Descriptive and Prescriptive Schools of Thought - Assignment Example

Descriptive and Prescriptive Schools of Thought Varying approaches have been made towards defining the expression strategy-making. There are two main views to this and these include schools of thought by the names descriptive and prescriptive. The former makes a description on how persons make strategies while the latter is all about making a prescription on how strategic behavior should be. Under descriptive school are cognitive, entrepreneurial, power, learning, environmental and cultural schools. The perspective school, on the other hand has positioning, planning and design schools. (Willauer, 2005 pp11, 12) The study is set out to look at these two aforementioned schools of strategy making and they are going to be tackled in the order in which they are presented. An extensive and detailed focus is to be used in the study to try to show the reader or the use of this study an ease in trying to understand. Henry Mintzberg is the major focus of this particular study and his works on the same topic will be put into account. The first to describe is the descriptive school of the process of strategy making and then the study will move to the prescriptive. The various schools under the descriptive school are going to be put into the vivid observation of the study. The work of Henry Mintzberg is to be the main contributor to this. To this front Cognitive school, which falls under descriptive school of formation of strategy focuses on the things happening in the head of a human being which helps him/her manage a strategy. The entrepreneurial school portrays the process of making of strategy as visionary and that calls for a leader who is strong. The power school has its concentration upon exploitation of power and conflict alike. Learning school seeks a strategy to get into a process of learning in a collective manner. The environmental school has an opinion that the formation of strategy happens as a passive reaction to forces emanating from external sources. Lastly, cultural school puts into consideration the cooperative and collective view of the process of strategy making. (Mintzberg, 1994 pp3, 4) There are about nine thought schools for strategic management and which do not agree in their tackling of this topic. This is according to Mintzberg, Henry. They approach the whole issue differently. The presumptions of all of these schools are worlds apart. For example, the prescriptive school’s design school is the sole school to identify with when it comes to the SWOT analysis developing. By SWOT it means to refer to the internal STRENGTHS of a firm, internal WEAKNESSES of a given firm, OPPORTUNITIES from externally and the THREATS going in tandem. The external factors are derived from the market a business is operating while the internal ones are a business’ unique features. The school of design model’s data has proven applicable in any upcoming market’s scenario as well as in the forming of the analysis of the opportunities arising from inside of the firm. As mentioned earlier the major driver of this school and the aid to its navigation is the accomplishing of the central position of internal opportunities and the external situations. The management of a firm comes up with the strategy with the person chairing the management performing an essential role. (Rickards, 1999 p128)Forming the strategy involves development, formalizing as well as putting the plans in work. In the planning school, the deriving of the strategy has the chairman not playing a very vital role. The management members (that is, the directors) also do not play a huge role. The main runners of the process are planners sourced from the members of the organization’s staff. The core of the planning school is cybernetics and system theory. The school of design has nothing similar to the planning school. This is because the design school is wholly based upon the actual practice. Thus, for design school, unlike the school of planning, is not based on a particular basis. A well formulated strategy is one which impacts on the surrounding environment by way of rectifying the organizational operations to suit the strategy or by stimulating it, regardless of whether or not the strategy has been planned. (Lechner, 2006 pp9-38) The write out is set out to discuss the demarcation between the descriptive and the prescriptive schools with regards to strategic management. The take of most people is that firms cannot depend in totality upon the formally set prescriptive system while coming up and putting into work various strategies. This is an approach that can be considered as integrated and therefore doing things strategically and in return raising the chances of attaining success. Defining socially made organizations like religion, culture as well as management has proven itself an uphill task. This also is the situation in strategies of any business despite numerous experts trying to come up with a solution to the predicament and so far not making any significant progress. McMillan argued that the attempt to define strategy by utilizing the approach of reductionist was doomed. To him they (scientists applying this approach) did not have a tangible way to come up with their conclusions. For example, he said that the scenario was like that of scientists trying to determine that something was an elephant by the mere touch of it. One of these scientists would make a conclusion that an elephant was made up of a trunk only while the other the legs and thus, neither of the two came up with a total description. So as to reach a comprehensive definition, thus, a phenomenological perspective in describing strategy is advisable. (Volberda and Elfring, 2001, p8) Mintzberg approached this whole issue from a philosophical point of view and to this he split strategic business thought in to ten schools. He explained them in both ideological and historical way. Most of the scholars who derived the theories had a particular interest in the formation of the analytical strategy. Henry Mintzberg’s first three categories of schools were prescriptive and their main concern was not how the strategies form but how they were supposed to be formulated. The biggest of the premises categorized under prescriptive school is the performance claim. Performance claim states that if a firm utilizes a systematic way of planning a strategy, it is most likely that it realizes an above average business returns. The schools under the main prescriptive school are celebrated most for their impact upon the formulation of processes. These have not yet come up with an explanation with regards to the execution of strategy procedure and the application of the same, though. (Mintzberg, 1990) The prescriptive school of strategy management includes these schools under it: Positioning school; which involves systems of strategy as the analytical process, Planning school; which has systems of strategy as a formal process and Design school; which takes the systems of strategy as the conception process. The descriptive schools presented by Mintzberg on the other hand are six in number. These are; The school of learning; which has the systems of strategy as an emergent process, The school of cognizance; which has the systems of strategy as a mental process, The school of entrepreneurial; which has the systems of strategy as a visionary process, The school of environment; which has these systems as a reactive process, The school of power; which has the systems of strategy as a negotiation process, and The school of culture; which has the systems’ strategy as a collective process. The use of Mintzberg’s categorization is merited for its excellent definition as well as the generic overview of the field if strategic management in entirety. The categorization possesses strengths like the provision of a vital illumination upon the characteristics and the origin of the mentioned schools that aid in the formation of strategy. More so it enhances an in-depth understanding, exploitation as well as appreciation of the differing approaches of strategic management. This categorization by Mintzberg is limited since ample categorization of the strategic field is a possibility. Another limitation is that the budding strategists may get discouraged by the nine schools due to their complex nature. Whittington, on the other hand is of the view that there are four thought schools. He enlisted them as processual, evolutionary, systematic and classical schools. The classical approach the philosophy used is the self interest economy kind. In the rational analysis, formal planning is obtained. In classical school, the driving force is the maximization of profits. The systematic approach stands as the most recent as well as the most optimistic in comparison to the other enlisted schools due to its focus. It recognizes the sensitivity nature and the plurality of results. The results are sensitive in the social view and these are known to influence on the cultural aspects. The approach of processual has similarity to the pragmatic view of things in its approaches. The main argument under this school is that strategy is always seen in the human acts while in the business firm as opposed to externally. Change has to be adopted due to the complex nature of business firms or institutions. Lastly, the evolutionary type of approach school has a perspective that is the most serious of all schools. Basically, business organizations are viewed as unable to prospect as well as respond to changes in the environment. Therefore, choices are made by the external factors. The best of the ends of this school is the optimization of the interaction between the business and the market environment. (Wittington, 1993) This write-out is in support of the descriptive strategy since it views it as the most popular. The conclusion is drawn from the fact that it has proven easy to make decisions using this approach in many levels. However, the study does not brush off the fact that if an action is failing, it definitely needs the prescriptive school approach to detect as well as analyse the negative factors bringing about the situation. Work Cited: Lechner, Christoph A Primer to Strategy Process Research. Cuvillier Verlag Gottingen. (2006). pp36-38. Mintzberg, Henry. (1990). The manager's job: folklore and fact. Edition reprint Harvard Business Review Reprint Service. Mintzberg, Henry. The rise and fall of strategic planning: reconceiving roles for planning, plans, planners. Edition illustrated. Simon and Schuster, 1994. pp3,4. Rickards, Tudor Creativity and the management of change. Blackwell Publishers Inc. (1999).p72. Volberda, Henk Wijtze and Elfring, Tom. Rethinking strategy. SAGE Publications Ltd. Edition 2, illustrated. (2001). pp8, 9. Whittington, Richard. What is strategy, and does it matter? South-Western, Cengage Learning. (2001). p128. Willauer, Bianca. Consensus as key success factor in strategy making. DUV, 2005. pp11,12. Read More