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Evolutionary
Processes
Deliberate
Emergent
Systemic
Processual
Plural
For the Classical school, planning can adapt to and anticipate market change. Strategy is a
rational process of deliberate calculation and analysis, designed to maximize long-term
advantage (profit-maximalization!). This is done by objective decisions at one remove from
the of the business battlefield itself.
For the Evolutionists, markets are too tough and too unpredictable for heavy investments in
strategic plans. They expect markets to secure profit-maximalization. They caution strategists
to keep their costs low (efficiency) and their options open. Competitive processes ruthlessly
select out the fittest for survival; the others are powerless to change themselves quickly
enough to ward off extinction. Successful strategies only emerge as the process of natural
selection delivers its judgement. Companies should fit their environment.
The Processualists too challenge the detached approach of the Classicists, but they are less
pessimistic about the fate of businesses that do not somehow optimise environmental fit.
Effective strategies emerge more from a pragmatic process of bodging, learning and
compromise than from a rational series of grand leaps forward. Involvement in the everyday
operations and basic strengths of the organization is important.
Finally, from the Systemic perspective strategy does matter. They are less pessimistic about
peoples capacity to conceive and carry out rational plans of actions. But the objectives and
practices of strategy depend on the particular social systems in which strategy-making takes
place. They argue that strategies must be sociologically efficient, appropriate to particular
social contexts. From a Systemic perspective, there is no one best way of strategy: just play
by the local rules.
Look at the sheets!
of change to survive in the market. There is no time to waste. If managers will not change,
change the managers.
7. Does it matter?
Managerial consequences: The differences between the four basic approaches to strategy do
matter. They provide radically opposed recommendations for managers.
Classical confidence in analysis, order, and control is undermined by Processual scepticism
about human cognition, rationality, and flexibility. The incrementalist learning of the
Processualists is challenged in turn by the impatient markets of the Evolutionists. But even
Evolotionary markets can be bucked if, as Systemic analysts of social systems allege, the state
is persuaded to intervene.
Strategy-making starts with the question: which theory of human activity and environment fits
most closely with your own view of the world? (p. 118-119)
These are four starkly different perspectives, but it is the Systemic sensibility that helps us
finally to choose. For the Systemic strategist, effectiveness depends upon understanding
context and playing by local rules. Classical, Evolutionary, Processual, they can all take place
in some conditions. There is no one best way. The key is to match strategy to market,
organizational, and social environments. They all work best in different contexts (p. 120).
Classical most relevant in mature, stable, and relatively predictable environments. + capital
intensive, monopolistic market.
Evolutionary new industries where many small firms compete in absence of market power.
Processual This fits protected bureaucracies, public sector, which often have both the size
and complexity of objectives to make of strategy a series of creeping but necessary
compromises.
Systemic Non-Anglo-Saxon, family and state firms.
National policy consequences: Evolutionary and Processual accounts are sceptical of big
government interventions, warning policy-makers to stand back and not to spoil emergent
economic successes. Classical and Systemic approaches are more confident in deliberate
action, but the Classical instinct is to make existing systems work better, the Systemic is
towards quite radical social and institutional change.
Processual reliance on the local and emergent implies a cautious and highly sensitive
approach to economic development. The role of government is to support existing processes
on the ground and not to get in the way.
Systemic thinks this may be too fatalistic. The conditions for new clusters can be created
deliberately by firms and governments working together.
Prescriptions for national economic policy:
Classical rely on better thinking and planning
Processual nurture developments from the bottom-up
Evolutionary stand back, hoping only to turn the winnowing processes of competitive
markets to general advantage.
Systemic sees business strategy and economic performance as tightly linked to the social
contexts in which they are embedded. Economic change means social and political changes as
well. They believe in social engineering.
Chapter 3
For todays business elite, Leadership qualities matter. Management is about providing the
order and procedures necessary to cope with the everyday complexity of big business.
Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.
The Visionary leadership is the mechanism for such change, providing the ideals to shape
strategy and the energy to make it happen. Leaders can give employees their sense of purpose
and transform their work into play. But it emphases individualism, neglects teams and
process, and exaggerates the power of single individual.
From the Systemic perspective,
- the very concept of leadership is inherently culture-bound. The fascination with
business leaders is not the same elsewhere in the world. It is not something easily to be
translated across cultures.
- Leaderships allure can change according to historical context. Fascination with leaders
tends to follow economic crises and ends with political crises.
- The leadership is highly sexualized. The concept is a masculine one-defined in terms of
men and understood in ways that exclude women.
In a word, leadership may be a vital and empowering force in contemporary organizations,
but it remains a cultural, historical and gender-specific phenomenon.
Systemic focuses on the social characteristics of managerial elites, and the social interests
they represent. From the Systemic perspective
- Entry into the business elite is not won simply by individual merit but also by social
conformity. Strategies are influenced by the interests of dominant groups rather than being
determined simply by the calculus of profit.
- Internal political processes can lead to the domination of a firms tip management by
representatives of particular functional groups. For example. Firms dominated by
production and accounting professionals tend to the cautious, inward-looking defenders
in their strategic orientations.
- The dominance of top management positions by a particular professional group can
profoundly bias corporate strategy. Once a profession gains advantage, the process tends
to be self-reinforcing.
In conclusion, the systemic argument is that business leadership is not simply a matter of
heroic high performance individuals, but involves the collective advance of self-interested
social groups- managers in general or particular professions.
There are two accesses to the business top.
- Through pattern of shareholdings in a particular society.( As an inheritor or founder)
- Through narrow educational channels. From the Systemic perspective, the early
education is critical to career success. Regardless of managerial merit and experience,
the chances of reaching tip management are determined long before ever entering the
business world