Evolution of Strategy

Historical development of strategic management

Birth of strategic management

Strategic management as a discipline originated in the 1950s and 60s. Although there were numerous early contributors to the literature, the most influential pioneers were Alfred Chandler, Philip Selznick, Igor Ansoff, and Peter Drucker.

Alfred Chandler recognized the importance of coordinating the various aspects of management under one all-encompassing strategy. Prior to this time the various functions of management were separate with little overall coordination or strategy. Interactions between functions or between departments were typically handled by a boundary position, that is, there were one or two managers that relayed information back and forth between two departments. Chandler also stressed the importance of taking a future looking long term perspective. In his groundbreaking work Strategy and Structure (1962), Chandler showed that a long term coordinated strategy was necessary to give a company structure, direction, and focus. He says it concisely, “structure follows strategy”. Today we recognize that this is only half the story: strategy also follows from structure (see Tom Peters Liberation Management)

Philip Selznick (1957) introduced the idea of matching the organization's internal factors with external environmental circumstances. This core idea was developed into what we now call SWOT analysis by Learned, Andrews, and others at the Harvard Business School General Management Group. Strengths and weaknesses of the firm are assessed in light of the opportunities and threats from the business environment.

Igor Ansoff built on Chandler's work by adding a range of strategic concepts and inventing a whole new vocabulary. He developed a strategy grid that compared market penetration strategies, product development strategies, market development strategies and horizontal and vertical integration and diversification strategies. He felt that management could use these strategies to systematically prepare for future opportunities and challenges. In his classic Corporate strategy (1965) he developed the “gap analysis” still used today in which we must understand the gap between where we are currently and where we would like to be, then develop what he called “gap reducing actions”.

Peter Drucker was a prolific strategy theorist, author of dozens of management books, with a career spanning five decades. His contributions to strategic management were many but two are most important. Firstly, he stressed the importance of objectives. An organization without clear objectives is like a ship without a rudder. As early as 1954 he was developing a theory of management based on objectives. This evolved into his theory of management by objectives (MBO). According to Drucker, the procedure of setting objectives and monitoring your progress towards them should permeate the entire organization, top to bottom. His other seminal contribution was in predicting the importance of what today we would call intellectual capital. Work would be carried out in teams with the person most knowledgeable in the task at hand being the temporary leader.

E. Chaffee (1985) summarized what he thought were the main elements of strategic management theory by the 1970s. They are:

• Strategic management involves adapting the organization to its business environment.

• Strategic management is fluid and complex. Change creates novel combinations of circumstances requiring unstructured non-repetitive responses.

• Strategic management affects the entire organization by providing direction.

• Strategic management involves both strategy formation (he called it content) and also strategy implementation (he called it process).

• Strategic management is partially planned and partially unplanned.

• Strategic management is done at several levels: overal corporate strategy, and individual business straegies.

• Strategic management involves both conceptual and analytical thought processes.

Growth and portfolio theory

In the 1970s much of strategic management dealt with size, growth, and portfolio theory. The PIMS study was a long term study, started in the 1960s and lasted for 19 years, that attempted to understand the Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies (PIMS), particularly the effect of market share. Started at General Electric, moved to Harvard in the early 1970s, and then moved to the Strategic Planning Institute in the late 1970s, it now contains decades of information on the relationship