Synopses & Reviews
Strategy making is considered the high point of managerial activity. But bombarded by fads and fixes, most managers have been groping blindly to get their arms around the proverbial elephant. Now Henry Mintzberg, author of the award-winning
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, has teamed up with Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel to create a powerful antidote: a comprehensive and illuminating -- as well as colorful -- tour through the fields of strategic management. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel have shaped each of ten different approaches into a coherent school of strategy formation. In the process, the authors clarify the enormous amount of confusion that exists.
The result is a tour de force: a brilliant, penetrating primer on business strategy that is, at the same time, immensely readable and fun. The authors provide a thorough critique of the contributions and limitations of each school -- from the design, planning, positioning, entrepreneurial, and cognitive schools to the learning, power, cultural, environmental, and configurational schools -- culminating in how they might combine to reveal that elephant.
Unique, insightful, and essential, Strategy Safari is the indispensable guide for the creative manager.
Review
"
Strategy Safari makes a convincing case for juggling several approaches at once. This book furnishes the complete tool set for every manager involved in strategy formation."
-- Report on Business
Synopsis
Strategy Safari, the international bestseller on strategy by leading management thinker Henry Mintzberg and his colleagues Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel, is widely considered a classic work in the field.
No other book synthesizes the entire history and evolution of strategic management in so lively and entertaining a fashion. Since the initial publication of Strategy Safari, managers, consultants, and academics all over the world have found this book an indispensable and delightful tool -- it has been translated into more than ten languages, including Chinese, Russian, and French, and has been used in top MBA programs worldwide.
Strategy Safari makes sense of a field that often seems to make no sense. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel pair their sweeping vision of strategy making with an authoritative catalog in which they identify ten schools of strategy that have emerged over the past four decades.
Why struggle through the vast, confusing terrain of strategy formation? With clarity and depth, Strategy Safari maps the strategic landscape and facilitates intelligent, informed strategy formation.
Synopsis
This indispensable guide for the creative manager takes readers on a powerful, comprehensive, and illuminating tour through the fields of strategic management. The result is a brilliant, penetrating primer on business strategy that is, at the same time, immensely readable and fun.
Synopsis
The classic, comprehensive guide to strategy formation from a leading expert and award-winning author.
About the Author
Henry Mintzberg, author of several seminal books, including Mintzberg on Management and The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University and professor of organization at INSEAD, in France.
Table of Contents
ContentsEmbarkation
1 "And Over Here, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The Strategic Management Beast"
2 The Design School
Strategy Formation as a Process of Conception
3 The Planning School
Strategy Formation as a Formal Process
4 The Positioning School
Strategy Formation as an Analytical Process
5 The Entrepreneurial School
Strategy Formation as a Visionary Process
6 The Cognitive School
Strategy Formation as a Mental Process
7 The Learning School
Strategy Formation as an Emergent Process
8 The Power School
Strategy Formation as a Process of Negotiation
9 The Cultural School
Strategy Formation as a Collective Process
10 The Environmental School
Strategy Formation as a Reactive Process
11 The Configuration School
Strategy Formation as a Process of Transformation
12 "Hang On, Ladies and Gentlemen,
You Have Yet to Meet the Whole Beast"
References
Index