Origin Of The Word Strategy Essay

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The Origins and Meaning of the Word Strategy

According to Lewis (1999), " the term strategy derives from the Greek word 'strategos', meaning 'the art of the general'. Chandler (1962) defines strategy as " the determination of the basic long term goals and objectives of the enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals". Strategy can be viewed as the identification of ends and the means to achieve those ends, thus providing the foundation for approaches to strategic management. According to Mintzberg (1994), " strategy is a plan, ploy, pattern, position, and perspective; strategy is a process of sensing, analysing, choosing and …show more content…

This school focuses on opportunities. Problems are secondary. There is a very low degree of delegation and the organisation is defined by power centralisation. Strategy moves forward in such organisations. The CEO seeks out and thrives in conditions of uncertainty. There is a heavy emphasis on growth. It can be safely said that growth is the driving force in such organisations. The process of strategy formation is semiconscious. There is heavy reliance on the experience and intuitions of the leader. The structure and strategy are both malleable in this view. The entrepreneurial strategy tends to take the form of niche, one or more pockets of the market protected from the force of outright competition. The basic disadvantage of this school is the heavy reliance and the dominance of the leader. The Harvard Business Review on Entrepreneurship (1999) suggests many entrepreneurial ventures do not have a well-defined strategy and severely lack formal control systems, decision-making processes, and clear roles for …show more content…

41% had no business plan at all, 26% had just a rudimentary plan, 5% worked up financial projections for investors, and only 28% wrote a full-blown plan. The entrepreneurial school has highlighted critical aspects of strategy formation, most notably its proactive nature and the role of personal leadership and strategic vision. The entrepreneurial school presents strategy formation as all wrapped up in the behaviour of a single individual. Key decisions concerning strategy and operation are together centralised in the office of the chief executive. Such centralisation can be beneficial in ensuring that the strategic response reflects full knowledge of the operations. A serial, remedial, and fragmented process, in which decisions are made to solve the problem rather than to exploit the opportunities, with little regard for ultimate goals or even connections between different decisions is strategy as viewed by the learning school. (Braybrook, 1963). According to Quinn (1980), " the real strategy tends to evolve internal decisions and external

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