Becoming misrepresentations: a taxonomy of ... - Cass Knowledge

Becoming Misrepresentations: A Taxonomy of Strategy 

Schools 

Bhalla, Henderson* and Watkins 

Dr Ajay Bhalla 

Cass Business School 

City University 

106 Bunhill Row 

London 

EC1y 8TZ 

Emai: a.bhalla@city.ac.uk 

& 

Indian School of Business 

Hyderabad-50032 

India 

Email: ajay_bhalla@isb.edu 

Steven Henderson 

Reader in Management 

Southampton Business School 

East Park Terrace 

Southampton SO14 0RH 

023 80 310858 

+44 23 80 310858 

steven.henderson@solent.ac.uk 

David Watkins 

Professor of Management Development 

Chair, Business Development Research Centre 

Southampton Business School 

East Park Terrace 

Southampton SO14 0RH 

023 80 310610 

+44 23 80 310610 

david.watkins@solent.ac.uk 

* Contact for correspondence and reprints 

Becoming Misrepresentations: A Taxonomy of Strategy Schools 

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1493662

Becoming Misrepresentations: A Taxonomy of Strategic Schools 

Page 1 

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1493662


ABSTRACT 

Robert Chia’s work on the deconstruction and decentering of decision making 

offers a powerful challenge to the strategic management literature (Chia, 

1994, 1996). Writers on strategy are used to debating the nature and 

rationality of decisions, their political motivations and the possible mismatches 

between strategic decisions and strategic outcomes. However, the notion that 

these decisions might be relatively unimportant in the hurly burly of 

organisational activity is not widely held or even discussed in the strategy 

literature. 

In this paper we follow Chia and others by decentering decisions from the 

Schools derived in Whittington’s (1993) taxonomy - selected because the 

Schools are constructed around notions of strategic choice. Drawing on 

Anderson (2003), the paper argues that scholars have created the literature 

described by Whittington’s Schools by exaggerating some, and suppressing 

other, deparaoxising strategies. This representation also removes the 

temporal dimension of strategic issues by seeking to bring the future into the 

present. This is reversed by thinking through Heidegger’s distinction between 

authentic and inauthentic time, centred on individual becoming. Taking this 

as a starting point, the paper looks for links between individual and collective 

becoming. This identifies five additional Strategy Schools, but shows that 

none are capable of satisfying the conditions of becoming: attunement, 

standing, discourse and destiny. The nine Schools are identified in relation to 

their frailties; a becoming misrepresentation. 


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“From a certain point of view, the universe seems to be composed of paradoxes. But everything 

resolves. That is the function of contradiction.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“When you can see everything from every imaginable point of view, you might begin to understand.” 

“Can you do that?” 

“No.” 

The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991) 

Schools of Strategy 

The literature on strategy formation is large and diverse. Much of it continues 

to generate rational analytical frameworks by which senior managers might 

carefully and rationally harmonise the organisation with its environment in 

order to maximise profits. Child, (1972) reviewed strategic management 

approaches according to the scope for decision making under different 

external constraints. He questioned the thrust of much organisational 

research into relationships between strategy and structure on the one hand, 

and size, technology, environment and performance on the other. He held that 

managers generally have much greater choice in their strategy and structure 

decisions than implied by such writers as Pugh (1969). The two notions that 

there might be a variety of ways to harmonise the internal and external 

environments, and a multitude of purposes for such harmonisation, are at the 

heart of the idea of strategic choice. The issue of choice, and how it might be 

exercised, was regarded as at least as important as the outcomes of choice. 

The approach was refreshing (Bourgeois III, 1984) and influential and it has 

been helpfully developed (Hebriniak and Joyce, 1985; Whittington, 1989). 

However, it has undoubtedly accelerated the fragmentation of the strategy 

literature into competing models and theories as various scholars have 


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expanded upon the scope of what these choices might really be, and the 

process by which such choices are made. Attempts to tidy the theories into 

similar groups have been generally helpful in clarifying the literature, although 

the solutions offered have been far from definitive. 

The most widely recognised classification, the eleven ‘Schools’ described by 

Mintzberg et al. (1998) is not based around the notion of strategic choice and 

rather loses sight of the notion along the way (Rouleau and Seguin, 1995). 

Rouleau and Seguin's solution is to identify Schools with discourses that 

share common assumptions concerning the importance of individuals, 

organisation and environment, although even here the notion of choice is not 

well defined. 

Perhaps the most heroic intervention based on choice is that of Whittington 

(1993), who sought to classify the eruption of models, frameworks and 

choices into broadly similar Schools of strategic thought. His model 

encapsulates the two key elements of strategic process outlined above in that 

it is driven by simplifications concerning how strategic choices are made, and 

the purpose of such choices. Holding that strategy writers assume strategies 

to be intentional or emergent, and goals to be singular (profit maximising) or 

pluralistic (representing a wide variety of interests), Whittington is able to 

compress the literature into the sort of two by two grid beloved of strategy 

writers. However, the axes are not defined independently of the Schools 

within them, rather the meaning shifts somewhat depending upon the School 

under consideration and the assumptions made about the environment. 

------------------------- 

Figure 1 about here 

--------------------------- 

The model is admirable in terms of its combination of explanatory power with 

economy, but follows the strategic choice literature in ascribing a central role 

to decision-making and articulated purpose. The role of choice may be 


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contestable in terms of who makes the choice, and for what purpose, but the 

ontological premises are held to be unproblematic. 

Chia (1994) offered an indirect challenge to the strategic choice debate, and 

its derivative strategy taxonomies. Far from being an exercise of choice 

expressed through decision, Chia argued that the decisions themselves are 

merely part of the means for understanding, rather than determining, so called 

strategic processes. Decision points are held not to be the key linkages in an 

intentional process, but rather interventions that add meaning and definition, 

rather more than direction, to events and actions. 

This challenge to the underlying premise of strategic choice and strategic 

management generally has not been widely picked up. The Social Science 

Citation Index indicates that there have been only seven subsequent citations 

to Chia’s paper (making it the least cited article in its edition) and none of 

these have used his work to develop explicit critiques of existing thought. This 

may be because the work uses ideas and citations that are not mainstream, 

making it a relatively difficult paper, Further, turning the given into a question, 

as Wieskopf and Willmott (1997) put it, makes it easy to trivialise the 

importance of the arguments presented making them less important than 

pushing back frontiers. 

Chia is not the only writer to raise doubts about the nature of decisions, Weick 

(1995) places decisions in the context of sense making, again placing the 

significance of decisions into hindsight rather than foresight. Chia’s work 

decenters decisions from organisational dynamics, and consequently renders 

the contingency versus strategic choice debate irrelevant, and highly 

misleading, to those who would wish us to understand strategy as it is 

experienced. 

In this paper we do not offer a critique of Chia’s work. Rather, we hope to 

explore the implications problematising the ontology of decisions and choices 

within Whittington’s framework in order to explore the representations of 


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strategic management. Whittington’s framework is chosen from alternatives 

because its focuses on how assumptions commonly held by strategy writers 

about strategic choice and decision making lead to well recognised, if 

conflicting, analyses and prescriptions about strategic issues. Examining the 

effect of Chia’s challenge to the centrality of decision making on Whittington’s 

framework should offer much novel insight into how theories of strategic 

management are constructed. 

The next section outlines Whittington’s framework, and considers the nature 

of the underlying decisions of each School. 

Whittington’s Strategic Choice Perspectives 

Whittington arranges the strategy literature into four different ‘Schools’ of 

management thought differentiated by two variables – strategic goals and 

strategic processes. These are plotted in the form of two axes intersecting 

each other as shown in Figure 1. The horizontal axis reflects the degree to 

which the strategy process can be construed either as an act of deliberation 

or as one of emergence - through incremental choices that (may) form a 

pattern, organisational politics, or arbitrary happenstance. The vertical axis 

represents the extent to which the objective of the strategy making can be 

seen simply as profit maximisation, or as directed towards other, additional, 

possibilities as well, such as market share, differing stakeholder preferences, 

social goals, company image, etc. 

The origins of the Classical School can be traced back at least as early as 

2500 BCE in the writings of China’s oldest military text, Sun Tzu’s Art of War. 

This argues that the highest form of leadership is to overcome the enemy by 

strategy, and provides a concise exposition of planning, organisation, tactics 

and seizure of opportunities. Whittington credits the contributions of Chandler, 

(1962) Ansoff,(1965,1988) and Porter (1980) as leading to the dominance of 

the Classical School. 


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Assuming managerial activity to be rational, these writers regard profit 

maximisation as the supreme goal of business, achieved through deliberate 

strategy - generally evidenced by the existence of formal planning processes. 

The environment facing the organisation is believed to be dynamic (but 

essentially predictable), and the organisation sufficiently controllable, to create 

a perfect fit between environmental opportunities and threats on the one 

hand, and the organisation’s resources on the other. Consequently, the 

strategy planning process is characterised by objective setting, environmental 

scanning via prescribed tools and matrices, strategy formulation and 

implementation. Some recent advances include Goodwin and Wright, G. 

(2001), who demonstrate how to improve decision making with scenario 

planning, Anderson (2000) who investigated the ways that autonomous 

actions by middle managers can supplement formal planning method and 

Darrah and Campbell (2001), who derive a technique for exploring and 

solving the rational reasons behind the sluggish implementation of corporate 

plans. Song et al.(2002) report experiments on how managers can use 

Porter’s generic strategies to simplify complex scenarios and reach decisions. 

More recently, Kim, Nam and Stimpert (2004) examine the applicability of 

Porter’s generic strategies among the internet firms, and conclude that 

integrated strategies combining elements of cost leadership and differentiation 

outperform pure cost leadership or differentiation strategies. 

The second approach to strategy is that which Whittington (1993) termed 

‘Evolutionary’. He cites as prominent exponents of this School, Hall and Hitch 

(1939), Alchian (1950), Hannan and Freeman (1989), Henderson and 

Ledebur (1970) and Williamson (1991). Recent advances include an updated 

edition of Aldrich (1999) and McKendrick and Carroll (2001), who look at the 

role of evolutionary trajectories on the evolution of organisational forms. 

Winter (2004) draws on comparisons between biological organisms and 

organisations to illustrate how peripheral vision can influence behaviour. 

Brouthers and Brouthers (2003) examine the effects of differing evolutionary 

factors on entry mode choices made by firms in service and manufacturing 

sectors. Sorenson (2000) has developed a product strategy based upon 


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competitive ecology while Salvato (2003) has examined the role of leadership 

and management in shaping strategic evolution. 

Evolutionists hold that environmental changes are too fast to be predicted in 

advance, and thus rational long-term planning for an unknown future becomes 

not only a futile exercise, but also harmful in that it both adds to cost and may 

distract management. Darwinian processes of natural selection are the 

underlying mechanics, not the guile and farsightedness of managers. 

Consequently, efficiency and day to day planning are regarded as essential 

ingredients for success. Accordingly, management is characterised by 

discretionary production, together with replication and optimisation of strategic 

fit with the environment in the short term. Several such adjustments over a 

period of environmental change would approximate a long-term strategy when 

viewed in retrospect, but this would be no more than a rational, albeit 

erroneous, reconstruction. 

The third approach to strategy is described as the ‘Processual School’. 

According to Whittington (1993), this School began to come to prominence in 

the 1970s under the influence of writers such as Pettigrew (1973) and 

Mintzberg (1979), although the Processualists were greatly influenced by the 

earlier work and Cyert and March (1963) and. These earlier writers contest 

the explicit objective of profit maximisation, holding that such an objective is 

problematic in so much as it not possible to know what the maximum might be 

without restrictive assumptions that would inhibit the role of strategy 

development. What is more, the objective would be reckless even if 

attainable, as many other important stakeholders would not be satisfied by 

any such achievement - a point well made by Doyle (1992). Processualists 

thus prefer the notion that firms satisfice their stakeholder’s expectations 

rather than maximise profits to please shareholders, or setting goals that 

exclude key stakeholders while elevating the needs of customers, employees 

or any other single agency. 


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The strategy process is ‘emergent’ rather than ‘deliberate’ for several different 

reasons, although all share similar assumptions about the environment in 

which these strategies emerge. The environment is held to be largely 

unpredictable over the longer term, and confusing in the short term, but not as 

harsh or unforgiving as evolutionary writers assert. Markets are not 

particularly efficient at punishing mistakes - in the short run at least - and 

many firms have considerable power in their market places. Often, significant 

market power can help organisations conceal profit levels from key 

stakeholders. Thus, organisations pursue a ‘gradual rational’ or incremental 

approach, rather than ‘perfect rationality’. Mintzberg (1987) proposed the 

metaphor of strategy as craft, comparing the work of strategists with that of 

the potter. Like a potter, managers are craftsmen and strategy is their clay. 

They have intrinsic knowledge of their organisation's strengths, weaknesses, 

and market opportunities and must gradually, incrementally, adjust to changes 

in these. He also asserts that there is no one best way to make strategy, and 

claimed that effective strategies can show up in strange, unexpected ways 

(Mintzberg, 1987); as, presumably, would ineffective ones. 

Other Processual writers take a less ‘managerialist’ view. They argue that 

strategies and change are greatly influenced by, and are perhaps the result 

of, wide-ranging political activities within the organisation. Pettigrew (1973) 

outlines the position that strategic responses of any significant size are likely 

to "unscramble the current distribution of resources," thereby creating winners 

and losers among various groups, subgroups and individuals. If all parties 

were focused upon achieving profit maximisation, or some other single goal, 

this would not matter particularly. However, once these component actors are 

acknowledged to compete for resources, or to have alternative and 

contradictory ways of identifying and analysing problems, or to have different 

agendas, or to respond to different pressures, the possibility of generating a 

single, organisation-wide strategy based upon deliberate action directed 

towards a common goal recedes. Strategy will then become emergent, 

pluralistic and satisficing, emerging from organisational and political change 

rather than preceding it - perhaps with surprising and unintended outcomes. 


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Recent enlightening examples of a processual approach include Grant’s 

(2003) study of the use of formal strategic planning in controlling emergent 

strategies in the oil industry, contrasting with Marginson’s (2002) careful study 

of the effects of management control systems on strategy formation at middle 

management levels. Chatterjee (2003) has provided a fascinating case study 

of Enron’s failure – focusing on poor incremental strategic decisions rather 

than governance issues. Boyett and Currie (2004) in a more recent study 

have shown how a group of Irish Telecom firm’s middle managers deviated 

from the firm’s prescribed strategy to successfully develop an international 

venture by collectively following a incremental strategic approach. 

Whittington (1993) terms his fourth generic as ‘Systemic’. He describes the 

1990s as the key period for the ascendancy of this approach, although the 

seminal works within this School – Marris (1964) and Granovetter (1985) - 

date from earlier decades. Systemic theorists echo Classicists on forward 

planning and working efficiently to achieve results. However, they contest the 

Classicists’ view that the rationales underlying strategy are same in every 

context. For example, they point out that Classicists have given scant thought 

to either the goal or the process implications of operating in different cultures. 

Recent explorations include Lesson (2001) derivation of four distinct, 

regionally specific worlds. He explains how different cultural conditions require 

appropriate management approaches. Yoshimori (1995) examines the 

differing understanding of corporations between Western and Japanese 

thinking. Peng (2002) explores the role of institutions and cultures in creating 

distinctive, company specific strategies. In a more recent study of Ethnic 

Singaporean Chinese family firms, who are shifting from being ‘family-ruled 

and managed’ to ‘professionally managed family-ruled’, Tsui-Auch (2004) 

draws on number of interesting observations while collecting her data. In one 

case, an ethnic Chinese family firm targeted North American market, so that 

the third-generation offspring could easily monitor them, exhibiting that 

business owners exercised decisions to maintain family control goals rather 

than pursuing economically rationalist objectives. 


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According to Whittington (1993), the Systemic School conveys the message 

that managers are not isolated individuals interacting in purely economic 

settings, but people rooted deeply in densely interwoven social systems. In 

reality, people’s economic behaviour is embedded in a network of social 

relations that may involve their families, the state, their professional and 

educational backgrounds, even their religion and ethnicity (Swedberg, 

Himmelstrand et al.,1987; Bhalla, 2000; Anurahda and Eser, 2002). 

In terms of practical strategy, the literature has focused cultural discontinuties 

in transnational companies; although often this has concerned itself with 

achieving Anglo Saxon business objectives in global markets and diverse 

cultures (Kanter, 2003; Begley and Boyd, 2003;Rowley and Benson, 2002). 

Gephart et al. (2003), in a similar line of thought, identifies some important 

differences between the Angles and the Saxons. 

Whittington’s taxonomy is particularly pleasing in the crispness of the axes. 

Further, it also captures many of the points raised in Rouleau and Seguin 

(1995) concerning the common assumptions about organisation and 

environment. Although these are not ostensibly derived from the two axes, 

they are nonetheless implicit in the way the model is constructed (Whittington, 

1989). A similar equivalence can be noted with the classifications developed 

by Schoemaker (1993), whose model is remarkably similar to Whittington's in 

that goal congruence and co-ordinative efficiency are used to denote the 

axes, while developing further the implicit assumptions about decision making 

processes. Subsequently, building on his analysis of processual and systemic 

school, Whittington (1996, 2003) has called for a closer attention to 

understanding how managers act in their daily organisational routines and 

how this impacts the strategic outcomes. 


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Decentring the Decisions in the Strategy Schools 

Thus far this paper has sought to identify the important role of Whittington’s 

model in classifying and clarifying the literature based upon strategic choice. 

In this section, we problematise the decision ontology of Whittington’s 

framework, drawing upon Anderson (2003) who, like Chia, draws upon 

Spencer-Brown (1969) to deconstruct the nature of decisions. 

A decision is usually identified as significant after the event, as an incision 

whereby many possible outcomes were reduced to a single contingency. That 

is to say, they are judgements about the point at which many decisions and 

outcomes that could have been the case were reduced to the retrospectively 

identified outcome. As Sartre observes, a story is created from its outcome, 

but written from its origin. 

Anderson takes this point further, to ask how decision-makers actually make 

decisions, and discovers a range of further paradoxes that can potentially 

block decision making. Firstly, the premise for decisions can only be that one 

does not know what actions to take – otherwise acts would be automatic, 

perhaps not even conscious. The decision taker is faced with myriad possible 

contingencies that will become invisible with hindsight, but almost impossible 

to evaluate with foresight. Secondly, decisions reflect social expectations of 

the future, but are identified respectively. Thirdly, retrospective identification of 

a decision is itself a decision. 

The act of decision, is thus an act of reducing the possible contingencies by 

applying some technique. Anderson identifies three such techniques – which 

he refers to as deparadoxifying strategies – by which choice can be voluntarily 

restrained in a natural, necessary way that enables the paradoxes to be 

ignored, a decision to be communicated and actions to be “unblocked”. 


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Firstly, the range of possibilities can be reduced to a few understandable 

choices, which can be evaluated according to some criteria understood by the 

organisation. Anderson refers to this as factual deparadoxification. Classical 

strategic management for example, groups strategic possibilities in a fashion 

that enables many to be dismissed cursorily; for example choosing one 

generic strategy or one of Ansoff’s growth strategies will eliminate a huge 

number of possibilities at a stroke. Those remaining can be evaluated against 

such criteria as suitability, acceptability and feasibility to produce a workable, 

if not optimal, strategy which is then communicated and implemented by 

another process. 

Secondly, actions can be unblocked by assuming that the most powerful 

stakeholders have in fact, already made the necessary decision. Anderson 

refers to this as social deparadoxification. This idea resonates with the 

Systemic School that sees strategy as constrained by powerful social forces 

that compel particular actions. It is not necessary to seek out or identify any 

signs that such decisions have already been made in fact, it is merely a 

devise by which contingencies can be reduced such that decision makers can 

focus on relatively few possible courses of action. 

Anderson’s third deparadoxification strategy is temporal, the moment of 

decision can be delayed by simply focusing on some elements that are better 

understood than the larger, ill-defined problems. Thus strategic issues can be 

fragmented into smaller, experimental and understandable actions, and these 

actions allow a strategy to emerge. Again, much of the work by incremental 

strategists in the Processual School is accommodated here. 

Fourthly, we hold that decision makers can use a cognitive deparadoxification 

strategy, by assuming that a solution has already been derived elsewhere and 

simply replicate the actions of another. The strategies advanced from the 

Evolutionary School support this approach if the decision maker goes beyond 

replication and attempts to implement the assumed solution more efficiently 


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y control of transaction costs – no matter how problematic this concept may 

be (Noorderhaven, 1995). 

Thus we see Whittington’s strategic choice taxonomy is not about rational, 

considered approaches to environmental fit. The distinctions between the 

Schools are not so much based upon competing techniques, models and 

literatures, but rather upon a selective focus by academics upon particular 

contingency reducing strategies masquerading as decisions. The strength of 

these particular contingency-reducing strategies is that it is always possible to 

create plausible narratives retrospectively, about the role of decisions and 

commensurate actions in creating outcomes, although it does not follow from 

this that the actors involved in the events under review will have restricted 

themselves to one contingency reducing strategy. This derivation of 

Whittington’s Schools in shown in Figure 2 below; note that we have avoided 

using a two by two grid because we do not wish to suggest that the 

contingency reducing strategies are incommensurate. 

---------------------------- 

Figure 2 about here 

--------------------------- 

Anderson’s deconstruction also appears to decenter the temporal aspects of 

strategic choice. They suggest that the decisions that are made about 

strategic choice are not distinctively related to the question of strategic 

management at all, since the same contingency reducing strategies apply 

generically to many other kinds of organisational problem, raising ontological 

questions about the very idea of strategy and strategic management. 

It would be possible to answer these questions by assigning strategic choice 

to the category of “explanatory principal”. That is to say, by giving a name to 

something that is not understood, it becomes possible to discuss it and its 

related actions intelligibly. This assignment could be supported by fieldwork 

from several sources. Von Krogh and Roos (1995) observe that the terms and 

phrases, such as competitive advantage, used by senior management in the 

course of strategizing, have unstable and contingent meanings that allow 


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individuals to act appropriately without actually developing shared meanings 

and strategies contemporaneously. Similarly, Keleman (2000) observes that 

such ventures as Total Quality Management require considerable ambiguity in 

their language so that individuals can act effectively. Mezias and Starbuck 

(2003) describe misperceptions held by senior managers, but hold that in fact 

accurate knowledge is not necessary to solve problems, but conscious trial 

and error commonly suffice well enough when there is an adequate 

understanding of a general purpose to the actions – an observation supported 

generally by Popper (1989). Most strikingly, Inkpen and Choudhury (1995) 

write of strategic absence and the role of academic theories in imputing 

strategy to situations where none is actually present. We might hold that it is 

only these notions of management that allow us to make sense of what Chia 

(1994, p.781) calls: "Ongoing contestation between order and disorder, 

routinization”. Prime among these might be the language and expectations of 

strategic management fads and fashions (Eccles et al 1992; Thomas, 1999; 

Fiol and O’Conner, 2002) that guide narratives and sense making. 

At this point, we might ask, as Whittington asks, does it matter? On the one 

hand, we might simply accept that strategic choice is an explanatory principal. 

From an academic viewpoint, this is entirely acceptable and there is no 

reason why strategy debates in this area should continue as engaging 

ideofacts. The danger, of course, is that such representations that emerge 

from the research and discussion derived might continue to be used as a 

means for justifying unpalatable corporate behaviour, or as a source of 

overconfident business advice. For example, Whittington (2001) attempts to 

answer his own question by subsuming all strategy into the Systemic School, 

and postulating that the three “lost” Schools are particular contingencies 

(although Whittington avoids using this word). The Schools become 

approaches to strategy that may be selected by individual managers 

depending upon their own objectives and the contexts they believe that they 

face. The Processual School is chiefly for protected bureaucracies and 

knowledge based firms, the Classical for mature industries and capital 

intensive monopolies, the Evolutionary for small firms, emerging industries 


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and conglomerates, leaving the Systemic approaches to non Anglo Saxon 

firms, family and state firm (Whittington 2001 page 120). 

We hold that this stance creates a crisis of representation and displaces the 

locus of his framework. Whittington’s framework is an heroic representation of 

the literature of strategic management, much of which is a representation of 

how firms create a strategy by representations of how and what managers 

should, or ought to think, decide and act. In the terms that Chia has chosen, it 

is a long way downstream from how managers might understand and 

organise their own activities, and will incorporate a great deal of the 

observer’s own predispositions along the way. Not only is there little reason to 

think that the four Schools accurately represent the way that managers do or 

even could think (Bhalla 2003a) but it is also the case that the narrative 

strength of the Schools is such that situations and evidence can normally be 

interpreted plausibly from more than one School – whatever the context 

(Bhalla 2003b; Henderson and Zvesper 2002). Thus we argue that the 

Schools do not, and cannot, offer contingency reducing strategies in 

themselves, but, as we have argued above, tend to be respectable, natural 

representations of such. 

There is a second issue here in that Whittington represents strategy as 

dealing with problems that arise and constrain the firm over time – particularly 

of competitiveness and control. This may be adequate when dealing with 

firms that, as Whittington points out, have no mind and therefore do not 

embody a sense of time, as entities within themselves. Whittington’s Schools 

representation of time is simply a timeline stretching from past to future 

punctuated by particular events, the most important of which will be 

anticipated or not, depending upon the School. This view of time attempts to 

bring the future into the present where it can be dealt with cognitively. Many 

recent advances in the literature on the relationship between time and 

management take this view (Barkema et al., 2000; Goodman et al. 2001), 

although Albert and Bell (2002) have a striking approach based on music. 

However, a firm cannot make the distinction between issues that may occur in 


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future as problems or opportunities, since its own existence is not an issue for 

it; only individuals can have such concerns. This raises ontological questions 

about the origins of strategy as collated actions of individuals, and the way 

that these actions are represented. 

The easiest way to resolve this is to make a simplifying assumption that 

individuals are subsumed into a corporate body: that a firm, or its 

management, creates the individual that behaves appropriately and thus 

becomes an appropriate employee (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Ashforth 

and Vaidyanath, 2002). However, even in such restrictive circumstances, 

individuals may distance or emancipate themselves from such pressures. 

Further, the very nature of work requires individuals to make decisions and 

think heedfully about what they are doing in processes described as 

“becoming” (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). That is to say, to find an origin for 

strategy at the level of the individual it is necessary to go beyond strategic 

problem solving, and try to understand how a person’s sense, or lack or 

sensibility, about her or his own future, in the context of what is faced at work, 

becomes central to the origins of strategic choice (Watson, 2003). 

In the same way that Anderson’s work helped our discussion to move 

upstream from Whittington, further exploration upstream of strategy requires a 

guide that places the ontology of individual choices in time, and how these 

may accumulate into collective actions that can be described as strategies 

and represented as Schools. This accords with the closing remarks of Chia 

(1996) that call for a reconstruction of our understanding along an “axis of 

time”. Thus, this next section of the paper moves towards taxonomy of 

strategic choice based upon Heidegger’s Being and Time (1996). 

Strategy as Becoming 

In Heidegger’s terminology, the parameters of Whittington’s framework 

(objectives, environment and method) are referred to as ontical properties, 

that is to say that they are intelligible attributes of an entity, but not at the 


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heart of it. For example, a strategy may be identified in terms of its associated 

documentation, or its charts and statistics or the action plans that are 

generated and circulated. These may pass an inspection that looks for the 

existence of the strategy, particularly if these properties were identified as 

definitive in advance of the audit. However, since the organisation has no 

mind it cannot have a sense of its own purpose, that is, its own existence and 

future cannot be an issue for it. The essence of the strategy cannot be 

something that the organisation. In order to grasp a more ontological 

understanding of the being of a strategy maker, it is necessary to explore how 

the issues of an individual’s own existence and of how the face their own 

becoming or future (dasein). It is necessary to review the nature of time and of 

being in time. 

For Heidegger, the preoccupation with representing time as events, timelines, 

speed and timeliness are inauthentic views of time, a deficient mode of 

concernful dwelling leading to an objectification of issues and problems. In 

such time it would be possible to run through (dream through) any number of 

strategic processes without any authentic engagement by individuals - 

producing results very much like those discussed under explanatory 

principles. 

Rather, time is at the heart of dasein. as a struggle between everydayness 

and becoming – taking a stand against falling from past to present and into 

the future. This is achieved – when it is achieved – through three ecstasies of 

present, past and future. The present is revealed as a moment of vision in 

which the everyday relationships between an individual and her or his daily 

tasks is disrupted. This vision is precipitated by strong moods and emotions, 

particularly anxiety and fearfulness, in which the past is retrieved and 

reinterpreted in terms of becoming in future. Much has been written on the 

role of moods and emotions in shaping strategy and perceptions (Drucker, 

1998; Kets de Vries and Miller 1989; Gin and Sexton, 1990; Pitt et al. 

1991;Thomas and Ramaswamy, 1996; Daniels 1998; Pratt and Rosa, 2003). 

These studies are often framed in the context of an inauthentic view of time, 


Page 18

that is to say that emotion causes the features of the environment to be seen 

as unduly hostile, the firm’s competences are thought of as particularly weak, 

or a particular strategic choice assessed over optimistically. In authentic time, 

where becoming is possible, such moods and dispositions are fixated on their 

cause, and herald a moment of choosing, or care about taking responsibility 

for one’s future. If this concerns the individual’s dasein in the community at 

work then, for a moment at least, individuals may reassess their current 

existeniell everydayness from past and future, and radically reassess their 

place in it. Such reassessments are frequently defective in some way, but 

without them it is not possible to make a stand - the conscious effort of an 

individual to throw himself, or herself into the future. This conscious effort of 

standing consists of interpreting the possibilities of one’s capabilities, the 

potentiality-for-being, and the temporal meaning of references in terms of 

purpose and uses of entities in a current worldhood. Actions based on 

becoming require the ability to organise attunement and standing into 

meaningful patters. Heidegger uses the term discourse here, but the ability to 

communicate is predicated on discourse, and requires a similar worldhood 

and standing between participants, which is not the same thing as subscribing 

to an organisational mind centred around management (Wood, 1998). When 

attunement, standing and discourse operate effectively, it is possible to avoid 

“falling” in the present and an inauthentic treatment of time. When these are 

experienced by a number of individuals within a community at work it is 

possible that they can develop destiny; a joint sense of heritage and means of 

enacting that can throw the community into the future. This destiny is a social 

becoming, it does not primarily relate to a vision or ideal future state as such, 

but is more closely tied with seeing individuals, including oneself, as authentic 

dasein. Although inauthentic modes are perfectly adequate for getting through 

the day, genuine strategy, as an act of individual will and social becoming can 

only arise through these four structures of attunement, standing, discourse 

and destiny. 

The structural elements derived in this section of the paper allow us to move 

upstream from Anderson because they offer a means of resolving the 


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paradoxes that block actions. Attunement, not a decision, is the precursor to a 

choice. Decisions are identified through discourse, and the social 

expectations are created through destiny. 

In this section we have used Heidegger’s notion of authentic time to explore 

the idea that individuals create corporate strategies by their own sense of 

becoming. We are prompted to do this by Whittington’s switch from Strategy 

Schools created by the observations of scholars, an eminently reasonable 

position, to the more contestable assertion that individuals within firms could 

make decisions about contexts and decide upon the most expedient School to 

guide the actions of the firm over time. In the next section of the paper we 

use the four structures derived to make first approximations about further 

Schools of Strategy around becoming in authentic time. 

Strategy Schools Structured Around Becoming? 

In this section of the paper we draw upon the four structures discussed above 

to examine some approaches to strategy that seem to slip from Whittington’s 

framework because they are focused on the agency of individuals rather than 

the features of environment, strategy process and corporate objectives. 

The Excellent School consists of writers who have identified particular 

features of outstanding companies – Peters and Waterman (1983) and Hamel 

and Prahalad (1994) being particularly well discussed examples. The ontical 

properties of these two theories are quite different, but share very similar 

structures. Recent examples include a reflection on Peters and Waterman 

(Crainer and Dearlove, 2002), an example of achieving excellence through 

managing corporate culture (Dooley, 2003 a,b ), the role of human resource 

management in developing and leveraging implicit competences (Zaugg and 

Thom, 2003) and yet another theory of leadership for excellence (Collins, 

2003). 

Excellence does not rely upon superior decision making or strategising as the 


Page 20

key to its stated aims of superior performance; quasi-humanistic notions 

supersede those of long term planning. Neither is there a particularly strong 

sense of attunement, although there is a strong value driven culture that 

engages emotions passionately. Engagement is frequently with ontical 

features such as quality, customer service, market share and so on, driven by 

a management vision that may exist as an articulated statement but is more 

importantly an accurate reflection of leadership, strategic intent and 

behaviour. Thus experiences at work are unlikely to trigger radical 

reappraisals of an individuals sense of purpose. However, it is more than 

possible that individuals involved in such strong worldhoods do so as a 

conscious choice through affinity with the core. Standing is rated high as both 

leverage existing strengths in novel combinations, but discourse in not rated 

particularly highly as experimentation and learning are emphasised above 

detailed analysis, Hamel and Prahalad’s model being particular strong in the 

safe deployment of resources towards adventurous activities. Destiny is 

similarly strong in both cases; the Peters approach by strong cultures, 

management by wandering around and simple structures, while Hamel and 

Prahalad emphasise the role of generalists and flexible competence based 

structures. 

Therefore the Excellent school will frequently find examples from the 

spectacular successes of corporate life, but relatively weak attunement and 

discourse suggest that although such firms may frequently change their 

industry around them, may fail to notice other changes outside their volition 

and voluntarily adhere to cultural routines that no longer lead to superior 

performance. 

-------------------------- 

Insert Figure 3 here 

--------------------------- 

The Self Organising School argues that complex systems inside and outside 

the firm make the notion of forward planning not only impossible in some 

circumstances but frequently self defeating (Burgelman, 1983; Stacey 1991; 

Anderson, 1999). This position recognises the intrinsic asymmetry of 


Page 21

organisational life in that senior managers can frequently control 

organisational behaviour by stopping activities, but the same rarely applies to 

the creation of desired behaviour. Strategic change does occur, but through 

complex political processes in which individual choices are critical, but the 

outcomes of changes are largely uncertain and frequently outside the control 

of strategic managers and the decisions they make. 

These ontical properties reveal a strong sense of attunement, as individuals 

do not rely upon organisational routines to identify problems and 

consequences in advance, the sense of surprise and wonder is critical to 

strategic actions. Standing is high, as behaviours are assumed to be 

reflections of an individual’s motives and competences and it is acknowledged 

that the understanding of the past is an interpretation that can be improved. 

Self-organisation is a key element of discourse here, as individuals form 

political units to stand together, but always with the caveat that patterns and 

understandings are evolving as individuals learn, rather than worked out 

solutions to well defined opportunities and threats. The question of destiny is 

more problematic, there is no temporally based mechanism for individuals to 

throw themselves into the future collectively, rather there is the pessimistic 

belief that the firm must position itself at the boundaries of chaos in order to 

ensure that it has a future. 

Recent examples have explored such problematic areas as the relationship 

between complexity and the knowing subject (Letiche, 2000), and the role of 

individual learning and enacting in the under performance of knowledge 

management systems (Snowdon, 2002). 

-------------------------- 

Insert Figure 4 here 

-------------------------- 

The Learning School has arisen from the idea that superior performance 

depends upon learning faster and more effectively than rivals. Although many 

of its central notions are shared throughout the Schools, the idea of the 

learning organisation is a particular construction that is worth considering 


Page 22

here. This account is based around Senge (1990) although none of the 

observations made are unique to his model. 

Standing is of great importance through the notion of personal mastery, the 

requirement for an individual to take responsibility for their own learning and 

development throughout their career. However, attunement is low since 

personal mastery is seen as a means for expression and utility within the firm, 

– that is failure to fit a role in a firm is the cause of anxiety rather than an 

individual’s own sense of becoming. Discourse is high - formalised through 

systems analysis and double loop learning based around information 

gathering. Destiny is also high, much of the literature is concerned with 

routines to reduce learning blocks caused by inter personal difficulties, 

improving team working and converging individual’s mental models through 

dialogue. 

Although this School scores highly on three counts, the low attunement is 

critical and could undermine the link between the five disciplines and superior 

performance. Poor attunement will mean that different mental models will only 

converge around specific problems since discrepancies do not matter to 

individuals outside of business expediency. Similarly, the means of bringing 

about the meeting of minds seems to depend upon tracing an individual 

interest in a particular position (which could further undermine attunement) or 

showing gaps in the underlying thinking (something that a sceptic is always 

able to do) or gathering more information (much of it about ontical features of 

the problem). Standing can also become undermined if the shared mental 

models – particularly those pertaining to a shared vision of the future – create 

the individual mental models, undermining both attunement and discourse 

and resulting in an inauthentic mode that Heidegger calls “they self” – where 

an individual’s being is defined by the actions they are required to carry out for 

others. 

Much of the literature addresses the issues raised here. Von Krogh and 

Nonaka (2001) have recently derived four strategies for managing knowledge 


Page 23

around creation and transfer. King (2003) explores the losses that result in 

turning dialogue into information, while Armistead and Measkins (2002) have 

focused upon the discontinuity between imposing and empowering learning, 

and suggest some solutions. 

----------------------------------- 

Insert Figure 5 about here 

----------------------------------- 

Writers in the Gestalt School characterise firms as operationally coherent 

entities gathered around a politically dominant coalition of interests within the 

firm. Significant examples include Mintzberg (1978), Miles and Snow (1978) 

and Miller (1996). These coherences are not based upon such ontical 

properties as generic strategy, technology or environmental constraints, but 

by the firm’s history or, in many cases, the personality of the chief executive, 

present or past. This approach is strong on identifying the variety of firms in 

an industry through its creations of typologies. These typologies continue to 

be used in the literature. Shoham et al. (2002) uses Miles and Snow’s 

typology to classify firms, and then establish connections between designated 

types and effective export strategies. Bowman et al. (2002) use the 

operational coherences of Mintzberg’s configurations to think through issues 

of corporate value creation. 

The form of the political elite will often be functional, but can also incorporate 

wider social alliances and, where the coalition is particularly strong, may come 

to further develop a recognisable, homogeneous or monolithic management 

style. Johnson (1988) hones the Gestaltist argument further by pointing out 

the strength of the organisational paradigm in controlling what senior 

managers see - and believe - to be logical and rational in their decisions, and 

thus there may be a general tendency for operational coherence to ossify over 

time. 

Attunement is frequently quite high for individuals outside, or on the periphery 

of the dominant coalition. Since many of these attuned individuals will have 


Page 24

espectable technical competences the discoursing may well reveal many 

alternative patterns and interpretations, and the dominant coalition may well 

be forced onto the defensive. However, these may not moderate standing 

very much – the operational coherences around the dominant coalition are 

sacrosanct for both political and economic reasons, and the firm is likely to fall 

into the future in spite of any anxiety and discussion. Only when the political 

cohesion of top management is undermined by external pressure will the 

counter currents gain any great momentum and a sense of its destiny – but 

effective new initiatives are doomed to become operational coherences in 

turn. 

It is incorrect to describe decision-making processes as being at the heart of 

Gestalt strategy thinking. The decisions are rather no more than selfreinforcing 

patterns of behaviour in which decisions simply replicate the 

dominant logic, no matter how well intentioned or honestly strategy is debated 

and decided upon. Where attuned individuals are able to prevent rigidity the 

firm may continue for many years without trauma, but a period of strong 

performance may well assuage anxiety and allow the conditions for crisis to 

develop. 

-------------------------- 

Insert figure 6 here 

-------------------------- 

The Structural Harmonisation School has a strong biological metaphor at its 

roots. Significant examples include the cybernetics of Beer (1972, 1984) and 

the autopoiesis derived from Maturana (1978, 1999), both of which have been 

linked with the mathematics of Spencer Brown. Although competing political 

and technical subsystems are acknowledged, the Schools propose structures 

and processes that tend to harmonise and direct these toward organisational 

goals in a form of self construction (Espego, 1996). Thus the roles of 

individual decisions and decision-makers are subsumed into the 

organisational patterns and routines, and are directed by it. Beer’s approach 

is typified by the following quote from Brain of the Firm: 


Page 25

“Instead of trying to organise in full detail, you organise it only 

somewhat; you then ride on the dynamics of the system in the direction 

you want to go”, Beer, 1972. 

Recent general work includes Feldman and Rafaeli (2002) who explore the 

role of organisational routines in creating understandings and Lissack and 

Roos (2001) who make the case for coherent rather than visionary strategies. 

It is likely that the field will become more active following the publication of 

Hernes and Bakken (2003), exploring managerial and organisational issues 

using Luhman’s version of autopoiesis, which differs from the analyses 

derived by von Krogh and Roos (1995). 

Attunement tends to be low in such systems – there is greater dependence on 

stimuli from the environment to cause strategic changes; although there is no 

requirement for these stimuli to be accurately understood, it is merely 

necessary to find an acceptable process for dealing with disturbance - much 

as Chia describes the unconscious but complex adjustments made by two 

groups of pedestrians crossing a road in opposite directions without mishap. 

Thus discourse – the identification and communication of patterns - is the 

critical mechanism here. Standing is weak, the systems regulate individual 

behaviours and permit motion in only the required direction, but this in turn 

allows destiny to be high as individuals operate within a tightly constructed 

world. 

-------------------------- 

Insert figure 7 here 

-------------------------- 

Testing Competing Schools 

It would be helpful if it were possible to devise crucial tests, be they 

experiments or field studies, which could identify one School as being 

superior, in some generally agreed sense, to any other. However, it is unlikely 

that any such test exists. There may be two distinct reasons for this, one to do 


Page 26

with the purpose of the strategic management literature and the other with the 

epistemological issues. 

First, any attempt to address the meaning of "…superior in some generally 

agreed sense…” immediately raises fundamental questions concerning the 

purpose of the strategy literature, and indeed, of the literature relating to 

organisations more generally. For some, the matter is straightforward; thus 

Hamel and Prahalad (1994) take an instrumentalist view and argue quite 

simply that the purpose of Business Schools is to assist management. Similar 

considerations underpin the attempt by Gorpinarth and Hoffman (1995) to 

stimulate the convergence of academic and practitioner research in the 

strategic management field. Critics, such as Knights, see strategy as related 

to domination and power and therefore might wish to shape the debate 

differently (Knights and Morgan, 1991; Knights, 1992). While others, including 

perhaps Chia himself, might be content with exposing the hubris of strategic 

managerial activity itself and much of the commentary thereon. 

It would be possible to overcome this objection by testing each School against 

the objectives of any one of them. For example, several of the competing 

Schools make claims about achieving superior performance, it would be 

possible to examine whether firms close to the prescriptions of the Learning 

School outperform those resembling the Excellence School. 

The second reason for doubting the possibility of the emergence of a single 

view of strategy - by either synthesis or crucial experiment - was derived in a 

compelling paper by Tsoukas (1994), who drew upon Pepper (1946) to show 

that the underlying epistemologies of strategy Schools are mutually exclusive, 

and that the differences between them are largely untestable. Applying 

Pepper to our extended strategic typologies model, we concur with Tsoukas 

that the opportunities for helpful dialogue between those committed to one or 

other School must be limited by the inability to agree epistemologically. 


Page 27

In Figure 8 we use Pepper’s framework (as outlined by Tsoukas) to locate the 

Schools identified by our extension of Whittington’s model. This framework 

distinguishes between Dispersive and Integrative theories. An integrative 

theory is one which seeks to arrange facts into a more or less coherent 

pattern that reveals something of the mechanisms that cause those facts. A 

dispersive theory does not seek to make huge generalisations, rather it seeks 

to establish similarities and differences. 

In Box one are located formalist theories that seek to establish similarity and 

difference between firms, without necessarily expecting to identify the 

underlying causes of these differences with any degree of precision. The 

‘Excellence’ model is one of hard formism; that is, it identifies similarities 

between the so-called excellent companies and then assumes that these 

similarities are therefore the cause of observed excellence. On such a basis, 

pundits propose means by which firms could duplicate the relationships 

identified and therefore improve their performance. Examples here include 

Peters and Waterman’s (1982) work and the derivation of ‘Stretch’ and 

‘Leverage’ by Hamel and Prahalad (1993). 

--------------------------------- 

Insert Figure 8 about here 

--------------------------------- 

Box two contains those models that take machines as their root metaphor. 

Such models assume that managers act in a predictable way - by either 

nature or incentive - and steer the organisation in much the same way a 

helmsman steers a vessel. Naturally, planning and implementation issues 

figure prominently in this literature. 

Box three contains theories that stress the uniqueness and unpredictability of 

events in a given context, arguing that the scope for generalisation in strategy 

is greatly limited by the drama of arbitrary factors that accompany 

organisational and political change. It may be possible to construct a 

believable narrative retrospectively, such as Burrough and Helyar’s (1990) 


Page 28

account of the fall of RJR Nabisco, but such stories are a poor guide to future 

behaviours in different contexts. 

Box four collects models that try to build upon the organisation and its 

environs as a macrocosm that is the source of its own change. Much like a 

Zola novel, given particular starting conditions and events, the characters will 

tend to stumble towards largely predictable postures and outcomes. For 

example, a ‘Defender’ in Miles and Snow’s typology will make strategic 

decisions that preserve its Defender characteristics for a variety of political 

and paradigmatic reasons, even though this might not result either in the best 

short-term results (Miles and Snow, 1978) or in long term advantage (Miller, 

1990). 

The implication of the foregoing analysis is that the possibility of deriving a 

‘correct’ School is impossible. As Tsoukas points out: ”The kinds of research 

questions asked, the objects selected for study, and the criteria for evaluating 

knowledge claims are intimately connected with assumptions of what is valid 

knowledge” (Tsoukas, 1994, p.770). Box 2 writers tend to prefer positivism 

and hard empiricism to confirm their work – although one might be surprised 

at the stubborn adherence to theories with rather unsatisfactory empirical 

credentials. Researchers in Box 3 tend to explore single cases in greater 

depth, often stressing the difference between examples. Evidence comes 

from – and indeed consists of – narratives, stories and impressions. Although 

there may be similarities at the level of process, there is rarely any attempt to 

impose a generalisable model of best practice. Naturally, it is possible to 

create, or review, secondary evidence outside one’s preferred epistemology. 

For example, Porter chooses to illustrate his model of generic strategies with 

case study examples (Porter, 1988). However, case studies are not capable 

of confirming or denying the U shaped curve that describes the relationship 

between firm size and performance that is at the heart of his model. Similarly, 

many researchers have produced empirical models related to some ontical 

properties of Miles and Snow’s typology. For example, Hooley, Lynch et al. 

(1992) surveyed companies by postal questionnaire to explore the 


Page 29

consistency between typology, marketing strategy and performance implied 

by Miles and Snow. However, the central roles of the dominant coalition and 

the dynamics of the Gestalt in producing these strategies, are invisible to this 

technique. 

In short, we concur with Tsoukas that it is not helpful to look for crucial tests 

that show the virtue of one School over all others. It is more helpful for our 

present purposes, to return to the impact of our thoughts on the Strategy 

Schools identified. 

Becoming Misrepresentations 

Acceptance of Chia’s decentering of decisions has profound implications for 

the theory of strategic choice, and the strategic management literature in 

which this has a central role. 

Whittington’s four Schools adequately encompass most of the strategy 

literature, but all are particularly vulnerable to decision paradoxes. The 

ontological distinctions between the Schools are descriptions about 

unblocking of these paradoxes. These paradoxes arise from an inauthentic 

view of time disguised by the objectification of ontical properties in the form of 

opportunities and threats, resulting in logocentric prescriptions of one form or 

another. The seeds of each School’s undoing are created by undue emphasis 

on some elements that would largely obstruct individual and social becoming. 

A further five Schools can be identified by examining distinctions between the 

way that each tries to deal with a more authentic understanding of time 

derived from Heidegger. No School entirely succeeds, and it is possible to 

trace underlying weaknesses of the prescription to these particular 

inadequacies. 

In conclusion, we argue that the strategic management literature can be 

divided broadly into nine fairly robust Schools. However, none of the Schools 


Page 30

identified are able to adequately represent strategy in the way defined here 

since both time and becoming cannot be simultaneously captured. We 

therefore describe our nine Schools collectively as a misrepresentation to 

draw attention to the frailties of each. The chief advantage of presenting 

Schools in this way is that it may force adherents of a particular School to 

reconsider, and probably defend, the basic principles upon which their models 

and prescriptions are constructed, and the veracity of the advice that is 

plucked from them. It may also help to expose the way that prescriptions 

thwart what Chia calls “the will to organise”; which we have derived using 

ideas from Heidegger. 

It may be argued that this is a backward step in the development of a vibrant 

literature on strategy, but our conclusion is that such backward steps are long 

overdue. 

------------------ 

Figure 9 here 

------------------ 


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