Perspectives in Strategic Management

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All Rights Reserved. Perspectives in Strategic Management. A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide. Through the Wilds of Strategic Management.
Perspectives in Strategic Management A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management Vaibhav Shekhar* Researchers in strategic management have tried to categorize various streams of thought in this field into few groups for better assimilation. Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel is one of the outstanding books in this area which coalesces strategic thinking from 1960s into ten broad schools of thought. The purpose of this article is to critically analyze this book and to delve deeper so as to gain further insights in different streams of business strategy. Further, the article also compares different streams of thought presented by different authors along with the thought process presented in the book.

Introduction Researchers in strategic management have tried to categorize various streams of thought in this field into groups for better assimilation (Porter, 1980; Christensen et al., 1982; Schwenk, 1988; and Mintzberg, 1994). Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel (1998) is an outstanding work in this area which coalesces strategic thinking from 1960s into 10 broad schools of thought. Henry Mintzberg is considered as one of the premier management thinkers. He is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University and professor of organization at institut européen d'administration des affaires (INSEAD) in France. He is the author of several seminal books, like, Mintzberg on Management and The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Bruce Ahlstrand is a Professor of Management at the Trent University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of The Quest for Productivity and co-author of Human Resource Management in the Multi-Divisional Company. Joseph Lampel is the founding member of the Institute for Research on Emergent Policy Processes, and a senior Research Fellow of the International Project in Management of Engineering and Construction. He is also a Professor of Strategy at City University Business School, London. The purpose of writing this book was two-fold: to provide a broad view of the process of strategy formation as the authors narrowly focussed themselves on a single perspective and to facilitate a guide which will help both the scholars as well as the practitioners, in understanding distinct points of view in the area of strategy formation. This book is well conceived and attempts to arrive at consolidated picture comprising all the aspects of strategy formation. According to them, a strategy is a plan, a pattern, a position, a perspective and a ploy. In this book, the authors have also justified the significance of strategic planning for any organization. According to them, setting up of direction, focussing * Research Scholar, The Icfai E-mail: [email protected]

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of effort, defining the organization and providing consistency are the main contributions that strategic planning makes for an organization. In this book, the authors have looked at the process of strategy formation from 10 different angles (each termed as a school of thought). Each angle has a unique perspective that focuses on one major aspect. In addition, the book has been categorized into three parts. The first three schools are considered as ‘prescriptive’ schools that discuss how a strategy needs to be formulated, next six schools (4-9) are concerned with a specific aspect of strategy formation rather than prescribing an ideal strategic behavior, whereas, the configuration school alone constitutes the third group that integrates the various elements of strategy formation. The authors have first discussed the various elements in each of the above schools and then critiqued them by bringing out their pros and cons. The objective of this paper is to critically analyze the 10 schools of thought as espoused in this classic book and compare it with similar books in the domain of strategic literature.

The Design School Strategy formation, is all about establishing a fit between strength and weakness of an organization and the opportunities available in its external environment. Christensen et al. (1982) are among the major proponents of this school. This school proposes a model of strategy formation that seeks to attain a fit between an organization’s internal capabilities and possibilities external to the organization, i.e., the need to bring together the organization’s internal state with its external expectations. The above model places primary emphasis on the appraisals of the external and internal situations, the former uncovering the threats and opportunities in the environment while the later revealing strengths and weaknesses of the organization. The external environment, includes technological, economic, social and political aspects of a company’s environment and issues of forecasting and scanning. This school also considers the role played by managerial values and social responsibility as important in the process of strategy making. Rumelt (1997), one of the proponents of this school, proposed a framework to evaluate strategy making. According to his framework, a strategy formulated should be consistent in terms of its goals and policies and must be adaptive to the changes in the organization’s environment, must provide and maintain competitive advantage in selected areas of activity and should be feasible. He also suggested a series of steps using which an organization can evaluate various alternatives available to it and hence, can select one which fits its internal strength and weakness with the opportunities in the environment.

Critique According to the proponents of this school, strategies should be deliberate, responsible for consciousness and control within an organization, simple and informal, explicit and unique and fully formulated and ready to be implemented. However, in the dynamic external environment, which is composed of competitors, government control, suppliers, customers, etc., as well as internal environment of an organization, following the above 44

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mentioned premises of design school may not augur well for an organization. In today’s hypercompetitive and dynamic external environment, an organization has to adapt to changes quickly enough to sustain a competitive edge over its competitors. This is in line with the observations made by Ansoff (1991). He found Mintzberg’s exposition on design school wanting on both methodology and applicability in current practices. In such a scenario by following the premises of design school, an organization may fall into the trap of inflexibility and non-adaptability and hence may go out of business. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is an example which, in spite of its earlier success, sold majority of its business because of its inconsistent structure and delay in introducing new products. It was due to this inadaptable nature that the company could not adapt quickly to the fast changing external environment characterized by a rapid change in technology and customer needs.

The Planning School According to this school, strategy is a plan or something equivalent—a direction, a guide or a course of action into the future. The planning school accepts most of the premises in the design school, however, the execution of strategy became formalized, almost mechanical in nature, like an elaborated sequence of steps. According to this school, strategy results from a controlled, conscious process of formal planning, decomposed into distinct steps, each delineated by checklist and supported by techniques. The Chief Executive holds the responsibility for the formulation of the overall process whereas, the execution rests with the staff planners and strategy resulting from this process has to be made explicit so that it can be implemented through detailed attention to objectives, budgets, programs and operating plans of various kinds.

Critique The formal nature of strategy formulation, control in the hands of a single individual and separation between formulization and implementation of strategy may result in strategy being inflexible, predeterminated and detached. The control in the hand of a single individual (CEO) and separation between formulation and implementation may result in conflict of interest between the CEO and the stakeholders (mainly implementers that are employees of the organization). Moreover, formalization of strategy may result in failure to predict changes in an organization’s environment leading to failure to predict possible discontinuities that may ultimately lead to what authors have rightly named as, “The Grand Fallacy of Strategic Planning”. General Electric (GE) was one of the most famous companies for strategic planning before 1980s. Its annual planning began on January 3 and ended on December 6 of each year. The top management used to formulate strategy and goals in general managers meetings that were held between January 3-5 every year. GE’s strategic planning also included continual review of planning after specified intervals, for example, review of corporate resources used to take place on June 25. However, this strategic planning model was dismantled by Jack Welch in early 1980s after he became the Chairman and CEO. Perspectives in Strategic Management A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

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The Positioning School This school added content to the premises proposed by the earlier school by emphasizing the strategy and not the process by which it is formulated. This school focussed on calculation specific selection of generic strategic position rather than on the development of integrated and unusual strategic perspective. It posits that only a few strategies can act as a position (one that can be defended against existing and/or future competition) for an organization in the economic market place in any given industry. It is these strategies that enable a firm to earn higher profits in the industry and provide it with a reservoir of resources that can expand and enlarge as well as consolidate its position. This premise resulted in this school ending with limited number of strategies or categories (known as generic strategies) like product differentiation, cost leadership and focus. However, Porter has been criticized for focussing only on traditionally big houses where effect of competition is the least. In addition, it gave little emphasis on political effects (both internal as well as external) on the strategy formation in an organization.

Critique The positioning school has been criticized on several fronts like its heavy inclination towards economic and quantifiable approach as opposed to social and political or even any non-quantifiable approach. This is evident from the emphasis of the majority of strategies on costs, for example, Boston Consultancy Group (BCG) matrix proposed strategies based on relative market share and industry growth. It was heavily criticized for its bias towards big business houses like Ford Motor Corporation, GE, etc., which ensured relative stability in the environment and its focus towards limited number of generic strategies that discourage formation of new strategies. Moreover, limiting the number of options available to the organizations in the form of three generic strategies goes against the concept of strategy being flexible and unique to an organization as proposed by the design school. This concept has been criticized by various researchers like Baden and Stopford (1992) and Miller (1992). These authors questioned the narrow focus of Porter’s concept of generic strategies. They cited examples of Caterpillar, Benetton and Toyota that became successful without following Porter’s notion of generic strategies. The success of these companies is not attributed to following generic strategies, but to following both cost leadership and differentiation strategies. The success of these firms suggests non-exclusive nature of Porter’s strategy. In addition, too much emphasis on quantitative methods results in ignorance of qualitative aspects like power, employee motivation and organizational culture.

The Entrepreneurial School The entrepreneurial school focuses on the leader and his vision. Exclusivity on a single leader is questionable, as visions can be set by a single or multiple founders of a company. The central construct of this school is vision: a mental representation of strategy, created or at least expressed in the head of the leader. This vision serves as an inspiration and gives a sense of what needs to be done—a guiding idea. Vision is more like an image rather 46

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than a plan that leaves it flexible for the leaders so that they can adapt to their experiences. This makes this school deliberate and emergent, deliberate in its broad lines and sense of direction and emergent in details so that these can be adapted en route. Proponents of this school saw personalized leadership based on strategic vision as the key to an organization’s success. Strategy exists in the mind of the leader and he singlemindedly promotes it and has complete control over its implementation so that changes can be brought in when necessary.

Critique This school has highlighted some of the critical aspects of strategy formation, most notably the proactive nature and role of personality, leadership and strategic vision. However, some deficiencies include dependence on single individual and narrow focus of strategic management, as power is vested with a single individual who might be enmeshed in operating details and may lose focus of ground realities. In addition, a leader may play different kinds of roles in an organization. He may be participative, democratic, autocratic, goal-oriented and situational. This school fails to discuss the above mentioned aspects of leadership and the types of role a leader must play under any given situation. Moreover, the authors should also discuss how the separation between formulation and implementation of strategy need to be dealt with in order to negate the disadvantages attached to this school of thought. Another critique of this school is that what some (top management which frames the vision) regard as a ‘vision’ can be seen as a pathology by others. Further, the vision formulation happens in the start-up firms. Large firms rarely re-evaluate or reframe their vision (McLarney and Shelley, 1991). Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Apple. He was a true visionary who created the first truly personal computer, the Apple, in his garage. From calculating federal taxes to executing individual business operations, Jobs lead a hardware revolution by reducing the size of computers to small boxes and introducing them to the masses. He was often criticized for his aggressive and demanding managerial style that led to his ouster from Apple in 1985. Jobs’ sacking is attributed to a boardroom coup after his power struggle with Sculley.

The Cognitive School This school probes into the mind of the strategist in order to understand strategic vision and how strategy is formed. According to this school, strategists are selftaught. They develop their knowledge, structure and thinking processes mainly through their experience. It is their experience that shapes their knowledge, their actions and their further experiences. This school has been viewed in two ways: an ‘objective’ way, which focuses on processing and structuring of the knowledge as an effort to produce some kind of motion picture of the world and a ‘subjective’ way which focus on interpretation of the events and behavior of the people around (customers). Perspectives in Strategic Management A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

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Critique This school has added a creative aspect to the process of strategy formation. It deals with how cognitive processes emerge in the form of concepts that shape how people deal with inputs from the environment. While Mintzberg and his colleagues framed the cognitive basis for strategic management, they missed out on the approach or systematic cognitive process to strategy formulation. In addition, cognitive school of thought does not consider collective way of strategy formulation and implementation. This results in this school being subjective in nature and hence, leads to distortion of information during transmission through various hierarchical levels of an organization. The formulators of the strategy, i.e., the top management, seldom visit ground level where the real action takes place. They rely heavily on information provided to them by managers at various levels. In such a scenario, the information they receive becomes biased and affects strategy formulation of an organization. However, interpretation of the same piece of information by different minds may simply look the same from different angles that may facilitate different alternatives for the top management and integration of complex information (Schwenk, 1988).

The Learning School This school considers strategy as an emerging process wherein people, sometimes individuals and sometimes groups come to learn about the situation as well as their organization’s capability of dealing with various kinds of situations. This school describes the process of strategy formation as a learning that takes place over a period of time. Strategy formation, according to this school, proceeds in an emergent fashion through behavior that stimulates thinking retrospectively, where the role of a leader is not to preconceive deliberate strategies, but to manage the process of strategic learning.

Critique Rapid changes in the environment require strategies and tactics to be flexible. Every strategy has some inherent weakness due to the conditions under which it is formulated. The changes in the above conditions are inevitable. Another important critique of the learning school is a concept called ‘learning myopia’ characterized by the tendency to overlook failures, distant futures and distant places (Levinthal and March, 1993). The Nokia vs. Motorola case is an example in this regard, wherein, the emergence of digital technology caught Motorola sleeping and Nokia took over as the leader. The strategy of Motorola revolved around old technology as it refused to take seriously the inroads of upstart digital competitors. This school offers a counterbalancing force to rational deliberateness, however, it is not free from criticism. Some researchers have described learning as purposeless and anti-strategic that may result in tactical manoeuvering, rather than strategic thinking. According to some, overemphasis on learning may undermine a coherent and perfectly viable strategy. Some researchers believe that learning may result in a formation that may no longer be wanted and some 48

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were of the view that focus of an organization should not only be on learning, but also on exploitation of learning in order to get on with regular work. Irrespective of various criticisms, this school is applicable in an organization that works in a highly complex environment and where knowledge required for strategy formation is widely diffused.

The Power School Here the word power refers to political power or the political relations surrounding an organization. The authors have distinguished between two branches of power, i.e., micro power and macro power. Micro power deals with the politics within an organization. It involves persuasion, bargaining and confrontation between the employees. Macro power, on the other hand, is the power exercised by an organization over other parties like alliance partners, suppliers, buyers, etc. This is done in order to negotiate the terms and conditions in its favor. The power school views strategy formation as a product of not a single architect but of a homogenous strategy team. It also suggests that strategy emerges from such a process that will not necessarily be opined, rather reflect the interest of the most powerful group in the organization.

Critique Power is an important element in the formation of strategy. There are many organizations where many actors have the power and inclination towards enhancing their own interests that might lead to conflicts within an organization, thereby resulting in strategic failure. In addition, by focussing too much on power, other important elements like leadership, culture, etc., gets sidelined in this school. This school also fails to address the effects of collusion (of both individuals and groups) within an organization that exist within every organization due to enduring differences in beliefs, values and interests. However, this school has broadened the view on strategy formation by introducing terms such as politics, collusion, coalition, etc., and also highlights the importance of politics in promoting strategic change.

The Cultural School Culture has been defined as the shared value that is reflected in traditions and habits as well as, more tangible manifestations—story, symbols, products, etc. According to this school, strategy formation is a process of social interaction, based on beliefs and understandings shared by the members of an organization. In an organization, beliefs are acquired by individuals through a process of acculturation or socialization, which is tacit and non-verbal, although sometimes reinforced by more formal indoctrination. As a result, strategy becomes prescriptive rooted in collective intentions (not necessarily explicit) and is reflected in the patterns by which deeply embedded resources or capabilities are protected and used for gaining a competitive advantage. Finally, it resists change in ideology and at best permits shift in an organization’s overall strategic perspective. Perspectives in Strategic Management A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

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Critique As mentioned, this school resists change in an organization’s ideology, hence, resistance to change can be cited as one of the major criticisms of this school. In addition, due to its prescriptive nature, this school fails to incorporate the concept of strategy as a learning process. This limits an organization’s capability of dealing with various kinds of situations. However, by discussing the constructs such as strategic drift, experimentation, reformulation and stabilization, this school has tried to address the issue of radical change in an organization that may guide an organization towards tackling the resistance. The authors seem correct in describing the culture as a resource of an organization that can provide a sustainable competitive advantage due to its imitability and causal ambiguous nature. This is evident from the example of success achieved by Japanese companies over their counterparts in the US and Europe.

The Environmental School This school brings out the overall view of strategy into balance by positioning environment as one of the central factors in the process alongside leadership and organization. It describes different dimensions of the environment facing strategists and also discusses their effect on strategy formation. This school emerged from the contingency theory that described the relationship between particular dimensions of the environment and specific attributed (structure) to the organization. This school hypothesized environment as a set of external forces that are central to the strategy making process, to which an organization must respond or else will be ‘selected out’.

Critique To remain existent, this school hypothesizes a continuous change in the environment to which every organization responds accordingly. However, in reality, if the environment of an organization is stable all the time, then it is not completely dynamic, for example, banking industry in India is regulated by norms laid down by RBI. Moreover, changes normally take place either in a certain aspect of the environment, like technology or after periodic intervals. The lack of ‘strategic choice’, as suggested by this school, can be countered with the argument that many organizations survive in the same environment using different strategies. This school also lays emphasis on the role of leadership and organization’s structure in the process of strategy formation. There is no doubt that the role of leaders becomes important in a situation marked by a sudden shift, as it is their vision that binds the organization and enables it to move forward. An example in this regard is the stand taken by Ratan Tata regarding the Singur controversy wherein, in order to protect his employees in the turbulent environment, he shifted the Tata Nano project elsewhere.

The Configuration School This school attempts to integrate learning from all previous schools. It has two sides viz., ‘configuration’ and ‘transformation’. The configuration side describes the states of an 50

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organization and its surrounding context, whereas, transformation describes the strategy making process. This is known as a configuration school mainly due to two reasons: (i) it describes how different dimensions of an organization cluster together under particular conditions to define states, models or ideal types; and (ii) how these different states get sequenced over time to define states, periods and organizational life cycle.

Critique This school makes an attempt to combine the premises of all the schools and presents an overall picture of strategy formation. This school has been criticized for its simplicity in terms of understanding and practice. It can be stated that proponents of this school have made many assumptions in order to explain complex phenomena that raises questions about its relevance in practical situations.

The Book in Totality Towards the end of this book, the authors have attempted to look at the wider picture comprising all 10 schools (Table 1) of strategy formation unlike earlier. They have compared each school with animals, e.g., design school with a spider, squirrel with the planning school, etc. The authors have discussed various issues that cropped up during the discussion of the schools, like the issue of generic strategy in a positioning school. To conclude, the authors have tried to understand various perspectives of strategy formation and view strategy formation as a single integrated process in order to see the whole picture. The book provides a more balanced view of strategy formation providing sufficient space to both prescriptive as well as descriptive views. Moreover, it helps a scholar to look at the field of strategic management from various angles instead of just one or two perspectives. This provides a better understanding of the subject. Though various issues emerged during the discussion of schools, no concrete solutions have been suggested by the authors.

Conclusion Other books in this area include The Rise and fall of Strategic Planning, by Mintzberg and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. The former criticized the role of strategic planners in the process of strategy formation. According to the book, planners need not be strategic planners, but should facilitate strategy formulators by providing their analysis of numerical data required for strategy formation. Jim Collins explored the transformation of companies from mediocrity to excellence and principles associated with this occurrence. According to their book, phenomena such as technology, mergers and acquisitions, etc., have no role to play in the above transformation. Greatness of company, is a function of conscious choice and not of circumstances (a critic of learning school). Moreover, the book also emphasizes the role that leaders (CEOs) and culture play in facilitating this transformation. This is in agreement with the entrepreneurial and cultural school of thought. Perspectives in Strategic Management A Critique of Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management

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5.

4.

The Positioning Strategy School formation as an analytical process

3.

Major Constructs

2. Organizational structure and strategy

1. Strategy: A combination of offence and defense.

3. Separation between strategy formulation and strategy implementation Generic Strategies

3. Strategy precedes structure in every organization. 1. Strategy formulated by specialists. Scenario Planning and Strategic 2. Strategy formulation as a formal Control process.

2. Strategy formulation as a deliberate, informal and explicit effort which SWOT Analysis is unique for every organization.

1. Fit between internal capabilities and external possibilities.

Major Premises

The Cognitive School

Strategy formation as a mental process

1. Strategy formation is a cognitive process which deals with how the mind works and processes informa tion in any given situation.

Cognition as Confusion, as Mapping and as Information Processing

is heavily influenced by industry structure. The Strategy forma- 1. Strategy formation is dependent on Role of Personality, Leadership and Entrepreneurial tion as a the vision of the leader of an Strategic Vision School visionary process organization.

Strategy formation as a formal process

The Planning School

2.

Strategy formation as process of conception

Concept of Strategy Formation

The Design School

School of Thought

1.

Sl. No.

Table 1: The Ten Schools of Thought

(Cont.)

Here, strategy formation depends upon how selected individuals visualize and interpret a given situation that leads to distortion of information.

Leads to dependence on single individual and separates strategy formulation from strategy implementation.

A limited number of options in terms of generic strategies available for an organization go against the premise of a design school. Moreover, it does not explain why different organizations in the same industry are successful with different structures.

Strategy based merely on tangibles like hard numbers and ignoring qualitative aspects like, leadership, culture, employee motivation, etc., may not reveal the true picture.

Unique strategy for every organization sounds logical because every organization has its own strengths and weakness. However, frequent changes in structure every time an organization changes its strategy may not auger well for an organization like in the case of DEC.

Critique

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1. Strategy formation is a result of struggle between various powerful groups working within an organization.

1. Strategy formation as a process of social interaction between the members of an organization.

1. Strategy of an organization involves Adaptation, adapting to the changes taking place Contingency Theory and Organization as in the external environment. an Ecosystem

Strategy formation as a process of negotiation

Strategy formation as a collective process Strategy formation as a reactive process

The Power School

The Culture School

The Environmental School

The Configuration School

7.

8.

9.

10.

Strategy formation as a process of transformation

1. Strategy in an organization is not formulation, instead it emerges out over a period of time as a pattern based on trial and error.

1. Strategy consists of sequence of alternate transformations and configurations.

Organizational Life Cycle, Models and Ideal Types

Corporate Culture, Values, Beliefs, Radical Change, Strategic Drift, Experimentation and Reformulation.

Politics, Power, Negotiation, Collusion, Stakeholder Analysis

Disjointed Incrementalism, Logical Incrementalism, Evolutionary Theory amd Chaos Theory

Cognition Maps, Frames and Schemata

Strategy formation as an emergent process

2. Strategists are self-taught. They develop their self-knowledge and structure their thought processes based on their past experiences.

The Learning School

Major Constructs

6.

Major Premises

School of Thought

Sl. No.

Concept of Strategy Formation

Table 1: The Ten Schools of Thought

The assumptions may not be relevant in practical situations.

Strategic formation as a reactive approach may keep the organization always on the defensive and hence it may not be in a position to respond appropriately to the sudden change in the environment.

Focussing only on culture and not on other factors of internal and external environment like competition, industry structure and consumers may lead to strategic failure, e.g., Motorola.

Sometimes too much power in the hands of a particular individual or a group may lead to conflict of interest as the dominant individual/ group may formulate a strategy that may be aimed at defeating their rivals and satisfying their own benefit, rather than that of the organization.

By defining strategy as an emergent process, the proponents undermine the role played by leadership like, Jobs, who achieved success through their visions.

Critique

This book presents a comprehensive picture of strategic formation; however, too much emphasis has been put on the ‘what’ element. The authors could have discussed about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ elements of strategy formation. In addition, the issue of strategy implementation should have been discussed in detail. Majority of examples used by various proponents of the schools involve big business houses and belong to developed western countries. Therefore, this book can be extended towards understanding the above schools from the context of small companies and companies belonging to the developing parts of the world like, India. Finally, we see emphasis given to customers, that are the basis for any company’s success or failure. Hence, this study can be further extended towards understanding how each of the above perspectives creates customer value. 

References 1.

Ansoff Igor (1991), “Critique of Henry Mintzberg’s the Design School: Reconsidering the Basic Premises of Strategic Management”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 12, No. 6, pp. 449-46.

2.

Baden Fuller C and Stopford J M (1992), Rejuvenating the Mature Business: The Competitive Challenge, Chap. 6, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

3.

Christensen C R, Andrews K R, Bower J L, Hamermesh G and Porter M E (1982), Business Policy: Text & Cases, 5th Edition, Homewood, IL.

4.

Collins J (2001), Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t, Random House Business Books, London.

5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation

6.

http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Motorola-Analoguedigital-Failure/79322

7.

http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=49

8.

Levinthal Daniel A and March James G (1993), “The Myopia of Learning”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 14, Winter, pp. 95-112.

9.

McLarney C and Shelley Rhyno (1991), “Mary Parker Follett: Visionary Leadership and Strategic Management”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 14, No. 7, pp. 292-304.

10. Miller D (1992), “The Generic Strategy Trap”, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 37-41.

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11. Mintzberg H (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Free Press and Prentice Hall Publications, NY. 12. Mintzberg H, Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampe (1998), Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management, The Free Press, New York. 13. Porter M E (1980), Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors, Free Press, New York. 14. Rumelt R P (1997), “The Evaluation of Business Strategy”, in Mintzberg H and Quinn J B (Eds.), The Strategy Process, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall Publications, NY. 15. Schwenk C (1988), “The Cognitive Perspective in Strategic Decision Making”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 25, pp. 41-56.

Reference # 33J-2009-06-04-01

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