory, the current environment requires strategy definition development in a way that is widely expressed and untreated with the theoretical assumptions. While, the third perspective put forward from the Ginter & White (2004) entails that both normative and perspective of strategy shall be combined to form a much wider framework that is capable to address all possible aspects within a single definition of strategy. DOES STRATEGY MATTER This section takes into account the contrasting ways of looking and developing the strategy. A) Planned, rational and irrational approaches Rational approach supports the planned strategic management process in the organization that is performed in a formal manner. However, irrational strategy process includes numerous dynamic factors that can impact planning process such as psychology, culture, social, political and legal, etc. The irrational approach includes no linear planning or hierarchy based decision making so as to act accordingly with by the time changing situations. Emergent strategy is one of the advanced irrational approaches (Greenspan, 2000). Rational approach provides a formal pathway to analyze environmental factors such as using PESTLE, Porter’s five forces model to evaluate the competition, industry, and the environment of the business in order to align strategy according to these factors. This approach in turn is widely contradicted and criticized by many researchers who highlighted the intrinsic limitations of this model (March, 2006). Since the organization’s culture changes over time along with continuous change in psychological perspectives, political situations, the planned strategy would fail to compete with the future developments. The Dynamics of Paradigm change describes that symbols, rituals, culture, processes bring major changes in the organization and thus its strategies need to be modified by the time. Now that the companies are dynamic and operate globally encountering the challenges of coping with continuous change in the system, the irrational approach to strategy is appropriate so as to deal with every changing situation, considering internal as well as external environmental factors (Priem, Rasheed, & Kotulic, 1995). Interestingly, when it comes to the matter of rational and dynamic, there cannot be a singly defined answer. Hamel (1996) puts it more creatively and states that the fact which is matters about strategy is the element of quest that is able to deal with the question of changing environment while maintaining its systems. For instance, Fujifilm managed to deal with the photographic film industry leader then Kodak and the reason that led to the lost of throne by Kodak to Fujifilm was its rigidity towards the rational approach in its strategy. However, this does not mean that companies shall hip hop to the every changing environment. B) Emergent and Rational versus Scenario Planning Emergent strategy is the strategy that appears during the course of business as a result of some action plans (Moore, 2011). The strategy comes into sight as business goals and objectives collide and hold a shifting reality instead of being planned. This strategy keeps behaviours and plans consistent and aligned with a pattern that is required for the process rather than intended. Organization alters its processes and thus alters strategies as per required situation to best imply the action plans. Rational strategic planning is position based strategy that relies on assumed plans (Pearce & Robinson, 2000). This develops a strategic plan while considering the environmental factors along with upcoming opportunities and threats. This helps to align action plans with organizational objectives. On the other hand, scenario planning is the process to develop various possible outlooks and observations of the future and to assess the consequences of future possible events on business (Chermack, Lynham, & Ruona, 2001). Scenario planning assists managers to evaluate the future opportunities and threats that are dangling and prepare for the future developments (Wright, 2000). There have been a number of various idea reported in support and contradiction to scenario and emergent strategy. For instance, according to Mintzberg & Waters (1998), effective strategies can never be planned since the business conditions and environmental factors change over the time (Stubner, Meißner and Wulf, 2010). Consequently, this change causes new strategies to formulate as according to the current situation. To formulate the best strategy before the event has occurred is impossible since no one can forecast future developments. However, emergent strategy involves the process of intuition, informal learning and creativity. According to De Wit and Meyer (2010), emergent strategy involves pattern of actions that focus on experimentation and parallel initiatives and implement learning based action plans; whereas, scenarios strategy involves hierarchical decision-making process that propose their action plan based on optimal resource allocation and anticipation of future events through proper programming. For example in the view of the changing business environment and its increasing complexity with every passing day, Whittington (1993) refers that business that business shall focus on the scenario planning in order to be ready to deal with any of the widely possible business climate. While, the success of the most of the Japanese firms that is widely derived on the basis of single principle of efficiency generation, does not have strategy (Whittington, 1993). C) Value Innovation (BOS) versus Red Ocean Kim and Mauborgne (2005a) explained the concept of Blue Ocean and Red Ocean strategy. They recognized the Blue Ocean strategy as a contributor to value innovation approach which is defined by available market space, demand creation, exploring opportunities for growth and profitability. The concept of Blue Ocean is based on expanding the industry boundaries that develop in red ocean approach. Moreover, there is no relevant competition in the market for them as they serve the market as a leader (Kim et al., 2008). Organizations, those who implement blue ocean strategy, do not assume the competition as their target or standard. Instead, they innovate and lead the market by creating value which is called value innovation. Such companies set the new standard of competition by introducing value creation processes and make the existing competition irrelevant and lead to new and unknown market space (Sheehan & Vaidyanathan, 2009). For example, the low cost airlines that have recently developed considerable space in the market have gone beyond the existing standards of the airline industry. Pioneer low cost airlines offered value to the untapped market with readiness to travel by airline but were restricted by the constantly rising price factor. The development of a totally new ocean brought many low cost airlines such as Ryan Air a leadership position. Contrary to this, companies incorporating red ocean strategy perform in order to compete with their existing rivals and account for greater market share. These companies tend to create value-cost trade-off. As the competition increases due to rising in demand, the market space becomes populated results in reduced growth opportunities. Products turn into commodities, and fierce competition makes the ocean bloody red. As this approach tends to defend the current position of the company, it aligns all the operations of the company with its strategies. (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005b). In the similar airline industry in which companies have won success with blue ocean strategy and value innovation, airlines like Emirates have generated further success in similar Red Ocean. Hence, the two polar yet successful example creates a dilemma about the dominance of the mode of strategy that matters for success D) CORE COMPETENCY & CAPABILITIES Core competencies are the level of proficiencies that facilitate the companies to offer unique value to its customers (Boyatzis, 2008). Competencies incorporate the collective learning of the organization, specifically in integrating various sets of technologies and production skills, when producing a wide variety of products (Naylor, 2000). With the high level of competencies, company can gain greater competitive advantage which provides excessive benefits to the company over other companies (Ljungquist, 2007). To set the successful and effective strategies and future of business, it is essential to identify the company’s core competencies (Hafeez, Zhang, & Malak, 2002). Moreover, the determination of company’s core strengths can help the company to invest in strengths so as to improve their overall productivity and differentiate them from other businesses (Helfat & Peteraf, 2003). Companies can efficiently use its core capabilities and competencies to make important business decisions, implement strategies in a way to get better outcomes, improve corporate image and create customer value and gain loyalty (Valentine, 2013; Ambrosini, & Bowman, 2009). For example, the Walmart has developed a core competency of generating efficiencies across the each element of the supply chain. Resultantly, it has won the leadership in the grocery industry across the globe. As a matter of fact success of Walmart is a result of years of consistent investment, both in terms of finance as well as expertise, to achieve this leadership position. Hence, it is a result of strategy. Moreover, in case of absence of strategy, Walmart would not have won the position it currently holds. Contrary, the success of the most of the Japanese companies without strategy is another reality. Interestingly, Japanese company Sony that went other way and developed a strategy is constantly facing challenges and is struggling. Therefore, would make more sense to state that strategy matters only to the point where developer is well equipped with the abilities that can ingrained art and science to strategy. SECTION 3 – HOW IS STRATEGY CONSTRUCTED? Despite these contrary views on the ways of viewing strategy, the strategy construction is one of the most deeply attended areas of the modern business. Businesses hire top strategist with experience and proven expertise to develop a strategy that guarantees success to the business. Important to mention is the fact that none of the strategy guarantees success. The strategists and businesses nowadays have accounted a new phenomenon where success is reaped by putting the elements of various factors in a success bowl. Therefore, strategy is developed in a planned way that takes in A) Crafting strategy from a planned / rational approach Rational approach is the systematic approach to develop strategies, that predicts the future developments and undertakes the environmental factors while developing action plan. The rationale approach requires systematically addressing the areas with scientifically tested and theoretically underpinned ideas tools as follows: This approach believes on hierarchy of the system, to develop strategies and implement them at all levels of the organization (Gamble, Strickland, & Thompson, 2007). For example, for example, For example, General Electric and Siemens planned to capture the wider market share in the industry. With this aim at work, both companies invested heavily in terms of expertise, experience and finances in the related domains of engineering, strengthened their Research and development capabilities. Moreover, both companies with rationale approach at work took measure to aspects like marketing, human resources and support, and servicing to ensure their dominants share. The success of the General Electric is a result of the long term planned approach for each of its function and the domain of business (Stuckey, and White, 1993). B- Crafting strategy from an emergent / umbrella approach Emergent approach to strategy is an unplanned approach that emerges at any point in time owing to some action plan. Organization modifies its processes and thus strategies as per required situation to formulate the action plans (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2012). Successful companies not only follow their defined rationale approach, instead it equally takes into account the impact of the environmental factors. The rationale strategy process of companies that have reported long term sustainability and success always offers the flexibility to redefining the elements of strategy as required by the emergent approach. For instance, the survival of Intel is reported to be the result of emergent strategy of Andy Grove to direct the company towards the microprocessors. From the information compiled in memoir by Andy Grove’s, Only The Paranoid Survive, the author asserted the unavoidable need of defining company’s strategy in line with the emerging changes. The Author noted that un-escapable factor and stated that new emergent strategy that ensured survival was result of the changes that line managers have already integrated. Therefore, ignoring such fact would have directed the company and its rationally developed strategy into polar directions (Satell, 2013). B) Irrationality in the crafting strategy According to Murray and Grimsley, strategy is the process of regular and efficient adaptations to various approaches and plans to deal with the changing circumstances and business conditions. Since the businesses operate in increasingly changing environments, they encounter a high degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and risk in business processes. Formulation of strategies involves the emotional feeling of customers. The strategy that hurts emotionality of employees and customers will be an unsuccessful one. Formulation of strategy, either rational or irrational tends to incorporate people’s perceptions, self-belief, quantitative and non-quantitative elements of the organization (Milićević & Ilić, 2010). Such models require integrating irrationality in strategy as well in addition to the element of rationality and emergent element. Irrational strategies do not bound to any structured processes or methods to formulate business strategies. This involves the formation of the right decision at the right time so as to cope up with changing business environment and circumstances (Thompson & Martin, 2010). Importantly, irrationality in the strategy does not refer taking measures that drown the company. Instead, it requires taking action that appears to more promising than the well developed and defined strategy with rationality. For example, high level of rationality found in the General Electric’s strategy is employed to save the success that was reaped by Jack Welch’s irrational approach. Welch refused to follow the static and stagnant systems that do not ensure success. Hence, strategy for the sake of rationality and not performance was not accepted by JW (Satell, 2013). C) Value Innovation is affecting strategic planning process Rising challenges in the business environment pressures business to consistently consider aspects that create higher value for the business. Value innovation in the business in integrated where cost to the business is reduced while value to the buyers or customers is also increased. While the generating value drives are crafting strategy for the business, businesses in a contemporary world. Businesses are faced with squeezed opportunities and increased complexities (Mason, 2007). Value innovation or Blue Ocean Strategy enables businesses with open fields for crafting a strategy in any direction, provided where value in terms of reduced cost and increased value can be derived. As the blue ocean strategy lacked academic firmness, and so another concept of disruptive innovation was presented by Clayton Christensen in 1977 while the most recent idea for the value innovation was presented by C.K. Prahalad in (2004) in terms of experience innovation. Hence, irrespective of the definition or the role of strategy that was underpinned by the traditional experts, the modern businesses in crafting their business strategy are directed by factor of value and imply every aspect from where it is available (Dye and  Sibony, 2007).Hence, the above cited example of low cost airlines that allowed the firm to explore the business opportunities for success. This implies that objective of strategy is to drive success in contrast to the debate of system that brings success. Strategy development shall be for the sake of business performance in contrast to following the theoretically ascertained idea only. CONCLUSION: Strategy is the direction on the basis of which business arrives at its objective. However, direction is not being directed in the single way. A detailed review of the strategy definition, its role and ways of development is only valuable to the point where it is able to convince the business for success. Businesses have in detailed understood, experienced, and witnessed that rigidity to the models and frameworks does not promise the success to the business. Hence, various theorists are also aligned with the idea to formulate a formula or recipe where success of business is the outcome of the strategy. This objective has led the consultants to test and trial new idea in collaboration with the already developed systems. REFERENCES: Ambrosini, V., & Bowman, C. (2009). What are dynamic capabilities and are they a useful construct in strategic management?. International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 29-49 Boyatzis, R. E. (2008). Competencies in the 21st century. Journal of Management Development, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 5-12. Bromiley, P. (2009). The behavioral foundations of strategic management. John Wiley & Sons. Chermack, T. J., Lynham, S. A., & Ruona, W. E. (2001). A review of scenario planning literature. Futures Research Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 2. David, F. (2007). Strategic Management: Concepts and cases. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. De Wit, R and Meyer, A. (2010). Strategy: Process, Content, Context. London: International Thomson Business Press. Dye, R., and  Sibony, O. (2007). How to improve strategic planning. [online] Available from: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/how_to_improve_strategic_planning [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Edward, H., Bowman, H. S., & Thomas, H. (2001). The domain of strategic management: history and evolution. Handbook of strategy and management,31. Freeman, R. E. (2010). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Cambridge University Press. Gamble, J., Strickland, A., & Thompson, A. (2007). Crafting & executing strategy. New York, McGraw-Hill. Graetz, F. (2002). Strategic thinking versus strategic planning: towards understanding the complementarities. Management decision, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 456-462. Grant, R. M. (2010). Contemporary strategy analysis and cases: text and cases. John Wiley & Sons. Greenspan, P. (2000). Emotional Strategies and Rationality*. Ethics, vol. 110, no. 3, pp. 469-487. Hafeez, K., Zhang, Y., & Malak, N. (2002). Core competence for sustainable competitive advantage: a structured methodology for identifying core competence. Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 28-35. Hamel, G. (1996). Competing for the Future. Harvard Business Press. Helfat, C. E., & Peteraf, M. A. (2003). The dynamic resource‐based view: Capability lifecycles. Strategic management journal, vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 997-1010. Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2012). Strategic Management Cases: Competitiveness and Globalization. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western Pub. Johnson, G., Scholes, K., & Whittington, R. (2008). Exploring corporate strategy: Text and cases. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall Kay, J., McKiernan, P., & Faulkner, D. (2006). The history of strategy and some thoughts about the future. The Oxford handbook of strategy: A strategy overview and competitive strategy, vol. 27. Kim & Mauborgne. (2005b). Blue Ocean Strategy. Boston. Harvard Business School Publishing. Kim, S., In, H. P., Baik, J., Kazman, R., & Han, K. (2008). VIRE: Sailing a blue ocean with value-innovative requirements. Software, IEEE, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 80-87. Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2005a). Value innovation: a leap into the blue ocean. Journal of business strategy, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 22-28. Ljungquist, U. (2007). Core competency beyond identification: presentation of a model. Management Decision, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 393-402. March, J. G. (2006). Rationality, foolishness, and adaptive intelligence. Strategic management journal, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 201-214. McManus, J., White, D., & Botten, N. (2008). Managing global business strategies: A twenty-first-century perspective. Oxford: Chandos Milićević, V., & Ilić, B. (2010). New strategic management and global innovation economy. Strategic Management, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 18-27 Mintzberg, H., & Waters, J. (1998). Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. The strategy reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 20-34. Moore, C. (2011). Porter or Mintzberg: Whose View of Strategy Is the Most Relevant Today? [online] Available from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2011/03/28/porter-or-mintzberg-whose-view-of-strategy-is-the-most-relevant-today/ [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Naylor, R. J. (2000). Core Competencies: What They Are and How To Use Them. Public Libraries, vol. 39, no. 2 . Pearce, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2000). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control. Irwin/McGraw-Hill. Priem, R. L., Rasheed, A. M., & Kotulic, A. G. (1995). Rationality in strategic decision processes, environmental dynamism and firm performance. Journal of Management, vol. 21, no. 5, p. 913-929. Satell, G. (2013). The Evolution Of Strategy. Forbes, Available from http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/09/14/the-evolution-of-strategy/ [Accessed July 23, 2014] Sheehan, N. T., & Vaidyanathan, G. (2009). Using a value creation compass to discover “Blue Oceans”. Strategy & Leadership, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 13-20. Shrapnel, R. (2000). A Concise Summary of Strategic Management Thought. [online] Available from: http://www.richardshrapnel.com/Resources_files/Richard%20Shrapnel%20-%20monograph%20-%20concise%20Summary%20Strategic%20Management%20Thinking.pdf [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Stubner, S., Meißner, P., Wulf, T. (2010). A Scenario-based Approach to Strategic Planning – Integrating Planning and Process Perspective of Strategy. [online] Available from: http://www.hhl.de/fileadmin/texte/publikationen/arbeitspapiere/hhlap0098.pdf [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Stuckey, J., and White, D. (1993). When and when not to vertically integrate. McKinsey, Available from http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/when_and_when_not_to_vertically_integrate [Accessed July 23, 2014] Thompson, J. L., & Martin, F. (2010). Strategic management: awareness & change. UK: Cengage Learning EMEA Valentine, E. (2013). Competencies, core competence, capabilities and dynamic capabilities. [online] Available from: http://www.enterprisegovernance.com.au/blog/competencies-core-competence-capabilities-and-dynamic-capabilities [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Volberda, H. and Elfring, T. (n.d.). Elfring, T., & Volberda, H. W. (2001). Schools of thought in strategic management: Fragmentation, integration or synthesis.. [online] Available from: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/9388_006130ch1.pdf [Accessed 12 July 2014]. Weigl, T. (2008). Strategy, structure and performance in a transition economy: an institutional perspective on configurations in Russia. Springer. Whittington, R. (1993). What is strategy-and does it matter?. Routledge. Wright, A. D. (2000). Scenario planning: a continuous improvement approach to strategy. Total Quality Management, vol. 11, no. 4-6, pp. 433-438. Read More