week 3 Journal

Bipin Lamichhane

Strategy impact and choices

Week 3

Assignment question

a)      Why is strategy making like a science and why is it also like an art or craft?

b)      In your own words and using referenced quotes describe the difference between intended strategy and emergent strategy.

c)      Choose two of the 10 schools of strategy thought and describe them in your own words. Try and provide a real world example for each e.g. an organization or a situation.

d)     Write about your experience with today`s case study. What answer did you give to the question?

Answers

a)      Strategy making is like a science because there are lots of analyses and experiments are done before getting result. It is also like an art because lots of creation and innovation insights are requires or it can also be called craft because of its experience practical learning and outcomes.

b)      Deliberate strategy are realized strategy (pattern in action) to form exactly as intended. These types of strategy are planned; formally structured, analyzed and judged well. For example IBM has always introduced deliberate strategy. They have always come with preplanned actions.

In other hand, emergent strategy are emerges incrementally. This type of strategy is informal and unstructured. There is always lack of proper planning and it looks like things are going in hurry.  Emergent strategies are more focused on exploring and experimenting. We can take example of Google and Wal-Mart store.

c)      The two schools that I choose are Planning school and Entrepreneurial school.

Planning schools extols the virtues of formal strategic planning and arms with strength, weakness, opportunity and threats (SWOT) analysis. Under planning school strategy are supported by checklist and analytical technique. The top level mangers and CEO supervise process. Example: Bank and Insurance Company.

Entrepreneurial school sees strategy formation as a visionary process and focuses on building strong leader or founder to the organization. The school stresses on intuition, judgment, wisdom, experience and insight. Example: Universities and colleges.

d)     Today`s case study was about the Google. It was interesting and exciting, interactions between group members was also increased. The question was about the strategy that Google has adopted. Our group told Google has taken the emergent strategy. Emergent in a sense that Google are making things in hurry. They are investing money in energy project and self driving cars which are not even the sector of their business.

References

·         Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes (9^th Edition, 2011). Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases.  Publisher, Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.

·         Robert Kaplan and David Norton (3^rd Edition, 2000). The Strategy- Focused Organization. Harvard Business School Press.

·  Online available from http://ffolliet.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/back-to-analogies-intended-versus-realised-strategies     [Accessed January 3, 2013]