Strategy Safari

"Henry Mintzberg is perhaps the world's premier management thinker" a Carlsberg-style endorsement of the author from Tom Peters, management guru Henry Mintzberg is one of today’s best-known and most controversial management thinkers. Currently Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, he is always interesting and usually controversial and holds the management and strategy communities in thrall. He claims to spend his public life dealing with organizations, and his private life escaping from them.Bruce Ahlstrand likes to prospect for strategy gems in unlikely places - from the game of Texas Hold’em to the Greek tragedies. He has a D.Phil. from Oxford University and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. Bruce is the author is currently a professor of management at Trent University in Ontario, Canada.Joe Lampel began his career believing that strategy is the answer, but has recently concluded that it may be the answer to the wrong question. He first began to suspect this terrible truth during the long journey that produced the first edition of Strategy Safari. Further research, and numerous publications in journals that are well received in polite academic society, only served to confirm this belief. Joe was awarded a PhD in management by McGill University for good

"Mintzberg is one of the best guides for an analysis of strategy and this book is the perfect starting point for someone interested in understanding more about it." - Director Magazine, January 2009 (readership 173,000)

• Contents  Acknowledgements / ix           Embarkation / xi                                                                      1          ‘And over here, ladies and gentlemen: the strategic management beast Why ten? A field review Five Ps for strategy Strategies for better and for worseStrategic management as an academic discipline  2          The design school: strategy formation as a process of conceptionOrigins of the design schoolThe basic design school modelPremises of the design schoolCritique of the design schoolThe design school: contexts and contributions  3          The planning school: strategy formation as a formal processThe basic strategic planning modelSorting out the hierarchiesPremises of the planning schoolSome more recent developmentsPlanning’s unplanned troublesThe fallacies of strategic planningThe context and contribution of the planning school  4          The positioning school: strategy formation as an analytical processEnter PorterPremises of the positioning schoolThe first wave: origins in the military maximsThe second wave: the search for consulting imperativesThe third wave: the development of empirical propositionsCritique of the positioning schoolContribution and context of the positioning school  5          The entrepreneurial school: strategy formation as a visionary processOrigins in economicsThe literature of the entrepreneurial schoolVisionary leadershipPremises of the entrepreneurial school&nbs