Assignment: Week 3

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

Strategy making can like science because it comprises of numbers with extensive analysis and are uncontaminated by bias, judgment or opinion. Strategy making also involves application of rational sets of formulas, analytical tools or set of rules. Therefore, strategy making can be much similar to science.

Strategy management can be termed as Art and craft-like because it involves people, conflicts, politics, compromises, external and internal influences, and many more. Strategy making widely depends on creativity, reasoning of people. Strategy making comprises of intended and emergent processes. Thus, strategy making is also like an art or craft.(introduction to management,2013)

2. In your own word and using referenced quotes describe the difference between intended and emergent strategy.

Differences between intended strategy and emergent strategy:

Intended strategy

·         Intended strategy acts on predetermined visions that emphasize intention. Intended strategy marks a concrete attention to detail concerning business operations.

·         Intended strategy attempts to minimize outside influence acting on business operations.

·         Intended strategy follows a formal structure of hierarchy in the organization. The employees are expected to work together to achieve the desired goals.

·         Intended strategy focuses on forecasting the future opportunities and threats for the business.

Emergent strategy

·         Emergent strategy is all about exploring new ways to achieve goals and objectives of the organization. It doesn’t follow specific predetermined procedures, but are implemented according to the circumstances.

·         It follows trial and error method.

·         It has informal or unstructured hierarchy.

·         It is much experimental in nature.

·         It is what strategic thinking is all about.(books.lardbucket,2013)

3. Choose two of the ten schools of strategy thought and describe them in your words.

The Design School

“The design school” has simply two-step approach.

1.       Make a close study of the organization. In this a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is carried out.

2.       “Establish Fit” between internal (Strength and Weakness) and external (Opportunities and Threats) aspects of the organization.

In short, this school focuses on the organizations strength, weakness, opportunities and threats, and according to it, formulates plans and strategies required to obtain the goals and objectives.

The Positioning School

The positioning school sees strategic management simply as the process of selecting from a highly constrained set of generic strategies and implementations as the following-through of the business logic of that generic strategy. The positioning school revolutionized strategic management by insisting that creativity was not required, actually and it can be viewed as necessarily deductive and deliberate.

(nickpellin,2013)

Would you describe Google’s strategy as more deliberate or more emergent?

I would describe Google’s strategy as more emergent because of the following reasons:

1.       It constantly brings changes on its online websites like YouTube, Google search engine according to the time and demand.

2.       It constantly changes technology according to the technological advancement.

3.       It carries experimental projects.

4.       It conducts more exploring works (self driving cars, renewable power plant projects)

4. What are the advantages of being very “experimental”?

The advantages of being very experimental are as follows:

Unexpected benefit
Product development
More flexibility
May extract solutions to other problems. 

5. What are the disadvantages of being very "experimental" ?

The disadvantages of being very experimental are as follows:

Sometimes experiments lead to nowhere.

May become time consuming.

Can be waste of resources.

(education-portal,2013)

What do you think of their strategy? 

According to me, Google’s strategies are very practical and beneficial. It moves according to time and demand of its consumers and its employees. 

References:

 [Online] Available at:http://www.introduction-to-management.24xls.com/en122 [Accessed on 14th march, 2013]

 [Online] Available at:http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/strategic-management-evaluation-and-execution/s05-02-intended-emergent-and-realized.html
[Accessed on 14th march, 2013]

 [Online] Available at:http://www.nickpelling.com/dissertation/chapter4.pdf[Accessed on 14th march, 2013]

 [Online] Available at:http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/non-experimental-and-experimental-research-differences-advantages-disadvantages.html[Accessed on 14th march, 2013]