Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The label strategy process, to some, is an oxymoron. Strategy is about creativity and innovation, whereas process smacks of bureaucracy and control. It is true that the word process does carry with it some baggage. Perhaps “Shaping, Implementing and Changing Strategy” is a better label for the strategy process field. While labels are important, it is even more important to define the contours of a field devoted to shaping, implementing, and changing strategy. Strategies, as we well know, are in part planned and in part emergent. But can a firm have no strategy at all? Inkpen and Choudhury (1995) examine three situations where a firm can be seen as having no strategy, that is, it is “strategyless.” The first such is an attribution, valid or not, when a firm fails. External observers blame this failure on the inability of its top management to set a clear strategy for the firm. The second is one when the firm is in a transitional phase from one strategy to another. It may temporarily appear “strategyless.” While the first two may be more in the eyes of the beholder, they also point to a third situation, where they suggest a deliberate attempt on the part of top management to create more flexibility and innovation by simply not setting strategies. It is true that the sheer genius of top management is not enough to set a firm's strategies. In any large diversified firm, the enormity ... log in or subscribe to read full text