Tracking Strategies through Mud | Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory of Strategy Formation |...

book: Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory of Strategy Formation | Henry Mintzberg

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	• Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory of Strategy Formation Henry Mintzberg Oxford University Press, USA, 2008 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Gestalt

This work is concrete and accurated to indicate the new way to think the business in a quantic market. How to brake the old and poor strategic planning.

Tracking Strategies through Mud

Reading "Tracking Strategies" is like trudging through mud, but immensely rewarding if you stick with it - if you can. It really is a difficult read based on a series of case studies about the trials and tribulations of various companies / entrepreneurs / sectors which, taken together, provide a basis for starting to extract a general theory of strategy formation. A lot of Mintzberg's previous work is tied up in this book. It is almost a book about justifying how Mintzberg came to think as he does - as, arguably, one of the world's pre-eminent thinkers on strategy.

There is a delicious irony in someone like Mintzberg using what appears to be a set of case studies to make his points given that Mintzberg has always argued, in my view, that a single swallow does not a summer make - that is, you can't generalise based on one case study (or even a handful for that matter). However, don't let the superficial similarity to business school case studies deceive you. If your "case studies" span decades (and in some cases over a century); if you have a number of "case studies" which comprehensively map the outline of the scope of your subject; if you use something resembling the scientific method based on clearly observable datasets to drive some rigour in your analysis, then perhaps, just perhaps, the theories you tentatively devise may withstand the test of time. In essence, "Tracking Strategies" is a showcase for the research method Mintzberg uses as the basis for his conclusions as much as it is a showcase for the conclusions themselves. Not many authors open themselves up to such public scrutiny (other than through academic journals) - only the truly confident.

The book is as much about "tracking" as it is about "strategy". There is standard Mintzberg fare about deliberate strategies, emergent strategies, etc; but, there are some new gems including, amongst others, the insight which comes from understanding the interaction of the leadership, organisation and environment triple; and the interaction of strategy process and strategy content. I won't spoil discovering your own gems for the interested reader - it's just the mud you have to trudge through to find them. More important, perhaps, Mintzberg is NOT definitive in his statements about what drives strategy formation (or formulation). How refreshing.

Ultimatley, worth the effort, but don't be surprised if, along the way, you wonder why you even started.

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There is a great deal of practice, discussion, and publication about strategy, but surprisingly little investigation of the processes by which strategies actually form in organizations. This book reports the results of Henry Mintzberg's investigation about this that he has conducted over several decades.
Defining realized strategy - the strategy an organization has actually pursued - as a pattern in a stream of actions, this investigation was able to track strategies in organizations over long periods of time, usually three or four decades, and in one case, a century and a half. This meant the patterns by which strategies form and change in organizations, the interplay of 'deliberate' with 'emergent' strategies, and the relationship between leadership, organization, and environment in the strategy formation process, could be revealed.
An introductory chapter considers the term strategy, and the various ways it has been and can be used, and then introduces the studies. These are reported in the next ten chapters, with descriptions of what the strategies were, how they formed over time, and how they combined to establish periods in the history of the organization. This is followed by conclusions about the study revealed about the process.
These studies range across business (six studies), government (two studies), an architectural firm, and a university, as well as one professor in that university. They include U.S. strategy in Vietnam (1950-1973), Volkswagenwrk (1937-1972), and the National Film Board of Canada (1939-1975).
The final chapter, entitled 'Toward a General Theory of Strategy Formation', weaves these findings together in two themes. First is strategy formation in different forms of organization: Strategic Planning in the Machine Organization, Strategic Visioning in the Entrepreneurial Organization, Strategic Learning in the Adhocracy organization, and Strategic Venturing in the Professional Organization. The second theme considers stages in the formation of strategies, from Initiation through Development to Renewal.

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