Comprehensive Approach to Strategic Management:

27COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

No single subject has so dominated the attention ofmanagers, consultants and management theorists as thesubject of corporate strategy. For the top managers of bigcompanies, this is perhaps understandable. Served byhordes of underlings, their huge desks uncluttered by thedaily minutiae of business, they often consider settingstrategy as their most valuable contribution. And it is alsounderstandable that there is a great deal of debate aboutwhich strategies work best; business is, after all,complicated and uncertain. More puzzling is the fact that theconsultants and theorists jostling to advise businessescannot even agree on the most basic of all questions: what,precisely, is … strategy?[1]

IntroductionThis article attempts to bring clarity to the definitionalproblem which currently exists over the meaning ofstrategic management (for discussions around this issue,

see[2,3]). It examines strategic management as a conceptwhich embraces the approaches of a range of theor-etically espoused leader types and then goes on to todescribe a model of the “strategic configuration” –aspects of the domain for strategic management andincluding decisional processes, environmental circum-stances, critical problems, and political situations (forexample), as well as leadership style itself. Thesecomponents of the strategic management domain arethemselves multi-faceted and interactive and arediscussed from an underlying perspective which seesmodern strategic effectiveness as being increasinglydependent upon the deployment of wide and deepleadership-come-domain-component-management skills.

What follows in this article, therefore, is an attempt toclarify what strategic management is and why “oneperspective” theoretical approaches are inadequate forthe task of managing modern organizations in modernenvironments.

Strategic Management as Strategic Leader TypesA continuum of strategic leader types can be synthesizedfrom the management literature. It should becomeapparent from what follows that each leader type bringsa style, skill-base and perspective to his/her job.Particular leader types have favoured decisionalprocesses, perspectives and problems-to-be-solved andnone provides a comprehensive response, alone, to thedemands created by modern environments.

Leader types are listed below and discussed briefly,thereafter:

● The Classical Administrator.● The Design School Planner.● The Role Playing Manager.● The Political Contingency Responder.● The Competitive Positioner.● The Visionary Transformer.● The Self-Organizing Facilitator.● The Turnaround Strategist.● The Crisis-Avoider Strategist.

The Classical AdministratorThe “classical administrator” is the most traditional ofour twentieth century models of the leader. Fayol isrecognized as a founding father of the “classical school”of management. Working and writing in the early years ofthe twentieth century Fayol[4] derived a set of commonactivities and principles of management.

For example, he divided general management activitiesinto five elements: Planning, Organizing, Commanding,

Modern organizations need to operate at alltimes from a comprehensive strategicmanagement basis.

ComprehensiveApproach toStrategicManagement:Leading across theStrategic ManagementDomain

Management Decision, Vol. 32 No. 8, 1994, pp. 27-41© MCB University Press Limited, 0025-1747

Bill Richardson

28 MANAGEMENT DECISION 32,8

Co-ordinating and Controlling. Planning involves exam-ining the future, deciding what needs to be achieved anddeveloping a plan of action. Organizing provides thematerial and human resources and creates the organi-zation structure to carry out the activities of the organi-zation. Commanding involves maintaining appropriateactivity among personnel and achieving the optimumreturn from all employees in the interests of the wholeorganization. Co-ordinating is aimed at unifying andharmonizing the activities and effort of the organization tofacilitate its successful operation. Control activity verifiesthat everything is occurring in accordance with plans,instructions, established principles and expressedcommands.

The “classical administrator”, therefore, is clearly mostconcerned to achieve progress through planning carefullyhow order inside his/her organization might beestablished and maintained.

Fayol’s work has been mirrored to a large extent by othertheorists and practitioners. Taylor[5], who introduced a“scientific management” approach to the planning,organizing, commanding, motivating and monitoring ofproduction department work at the turn of the century,might be viewed as a production-centred classicaladministrator. Drucker[6], considered by many to be thefather of modern-day management theory, might be seenas a “strategic administrator”. His starting point is theexternally oriented product-market strategies of theorganization but, thereafter, in traditional classical-administrator mode he prescribes the use of an internallyoriented management by objectives system whichsystematically plans individual employee performanceimprovements, and motivates, monitors and controlsthese performances.

The Design School PlannerKenneth Andrews of Harvard Business School has beengiven credit as a primary architect of the “Design” schoolof strategic management, along with Chandler[7] andAnsoff[8]. They emphasize the leader’s role as that of theprimary planner of the medium to long-term developmentof the organization. This “design school planner” leader,designs strategic developments by formulating strategyin a controlled and conscious process of thought. He/sheis the leader who creates success by asking andanswering the questions of “Where are we now?”, “Wheredo we want to be?”, and, “How are we going to get there?”in a process of systematic business planning. The “designplanner”, therefore, is an expert at anticipating, with thehelp of strategic planning’s analytical techniques, whatfuture business environments are to be like, and atdevising appropriate product-market strategies which fitproductively (economically speaking) with theenvironmental opportunities and threats facing the

organization and its resource strengths and weaknesses.Having planned strategy, the “design planner” leaderthen uses the techniques of his “Classical Administrator”forerunners to plan its implementation by subordinateswho are expected to work to a blueprint of key tasks andbudget-controlled activities.

The Role Playing ManagerMintzberg challenged the models of the classical anddesign theorists on the basis of their being unrealisticrepresentations of how leadership and organizationdevelopment actually occurs. He carried out empiricalwork into the “real” nature of managers’ jobs[9].

Mintzberg, therefore was an early advocate of the need toprescribe through description – to actually observe thereality of strategy in action and to report this reality andits implications for leadership rather than to prescribe“design” type approaches which, he claimed, were notrepresentative of what actually happens in organizationsand which might not necessarily be the best way thingsshould get done, strategically speaking, in organizations.

Thus Mintzberg took a founding-father position for agrowing body of theory which portrays the manager’s jobas being much bigger than that of the “reflective-calcu-lating planner-controller” as portrayed by contributors inthe classical administrator and design school moulds.Mintzberg’s findings, for example, produced ten leadershiproles – the “figurehead”, “leader”, “liaison”, “monitor”,“disseminator”, “spokesman”, “entrepreneurial”, “distur-bance-handler”, “resource-allocator” and “negotiator”roles.

This school of leadership thought emphasizes the leader’sinvolvement in learning-by doing decisional processes, in asystem of strategic development where strategies emergerather than get deliberately planned into existence, and inthe context of political and social interactions.

The Political Contingency ResponderA more externally oriented and strategic (emphasizingtotal organizational development rather than more narrowand discrete administrative or operational issues) view ofleadership is provided by Pfeffer and Salancik[10]. Fromthis political contingency responder perspective thestrategic leader’s main tasks are to monitor his/herinternal and external environments, to recognize thecritical strategic issues (those issues which have thepotential to affect the security and development of theorganization) which are emerging and to change theorganization to meet the challenges arising.

For Pfeffer and Salancik[10], for example, the key skill ofthe political contingency responder is one of discerningand acting on an appropriate reality – one whichacknowledges the need to satisfy the aspirations of those


parties (as they emerge) who have control over the supplyof a critical organizational resource. Too often, accordingto these theorists, organizations fail to react to changeswhich create new power balances. Rather they continueto accept, unthinkingly, the continuing importance oftraditionally important stakeholders.

This, then, is a power-based perspective of leadership.The political contingency leader thus needs to be anadept power structure analyst – in this view of strategicmanagement critical issues for organizations owe theircriticality to the existence of stakeholders (customers,governments, suppliers, for example) or other variables(such as environmental variables which locate in theecosystem, for example) which have the power tothreaten organizational survival and which might bedisposed to use this power against the organization ifappropriate organizational responses are not made.Having performed his/her stakeholder-power analysis,the political contingency leader then requires expertise asa political bargaining strategy designer and manager.

The Competitive PositionerThe “competitive positioner” subscribes to the environ-mental determinism school but focuses almost exclu-sively on the task of achieving competitive advantage(market power which produces above average profits) in amarketplace where the critical contingency is com-petition. The primary proponent of this view of strategicleadership has been Harvard professor Michael Porterwhose books in the decade of the 1980s, CompetitiveStrategy[11], Competitive Advantage[12] and CompetitiveAdvantage of Nations[13] have been extremely influentialin shaping the thoughts and activities of managementtheorists and practitioners. Much attention has been paidover the past decade or so to the question of how anorganization can create a better than average wealth-producing position in competitive marketplaces. Thisattention has, of itself, fuelled and intensified competition.

The competitive positioner’s main tasks are to decidewhere his/her organization is to compete and then to alignhis/her organization against other marketplace forces in away which gains advantage over them. Competitiveadvantage is assumed to lead to above industry averageprofitability.

The Visionary TransformerDuring the 1980s, fuelled by the works of writers such asPeters and Waterman Jr[14] and Deal and Kennedy[15],the “visionary transformer” rose to prominence as aleader type for the present age. The theorists whopromote this view of leadership describe and prescribe aprocess of “vision management” which requires leaders todecide:

● Where the organization should be – in terms ofstrategic market positioning (the visionary leadertakes his/her organization into market positions ofgreater growth and profitability than has been thetradition for his/her organization or the norm forthe industry in which it has operated).

● How the organization should be – in terms of mar-ket image, the especially attractive features of itscustomer interaction strategy, its role in society andhow it will be a particularly attractive place to workin and to interact with (the visionary leader “re-defines the mundane”, for example, to make his/herorganization’s customer interaction strategy com-petitively attractive in even commodity markets).

● What should be the central thrust (and text if it isto be written down) of the organization’s mission.The mission conveys to all personnel the centralintent behind the “wheres” and the “hows” of theorganization and the core goals and values towhich all personnel should commit themselves.

● How to reorganize the entire organization so thateach component part of it and the organization inits entirety act in harmony to live the mission. Thisrequires, particularly, the ability of the leader to“empower” the personnel of the organization – toimbue them with the commitment and emotionaland physical resource backing to enable them towork with much discretion towards the realizationof the organization’s goals.

Success in achieving “vision living”, therefore, dependson the ability of the “transformational” leader to, first,envision a successful future; second, design and managean appropriate organization; third, utilize a range of“vision implementation leadership qualities” (whichinclude high levels of motivation, dogged determination,an enormous capacity for hard work, exceptionalcommunicative skills and the ability to perform as a rolemodel for others to emulate).

The Self-organizing FacilitatorAs the environments around organizations are perceivedto become increasingly turbulent and surpriseful,theorists are emphasizing the need for “self-organizing,learning” types of organizations. Such organizations aredesigned and led by self-organizing facilitators.

Here, the major skill of the organization leader is as anorganization designer. This leader is required to create anorganization in which its parts (and, first and foremost,its people) continually “self organize” around emergingstrategic issues to develop the organization in a fluid way.In this type of organization, too, the accepted recipesabout what the organization should do and how it shoulddo it are constantly challenged and, if necessary,“unlearned”[16].


The Turnaround StrategistThe “turnaround strategist” is a leader who comes to thefore when a decision is made to re-orient and “turn-around” the performance of an organization in decline.

Often, the “visionary transformer” is portrayed as aturnaround strategist – when he/she is called to practisehis/her transforming skills following the removal of adecline-prone, non-visionary leader.

An altogether more autocratic, ruthless and swiftly-acting type of leader, however, is called in to save, undercrisis conditions, an organization in imminent danger ofdemise.

This type of leader rises to prominence when others havefailed and so does not fit into a one-only position on thecontinuum which has been developed above. He has,however, received special attention in the 1980s fromtheorists such as Slatter[17] and Grinyer et al.[18], andmore recently from theorists such as Miller[19], andRichardson et al. [20], as the importance of this leadershiprole has grown alongside an increasing incidence ofbusiness failures.

The Crisis AvoiderThe late 1980s heralded the era of “a world turned upside-down”[21] and paved the way for the crisis avoider leader.

Central to the model of the crisis avoider leader is thepossession by him/her of a belief system which is neithertoo exclusively introverted and selfish nor too extrovertedand generous. The crisis avoider utilizes “double-sided”belief systems which are reflected in an array of “hard”and “soft” organizational systems and behaviours. Thisleader acknowledges the likelihood of crises and sointroduces organizational systems which reflect anunderstanding that crises and disasters are part andparcel of modern business life.

The crisis avoider leader creates an organization whichcontinuously tests its crisis proneness, and maintainscrisis-simulation-tested structures, systems and staff forthe more effective management of any crises whichimpact on the organization.

This type of leader is concerned about his/her organiza-tion’s impact on the ecosystem – he/she works from thepositions of both crisis responder and crisis causer.He/she brings ethical considerations to the fore ofstrategic decision making with a greater cogency than isthe case with any of his predecessor leaders, and isbeginning to challenge our traditional economic ethic-based approach to strategic decision making[22].

The continuum of leaders described above is illustrated inchronological sequence in Figure 1.

The Domain of Strategic Management: Strategyas “8Ps”, Leadership and EnvironmentProponents of particular strategic leadership stylesusually emphasize particular strategic issues, decisionalprocesses and environmental contexts. In their zeal topromote their preferred approach to strategic manage-ment these proponents pay only partial and superficialattention of the other approaches to and factors involvedin strategic management.

This section of the article attempts to improve thissituation by taking a more comprehensive look, than isusual in the management literature, at the components ofthe “strategic configuration” – those inter-related aspectsof the organizational domain, in which the modernstrategist works and into which he/she is expected tointervene in leading the entire organization.

Leadership of an organization involves the influencing ofwhat the organizational domain is and does. The basicstrategic task of the organization is one of successfullycreating and/or adapting to its environments throughtime. What the organization is and does and how success-fully it negotiates its environments is determined by thenature of a strategic configuration consisting of aspectsof the organization and aspects of the environment. Thisconfiguration represents the domain for strategicmanagement. It includes the component of leadershipitself. The other components of this configurationconstitute the areas of concern for the leader – thoseaspects of the strategic domain which the leader shouldseek to influence and shape or otherwise take account of.

Figure 1. Strategic Leadership Types in ChronologicalSequence of Their Gaining Theoretical Force and GeneralAcceptance (Years Approximate)

1910

1965

1975

1980

1982

1985

1992

1992 (new emphasis)

1994

The Classical Administrator

The Design Planner

The Role Player

The Political Contingency Responder

The Competitive Positioner

The Visionary Transformer

The Self-Organizer Facilitator

The Turnaround Strategist

The Crisis Avoider


They provide an agenda for strategic management – aseries of related organization/environment componentswhich need to be monitored and reorganized as necessaryto create a more effective organization (as the strategy).

Building on the work of Mintzberg[23], who has attemptedto widen our perspective of strategic management, thissection now focuses on these components of the domainfor strategic leadership attention. Our simple frameworkfor examining the strategic configuration is one we haveentitled the “8Ps plus Environment” framework. Itconsists of the following elements:

● Processes of decisional activities.

● Patterns of activities flowing from implementeddecisions (actions).

● Power structures and systems which influencewhat gets done in the organization and how it getsdone.

● Positions achieved by the organization in terms ofits impact on its environment and, particularly, in acapitalist society, the capability its positionbestows on the organization as an economic andsocial wealth-creating, wealth-distributing, system.

● Problems or challenges which the organizationfaces as it seeks to maintain a viable position andto continue to progress successfully.

● Ploys which are shorter term tactical activitiesdesigned to protect or develop the organization’sinterests.

● Perspective which, at its most fundamental level, isthe basic beliefs of the organization’s mostinfluential decision makers about how theorganization should be – the way it relates to itsenvironment, the way people interact in it, thesorts of activities the organization should performand the way in which it should perform them.

● People-motivation and control systems which needto change as the organization grows bigger andmore diverse in its activities.

● Environment which can be classified according toits decisional nature (the extent to which it is easyto understand and/or deal with) and the specificevents unfurling or forthcoming in it.

From the perspective of this article “strategic manage-ment” is a proactive attempt to manage the “strategicconfiguration” – in holistic totality and through themanagement of its parts, across their widths and throughtheir depths.

This view of the job of strategic management is illus-trated in Figure 2. Following is a discussion of thesecomponents of the strategic configuration in turn.

Strategy as Processes of Decision MakingThe theory of management strategy contains manymodels of strategic decision making at work inorganizations[24,25]. These models and the nature of thecontinuum they form are discussed in greater detail inthis section.

The corporate planning model is prescriptive as to howstrategic decision-making processes should be under-taken. The view projected by this model emphasizes alinear sequential sequence of decision making whichinvolves top management in seeking out and utilizing allrelevant information before generating, evaluating andchoosing the way(s) forward for the organization.

Strategic analysis, therefore, leads to strategic choice andonto strategic implementation. An underlying concern ofthis model is the quest to achieve a state of globalrationality where best choices of strategic developmentscan be made from a base of perfect information. Strategicdecision making, in this view, is seen to be the province oftop management who deliberately and systematicallypre-plan developments to ensure that the organizationdevelops, through people working to the “blueprint”, inclosely defined, intended ways. It also emphasizesstrategic decision making as a process concerned withchoices on long-term effect, major resource committing,developments.

The “muddling through” model of strategic decisionmaking[26] is a mode of decisional process whereindecision making proceeds via small steps which areexpected only partially to achieve the central decision-maker’s goals. The decision maker is committed to

Processes

Pattern

Power

Environment

LeadershipPeople motivationand control systems

Problems

Perspective Ploys

Position

Figure 2. The Strategic Configuration (or the Domain ofStrategic Management)


repeating endlessly these small steps and to makingadjustments as conditions and the aspirations ofinfluential stakeholders dictate. Often decisions get takenin a “disjointed incrementalist” manner – the decisionmaker accedes to options linked to existing activities, to“righting wrongs” and to trials and retrials. Processes ofobjectives setting, information analysis and strategyevaluation are intertwined – goals and strategies toachieve the goals are chosen simultaneously. The result isa few simple and global objectives that provide littledirection. However, this mode of decision making doeshave a strong element of intent in that a central objectiveis the continuance of existing strategies. The centraldecision maker, here, tends to “muddle through” decisionmaking life, acceding to the demands of others to createemergent/acceded strategy which is intended to be acontinuation or refinement of existing, traditionaloperations. Defenders of this approach to strategicdecision making claim that its reliance on past experienceand its propensity towards small steps forward (and itsdeliberate exclusion of wider drawn, less certain factors)makes it a more rational approach to strategy makingthan that provided by the allegedly rational approach ofthe linear-sequential model.

Critics of this approach, however, are able to point to ahistory of organizational crises which have been seen tooccur because of “strategic drift”[27] – organizationswhich have failed to challenge and change existingrecipes for doing business become misaligned with thenature and needs of their environments until theirsurvival is threatened.

The logical incrementalism view of strategic decisionmaking, like the “muddling through” model is moredescriptive than it is prescriptive. Theorists such asQuinn[28] have been concerned to find out how strategymaking actually takes place in organizations. (Descrip-tions, of course, lead to enhanced understanding and soprovide a better basis from which to become a moreskilful interventionist in decision-making processes –they help us prescribe better how to make changetowards our preferred outcomes.)

In contrast to the corporate planning model the logicalincrementalist view sees top managers using political andsocial skills to pick up, re-form, check out, gather supportfor, modify and test strategies. Quinn’s study of strategicchange processes in major companies emphasizes the roleof top managers as opportunistic and incrementalblenders of strategies which “surface” from differentparts of the organization and which, before being“blended”, deal with more specific strategic problems. Asenior executive, quoted by Quinn, explains thisapproach to strategy making:

Typically, you start with general concerns, vaguely felt.Next you roll an issue around in your mind till you think you

have a conclusion that makes sense for the company. Youthen go out and start hearing the argument’s pros and cons,and some very good refinements of the idea usually emerge.Then you pull an idea in and put some resources together tostudy it so that it can be put forward as more of a formalpresentation. You wait for the “stimuli occurrences” or“crises” and launch pieces of the idea to help in thesesituations. But they lead towards your ultimate aim. You’dlike to get there in six months, but it may take three years, oryou may not get there, and when you get there, you don’tknow whether it was originally your own idea or somebodyelse had reached the same conclusion before you and just gotyou on board for it. You never know.

This incremental view of strategy nevertheless maintainstop managers as the architects of strategic developments.This incrementalist manager, too, is rational and logical.He/she creates a situation where a coherent strategy canemerge based on better, more up-to-date information, andon the commitment of staff. Here, deliberate strategies areformulated in iterative fashion and helped to emerge in abroadly intended but shared way.

In the “garbage-can” model[29] strategic choice decisionsare outcomes of the interplay between problems, solu-tions, participants and choices, all of which arise indepe-ndently of each other. Problems can arise anywhere, atany time. Solutions exist irrespective of whether problemsexist (for example, people with preferences wait for theirmoments to come, computers wait for questions they cananswer). Participants in decision-making processes movein and out. Opportunities for choices occur at any time adecision has to be made (for example, when a budgetaryschedule demands that money be spent before a specifieddate). Most decisions get made in an oversight mode – thechoice is made quickly, incidentally to other choices beingmade – or under flight conditions (the original problemhas “flown” away and a choice which solves nothing ismade). Fewer decisions actually produce resolutions tostrategic problems.

In this model, therefore, many, if not most, organizationaldecisions are little more than coincidences. Decisionshappen due to the “temporal proximity” of what hasstreamed into the garbage can during a particular periodof time. Decisions appear out of “foggy emergent contextswhen people, problems and solutions find themselvessharing the same bed”[30].

The garbage-can model of strategic decision making,therefore, stands at the opposite extreme of the decision-making continuum to that of the rational corporate plan-ning model. The garbage-can view has people sometimesacting before they think. Top managers might have little orno involvement and/or little or no purposive, rationalinvolvement in important decision-making situations.Here, strategies can simply emerge in unintended waysfrom different parts of the organization. It is important thatleaders understand this process of strategic development


because they can then consider whether, and, if appro-priate, how, to improve garbage-can flows, or to reducetheir prevalence, or to create an environment wheregarbage can decisional processes tend to emerge, notwith-standing their ambiguity and unpredictability, in wayswhich favour the organization’s development.

Key points from the above discussion on the processes ofstrategic decision making indicate that so far as this com-ponent of the strategic configuration is concerned:

● The above continuum of decisional processesmirrors the strategic leadership continuum des-cribed earlier (see Figure 3).

● Every organization needs to employ a range ofdecisional processes and the level of sophisticationwith which each type of process needs to beundertaken grows as business conditions becomemore turbulent and more demanding of organiza-tional responsiveness. What is needed, therefore, isa “multi-problem-solving” and “multi-process”approach to strategic leadership as recommendedby theorists such as Miles and Snow[31] who, forexample, prescribe that the “three organizationalproblems” of engineering, administration andentrepreneurialism need to be solved continuouslyand in coherent, mutually complementary ways.

Thus, although it might make sense for one particularstrategic problem to dominate the attention of a parti-cular organization at a particular time, and for a parti-cular decisional process style to characterize the way theorganization acts generally[18], at the same time, anumber of problems will require attention and numerousprocesses will have important roles to play. Again, thispaper argues for a managerial-across-all-(process)-frontsapproach as illustrated in Figure 3.

Strategy as PatternMintzberg[23] draws to our attention “strategy inhindsight”. In one sense this is the most important viewof strategy because this is strategy that actually “getsdone” (or has “got done”) – it is organization as theevolving, combined outcome of all the plans, decisionsand actions which are being made and realizedthroughout the organization.

Strategy as pattern is realized strategy attributed ashape. A discernible pattern is the outcome of similar“successful approaches which merge into a pattern ofaction that becomes our strategy”[28, p. 35]. By thisdefinition, strategy is consistency, in behaviour over time.Strategic shape emerges over time, as in the case of theactress who obtains a film part playing a femme-fatalecharacter and who thereafter is offered a similar role andso embarks on a period of consistency during which she

chooses to work in these roles, thus developing areputation, image and niche position in the film industry.It is possible, therefore, to conceive of strategy as thepattern which evolves from “a stream of actions” (seeJohnson[32] for an illustration of strategy as pattern in ahigh street menswear retailer context).

A series of product/market patterns can be traced overthe course of this century. These patterns have evolvedfrom one related to the “any colour provided it is black”philosophy to ones reflecting greater market responsive-ness: attention to improved quality, differentiation, andcost-based competitiveness; the need for innovation andswift change; and the pressures for the adoption of greenmarketing and patterns which fit with a growing recog-nition of the need to reduce crisis-creating turbulence andto introduce context changing, collaborative, compati-bility-seeking strategies aimed at reducing resourcewastage and environmental pollution.

Lawrence and Lorsch[33] have also emphasized the needfor organizations operating in dynamic environments tocomprise of a number of differentiated and integratedstructural patterns – one general shape presents toosimplistic a picture and is dangerous because a deeplyingrained, generally applicable organizational pattern ofstructure and strategy, given changing and hostileenvironments, is a condition of performance decline.Rather, what is needed is the capability to maintain andchange overall structural and product-service patterns

The ClassicalAdministrator

Planned

The Design SchoolPlanner

The Role PlayerManager

The PoliticalContingency Responder

The CompetitivePositioner


The Self-OrganizerFacilitator

The Crisis Avoider

Imposed

Entrepreneurial

Ideological

Umbrella

Process

Unconnected

Consensus

Planned/intended[Budgeting] and

Corporate planning

Acceding/intendedMuddling through

Emergent/sharedIntended, logicalincrementalism

Emergent/unconnectedUnintended, garbagecan

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

Figure 3. A Continuum of Strategic Leadership Styles andStrategy-Making Processes


and to interweave into the overall approach whichpredominates at any one time, a multiplicity of inter-connected, mutually supporting sub-patterns.

In terms of business function emphases the followingprogression of structural changes seems to haveapplied generally, as the twentieth century hasunfurled: production -to- finance-to-sales-to-marketing-to-competition-to-people-to-innovation-to-public-relations-to-social responsibility.

Chandler’s work[6] provides further insight into organi-zation structural pattern issues and helps us to model, inthis article, progressions of “organization skeletons” (theframework of the organization through which it getsadministered) from simple, to functional, to divisional, tomatrix skeletons. These changes to structure were seenby Chandler to create structural patterns which fittedwith the bigger, more diverse strategy patterns developedby organizations as they grew over time.

In contrast to the general trend in theoretical thought(which has moved towards “empowered, networked,employee-centred” structural patterns) some crisis-avoider commentators are beginning to call for a return tomore centrally influenced, bureaucratic structures asnecessary structure-context changes for taking some ofthe heat out of our current crisis-ridden era.

Once again, therefore, we can conclude that what isrequired from and for most of our organizations is amulti-patterned, “managing across many fronts,simultaneously” stance towards the pattern componentof the strategic configuration such as that implied inFigure 4.

Strategy as PowerStrategy as power is a view which accedes to the realityof strategy as a political process – a view that emphasizesstakeholder interactions. In this view those with power toinfluence organizational activity and the will to exercisethat power will be influential in determining what theorganization does.

Salancik and Pfeffer[34, p. 227] point out that:Power is shared in organizations; and it is shared out ofnecessity more than out of concern for principles oforganizational development or participatory democracy.Power is shared because no one person controls all thedesired activities in the organization.

This power perspective, therefore, demands that strate-gists monitor changing power structures – the ways inwhich people with control over resources which arecritical to organization functioning change over time.This “P” of strategy calls for skills in stakeholderanalysis and in the formulation of political bargaining

strategies which ensure that stakeholders are attracted tocontribute to the development of the organization.

We might conceptualize the changing fortune of Britishcommerce and industry over the past 40 years as havingbeen the product of changing power situations. A periodduring the 1950s and early 1960s represented an eraduring which British business held strong marketplacepositions. This position of power has been progressivelyweakened as competitors, customers, and, in some cases,governmental-based suppliers and regulators havegrown their power bases. In the globally networkedenvironment of the 1990s we also have a situation ofmuch power diffusion – people, events, and other pheno-mena can arise from anywhere in these inter-connectednetworks to impact on the strategic development of thefirm. Positions of power enable tightly specified andcontrolled administration and production systems. Theyalso facilitate “design” planning-by-extrapolation-and-anticipation. Situations involving “powerful others”require a “political bargaining” response. Diffused powerneeds to be managed in the more sharing, facilitating,careful-but-caring manners ascribed to the visionary, self-organizer and crisis-avoider leaders. So once more we cansee a component of the strategic configuration – this timethe power component – as comprising a continuum ofsituations which tends to mirror our strategic leadershipcontinuum (see Figure 5).

The ClassicalAdministrator

The Design Planner

The Role Player

The PoliticalContingency Responder

The CompetitivePositioner


The Self-OrganizerFacilitator

The Crisis Avoider

"Any colourprovided it'sblack"

Greater marketresponsiveness

Quality, differentiation and cost competition–focused effort

Innovation and swift change

Collaborative,compatible,competitive

Production

Finance

Sales

Marketing

Competitive

People andinnovation

Public relationsand social responsibility

Functional

Divisional

Matrix/network

Collaborative,robust,centrallyinfluencedbureaucracy?

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

Figure 4. A Continuum of Strategic Leadership Styles andPatterns of Strategy


For most of our organizations it makes sense to organizeon the basis of multi-political situation responses. It is tobe expected that the organization will be relativelypowerful vis à vis particular stakeholder groups and lesspowerful vis à vis others. It is also to be expected that theoverall power position of the organization will changeover time as will the individual power relationshipsbetween stakeholder groups connected to the organi-zation. Each organization, also, is part of our power-diffused society and so needs a leadership style andorganization response which acknowledges this.

The crisis-avoidance movement is beginning to call formore collective and collaborative, higher system (govern-mental, for example, as compared with organizational)interventions into the diffused power environments of the1990s.

Strategy as PositionUnderlying all the views of strategic management beingdiscussed here is a model of the organization as an “opensocial system”. In this model, the organization itself is thestrategy for creating and distributing wealth through itsinteractions with people-aspects of its environment. Thisview sees the organization as a mechanism whichattracts resources, uses them inside the organization to doand make things and then offers organizational products

and services to customers and other users of organizationoutcomes. The aim of the organization, from this per-spective, therefore, is for it to occupy an attractive andproductive position in its environment – one whichattracts inputs and provides attractive outputs in a waywhich creates sufficient wealth to satisfy those involvedin the conversion process and to enable the organizationto maintain its viability.

Competitive strategy theorists such as Porter see themajor tasks of the management strategist as being onesof choosing and maintaining “winning” positions incompetitive marketplaces. This “competitive advantage-seeking” view has become increasingly influential overthe past decade or so. The key to strategic success fromthis perspective is the winning of above average returnson investment through the design and implementation ofcompetitive strategies.

“Strategy as competitive position” is an especiallyimportant topic for the political contingency responderleader, i.e. competitive positioning is a concept related to“strategy as power” – but is a critical issue which issufficiently important to warrant its own categorization.Mintzberg and Quinn[23, p. 371] mirror this view:

Pfeffer’s work, in some respects, can be viewed as a mirrorimage of Porter’s. Perhaps you may want to go back…andread Porter, this time between the lines, about barriers toentry, bargaining power of suppliers, and so on – fromPfeffer’s perspective [a power perspective]. You maydiscover that “political” and “competitive” are not so distinctas they might at first seem.

It is not too difficult to see “position” as a continuumcreator similar to that which describes the range of“power” configurations. In a situation where an organi-zation has great competitive strength, as for example, in amonopolistic situation, then it can afford to ignoreaspects of its environment and concentrate on makingefficient its administration, production and planningsystems. As contexts become more competitive, however,leadership and organizational responses need to focus oncatering for the needs of important suppliers andcustomers, for example. In very diffuse and diversesituations leadership has to give away power to itsoperating personnel – it simply cannot respondsufficiently quickly or effectively through a central-personal control system. In such a macro system, too,power sharing networks and strategic alliances arenecessary strategies for developing successfully acrossmany fronts.

It is inappropriate to leave the discussion on strategy asposition, however, by merely drawing attention to theway in which a continuum of competitive responsesmatches the continuum of leadership styles. We must alsoonce again emphasize the need for multi-competitiveresponses to be ongoing, simultaneously. Competitive


The Design School Planner

The Role Player Manager



The Visionary Transformer(sharing)

The Self-OrganizerFacilitator(facilitating)

The Crisis Avoider(careful but caring)

"Powerful others"environments

Emergence of centralinterventions?

Power-diffusedenvironments

Powerful organization●

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Figure 5. The Strategic Leadership and Power Continuums


advantage (above industry-average profitability) isachieved through creating bigger profit margins thanone’s competitive rivals. This, in turn, in marketplaceswhere the competition is constantly innovating itsprocesses and products to get ahead, requires constantattention to the objectives of efficiency, customersatisfaction and product/market growth and innovatorycapability. These tasks require an all round sophisticationin administration, strategic development planning,organizational focusing, commitment harnessing andnetwork facilitating.

Moving one step further along our continuums, movingon from the point of network facilitating, the fundamentaland implicit role of competition in society is now beingchallenged by commentators who question the sensibilityof “thriving on chaos” competitive policies in an alreadychaotic and resource-threatened world. This is a questionbeing grappled with presently by those who affiliate tothe crisis-avoiding movement and who see a need tomaintain competitive and innovatory robustness but whoalso see these features of organizational life as propellingsociety even further into a crisis-ridden era. The com-petitive positioner and strategic leadership stylescontinuums are illustrated in Figure 6.

Another key point which should be made before we moveon from the concept of “strategy as position” is that

although the traditional emphasis in the managementliterature has been on the role of position as a competitiveadvantage, market power, economic-outputs generator,this concept of “position” can be widened to include“social”, “nature(al)” and “ethical” position. In this way, theconcept of position might be used to generate usefuldevelopments towards the resolution of some of the criticalstrategic problems which are part of our final “P” (Strategyas Problems and Challenges) component of the strategicconfiguration (discussed after the following sections).

Strategy as PerspectiveStrategy as perspective is a view which emphasizes theway people inside organizations see themselves – in thewords of Mintzberg[23] their “ingrained way of per-ceiving the world”. This view of strategy, then, is onewhich embraces “paradigms” (deep-rooted assumptionsabout the way the organization should do business andabout its role in society) and “organization culture”(described by Deal and Kennedy[15] as “the way we dothings around here”). Strategy as perspective is impor-tant because “perspective” underpins organizationalactivity and what the organization does determines howsuccessful it is.

In previous conditions of steady-state environments,introverted, bureaucratic and self-centred cultural normswere adequate for the task of successful organization. It isnow generally accepted, however, that one-sided culturalbases are crisis-inducers and that, increasingly, successfulstrategic configurations include a “perspective”component which “manages paradox”[35], and is “looseand tight”[14]. Thus, in terms of a continuum of “organiza-tional culture prescriptions” we can model a progressionfrom “the business of business is business – look after theinternal operations of the business to achieve success”[36](Friedman and the neo-classical economists, generally;Ford, circa 1920; Taylor[5]; Burns and Stalker[37]), to “lookoutwards, be organismic, emphasize market responsive-ness and customer care” (Burns and Stalker[37] and themarketing movement, generally, in the 1980s and 1990s).This progression is illustrated in Figure 7.

Strategy as People Motivation and Control SystemsAs we have already noted, many contributions to themanagement literature focus on narrow definitions ofstrategic leaderships. Some theorists have taken usefulsteps forward by connecting different strategic-organiza-tional contexts together[38] or including material onmany contexts in one book[22].

The thrust of these contributions is towards exploring arange of discrete leadership style/leadership context “fits”(Mintzberg, again as an exception, at least notes theexistence of mixed and transitionary strategic con-figurations) – in contrast to the thrust of this articlewhich is based on the assumption that, in most cases, any



The Role Playing Manager




The Self-Organizer

The Crisis Avoider

Powerful othersResponsiveness and attentionto their needs

Power much diffusedDo all the above and collaborate tochange the underlying context

Power much diffusedEnable productive, creative, emerging networks and alliances

Power more diffused Articulate and commitpersonnel to a shared vision

Powerful customers andcompetitorsTarget customers–position all aspects of organizationto achieve competitive advantage

Strong(ish) positionProduct-market developmentoriented

Strong position Internal efficiencyoriented

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Figure 6. Strategic Leadership and Position Continuums


one context comprises (or needs to comprise) all theelements of each of the strategic configuration continu-ums and that the fitting response, therefore, is a multi-faceted one.

Thus, although this article departs from the “discreteand separate” movement of these contributors it acknow-ledges the building block contribution made by thesecontext-linking theorists. In this section, too, advantagewill be taken of a further component of the strategicconfiguration which is emphasized by “strategiccontext” theorists. This additional component isorganizational systems for the motivation and control ofits people.

Greiner[38], for example, explores the notion of organi-zation as a sequence of success-into-failure processeswherein contexts change as the organization grows olderand bigger. As this progression (which is driven by theleader’s desire to grow his/her organization) occurs,according to Greiner’s model, leadership style, struc-tures, systems and processes of management must alsochange to replace the old elements of the strategicconfiguration.

Greiner models a series of “managerial obsolescences”and “strategic drifts” (created by people-control-and-motivation systems which become increasingly out ofdate and out of context). In this way Greiner creates a

picture of organization development (and growth) overtime as a series of evolutionary periods which arepreceded and followed by bursts of revolutionarychanges. The revolution-crises reorientate the organiza-tion to a new stage of development – with a new leader atthe helm.

In Greiner’s model the successful leader at the outset ofan evolutionary period is him/herself the seed of thenext revolution/crisis. In particular, these crises requirenew people motivation and control systems for theirresolutions. These systems are illustrated in Figure 8.

Strategy as Problems and ChallengesManagement theorists are now emphasizing the inade-quacy of the Corporate Planning-to- “Grand Vision”approaches as a basis for the strategic development of theorganization. Rather they argue, in our modern era ofquick and often surpriseful change, the key to stayingsuccessfully adaptive is an organizational system whichpicks up and monitors “strategic issues” as they emergeand develop. This view of strategy, then, is one of con-tinuously providing suitable responses to new strategicproblems. “Strategy as problem” is the last of our “8Ps” ofthe strategic configuration.

Richardson and Thompson[39], have identified a numberof generic problems of modern strategic management.








The Crisis Avoider

Look outwards

Work from a double-sidedbelief base, manage paradox

Work from a multi-faceted,cultural base, harness many approaches

Emphasize customercare

Be more organismic

The business ofbusiness is business

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Figure 7. Strategic Leadership and Cultural PerspectiveContinuums



The Role Playing Manager





The Crisis Avoider Higher system interventionary control

Collaborative, networkingself-control

Co-ordinated control

Delegated control

Professional leadership

Collaborative team control

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Figure 8. Strategic Leadership Styles and People Motivationand Control Systems


These are listed in Table I and create an agenda forstrategic action in organizations – each problem orchallenge needs to be addressed with greater effective-ness. These problems also provide one approach toimprovement of “all round” strategic management compe-tencies and for the design of a problem-solving approachto strategic management development programmes.

Although management developers have been called on tohelp practitioners improve their skills in the processes ofbuilding strategic issue agendas no-one seems to havebuilt a strategy programme or a strategy book aroundthe concept of generally applicable, critical strategicissues and how they should be managed. Such a book andstrategy programme is considered by this author to beparticularly appropriate in a world where each of theabove problems are critical ingredients of strategicconfigurations.

Most, if not all, modern-day organizations operate inenvironments which raise all of the problems shown inthe table. Modern strategists thus need to improve theirskills for solving or dealing with each of these types ofproblems or challenges and organizational strategiesneed to be employed to deal with each of them.

Environments for Decision MakingReflection about the “8Ps” of the strategic configurationleads to the conclusion that the environment in whichstrategic decisions have to be made and to which they areaddressed is a major influence on the type of decision-making process and leadership style which can (orshould) be utilized.

Johnson and Scholes[40] point out that it is not simplywhat is going on in the environment around the decisionmaker (such as key forthcoming events as, for example, achange in business law) that is important. What isequally as important is the nature of that environment.“Nature” refers to the levels of dynamism and complexity(and, as a consequence, levels of uncertainty for decisionmakers) in the environment. Very dynamic and complexsituations call for different strategic leadership styles,decision-making processes and other strategic configur-ation arrangements to those which are suitable for staticand simple situations[41, pp. 58-61).

Thompson and Tuden[41] have also focused on theimplications for decision makers of different types ofdecisional environments and have highlighted the need forstrategic decision-making style to fit levels of environ-mental uncertainty. Their “decisional styles to fitdecisional environments matrix” distinguishes betweenuncertainty or conflict over the objectives which underpinorganizational action, and uncertainty about what hascaused (or will cause) particular outcomes.

Clear and agreed objectives and similarly clear under-standing of causal relationships gives rise to thepotential for decision making by computation. Asdisagreement over objectives for action become part ofthe decision maker’s environment, however, negotiationand compromise are called for. Consensus overobjectives but uncertainty about how to achieve them(as for example, where decision influencers are agreedon the need to increase their organization’s marketshare, but where they are uncertain over howadvertising, for example, will affect market take-up, orhow competitors might respond to tactical moves)requires decision by judgement. The most difficult andambiguous environment for decision making is onewhere there is conflict or uncertainty over what theobjectives of organizational action should be anduncertainty about what the causes of existing scenariosare or what the consequences of particular actions will

● How to think strategically

● How to gain awareness of the implications of modern environments on the need for managers to think strategically

● How to avoid the trap of self enacted reality and to reach more objectively informed decisions

● How to manage the organization’s political and goal setting/attaining system

● How to diagnose organizational strategic standing

● How to choose where and how to compete

● How to test for winning product/market developments

● How to plan for things to go wrong

● How to collaborate for competitive advantage

● How to organize to operationalize strategy

● How to design a “fitting“ organization

● How to get closer to the customer

● How to achieve more productive organization

● How to create a “living“ vision management system

● How to invoke creative, innovative and self-organizing organization

● How to avoid and/or manage business-failure turnarounds

● How to manage paradox

● How to resolve ethical problems

● How to avoid and/or manage shock events and socio-technical disasters

● How to gather, create and use information for the solving of each of the above problems

Table I. Generic Strategic Problems


be. This, according to Thompson and Tuden[41] callsfor inspirational decision making.

Strategy theorists have pointed to the emergence of atrend in the nature of environments from steady stateconditions through to high levels of turbulence and“surpriseful” conditions. There is strong agreement thatwe are now managing in environments that require skillsin negotiating, judging and “inspirationing”.

The recurring key points of this article are made again,this time in the context of the “environment” componentof the strategic configuration. Modern environmentscomprise each of the sets of conditions which comprisethe four quadrants of the Thompson and Tuden[41]matrix. Correspondingly, decisional processes andleadership styles are needed to ensure that the decisionalenvironments are matched by appropriate strategicresponses.

Figure 9 illustrates the continuums of leadership stylesand decisional environments/decisional responses.

ConclusionDespite the growing need for a “leading across all styles”approach to strategic management, more often than not itis the case that particular writers, teachers and

practitioners emphasize the strategic problems mostclosely related to their own preferred strategic leadershipstyle and adopt a stance (implicitly) of “this by and large,is the only way to do strategic management”.

The tendency in the management literature has also beento present a range of strategic contexts as a series ofsituations wherein particular styles need to be fitted withparticular configurations of business conditions. Theclear implication here is that leaders need to choose theone style that fits their particular strategic configuration– or to change their style, or to accede to a new, morefitting, leader.

One danger which arises from this tendency to presenteither/or choices of strategic leadership style (or, as wediscussed earlier, to ignore the presence of other styles) isthat of “the baby being thrown out with the bath water”.One likely consequence of these discrete views of strategicmanagement is that more traditional approaches toorganizational leadership or “out of context” approachesare likely to be ignored by those following currently in-vogue theoretical dictates, or perceiving themselves to bemanaging in theoretically described specific contexts.This is likely to be the case even when much of the earliertheory remains helpful as part of a comprehensivelyeffective approach.

This article is based on the underlying assumption that arange of leadership styles needs to be employedsimultaneously, that modern environments demandorganizations which are led by strategists who have thenecessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to facilitate an“across all leadership fronts” approach to their jobs.

Thus, unlike the context-linked models of strategicmanagement “fit” this article does not project a “relay”type sequence of strategic management development. Inthis article, as new processes, power structures andenvironmental contexts, for example, come into play inthe strategic arena and assume topical importance, muchof the earlier “baggage” of the component continuumsremains as important ingredients in the total strategicconfiguration.

Essentially, this article argues that modern strategicmanagement takes place in a situation of complexitywhich needs to be met by a multi-skilled strategic leader-








The Crisis Avoider

Certainty of objectives but less certainty of outcomes–computational and judgemental decisions

Judgemental, negotiated andlargely inspirational

Conflict over objectives and someuncertainty over outcomes–judgemental, negotiated andinspirational decisions

Conflict over objectives–negotiated and compromiseddecisions

Certainty of objectives and of outcomes–computational decisions

and

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Figure 9. Strategic Leadership Styles and DecisionalEnvironment Continuums

A range of leadership stylesneeds to be employed

simultaneously


ship response – a generalized approach to strategicmanagement might need to predominate at a particularpoint in time, but, nevertheless, modern organizationsneed to operate at all times from a comprehensivestrategic management basis.

Figure 10 links all the components of our strategicconfiguration in a way which indicates their inter-related, matching, and sub-context creating nature. Thisis modelled as a “strategy cylinder” and might be concep-tualized as a piston which brings all its parts to bear inthe task of propelling itself and its environment forward.The piston has the ability to change its angles and itsenergies to change the emphasis of its actions to moreeffectively meet the demands of the environment inwhich it works but, at any one time, all parts of thecylinder need to be functioning simultaneously andharmoniously.

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PloysPatterns

PerspectivesProblems

Positions

Leadership

E N V I R O N M E N T

ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT

Modern

Traditional

Power People/motivationand control systems

Processes

Figure 10. Strategic Configuration as a Strategy Cylinder


24. Mintzberg, H. and Waters, J.A., “Of Strategies Deliberateand Emergent”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 6,1985, pp. 257-72.

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Bill Richardson is a Lecturer at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.

Application Questions(1) Categorize your organization’s leadership on the eight leadership types model.(2) Can “a range of leadership styles be employed simultaneously” in practice? What kind of behaviours does that imply?

Comprehensive Approach to Strategic Management:

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