Schools of strategy. Modern structure of strategic management schools

25.09.2019

Founders: R. Lapierre, C. Lindblom, G. Rapp, S. Winter. School of Learning Reviews the Process strategy development development of the company as an evolving process. The content of this school is revealed by the following most important provisions:

1. Output development strategies firms should be viewed as a form of learning process.

2. The learning procedure should be developmental in nature, through behavior that promotes retrospective thinking aimed at understanding the actions taken.

3. Strategic initiatives are implemented by those who have the ability and resources to learn.

4. Successful initiatives in the strategy development process form operational experience that can develop into a specific scheme, that is, an evolving strategy.

5. The role of the firm's manager is to manage the strategic learning process where new strategies may be developed.

6. According to the learning school, strategies initially appear as patterns of action from the past, which then turn into plans for the future.

It should be noted that in recent years, interest in studying the cognitive aspects of the process has increased significantly in foreign countries. strategy formation. Especially popular among foreign specialists in the field strategic management becomes the view that strategy depends on learning and learning depends on ability. This view is called the “dynamic approach to capability development.” Accordingly, strategic management is viewed as a process of “collective learning.” The result of this process is the development of core competencies.

11. School of power in the theory of strategic management.

Founders: A. Macmillan, D. Sarrazin, E. Pettigrew, J. Bowyer

The school of power interprets the process of developing a company's development strategy as a negotiation process. The content of this school is revealed by the following main provisions:

1. The process of forming a development strategy for any organization is determined by the action of political forces both within it and in the environment external to it.

2. The development strategy of the organization is, as a rule, spontaneous.

3. Power structures at the organizational level view the strategy development process as an interaction based on methods of persuasion and negotiation, and in some cases, direct confrontation.

4. Power structures at the macroeconomic level view the organization as striving for its well-being through control over the actions of other market agents or through cooperation with them. In this case, companies rely on both strategic maneuvering and collective strategies in various types of alliances.

The school of power has made a significant contribution to the development of the arsenal of strategic management, revealing such concepts as “coalition”, “political games” and “collective strategy”. She also emphasized the importance of using political methods to bring about strategic change.

The power school argues that the process of forming or changing strategy is associated with an open struggle for power and influence, using political methods. There is micropower - the relationship of political forces within the organization, and macropower - the use of power levers of the organization itself. Any person in an organization with a claim to power must come up with some kind of plan. This is what gives birth to strategy. Those who manage to gain the upper hand establish their strategy, for example, a group of researchers who discover a new formula, two rival camps arguing for and against new technologies, a sales manager who advocates cutting prices. The organization also tries to assert its power in the external environment by creating strategic alliances, absorbing competitors, influencing the behavior of interested groups (suppliers, media, etc.)

"Schools of Strategy" is an excellent book written by a specialist for specialists. It will not seem simple to an ordinary strategic leader of a corporation (director). At the same time, the book is the best publication, which not only examines almost all areas of strategic management, but also provides a synthesis. The book is a wonderful help for undergraduates, graduate students and others who want to write a modern work on strategic management. It is very useful for strategic management teachers (helps develop an understanding of strategic management beyond SWOT analysis and mission). Most standard Russian consulting companies may need to buy it in large quantities (and read it, of course) to understand the differences between strategic management and what they sell to clients.

Chapter 1. SO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ENTERS THE ARENA

ELEPHANT STUDY

from John Godfrey Sachs

Free translation by Valery Zemskikh

Let's imagine that we are the same blind people, and building a strategy is our elephant. Not being able to see the “beast” in its entirety, we grab the ear, trunk, leg of the “elephant” and hold on to it, being “blissfully unaware” of the object as a whole. But even if we gradually learn that our “experimental subject” consists of separate parts, and we try to “put” them together, we will not get an elephant. The whole is by no means the simple sum of its parts. But knowledge of the whole one way or another presupposes analysis, comprehension of the interactions of all its elements.
The next ten chapters describe the ten parts of the beast called "strategy formation", each of which represents one of the "schools of thought." The main chapters are preceded by the first, in which you will get acquainted with all the schools and the very concept of strategy, and the final one returns us to the object of study as a whole.

Why ten?

In the article "The Magical Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity to Process Information," psychologist George Miller asks why we like to group things in sevens: the seven wonders of the world, the seven deadly sins, the seven days of the week (Miller, 1956 ). According to the author, this reflects the structure of our cognition: seven is the number of “portions” of information that a person can easily retain in short-term, “operative” memory. Three wonders of the world will be forgotten faster than they will be remembered, and the need to keep in mind, for example, eighteen wonders is depressing. But those who are interested in strategy, of course, are not mere mortals - at least in their cognitive abilities, and therefore must be able to comprehend more ideas than, say, the magical seven plus two. Accordingly, our book presents ten schools of strategy formation.
Leaving aside cognitive abilities and looking at the body of scientific literature, we find ten different points of view, most of which are reflected in practical management. Proponents of each hold unique views on the same basic aspect of the strategy process. But in a certain sense all these theories are limited and distorted. On the other hand, the views of each of the representatives of the various schools of strategy are very interesting. The elephant is not only composed of a trunk, but it certainly has a trunk, and it would be very difficult to describe the animal as a whole without mentioning such an essential part of it. Typically, one of the consequences of blindness is the enhancement of other senses to such an extent that a person is able to live without the help of a sighted person.

SCHOOLS. Each of the following chapters presents - from their own perspective - one school of strategy. We then provide a critical assessment of the views under consideration, emphasizing their limitations and value. Listed below are the scientific schools offered to your attention and the definitions that best describe the vision of their supporters of the strategic process:

1. School of Design comprehension 2. School of Planning: strategy formation as formal process 3. Positioning School: strategy formation as analytical process 4. School of Entrepreneurship: strategy formation as a process foresight 5.Cognitive school: strategy formation as mental process 6. School of Training: strategy formation as developing process 7. School of Power: strategy formation as a process negotiations 8. School of Culture: strategy formation as collective process 9. School of external environment: formation of strategy as reactive process 10. School configuration: strategy formation as a process transformation

Our ten schools can in turn be divided into three groups. The first three schools are prescriptive in nature - their adherents are more interested in how strategies should be formed, rather than how they are actually developed. Attention of supporters of the first of the schools, on the basis of which in the 1960s. two others were formed, concentrates on building a strategy as a process of informal design (in the sense of construction, design, modeling), and in essence - a process of comprehension and elaboration. The second school, which flourished (in the form of a wave of publications and practitioners turning to it) in the 1970s, formalized the first theoretical “escapes.” It views strategy creation as a relatively isolated, systematic formal planning process. Supporters of the third, who joined the first two in the 1980s, promising school are busy not so much with the process of forming strategies, but with their actual content. The school is called the school of positioning, since the attention of its teachers and students is concentrated on choosing the strategic market positions of the company.
The following six schools examine specific aspects of the strategy formulation process. Their proponents are not so much interested in prescribing ideal strategic behavior as in describing the actual processes of strategy development.
In an effort to connect strategy with entrepreneurship, some well-known authors have viewed the process of strategy creation as an attempt to penetrate the future, an insight that visited an outstanding manager, and his taking of risks. But if strategy is presented as an individualized vision, then its formation should also be considered as a process of comprehending ideas and principles taking place in the human head. Accordingly, although not the largest, but a very important cognitive school has arisen, which, based on the logic of cognitive psychology, is trying to penetrate the consciousness of the strategist.
The following four schools, in explaining the principles of strategy, have tried to rise above the individual level; they turn to other forces and actors. According to supporters of the learning school, the world is too complex, so building a strategy from the first step to the end is pointless, unlike, for example, plans. Strategies should be developed gradually, step by step, as the organization develops and “learns.” In the same vein, but from a different angle, the school of power views the formation of strategy. Its representatives view strategy as a process of negotiations between conflicting groups within an organization or between an organization and its opposing environment. According to another scientific school, the principles of strategy formation are determined by the culture of the organization and, therefore, the strategic process is a collective process. Finally, environmental school theorists believe that strategy formation is a reactive process, initiated not from within the organization, but under the influence of external circumstances. Accordingly, they try to comprehend the external pressure experienced by the organization.
IN last group There is only one school, but it actually incorporates all other approaches. We call this school the school of configuration. Its representatives strive to unite the disparate elements of our “elephant” - the process of building a strategy, the content of the strategy, organizational structure and its environment - into separate, sequential stages of the organization’s life cycle, for example growth or stable maturity. But if an organization enters, for example, a state of stability, then developing a strategy involves analyzing the transition from one state to another. This means, on the other hand, this school, drawing on the rich literature and practice of “strategic change,” describes strategy formation as a process of transformation.
The emergence of schools of strategies is largely associated with various stages of development of strategic management. Some have experienced their heyday and are in decline, others are only “gaining momentum”, others are “making their way to the surface” in the form of thin but important “trickles” of publications and reports about practical application proposed concepts. We will talk about the views of supporters of each school and offer our own view of their development, strengths and weaknesses. In the final chapter you will be introduced to summary comments.
You can get additional information about each of the schools we mentioned in specialized literature: academic collections, magazines for practical managers, monographs. In addition, most of the methods proposed in publications are used in practice by organizations and consulting firms. Practitioners read literature on management, authors of scientific articles analyze practical experience. Therefore, our description of strategy schools is based both on theoretical publications and on a generalization of practical experience.

Topic overview

The extensive literature on strategic management (the number of works that the authors of this book studied is close to two thousand) is growing “day and night.” Of course, not all new publications are directly related to strategic management. On the other hand, understanding the strategy development process is unthinkable without studying books and articles devoted to various areas of scientific knowledge.
William Starbuck wrote that discussing “all aspects of an organization in need of change means considering everything that has ever been written about organizations” (Starbuck, 1965:468). Moreover, this is even an understatement, because the last word in the quotation should be read as “collective systems of all types.”
If you are interested in strategy as a search for an organization's possible market position ("niche"), you will be very interested in the work of biologists on the adaptation of species (for example, on "periodically disturbed equilibrium"). Historians' reflections on various periods of social development (say, revolutions) help explain the various stages of formation of organizational strategies (for example, “transforming a struggling company” as a form of “cultural revolution”). Developments in quantum mechanics and mathematical theories of chaos may provide clues to changes in organizations. And there are many such examples. Add to this all the literature that is usually classified as organizational studies - psychological (on the process of cognition and leadership charisma), anthropological (on cultural diversity), economics (on industrial organizations), urban planning (on formal planning processes), scientific-political (about the principles of public policy), military-historical (strategies in conflict conditions), etc. - and we will receive extensive material that reflects all existing points of view. Strategy formation is not limited to foresight, prioritization and alignment of forces. In this process, it is important to take into account crisis situations, political preferences, the principle of periodically disrupted equilibrium, and social revolutions.
We review this kind of literature using its own terms. However, we did not set out to give a comprehensive overview of it. (Our desire to write “extra” thousands of pages is no more than your desire to read them.) In other words, we offer to your attention not a review of the literature, but a review of the topic. We have made an attempt to highlight the most important scientific sources and practice - in order to clearly highlight different points of view, directions, trends. Therefore, the quotes that we provide serve either as a key to understanding an idea or as an illustration of a set of sources. We apologize to all those authors and consultants who were not mentioned in our book; For our part, we hope that we have not missed any significant directions.
We consider it our duty to note the following. We are depressing by the tendency in modern management literature towards popular, latest fashion trends. This not only disadvantages wonderful old authors, but, even sadder, it does a disservice to readers, who are often offered worthless new ones instead of worthwhile old sources. In the book brought to your attention, the authors tried to maintain a balance, to combine a review of the evolution of views on the problem and an analysis of the latest scientific and practical trends. We are convinced that ignoring an organization's past can cause irreparable damage to its strategic development in the future. The same is true for the topic of strategic management in general. Those who neglect past experience, classical works, take risks, as it seems to us, completely unreasonably. Time has the same effect on strategic management literature (and management practice) as it does on wine in a barrel: it puts everything in its place and shows what is worth what.

Five P's of strategy

The word “strategy” has long gained popularity; modern managers use it freely and with visible pleasure. Among other things, for them it denotes the highest manifestation of management activity. Over the past two decades, the topic of strategies has been widely developed in scientific research, and lectures on strategic management usually crown the course of study in business schools. The word "strategy" is a very important word. But what does it really mean?
It is human nature to define ourselves in terms of concepts. The introductory chapters of most standard textbooks provide a definition of strategy that goes something like this: “Top management's plans for achieving long-term results consistent with the goals and objectives of the organization” (Wright et al., 1992:3). Generations of students dutifully memorized such definitions and then used them to write thousands of reports for their companies. We do not propose one simple definition, but we do argue that strategy (not to mention the ten schools of thought on strategy) requires several—namely five—definitions (Mintzberg, 1987).
Ask someone to explain what strategy is, and you will almost certainly hear in response that strategy is a plan, or something like that - a guide, a guideline or direction for development, a road from the present to the future. Then ask the same person to describe the strategy that his or her organization or major competitor has actually pursued for the past five years—not stated strategic principles, but actual behavior. Most people will readily answer your question, completely oblivious to the fact that their answer differs significantly from their definition of strategy.
It turns out that “strategy” belongs to those words into which we, when defining them, put one meaning, and when using them, another. Strategy is a principle of behavior or following a certain model of behavior. A company that consistently delivers the most expensive products in an industry is pursuing what is generally called a high-performance strategy, just as a person who takes on the most difficult tasks is said to be pursuing a high-risk strategy. In Fig. 1.1 compares strategy as a plan (preliminary forecasting) and strategy as a principle of behavior (taking into account past behavior).
So, both formulations are completely equal: organizations develop plans for the future and derive principles of behavior from their past. We will call one the planned (predetermined, pre-planned) strategy, and the other the implemented one. An important question arises: does the implemented strategy always “grow” beyond the intended one? (It is obvious from experience that pre-developed strategies do not always turn into implementable ones.)
The answer to this question is simple. Just ask the interlocutors who enthusiastically describe their (implemented) strategies, what happened to the strategies they planned five years ago. Some will argue that the planned plans were not only fully implemented, but also exceeded. Let us doubt the sincerity of such an answer. Others will report that the actual strategic actions had nothing to do with the intended goals. This means that their actions were contrary to the adopted strategy. As our experience shows, the overwhelming majority of respondents give an intermediate answer - some things came true, but some did not. They did not deviate from their goals, but they did not go out of their way to achieve them. Among other things, flawless execution requires brilliant foresight, not to mention not being subject to unforeseen circumstances, although in any case there are rough edges. In the real world, both forecasting and the need to adapt are inevitable.
As Fig. 1.2, fully realized intentions can be called well-thought-out strategies. Those that were not implemented at all will be called unrealized strategies. For example, the planning school recognizes both of these categories, naturally giving preference to the first. But there is a third case - the emergence and development of a new strategy, when an unplanned model of behavior is implemented. The steps taken, one after another, eventually line up into a certain sequence or principle. For example, instead of sticking to a (planned) diversification strategy, the company simply makes isolated decisions, moving forward step by step, “testing” the market. First, it acquires a city hotel, then a restaurant, then a hotel in a resort area, then another city hotel with a restaurant, then a third, etc. until a new diversification strategy is built - city hotels with restaurants.
So, few, if any, strategies turn out to be perfectly thought out. No less rare are exclusively new strategies. In the former there is no room for learning, in the latter there is no control. Any real-world strategy must include both: control and opportunities for learning. In other words, it is necessary not only to formulate strategies, but also to form them. For example, building an “umbrella” strategy implies developing a global plan (to become a market leader), and the details (when, where, how) are supposed to be dealt with “in the process.” Thus, new strategies are not necessarily bad, and well-thought-out ones are not always good. Visionary strategists skillfully combine both types of strategies. In such people, the combination of the ability to foresee with the ability to respond to unexpected circumstances is especially valuable.
To “plan” and “principle of behavior” you can add two more words starting with the letter “p”. Several years ago, the McDonald's restaurant chain introduced a new product called Egg McMuffin - a traditional American breakfast. It was assumed that the new offer would attract visitors to McDonald's restaurants in the morning. When asking people whether the Egg McMuffin is a strategic change for McDonald's, we will get two answers: “Yes, absolutely; the new product gave the company access to the breakfast market" and "Come on, it's still the same junk - McDonald's style, only in new packaging." In our opinion, the differences in answers are caused by the way these people define the content of the strategy for themselves.
It is believed that strategy is a position, namely the placement of certain products in specific markets, for example the Egg McMuffin product in the breakfast market. As Michael Porter reiterated recently, “strategy is the creation, through a variety of actions, of a unique and valuable position” (Porter, 1996:68). There is also an opinion that strategy is a perspective, i.e. the main way of operating of an organization (for example, McDonald's), or, in the unforgettable expression of Peter Drucker, it is the “theory of business” of a given organization (Druker, 1970:5; 1994) As can be seen from Fig. 1.3, strategy as a position is a look down at the “x” mark, indicating the place where the product meets the buyer, and outward - at the external market. On the other hand, as a perspective, strategy is directed inward - inside the organization. more precisely, in the thoughts of strategists, but at the same time upward - into the great future of the enterprise.
Again, we cannot reject either of the two definitions. The success of Egg McMuffin depends on the extent to which the new position fits with McDonald's existing perspective. Apparently, the company's leaders are well aware that they cannot simply ignore the prospect. Changing the position within a given perspective is quite easy; but changing the perspective, even while maintaining the position , is another matter. (Swiss watchmakers who had to master the technology of producing quartz watches will confirm this.)
Thus, we have four different definitions of strategy. The fifth is also quite common: strategy is a deft technique, a special “maneuver” undertaken in order to outwit an opponent or competitor. Imagine how a boy jumps over the fence, wanting to lure another - a terrible bully - into his yard, where a Doberman is strolling, always ready to rush to protect its owner. In the same way, a corporation, in pursuit of the impression of its grandiose plans, announces the acquisition of a number of land plots, but in fact it seeks to force a competitor to abandon the construction of a new plant. The strategy it implements (as a plan, that is, as an implemented intention) involves exclusively putting pressure on a competitor, and not real expansion, and therefore is considered as a technique.
Five definitions and ten schools. As we see, the connections between them are not constant, although some schools have their own preferences: for example, plan - from the planning school, market position - from the positioning school, perspective - from the entrepreneurship school, the principle of behavior - from the teaching school, reception - partly - at the school of power.
One simple definition There is no strategy, and yet we need to reach common ground on a number of fundamental issues (see Strategy: Areas of Agreement).

Pros and cons of the strategy

Any discussion about strategy inevitably ends in a draw, because for every strategic advantage there is a weakness or disadvantage:
1. "Strategy sets direction."
Advantage. The main point of strategy is to show the organization a reliable course of development in existing conditions.
Flaw. A strategic course can, like blinders, cover up potential dangers. Following a predetermined course in unfamiliar waters is a sure way to “encounter” an iceberg. Direction is of great importance, but sometimes it is more advisable to slow down, look carefully, but not very far ahead, paying attention to what is happening to the sides in order to change behavior at the right moment.
2. "Strategy coordinates efforts."
Advantage. Strategy promotes coordination of activities. In the absence of a strategy, chaos reigns in the organization when management “pulls the cart” in different directions.
Flaw. Excessive coordination of efforts leads to the reign of "groupthink" and the loss of peripheral vision, thanks to which we often notice new opportunities. The adopted strategy dominates the organization, permeating its every cell.
3. "Strategy characterizes the organization."
Advantage. The strategy reflects general outline character of the organization and demonstrates it distinctive features. Strategy provides not only a key to an overall understanding of the organization, but also a useful opportunity to understand how it “does business.”
Flaw. Defining an organization in terms of its strategy can be overly simplistic, even to the point of using stereotypes, thereby overlooking the scope and complexity of the system.
4. "Strategy provides logic."
Advantage. Strategy eliminates uncertainty and provides order. In this sense, it is akin to a theory that simplifies and explains the world and facilitates the operation of the cognitive structure.
Flaw. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “foolish logic is a ghost that haunts narrow-minded people.” Creativity does not tolerate consistency - the creator finds new combinations of phenomena hitherto considered incompatible. Any strategy, like any theory, is a simplification that inevitably distorts reality.
When we have strong confidence in our actions, we tend to achieve very good results. This is precisely the role of strategy for an organization: with its adoption, the main problems are removed and people, having decided on the main thing, instead of discussing the choice of the best market, pay attention to the details - the choice of specific goals or areas of customer service. Even senior managers must devote a significant portion of their working time to managing the organization in this context; they cannot, they simply do not have the right to constantly doubt.
Often from the pages of books we see the image of a manager-strategist, a kind of thinker who harbors grandiose plans, while taking care of the small details is entrusted to someone else. But the responsibilities of a manager for the most part consist of working with details, although, of course, at a high level. He is obliged to use all means available to him as the head of the organization to strengthen the existing perspective (and “culture”), develop contacts in order to obtain important information, negotiate and conclude agreements to strengthen the gained positions, etc.
In this case, the problem lies in changes in surrounding circumstances over time - the external environment is destabilized, familiar niches disappear, and new opportunities open up. Everything that was constructive and effective in the adopted strategy turns over time almost into its opposite. This is why, despite the fact that the concept of strategy is associated with stability, a lot of research focuses on change. But while formulas for strategic change are easy to come by, managing them, especially when change involves new perspectives, is very difficult. The very promotion of strategy implementation and its main function - protecting the organization's employees from strife - presupposes their ability to respond to changes in the external environment. In other words, transformation is very expensive, especially when it is not just about upgrading outdated equipment, but about changes in the usual way of thinking. As intellectual constructs, strategies sometimes make it very difficult for the management of an organization to realize the fact that its views and plans have lost relevance. In our opinion, strategies serve the same function for an organization as blinders do for horses: they keep them from going astray, but they hardly allow them to see what is going on around them.
All of the above finally convinces us of the vital importance for an organization of both the presence of a strategy (and strategic management) and its absence (see the box “The absence of a strategy is a good thing”).

Strategic management as a scientific discipline

Strategic management, like marketing and finance, has rightly received the status of an independent scientific discipline. Academic journals on strategic management are published, “clubs” of strategists operate, and scientific conferences are held. The beginning of research on this topic is usually attributed to the mid-1960s, but sometimes it is also referred to as 1951, the year William Newman’s book was published. But much earlier, works on military strategic construction appeared (for example, the “out of print” of the famous treatise on the art of war by Sun Tzu dates back to the 5th century BC). Since the early 1980s. The range of literature on strategic processes began to expand rapidly.
Strategic management courses typically focus on the rational and directive sides of the process (design, planning, and positioning schools). Strategic management is presented as a cyclical process consisting of three distinct but sequential phases - formulation, implementation and control. This theoretical approach is also reflected in the practice of the planning departments of commercial and government organizations and consulting firms.
The authors of the book brought to your attention, departing from the traditional approach, strive to “write” a more balanced picture of strategic management, but reflecting all the significant contradictions and disagreements. Significant place it focuses on non-rational/non-prescriptive schools. Representatives of some of them are very pessimistic about the possibility of formal strategic intervention. We have upset the balance only in one thing - in the critical assessment of various schools. The dominant position in the literature and practice of strategic management completely undeservedly belongs to promising schools, and therefore we consider it appropriate to dwell in more detail on the ideas they propose, often accepted as immutable truths. Of course, we give a critical review of all ten areas, since each of them has its own weaknesses. But when a person is at one end of a see-saw board, it is useless to try to balance it by sitting in the middle. In other words, balance in critical commentary will contribute to maintaining the overall imbalance in the literature and practice of strategic management.
The strategic failures of the largest corporations are largely due to the actions of “hordes” of business school graduates who took a rather superficial course in strategic management. The authors of this book want to show their readers - students and managers - the full range of existing points of view. As S. Hart noted, “the most successful companies use various, even directly competing, theories in shaping their strategy. Such companies can at the same time adhere to a rigid plan and act according to circumstances, regulate, control the actions of employees and allow their participation in management, empower them, make long-term plans and pay attention to detail" (Hart, 1991:121). F. Scott Fitzgerald put it even more bluntly: “Intelligence is tested by the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still act effectively.” Of course, in order to be a true strategist, the ability to take into account opposing views is not enough; one must, as J.C. Spender argues, be able to synthesize them (Spender, 1992). So, dear reader, you will have to manage all ten points of view at the same time!
In the field of strategic management, such a synthesis is already overdue. As we will see later, in some cases the latest experience contradicts all existing schools. It would seem that this could bring confusion into our thinking. In fact, the schools we are considering will help to see how all the most important aspects of strategy formation are combined in recent practice. We admire the achievements of many modern managers and illustrate our narrative, where possible, with relevant examples. Well, it seems that strategic management is coming of age.
But synthesis is “in general” impossible. The “reaction” must take place in the head, your head, reader. For our part, we promise all possible assistance. Everyone knows what an elephant looks like, but how often do we describe it in parts? The same is true for verbal description: words form lines, chapters form a book.
So here we go!

IN strategic management, there are various directions or schools that, although they share common basic principles, nevertheless place research emphasis differently, while highlighting certain methodological priorities.

A thorough analysis of schools of strategic management is presented in the work of G. Mintzberg, B. Ohlstrand and J. Lampel (1997). Characterizing the type of strategy formation process, the authors identify ten scientific schools (Table 1.2.). The first three schools are prescriptive in nature - their adherents describe how strategies should be formed. Proponents of the following six schools are interested not so much in prescribing ideal strategic behavior as in exploring and describing the actual processes of strategy development. In an effort to link strategy to the actual behavior of the firm, they tried to view strategy as the result of foreseeing the future through the manager's insight, allowing the latter to accept risk. In the tenth school, an attempt was made to combine previous concepts into a single system of strategic management.

Table 1.2. School of Strategic Management

Some of these ten schools are well established and hold a strong position for analyzing the activities of companies belonging to “traditional” industries, others demonstrate the effectiveness of their methodology in innovative business sectors, and others are more suitable for designing strategic changes in non-profit organizations or municipal government organizations.

1. School of Design: Formation of Strategy as a Process of Understanding. Founders schools of design ( HELL. Chandler, K. Andrews, I. Ansoff) in the 1960s viewed strategy as a process of informal design, i.e. understanding the situation, constructing, designing, modeling. The main tools of this school are the well-known SWOT analysis.

The design school is built on two fundamental principles:

strategy formation occurs as a match between the characteristics of the company and the opportunities that determine its position in the external environment;

a strategy developed for a specific organization is unique and is formed outside of any templates or predetermined standards.

In the textbook by Harvard University professor Kenneth Andrews, “The Politics of Business” (1965), the main premises of the design school are declared:

1) strategy formation must be a thoughtful process of conscious thinking, that is, good strategies are created during the thought process;

2) responsibility for control over the process of developing and implementing strategy, as well as for the conscious nature of this process, rests with the manager, who is a strategist by definition;

3) the model for building a strategy should initially be and remain quite simple, clearly defined and informal;

4) the strategy of a particular organization must be one of a kind: the best, obtained as a result of individual modeling and formed outside of any templates and standards;

6) to remain simple, the strategy must be precisely formulated;

7) only after all the above requirements are met, the strategy can be implemented, that is, only after a unique, mature, clear and simple strategy is finally formulated, the process of its implementation begins.

2. Planning School: Formation of Strategy as a Formal Process. School of Planning was founded by I. Ansoff, D. Steiner and others in the 1970s. In the planning school model, as opposed to the design school model, strategy is the result of a controlled, deliberate process of formal planning, broken down into individual steps, diagrammed in the form of checklists and corresponding models. The strategy development process is a set of formalized procedures for designing, programming and planning. The strategic plan is formed as a result of forecasting, situational and scenario analysis of the internal and external environment. Strategic planning involves structuring goals and objectives, developing strategic and operational plans at the levels of the company's organizational structure.

Since the school of strategic planning calls for developing the goals and objectives of the organization in quantitative form, which are conveniently presented in the form of graphs and tables, special emphasis in this school is placed precisely on the quantitative interpretation of the organization’s goals and the development of a sequence of steps and corresponding procedures (decomposition, compilation of various tables, etc. .).

The main tools of this school are the so-called growth vector (product-market matrix by I. Ansoff) and corresponding diversification models based on portfolio analysis.

3. School of Positioning: Formation of Strategy as an Analytical Process.School– positioning ( 1980s) received its name because its followers as the most important task considered the principles of choosing a strategy in accordance with the positioning of the company in the market. The positioning school, in contrast to the design and planning schools, proclaims the limited number of standard strategies in established industries that can be chosen by top management of any type of organization in a specific situation and that will allow the company to occupy advantageous market positions and provide protection from competitors. It focuses on the economic aspects of the company’s development, moreover, mainly quantitative ones. Strategy formation is a fairly orderly process of strategic planning, based on competitive and industry analysis and a developed set of analytical techniques that allow you to select the right strategy for certain conditions.

The concepts of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the growth-market share matrix and experience curve proposed by its employees belong to this school. The school of positioning received intensive development in Michael Porter’s book “Competitive Strategy”, in which three interrelated concepts were proposed and brought to the level of practical methods: competitive analysis (Industry analysis); competitive advantage of the company and building a competitive strategy based on it (competitive advantage); value chain.

4. School of Entrepreneurship: formation of strategy as a process of foresight.School of Entrepreneurship is a further development of some provisions of the design school. The key problem of strategic management, to which the school is called upon to find an answer: “Where and how is the organization’s development strategy formulated?” The founders of the school (J. Schumpter, K. Knight) believe that the development of a company fully depends on the dictates of the individual, and not on collective creativity. The strategy formation process comes down to the behavior of one person - the manager, who makes key decisions regarding strategy and management. The central concept of the school of entrepreneurship is vision, i.e., the mental representation of strategy born or reflected in the minds of top management.

1. The development strategy of any company exists in the mind of its leader in the form of a unique perspective, namely, an intuitive choice of the direction of movement and foreseeing the future of the company.

2. The process of forming a company’s development strategy is based on life experience and the intuition of its leader, regardless of whether the idea of a strategy is born in his mind or he perceives it from the outside.

3. Strategic foresight is characterized by flexibility, and entrepreneurial strategy is both deliberate and emergent.

4. A business organization is flexible because it is a relatively simple structure that is quite responsive to the instructions of its leader.

5. The entrepreneurial strategy is, to a certain extent, protected from the influence of direct competition in the market niche.

5. Cognitive school: formation of strategy as a mental process.Cognitive school or school of knowledge- Gained popularity in the 1980s. Its founders (M. Lyles, G. Simon) consider the construction of strategy as a mental process of the company’s actually existing and knowable external environment. Based on cognitive psychology, representatives of the school analyze the strategic process from the point of view of human cognitive abilities, trying to penetrate the consciousness of the strategist. The main principles of the cognitive school are as follows:

the process of strategy formation is considered as a process of cognition taking place in the mind of the strategist;

Strategy is a perspective that reveals ways to obtain information from the environment.

Information from the environment is an interpretation of the world, which exists only as it is perceived. According to representatives of the cognitive school, the mutual world can be modeled, structured and constructed.

The cognitive school pays considerable attention to specific stages of the strategy formation process, especially the period of initial understanding of the strategy and the period of rethinking the adopted strategy. Understanding the strategic process contributes to further knowledge of the laws of thinking.

Within this school, two directions can be clearly distinguished. The first direction interprets the formation of strategy as an attempt to create some kind of objective picture of the world. The second direction, based on the subjectivity of the cognition process, considers strategy as an interpretation of the world.

6. School of learning: strategy formation as an evolving process.School of Training(1980) views strategic management as a process of “collective learning”, the result of which is the development of core competencies of the organization.

Representatives of the training school (R. Lapierre, C. Lindblom, etc.) believed that the strategy should be developed step by step as the organization develops and self-learns. Constant changes in the external environment lead to constant influences on these changes, which are built by top management in a logical chain, which is called strategy. According to this school, any system evolves and does not develop in leaps and bounds. In accordance with this, we can talk not about a predetermined strategy, but about an evolving strategy based on learning and allowing a flexible response to changes in the external environment, and any interested party can be its participant. The content of this school is revealed by the following most important provisions:

1) Development of a company development strategy should be considered as a form of learning process.

2) The learning procedure must be developmental in nature, through behavior that promotes retrospective thinking aimed at understanding the actions taken.

3) Strategic initiatives are implemented by those who have the ability and resources to learn.

4) Successful initiatives in the strategy development process form operational experience that can develop into a specific scheme, that is, an evolving strategy.

5) The role of the firm's manager is to manage the strategic learning process where new strategies may be developed.

6) Strategies initially appear as patterns of action from the past, which then turn into plans for the future.

Recently, the point of view according to which strategy depends on learning, and learning depends on abilities, has become popular among foreign specialists in the field of strategic management.

7. School of Power: Formation of Strategy as a Negotiation Process. Representatives schools of power(A. McMillan, D. Sarrazin, etc.) considered strategy as a process of negotiations between conflicting groups within the organization or between the organization and the external environment. In conditions of fierce competition, ideas for the development of a department put forward by line managers, with careful study by senior management, can “grow” into the general strategic line of the organization as a whole. Studying such relationships between senior managers and all interested parties and is engaged in the school of power. She views strategy formation as a political process of implementing the organization's strategy, in which the interests of all its participants are taken into account and a compromise is found. The content of this school is revealed by the following main provisions:

1) The process of forming a development strategy for any organization is determined by the action of political forces both within it and in the environment external to it.

2) The development strategy of the organization is, as a rule, spontaneous in nature.

3) Power structures at the organizational level view the strategy development process as an interaction based on methods of persuasion and negotiation, and in some cases, direct confrontation.

4) Power structures at the macroeconomic level view the organization as striving for its well-being through control over the actions of other market agents or through cooperation with them. In this case, companies rely on both strategic maneuvering and collective strategies in various types of alliances.

The school of power has made a significant contribution to the development of strategic management, revealing such concepts as “coalition”, “political games” and “collective strategy”, and drew attention to the importance of using political methods to implement strategic changes. The most striking developments, which are of an applied nature and widely used in practice, are the theory of stakeholders and the development of strategic alliances.

8. School of culture: formation of strategy as a collective process.School of Culture formed in the field of strategic management in the 1980s thanks to the success of Japanese corporations. According to the creators cultural schools(D. Johnson, J. Spender, etc.), strategy depends on the culture of the organization, and the process of its development is a collective process of social interaction among members of the organization. Organizational culture, influencing the style of thinking and analysis adopted in the organization, not only affects the strategy formation process, but also provides a certain resistance to strategic changes that top management needs to overcome. The main provisions of the school of culture:

1) Strategy formation is considered as a process of social interaction based on common beliefs and understanding among members of the organization.

2) The beliefs of each individual are the result of processes of familiarization with a particular culture or socialization.

3) Members of the organization are able to only partially characterize the beliefs on which their culture is based.

4) The main characteristic of an organization’s development strategy is considered to be its predestination, even if it is not fully conscious.

5) Culture, including ideology, does not promote strategic change, but the preservation of the current strategy.

The Swedish branch of the school of culture (E. Renman and R. Normann) received particular development. Her focus is on organizational stagnation and decline, and on the political and cultural forces that shape these conditions. A key role in the process of studying an organization is given to the study of the concept of “compliance”. There are four main mechanisms for achieving such compliance:

drawing up a diagram depicting the organization’s environment;

bringing into compliance (supplementing the external environment);

joint consultations;

dominance (the ability of an organization to transfer its image to the external environment).

Representatives of the cultural school introduced the concept of “strategic resources” that ensure sustainable benefits in a competitive environment. The criteria for assessing resources are: value, i.e. the ability to increase the efficiency of firms; rarity; uniqueness; replaceability. The main factor that gives a firm a resource-based advantage is that it cannot be imitated, and the most effective barrier to imitation is culture.

9. School of external environment: formation of strategy as a reactive process. Theorists environmental schools(M. Hann, J. Freeman, etc.) believe that strategy building is a reactive process and is defined as a reaction to changes in the external environment. Strategy formation is a kind of reflection process in which the organization is assigned a passive role.

The basis of this school is the “theory of situational factors,” which describes the relationship between specific changes in the environment and certain characteristics of the organization. This theory denies the existence of a “single way” of managing organizations and, on the contrary, emphasizes the uniqueness (similar to the design school) of all strategic decisions depending on the size of the organization, the technology used, the degree of external hostility, etc.

The most important principles of the school of external environment include the following:

1) The external environment of the organization is considered as the main element of the process of forming an organizational strategy.

2) The organization must respond adequately to changes in the external environment.

3) The leadership of the organization is considered as a passive element of the strategic process, the main task of which is to ensure the organization’s adaptation to the action of external forces.

A significant drawback of the theory of situational factors in relation to strategic management can be considered the fact that the description of the nature of changes in the external environment is very abstract and vague, and the company’s development strategy should be formed based on certain positions.

10. School of configuration: formation of strategy as a process of transformation. School of Strategic Management, which was named by G. Mintzberg “ configuration school" is an approach that seeks to combine the tasks and content of all previous ones - the process of developing a strategy, its content, the organizational structure and its environment.

The configuration school is based on two important principles - configuration and transformation. Configuration refers to stable structures and the external environment, and transformation refers to the process of developing and implementing a company's development strategy. Representatives of the school view change in an organization as a quantum leap, which means the simultaneous change of many organizational components. In other words, the organization is actually attempting to make a leap into a new stable position, with a new set of strategies, structures and cultural principles, i.e. with a new configuration.

The following are the fundamental principles of the strategic management configuration school:

1) Any organization over a sufficiently long period of time can be described as a certain stable configuration of its component parts, that is, it takes on a clearly defined form of structure, which, in turn, determines its behavior and its inherent set of strategies.

2) Periods of stable development of the organization are interrupted by jumps into a different configuration.

3) The alternation of periods of a stable state of configuration and a transitional process of transformation is gradually built into a certain sequence (the concept of life cycles of organizations).

4) The main goal of strategic management is to maintain the stability of the organization over relatively long periods of time, that is, to ensure management of the transition process and maintain the viability of the organization.

6) Resulting strategies take the form of plans or schemes that are self-sustaining over a period of time.

Representatives of the school of strategic management configuration proposed to highlight certain stages, or stages, in the development of an organization: stage of development; stability stage; adaptation stage; struggle stage; stage of revolution.

In addition, researchers have identified the main patterns according to which, over time, certain stages of organizational development replace each other:

Periodic shocks, when long periods of stability are periodically replaced by “revolutionary upheavals”;

Shifts back and forth, when periods of adapted convergence into a stable environment are replaced by stages of struggle to implement change;

Life cycles, when the stage of development is replaced by a stage of stability, etc.

A regular process where an organization is in a more or less constant process of adaptation.

The literature on management has identified ten main scientific schools that differ in their fundamental vision of strategic management. Conventionally, they can be divided into three groups.

first group three schools are included and are prescriptive; their representatives pay attention to how strategies should be formed.

Second group The six schools address specific aspects of the strategy formulation process. their main provisions relate not so much to the content of strategic behavior as to the description of the actual processes of strategy development.

third group includes the school of configuration (it absorbs approaches arising from the content of strategies, the process of their formation, organizational structure and external environment, as well as the sequence of stages of the life cycle), as well as the school of cooperative strategies.

First group: prescriptive schools of strategies.

The first one design school. She approaches strategy formation as prior to conscious design and modeling.

The most famous representatives of this school are Alfred Chandler, who published Strategy and Structure in 1962, and Kenneth Andrews, the theorist of the basic Harvard University textbook The Politics of Business (1965). They declare the following requirements:

Strategy formation must be a deliberate process of conscious thought;

Responsibility for control over the strategic process and its nature rests with the manager;

the model for constructing strategies should be quite simple (and therefore clearly defined) and informal;

The strategy must be one of a kind, unique, and obtained as a result of individual modeling;

Only after the above requirements have been met can the strategy be implemented.

The main disadvantages of this approach are a certain abstraction of thinking from action and loss of flexibility in the strategy.

School of Planning: strategy formation as a formal process.

Its founder is Igor Ansoff, who published the book “Corporate Strategy” in 1965. Particular emphasis in this school is placed on quantitatively presenting the goals of the organization and developing a sequence of steps and corresponding procedures (decomposition, compilation of various tables, etc.).

The leading role is given to professional “planners-strategists”; the most important tools are “scenario planning”, software such as “Project Management” (project management), etc. The disadvantage of this approach is the preoccupation with internal procedures to the detriment of the actual choice of strategy and strategic creativity. The general idea of a strategy is often chosen hastily, but then the only (but not the best) option will be carefully considered.

Positioning school: strategy formation as an analytical process.

The foundations of this school were laid by military strategists - Sun Tzu, K. Clausewitz, etc. It also includes the achievements of the consulting companies Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey. The founders of this school also include Michael Porter with his book “Competitive Strategy” (1980 p.).

The starting points of this school are as follows:

Strategies represent the market positions of companies (market leader, contender for leadership, etc.), which can be identified;

Market positions are competitive, they are based on the well-known five forces that determine the level of competition in the industry;

The process of strategy formation is a choice made on the basis of analytical calculations of one specific position, most often the position of a leader in a particular promising market segment, by applying a competitive advantage;

The main role in the strategic management process is played by analysts (full-time “gray cardinals” or invited consultants), who provide the results of their calculations to top managers;

As a result of the strategic planning process, the organization receives a “ready-to-use” strategy, and the market structure actively stimulates the use of positioning strategy, which, in turn, influences the organizational structure.

The focus on analytical work is both the strength and weakness of this school: no matter how well-conducted an analysis is, it must always be followed by a synthesis. But the main “synthetic” recommendations are of a general nature, so the organization’s actions can be easily “read” by competitors. In addition, excessive attention to external market conditions leads to a clear underestimation of the role of the internal potential of the enterprise.

Second group: school strategy formulation

Representatives of this school include economic thinkers who emphasized the role of the personality of the entrepreneur and the inherent qualities of intuition, prudence, experience, wisdom, and insight. Among them are Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter. According to Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is valuable primarily because he has a commercial idea and a tendency to make bold, risky moves and attempts to cope with a changing situation. Within this school, four types of entrepreneurs are identified: the prudent inventor, the innovator-inspirer, the over-optimistic organizer and the founder of a strong enterprise.

A strong, charismatic manager-leader of an organization is capable, from the position of this school, of developing an idea of the future activities of the organization, without creating a plan, but through a unique “vision” of the future - simple, understandable, desirable and exciting. He needs support, an audience, but he does not “play a role,” but is sincere and genuine.

School of Strategy Formation uses the following basic postulates:

Strategy exists in the psyche of a leader-entrepreneur as a perspective, as an intuitive choice of direction of movement and as a prediction of the future of the organization;

The formation of a strategy takes place even then, on the basis of experience and intuition. Therefore, the process and result are difficult to formalize;

A strategy can be flexible and responsive to changes in the environment to the extent that these qualities are inherent in the leader himself; Moreover, such a strategy is often proactive.

Of course, the exclusive dependence of strategic management, as this school understands it, on the intuition and charisma of the leader is a significant weakness. But in a small business, the scope and economic role of which is very large, a small entrepreneur can thrive in a market niche thanks to precisely this leadership style.

Cognitive school: strategy formation as a mental process.

This school insists on the need to gain insight into the information processing and thought processes of the strategist. Its founder is considered to be Herbert Simon, who published the book “Executive Behavior” in 1947, and the book “The New Science of Management Decisions” in 1960.

Supporters of the cognitive school actively rely on the developments of psychologists, and above all Carl Jung with his typology of faces. Four scales have been identified that determine the individual cognitive style of a manager:

♦ extraversion - introversion (motivation of a person to act under the predominant influence of signals from the external world or features inner world);

♦ sensory - intuition (dominance of well-perceived or special techniques for processing information);

♦ thinking - emotions (based on analysis or personal feelings about the situation);

♦ thought or perception (priority of planned, ordered or spontaneous, flexible perception of the environment).

The cognitive process begins with attracting attention, obtaining information and attempting to apply an interpretation scheme to it, as if “mapping” the situation. Moreover, we are talking about maps not only of external conditions, but also about maps of the causes of behavior, mental models that exist in the head of any experienced leader. Cognition acts both as an achievement of understanding (including through the process of illumination, “insight”), and as a process of constructing frames (assumptions, references, views of the world), the set of which should be quite large for a strategist. Moreover, if the strategy defined in this way ceases to be effective, then changing it is associated with significant difficulties.

The main problem of the cognitive school is the productive use of the potential of cognitive psychology. Unfortunately, psychology has not yet answered the main management questions in this context: how concepts and models are generated and how they are formed in the mind of a strategic manager.

School of Study: strategy formation as an evolving process.

Previous schools of strategy somehow assumed that you first need to work out a strategy, “prepare” it, and then act in accordance with it. True, questions arise: how should an organization act while the strategy is not ready, how to change strategies, etc.? The school of learning for the first time refused to accept a strategy as somehow decided, unchangeable for a certain period and took up problems not with the formulation, but with the formation of a strategy, blurring the boundaries between the processes of formation and implementation of strategies, proposing instead of a revolutionary evolutionary path of strategic management.

The most important milestone here was the book by J. Quinn “Strategy of Change: Logical Incrementalism” (1980). The word "incrementalism" means the priority of a number of successive steps of the "idea-implementation" type. Such strategies are “processual”, and a manager of this kind can hardly be called a strategist. This is due to the fact that in politics and diplomacy, strategy is often formed and implemented step by step, constantly taking into account the results of previous steps. Moreover, the results mean not only changes in external conditions and the position of the organization as a whole, but also changes in its individual subsystems.

An important task of a top manager, in accordance with the principles of the school of training, is to create and broadcast so-called “trust symbols of change” within the organization’s team and among its partners. Other important requirements include staying ahead of the information system, ensuring loyalty to new points of view and cooperation with the opposition, up to coalition governance. The requirements also include constant management flexibility, supported by a sufficient supply of resources to respond appropriately to changes.

Monitoring and benchmarking become the core processes of strategic management with the school system of education. It is clear that top managers do not always have the “best knowledge”, so they must use democracy to realize the total human potential of the organization in optimizing strategy. They become the instigators of new initiatives, appear interactively, especially on the part of “front line” managers (most often in contact with outside world) and middle managers.

Interaction is being adopted as a technology for constant interaction between managers and professionals. It becomes possible for the emergence of so-called “umbrella strategies”, “disconnected strategies”, “consensus strategies”, etc. These strategies can multiply and interrupt periods of consistency. In this case, the head of the organization becomes the main student in the strategic “training school.”

“Learn, study and study again” is very little for an organization that is learning. There are so-called single and double loops of learning. According to Chris Argiris, training is characterized by a single learning loop, compared conservatively, its goal is to find mistakes made and support the chosen course of the organization; Such training does not lead to a change in strategy, but only supports its implementation. Double loop learning is sometimes called single loop learning.

Strategy, as the school of learning understands it, is an eternal “disadvantage,” but this is not only its disadvantage, but also its advantage. It is capable of uniting people who think about the future into a single team and thereby obtaining not only a quantitative, but also a qualitative increase in its supporters. Being in the midst of external forces, such an organization learns and creates, seizing the initiative.

This school gave impetus to the development of organization theory, studies, work with “knowledge creation”, key (core) competencies, the theory of chaos, which can lead to a new order (as a chain of relationships of seemingly random events - to a new, unexpected result) .

However, it should be noted that the school of learning involves a serious pitfall. You can't treat learning as a "sacred cow." Training is not an end in itself, because then it can become meaningless for the organization. The pitfall is that by slowly drifting in the direction of learning, an organization may not only move away from an already adopted strategy, but may even abandon any strategy at all.

School of Power: strategy formation as a negotiation process.

All previous schools actually ignored issues of power and politics, being within the spheres of economics, psychology, and computer science. The school of power implies influences that go beyond the boundaries of pure economics, we are talking about its own relationships relating to a specific organization. In the context of this school, strategy is seen as politics, and strategy building as a political process.

The model of “government policy” by Graham Allison (1971) gained the greatest popularity due to the special status of the development object. He was the first to describe strategy formation as a political process. One of the relatively few fundamental basic works of this school is the work of A. Macmillan. His followers, describing social trends in the organization, identified a number of situations, the names of which are very characteristic. For example, a rebellion in an organization is aimed at seizing power from within, while maintaining the control system. The counterattacks are attempts by the former leadership to regain their former positions. The conflict of “line managers versus staff experts” is not about expanding personal power, but about destroying the competing one (in relations with the leadership of the group. The conflict is an attempt by a small group of managers close to power, not included in its core, to change the basic strategy of the organization, its key competencies, organizational culture, and to do this - get rid of the existing top management.

The following theses of the school of power, formulated by L. Bolman and T. Diehl, deserve attention:

Organizations are coalitions of various individuals and groups united on the basis of a common interest;

There are persistent differences among coalition members in value systems, beliefs, awareness, interests, and perceptions of reality;

Critical decisions concern the allocation of limited resources;

Limited resources and the persistence of differences create the basis for conflict, which is central to organizational dynamics;

Goals and decisions are the result of the manipulation of positions and negotiations between interest groups.

An interesting interpretation is the political approach to strategy formation as “consistent attention to goals” and “maneuvering”. In conditions when many external and internal factors set multidirectional vectors of movement for the organization, it is impossible to summarize, the organization can resolve conflicts that arise due to mismatch of goals. When maneuvering between influencing factors, it is important to clearly know the degree of readiness of a competitor for a collision and a compromise, if possible without revealing his intentions to competitors.

In line with the school, the authorities distinguish two concepts:

- “micro-lady” - relationships between individuals and groups within the organization;

- “makrovlada” - the relationship between the organization and the external environment (suppliers, customers, competitors, local and central authorities, other influence groups).

Michael Porter did a lot for the methodology of analyzing macro-government in relation to organizations. But we must keep in mind that organizational and interorganizational effects are increasingly determined not by the faceless forces of the market (equal vectors), but by regulation and political negotiations.

The concept of the school of power is vulnerable primarily in relation to the fact that strategies are determined by a complex conglomerate of power and political forces, are spontaneous in nature and take the form of a position rather than a perspective. While emphasizing the importance of the power factor, this concept does not consider the role of other factors. Politics can not only bring order to the activities of an organization, but also disorganize it; moreover, sudden changes often occur in politics, and organizations must ensure their stability from political cataclysms and instability.

School of Culture: strategy formation as a collective process.

In the field of management, the “discovery” of the role of organizational culture belongs to analysts of the activities of Japanese corporations and dates back to approximately 1980. The work of T. Peters and R. Waterman “In Search of effective management". Somewhat later, in 1987, J. Johnson’s work was published, in which the “belief system” of this school was formulated. Here are its brief theses.

1. Strategy formation is a process of social interaction based on common beliefs and understanding among members of the organization.

2. An individual’s beliefs are the result of processes of familiarization with a particular culture or socialization.

3. Organization members are only partially able to characterize the beliefs on which their culture is based, while its sources and explanations may remain obscure to them.

4. As a consequence, strategy takes the form of a perspective and only secondarily a position that is rooted in collective aspirations and is a model that reflects the resources and capabilities of the organization, and creates the basis of its competitive advantages.

Fifth. Culture and especially ideology contribute, rather than to strategic changes, to the preservation of the current strategy.

Culture includes and influences the style of analysis and thinking adopted in the organization as a whole, determining decision-making, including strategic ones. As a factor of inertia, it resists strategic change. Representatives of the Swedish branch of the school of culture especially emphasize the role of “myth” as a metasystem that cannot be seen, much less verified, except through action. The myth of the organization is stored in the employee's brain as a certain construction, always simplified and partially erroneous, but such that it provides a certain interpretation of reality.

School of external environment: strategy formation as a reactive process.

the external environment is discussed in each of the schools of strategies, and most of all in the school of positioning. The external environment school is distinguished by the fact that it makes both management and the organization itself dependent on a set of forces in the external environment that determines strategy. This school found its most striking expression in the person of M. Hannan and J. Freeman, authors of the book “Population Organizations” (1977).

The school grew out of the “theory of situational factors,” which declared a direct relationship: the more stable the external environment, the more careful the planning and formalized structure of organizations. Leadership is seen as a passive element of the strategic process, its task is to identify external forces and ensure the adaptation of organizations. If the environment poses many different challenges to the organization and provides various opportunities, then the organizations' strategies become more versatile and rich in aspects.

The organization must either respond adequately to external forces, or it will have to “leave the scene.” Organizations remain in peculiar niches (a niche is understood here as the area of action of a certain set of specific external forces) until its resources become scarce or the environment becomes excessively hostile.

The environmental school provides organizations with a choice of two strategic alternatives: either to study the environment more deeply and increase competitive advantage, or to accumulate contingency resources to move to another environment.

Representatives of this school see freedom in joining one’s surroundings. To achieve success, an organization must conform to external norms. The optimal behavior of an organization is considered to be the gradual establishment in it of structures and orders similar to the environment. The term "institutional isomorphism" is used to describe this increasing convergence.

Criticism of the school of external environment is associated primarily with the lack of alternative “choice”. In any given environment, only one strategy is realistically possible. The founders of the school, G. Hannan and J. Freeman, recognize that large organizations, by establishing relationships with other organizations, are thereby able to ease external pressure.

Third group: school of configuration and cooperative strategies.

School configuration considers strategy formation as a process of transformation. There are two main concepts in this school: “configuration” and “transformation”.

Configuration is the stable structure of the organization, “transformation” is the process of developing and transforming the strategy.

The origins of the configuration school are found in Alfred Chandler's work "Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of Industrial Production", which first outlined the stages of an organization's life cycle: vertical integration - the acquisition of primary resources and the creation of internal and external connections; intensification - finding more effective ways their use; diversification - entering new markets and business areas; Divisionalization is a repeated shift in the structure in the direction of separating subsidiaries. This school was born later than others. its main provisions contain the postulates of different schools, bringing them together, and in a very specific context.

The empirical basis for the school was the dissertation of P. Handawalla “The Effect of the Environment on the Organizational Structure of a Firm” (Carnegie Melon University, 1970). In it, he argued that the effect of a strategy is determined not by the use of one or another of its attributes, but by their interaction (for example, combination of a given type of power, a specific environment, a certain type of planning with a specific structure and under a certain leadership style).

Danny Miller became the theorist of the school, who presented strategic changes as quantum leaps - transitions from one archetype (state of strategy, structure, situation and process) to another archetype.

The main theses of the configuration school are:

Over a period of time, an organization has a certain structure that is adequate to a certain context, which determines the behavior and set of strategies of the organization;

Periods of stability are interrupted by transformations - leaps into another configuration;

The alternation of periods of stability and transformation occurs in a certain sequence, which represents the life cycle of the organization;

The purpose of strategic management is to maintain the stability of the organization over a long period and maintain viability when transformation occurs;

The process of building a strategy comes down to the choice of one or another configuration of elements of various schools of strategic management;

Developed strategies take the form of plans, positions, perspectives, techniques, organizational culture or niches of the external environment, depending on the situation.

There are several stages in the life cycle of an organization:

Development - hiring employees, establishing positions, etc.;

Stability - fine-tuning strategies and structures;

Adjustment - marginal changes in structures and strategic positions;

Struggle - identification of a new direction in anticipation of an imminent collapse or in the flow of change and experimentation;

Revolution is a rapid transformation of a number of essential parameters of an organization.

School of cooperative strategies.

This school operates with such concepts as “business networks”, “collective strategies”, “strategic alliances”, “joint ventures”, etc.

The term “collective strategy” was proposed in 1983 by G. Est-li and C. Fombrun to describe the process of strategy formation in the work “Collective Strategy: The Social Ecology of the Organizational Environment.” The name itself indicates that in this school, just like in the configuration school, they do not neglect the achievements of other schools, but strive to use them. This school explores various forms of cooperation: both joint ventures and franchising, selling licenses, etc.

The advantage of this type of strategic management theory is that it undermines the egocentrism of other schools, focusing strategy on achieving benefits not only for the organization, but also for its partners. The benefits of partners serve as a catalyst for the growth and benefits of the organization itself.

Cooperative strategies are borderline with the “school of power” and lead to partnership strategies.

1.	School of Design- process of comprehension (Harvard model) (introduction of strategic management - ensuring correspondence between external opportunities and internal potential of the enterprise - methodology for conducting swot analysis) Andrews, Ansoffa.	Criteria: 1) Consistency - the strategy should not be based on conflicting goals and programs; 2) Coherence - the strategy must provide for a response to the external environment and changes in it; 3) Advantages - the strategy should be aimed at developing and maintaining a competitive advantage; 4) Feasibility - the strategy must be based on available resources.
2.	School of Planning- formal process (I. Ansoff, G. Steiner)	-recognizes most of the starting points of the design school; -the process of strategic planning begins with determining the initial goals of the enterprise; - an analysis of resource potential and the external business environment is carried out; - the synergistic effect must be taken into account, - the strategic development plan of the enterprise must contain a financial and administrative strategy, - taking into account feedback, which ensures the interactivity of the procedure for forming a strategic plan, and the continuity of its implementation.) The concept of diversification is introduced - the entry of an enterprise into a new industry. Basic theoretical principles: -the process of developing a strategy does not end with some immediate action, but ends with determining the direction of development; -the developed strategy should be used to develop subsequent strategies; -the need for this strategy disappears if the real course of events leads to a real future; -in the process of formulating a strategy, it is impossible to foresee everything, since you have to use general information. As information becomes more refined, the strategy can also be refined. Administrative strategy implies a strategy for changing the organization itself (its structure)
3.	Positioning School- analytical process	Three waves of development: 1. Early works on military strategies 2. “Consulting imperatives” (growth-market share model, experience curve, pims model) 3. Works on empirical assumptions (Porter’s work) The transition from qualitative to quantitative indicators, development of models (60s). The development of tools went in two directions: matrix methods (generalize quantitative characteristics) and dynamic models (consider the development of a system of dynamics).
4.	School of Entrepreneurship- the foresight process considers the development of company development strategies not as a collective process, but as the individual creativity of the manager	Fundamental provisions: 1. The development strategy of any company exists in the mind of its leader in the form of a unique perspective 2. The process of forming the development of a company is based on the life experience and intuition of its leader, regardless of whether the idea of the strategy is born in his mind or he perceives it from the outside 3. Strategic foresight is characterized by flexibility, and entrepreneurial strategy is both thoughtful and unexpected. 4. Entrepreneurial strategy is, to a certain extent, protected from the influence of direct competition in a market niche. The cognitive school - mental process - analyzes the strategic process from the point of view of human cognitive abilities. Global firms model and structure their environment. Fundamental provisions: 1. The process of strategy formation is considered as a process of cognition occurring in the mind of the strategist 2. Strategy is a perspective that reveals ways of obtaining information from the environment 3. Information from the environment is an interpretation of the world that exists only in the form in which it is perceived.
5.	Cognitive school- mental process - analyzes the strategic process from the point of view of human cognitive abilities (considers the process of developing a strategy as a thinking process). Global firms model and structure their environment.	Fundamental provisions: 1. The process of strategy formation is considered as a process of cognition occurring in the mind of the strategist 2. Strategy is a perspective that reveals ways of obtaining information from the environment 3. Information from the environment, before it is deciphered using cognitive maps, passes through all sorts of distorting filters, or (according to the “objective” branch) is an interpretation of the world, which exists only in the form in which it is perceived. 4. Strategies are “born in pain.” Changing strategies presents significant challenges.
6.	School of Power- negotiation process - interprets the process of developing a company’s development strategy as a negotiation process	Fundamental provisions: 1. Development of a company's development strategy should be considered as a learning process 2. Learning should be developmental in nature through behavior that promotes retrospective thinking. 3. Successful strategic initiatives in the strategy development process form operational experience. 4. The role of the head of the company is to manage the process of strategic learning. 5. Strategies initially appear as patterns of action from the past, which then develop into plans for the future. Decision making comes from below. Japan. It is assumed that the school does not wait for it to grow, creating competitive advantages from the very beginning.
7.	School of Training- developmental process - considers the process of developing a company's development strategy as a developing process	1. The process of forming a development strategy for any organization is determined by the action of political forces, both within it and in the environment external to it 2. Power structures at the organizational level consider the process of developing a strategy as an interaction based on methods of persuasion negotiations 3. Power structures at the macro level consider the organization as striving for its well-being through control of market agents or through cooperation with them
8.	School of Culture- collective process	1. According to ideas, the process of strategy formation is considered as a process of social interaction based on beliefs and understandings common to members of the organization 2. The beliefs of each individual are the result of the processes of familiarization with a particular culture 3. Members of the organization are able to decide on the parts to characterize the beliefs on which their culture is based 4 The main characteristic of the development strategy of a cultural school organization is its predestination 5. Culture, including ideology, contributes to strategic changes and the preservation of the current strategy.
9.	School of External Environment- reactive process	1. the external environment of the organization is considered as the main element of the process of forming an organizational strategy. 2. The organization must respond adequately to changes in the external environment. 3. The leadership of the organization is considered as a passive element of the strategic process, the main element of which is to ensure the organization’s adaptation to the action of external forces.
10.	School configuration- transformation process	1. is based on the two most important provisions of configuration and transformation. In this case, configuration is understood as stable structures and the external environment, and transformation is the process of developing a company’s development strategy. The development of an organization is divided into stages: 1. stage of development 2. Stage of stability 3. stage of adaptation 4. stage of struggle 5. stage of Revolutions Stages of development replace each other according to certain patterns Periodic shake-ups Shifts Life cycles Regular process

All schools are divided into 3 groups.

Cognitive school

A separate decision maker (DM) is identified. The school considers how decision making is influenced from outside.

Periods are distinguished:

1) the period of initial understanding of the strategy,

2) a period of rethinking the adopted strategies,

3) period of getting used to them.

The cognitive school proposed parallel information processing model in the process of making strategic decisions. According to it, people and organizations process information using the same principles. There are 2 streams of information:

information for the manager (individual perception)

information for managers (cognitive perception)

1- Common sense.

2- Classification

3- Socialization

Main stages of information processing:

1. Concentration of attention (the data that will be processed is determined);

2. Coding (all information is divided according to classification criteria, connections are established)

3. Memorization and retrieval (if information is well organized, then it becomes part of the memory);

4. Selection (selection of the necessary information to make a decision).

Trends in decision making.

1) Inconsistency - failure to apply the same criteria in similar situations;

2) Search for supporting data - willingness to collect facts in favor of certain conclusions and neglect of other facts that threaten these conclusions;

3) Newness - the most recent events dominate over older ones that are no longer of interest or are ignored;

4) Selective perception - people tend to see problems through the prism of their own position or experience;

5) Explaining success and failure - success is attributed to skill, and failure is attributed to bad luck or someone else's mistake. This does not allow a person to learn from failures and realize their own mistakes;

6) Underestimation of the unknown - excessive optimism, deceptive correlations, the need to reduce anxiety lead to an underestimation of future uncertainty.

Classification of decision making in terms of analogies:

1. Thinking by analogies (if carried out strategic analysis);

2. Illusion of power (those who make decisions overestimate their power and do not take into account circumstances that interfere with success),

3. Escalation of participation (involves a continued increase in capital investment under pressure from unsatisfactory performance results),

4. Consider one possible outcome.

Study and analysis of the decision-making process, from the point of view of the formation of this decision, and identification of factors that influence decision-making, modern technology strategic management, which are called intellectual models.

Intuitive

Extraversion – based on external factors

Introversion - based on one's own motives

Rational - on the goal

Irrational – spontaneously

The cognitive type of behavior of the decision maker determines those factors that to the greatest extent influence the choice of alternative. Based on the ideas of the cognitive school, the science of canitology was formed. The first cognitive research center was opened at Harvard in 1960.

Types:

1) Cognitive map – reflects the relationship, tasks with influencing factors. Implemented in the form of strategic maps (reflecting cause and effect relationships), based on process analysis, we obtain a forecast for the development of a specific situation. This approach has no limitations. The use of this method, on the one hand, increases the validity of decisions, on the other hand, leads to the development of stereotypes. In management practice, expert systems, which are a form of artificial intelligence, are becoming widespread.

The evolution of competitive advantage

Simple competencies- this is a way of using knowledge, the ability to use it better than others, to produce a product at the level of others.

Key competencies are a combination of simple competencies. These unique abilities cannot be copied. Knowledge of these competencies is necessary to develop enterprise strategy.

Dynamic capabilities – capable of creating new core competencies

Lecture 5

System-forming factor:

Time is a hierarchy

Space – structural divisions, partly hierarchy.

Economy Environment - types of activities

To carry out strategic changes, investments are always needed (project - program)

For each project, a business plan is developed, which is an element of the strategic plan being developed. A control system is created to manage this process. The purpose of the system is to organize processes.

Such activities can be effectively implemented if similar projects are combined and investment programs are formed.

For the planning system to work effectively, it must work as a single whole.

Due to the complexity of planning problems, only general approaches and concepts have been developed that can be used when developing a specific plan.

Structural divisions in strategic planning are business units, each of which implements its own competitive strategy

Each planning level has its own structural divisions. You need to know what sections the strategic plan consists of, content and main indicators, product mission, strategic analysis.

Strategic organizational plan – strategic change plan

A strategic decision always involves great risk. Risk assessment contains an individual approach

The development of a strategic plan requires highly qualified personnel, professional knowledge and knowledge of the enterprise. Calculation and optimization required investment projects and programs, as well as the mandatory use of modern computer models.

Another problem is related to information support. Ideally, an enterprise should have a corporate information system