Strategic Management: A Brief History

B290

Early years

• The Wharton School and Harvard Business School

• Vicarious learning through the case study method

• Little by way of – Disciplinary foundation–Wide-spread academic interest

Pre- 1980

–The “Planning school” - focus on process–The “Design School” - focused on

structure (“Strategy follows structure”)

–“Contingency theory” - resource and environment fit; one size doesn’t fit all (“Structure follows strategy”)

“The Watershed” (1980)

–Michael Porter’s 1980 book “Competitive Strategy”

– The launch of the Strategic Management Journal

–Growth of management consulting

– Stronger theoretical and methodological foundations

– But a growing problem of lack of relevance

“Fin de Ciecle”

• Major themes in strategy research:–Diversification– Industry structure– Firm resources and competitive

advantage–Dynamic Capabilities– Knowledge based view

Strategic Management Research

• It offers– Analytical frameworks, tools for seeing

the wood for the trees

• It doesn’t offer– Silver bullet prescriptions–Much insight into the dynamics of

interaction

However…

• Senior managers attend Exec Ed courses at academic business schools - Why?

• Some of the ideas, while abstract, provide alternative framings

• Reframing is the wellspring of creativity

• It’s a form of context switching (of which more later)

So: why take this course?

(because you have too…)AND…

The study of chess…

• Psychologists have studied chess grand masters – To become a grand master takes 10,00

hours of study and practice (not to mention some talent)

So, what should White do here?

Intuition / pattern recognition

• Good chess player’s – Recognize specific situations – See general patterns– Are sensitive to cues and clues

• Depend as much on intuition as computational ‘horse-power’