Topic 1 – Overview – Strategic Context

Learning outcomes:
● Summarise the strategy of an organisation in a ‘strategy statement ’.
● Distinguish between corporate, business and operational strategies.
● Identify key issues for an organisation’s strategy according to the Exploring Strategy model.
● Understand different people’s roles in strategy.
● Appreciate the importance of different organisational contexts, academic disciplines and
theoretical lenses to practical strategy analysis.
Strategic
Before you begin, complete Task 1.1 on the VLE. List at least five (5) words or phrases that come
to mind when you think strategy.

For the material covered this week you should read Chapters 1 and 2 of the EBook provided on
the VLE. You can choose to do so at the beginning of each topic, at the end, or as you study read
back and forth between the material as it is provided and the corresponding material in the
EBook.

Introducing Strategy
What is Strategy?

Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term which achieves advantage
for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a changing environment to meet
the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations (Johnson, Scholes and Whittington,
2017).

Strategy Dimensions: Content, Context, Practice

Purpose-any strategic problem or situation is three-dimensional because characteristics of all three

dimensions must be understood in order to fully comprehend the strategic problem or situation.
 Organisational purpose

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Context-Circumstances of the content and process
 Industry
 Organisational
 International
Content-The product of the process; concerned with what is and what should be
 Business level strategy
 Corporate level strategy
 Network level strategy
Process (Practice)-The way in which strategies are made
 Strategic thinking
 Strategy formation
 Strategic change

Deliberate and Emergent Strategies (De Wit and Meyer, 2010)

There are two perspectives regarding the way in which strategies are made:
 Strategic Planning-Prescriptive (What to do) Planned/Designed (Ansoff)
 Strategies should be deliberately planned and executed
 The process is systematic, orderly, consistent and logical
 Since this is deliberate it involves: direction, commitment, co-ordination,
optimisation and programming
 Strategic Incrementalism-Descriptive (How to do it) Chaos/Process (Mintzberg/Stacey)
 Strategies emerge over time
 The process involves innovation and organisational development
 Since this is emergent it involves: opportunism, flexibility, learning, entrepreneurship
and support

Levels of strategy (Units of Analysis)- Strategy Content

 Network-it is important to remember that an organisation does not stand alone, but is
involved with many people and entities, both internal and external to the organisation. In
considering strategy these different relationships need to be considered (Johnson, Scholes
and Whittington, 2017).

 Corporate-identifies the scope or range of the organisation as a whole. Geographic

location/s, product diversity, business acquisition and resource allocation are all part of the
corporate strategy (Johnson, Scholes and Whittington, 2017).
 Overall purpose and scope  Resource allocation between SBUs
 Adding value to shareholder investment  Structure and control of SBUs
 Portfolio issues  Corporate financial strategy

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  Business-is also called the competitive strategy and is concerned with how each business
competes in its market. This includes business units within a large corporation (Johnson,
Scholes and Whittington, 2017).
 Competitive strategy  Resource allocation within the SBU
 Developing market opportunities  Structure and control of the SBU
 Developing new products/services  Identify the SBUs key competitors-
assist in competitive position analysis
and comparative analysis

 Functional-each functional part of an organisation must meet the corporate- and business-
level strategies. The functional-level strategies should be developed to be in line with the
higher level strategies. Integration of strategies is key (Johnson, Scholes and Whittington,
2017).
Read the three articles found under week 1 in the Readings folder.
The first reading is about strategies involved with mergers and acquisitions which is important to
apply to the first assignment. The second and third readings provide a history of strategy and
include some modern views.

Often a balanced scorecard is used to help plan out and analyse strategies, but another tool to use is
strategy mapping. Follow the link for the below video that compares the Balanced Scorecard to
Strategy Mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-e5CNR1tXI

This video compares the balanced scorecard to strategy mapping. It also provides step-by-step
guidance describing how to map strategy. You should view this video before attempting Week 1 Task
2. The publisher of the video, Phil Jones, has written texts on the subject and is associated with
Excitant.co.uk if you need more instruction regarding strategy mapping please access the website.

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Strategies explored in different contexts

Strategy can be explored in the context of small businesses, multinational corporations and public or
non-profit organisations. Each of these contexts has its own parameters for consideration of strategy
(Johnson, Scholes and Whittington, 2017).

Exploring strategy through different strategy lenses

There are four ways of looking at strategy that can allow one to gain insights. These perspectives can
help you to be critical of current approaches and to help generate solutions to strategy problems.

Before you continue, read Handout: Strategy Lenses found under week 1 of the VLE. Complete
Week 1 Task 1.

Evolving of Strategy in recent years

The Traditional view of Strategy is still an important perspective and informs a lot of business
practice. However, there have been developments in how Strategy is considered. The emergence of
the ‘practice based’ perspective, seeing strategy as a sociological process emphasises the human
aspect of strategy (e.g. Whittington 2004; Volberda 2004) (Davies, 2017).

Questions to consider:

– Will complexity thinking begin to offer prescription?

– Is there an Importance of leadership in decision-making?

– Will there be an emergence of ethics and responsibility as components of values

based strategies?

– Is an eclectic approach needed?

You should now be ready to collaborate with your peer/s to complete task 2 of week 2. You
may want to read the articles found under Additional Readings to help you identify some of
the strategies for the activity. Please complete this by the end of week 2.

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References

Davies, P. (2017). 1 – Introduction and Strategic Context, Class Slides, University of South Wales,
viewed July 13, 2017, <ST4S38 Blackboard site>.

De Wit, B. and Meyer, R. (2010). Strategy: Process, Content, Context. Andover: Cengage.

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D. and Regner, P. (2017). Exploring Strategy: Text
and Cases. Harlow: Pearson.

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D. and Regner, P. (2014). Exploring Strategy: Text
and Cases. Harlow: Pearson.

Jones, P. (2017). Strategy Mapping 101. [Online Video]. 27 May 2011. Available
from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-e5CNR1tXI. [Accessed: 31 July 2017].

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