(1) The Design School (mid-1950s) - representative figure

The Design School’s point of view

Strategy is a reflection of the company’s internal strength Matching with external opportunities is a conscious but informal visioning process by the CEO. This school of thought established the famous SWOT model, which examines the threats and opportunities faced by the enterprise as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the enterprise itself, and fully reflects the importance of internal and external relationships within the organization in formulating strategies. Strategy emerges from a conscious, deliberate process. The CEO is the strategist. The model for strategy formation must remain simple and informal. Strategy should be clear and simple, one of the best outcomes of personalized design.

Evaluation of the Design School

The Design School has put forward some important vocabulary in strategic management, which form the basis of the explanatory school. However, this school also has great limitations, which are mainly reflected in the evaluation of advantages and disadvantages, the problems of strategy and structure, the clarity and flexibility of strategy, and the formulation and implementation of strategies.

(2) The Planning School (mid-1960s) - representative figure

The views of the Planning School

Similar to the Design School, planning The school also regards the market environment, positioning and internal resource capabilities as the starting point for formulating strategies. But it believes that the formulation process of corporate strategy should be a formal, controlled planning process that is broken down into clear steps and supported by analytical techniques. The strategy should be clearly formulated so that it can be passed through detailed goals, budgets, procedures and various business plans to be implemented. Based on this concept, the planning school introduced many mathematical and decision-making science methods and proposed many complex strategic planning models.

Evaluation of the Planning School

The staff department took over the formulation of strategic plans. The staff department paid too much attention to analysis and prediction, lacked real strategic insight, and had fallacies and separation in prediction. The fallacy, the formal fallacy (see Mintzberg's article "The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning").

(3) The Positioning School (mid-1970s) - representative figure

The positioning school’s point of view

The positioning school negated the design While recognizing the uniqueness of the school's strategy, it invented a set of analysis methods, believing that the core of corporate strategy is to obtain competitive advantage, and competitive advantage depends on the profitability of the industry in which the company is located, that is, industry attractiveness and the company's relative competitive position in the industry. . Therefore, the first task of strategic management is to select the industry with the most profit potential, and secondly, we must also consider how to position ourselves in the selected industry. This school of thought provides enterprises with a series of analysis techniques such as the five forces model and value chain to help enterprises choose industries and formulate competitive strategies that conform to industry characteristics.

Evaluation of the positioning school

The positioning school has opened up many avenues for academic research on strategic management; it has provided a set of powerful theoretical tools for the analysis of strategic practice. The positioning school also has a separation of thinking and action. At the same time, it judges the current situation and looks to the future. It emphasizes the stability of the industry and excessively formalizes and generalizes the strategy formulation process and content. Therefore, the positioning school prefers to "stay there." ” rather than “go there”.

(4) The Entrepreneurial School (early 1950s) - representative figure

The views of the Entrepreneurial School

The Entrepreneurial School The school of thought believes that entrepreneurs with strategic insight are the key to business success. Many successful companies do not have systematic and documented strategies, but they still operate well. This is closely related to managers' belief in the basic value of the company and the reason for its existence. The biggest characteristic of the entrepreneurial school is its emphasis on leadership enthusiasm and the importance of strategic intuition. On the one hand, it attributes strategy formulation to personal intuition; on the other hand, it believes that there is no normative strategy formulation process. The core concept of this school is vision, which is generated in the minds of leaders and is the expression of strategic thinking. Strategy is both deliberate and adaptable: it is thoughtful in its general ideas and judgments of direction, flexible in its specific details, and flexible in making changes during the execution of the strategy.

Evaluation of the entrepreneurial school

Emphasis on the role of personalized leadership and strategic vision. However, the entrepreneurial school regards the formation process of strategy as a black box buried in the process of human understanding, and does not tell companies how to obtain the entrepreneurial talents they need. At the same time, one-sided exaggeration of entrepreneurs' superhuman abilities to replace substantive organizational construction will often bring disastrous consequences.

(5) The Cognitive School (late 1940s) - representative figure

The view of the Cognitive School

The Cognitive School believes that the strategy formation process It is a basic process of understanding. It is a bridge between the more objective school of design, planning, positioning and entrepreneurship and the more subjective school of learning, power, environment and structure.

It proposes that strategy is essentially a kind of intuition and concept, and the formulation process of strategy is essentially the cognitive process in the mind of the strategist; because the environment in which the strategist is located is complex, the input information must go through various processes before it can be understood. The filtering of distortions, so that strategies focus on pragmatism rather than optimization in the actual formation process.

Evaluation of the cognitive school

The cognitive school reminds us that strategists have great differences in cognitive styles, which will have an important impact on the strategies they pursue. If we To understand the strategy formation process, it is best to understand the human psychology and brain. However, its contribution to strategic management research is extremely limited.

(6) The Learning School (late 1950s) - representative figure

The view of the Learning School

The Learning School believes that the organizational environment has Due to the complex and unpredictable nature of strategy, strategy formulation must first adopt a continuous learning process, in which the boundaries between strategy formulation and execution become blurred and indiscernible. This kind of learning process is more of a collective learning, and the role of leadership becomes no longer a pre-thought-out thing, but a process of managing strategic learning.

Evaluation of the learning school

The learning school brings the reality of studying the strategy formation process, which is exactly what the previous schools lack: strategy is a simultaneous learning process process, companies understand and formulate strategies during the learning process. But it may lead to strategic dispersion problems, such as no strategy, abandonment of correct strategies, and purposeless learning.

(7) The Power School (early 1970s) - representative figure

The view of the power school

Organizations are different individuals and As a coalition of interest groups, strategy formulation is a process of bargaining, mutual control, and compromise among conflicting individuals, groups, and alliances, both as a process within the organization and as its own behavior in the external environment of the organization.

Evaluation of the power school

Strategy formulation is about power, but it is not only about power. There are also common interests within and between organizations. On the one hand, this homogeneity manifests itself in the views of other strategic schools.

(8) The Cultural School (late 1960s) - representative figure

The viewpoint of the Cultural School

Culture is the influence of all human beings A shared intention created over time, not only through purely social activities, but also through people working together for a common purpose, including the interrelationships that arise between them and the resources they use. Strategy formation is a process of social interaction based on the shared beliefs and understandings of organizational members. Strategy first takes the form of ideas rather than positions, ideas rooted in collective intentions and reflected in organizational patterns that harbor resources or potential, are protected, and are used as competitive advantages.

Evaluation of the cultural school

If the shortcoming of the positioning school is artificial precision, then the shortcoming of the cultural school should be the vagueness of the concept. It favors strategic management. coherence. However, the cultural school introduced the important collective thinking in the social process, established the equal status of organizational style and personal style, and was conducive to the establishment of an overall concept.

(9) The Environmental School (late 1970s) - representative figure

The views of the Environmental School

Shift attention to organizations External, focusing on the impact of the organization's external environment on strategy formulation. The environment as a comprehensive force plays a central role in the formation of corporate strategy, and companies must adapt to these forces. The leader thus becomes a passive factor, responsible for observing the environment and ensuring that the enterprise fully adapts to it. Businesses that refuse to adapt will die.

Evaluation of the Environmental School

The Environmental School has completely turned strategic management into a passive process. Enterprise strategic management means that enterprises observe and understand the environment and ensure their complete adaptation to the environment. . How can two organizations in a similar environment successfully employ two completely different strategies.

(10) The Configuration School (early 1970s) - representative figure

The view of the structural school

The key to strategic management is to maintain Stable, or at least adaptive most of the time, to strategic change, but periodically recognizing the need for change and being able to manage chaotic transitions without disrupting the organization. The corresponding strategy formulation process can be a conceptual design or formal plan, a systematic analysis or a leader's vision, or a peer-to-peer learning or competitive power strategy, which is concentrated in personal understanding, Collective socialization or simply response to environment, but each has its own time and its own content. In other words, these strategically formed schools of thought themselves represent particular structures.

Evaluation of the Structural School

The Structural School provides a way to reconcile different schools. It believes that different schools have their own time and their own position, which brings new opportunities to the research on strategic management. Come order. “Choosing the right degree of structure is a complex balancing act in which managers must avoid mediocrity and avoid the chaos of too little structure, while not becoming too obsessed with structure.

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