Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Chapter 2.5 Strategic Management
Decline of the ‘traditional’ approach
During the last half-century, the majestic term ‘strategic planning’ was so much in use by so many,
that it finally got discredited, lost its sense and flavour and became an object of ridicule and
indignation - although not many significant undertakings were successful without a strategy and
plan.
Since the criticism was mostly related to the ‘traditional view’ or the ‘Western approach’, it became
fashionable in the West to talk about ‘re-defining strategy’ in a way that would make it effective for
today’s conditions. Neil Glass insists that “it must move from being a centrally developed detailed
plan, cascading down to each operating level, to becoming a corporate direction or ambition that
operational levels must refine and apply as best suits their individual circumstances.” (Glass, 1998)
Edvin E. Olson and Glenda H. Eoyang think that, ‘The use of traditional planned change
approaches, driven by leaders with the help of change facilitators, has fallen short even when
bolstered by formal (and expensive) programs such as TQM and re-engineering. The root of the
problem has been the Newtonian legacy of organization-as-machine.” (Olson and Eoyang, 2001)
No surprise that, based on the authors’ key assumption that “Individual or system behaviour is
unknowable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable”, nothing remains for strategic planning - or for
management at all – the field of the battle is left to consultants… Nobody knows yet if the proposed
new cure called CAS (Complex Adaptive Systems) will be less expensive than, let’s say, TQM. But
it is good to see that the attention and respect given to the concept of self-organization is rising.
Understanding the true order of things should also come one day.
The East has not had much to do with a ‘re-defining strategy’, since the traditional Western
approach had never been seriously rooted here as anything more than a form of socialistic
centralized planning, which had little to do with strategic thinking and was abandoned two decades
ago anyway. Since we have nothing to re-define, we will simply define what we mean by ‘strategy’
and ‘strategic management’.
Definition of strategic management
With the respect to the Western roots of the discipline, let’s start from Wikipedia, and try to find out
if strategic management, even in the Western sense, is truly gone.
“The word ‘strategy’ derives from the Greek stratēgos, which referred to a 'military commander'
during the age of Athenian Democracy. A strategy is typically an idea that distinguishes a course of
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