Pascale stressed the importance of contention and challenge in strategic management.
Much of conventional strategic management focuses on logical analysis and thus on achieving consensus, whereas Pascale suggests that a degree of contention is productive.
'Managing on the Edge' is his major work and highlights the need for challenge in the ongoing processes of strategic diversion making and strategic challenge particularly through challenging paradigms. To do this he proposed that it was often essential to provoke debate, contention and conflict, which would then lead to strategic renewal. He also draws from the studies of the ecology of natural organisms to understand organizations as complex systems.
His initial book 'The Art of Japanese Management' which explained using the Seven 'S' model how Japanese organizations were often superior. He contended that they were often better at managing the 'softer factors', particularly the shared values tan their western counterparts.
Tom Peters is one of the most important management gurus who continues to challenge management ideas which has made more complacent managers to sit up and think. He is best know for the book 'In Search of Excellence' which he co-authored with Robert Waterman.
'In Search of Excellence' was management research carried out to discover what made certain US companies perform better than others. These success factors were distilled into the seven 'S' model. The seven 'S' model includes the following:
- Strategy
- Structure
- Staff
- Skills
- Style
- Systems
- Shared values
The seven 'S' are indeed a useful checklist for making sure that in a particular organizational issue one has covered all the main angles. Separately, it is often useful to map the various interdependencies between the individual components of the seven 'S' for example:
- Between strategy and structure
- Between structure and style
- Between style and shared values etc.
Effectively this earlier model was based on the need for organizational alignment (following a deliberate strategy school model). Unfortunately, many of Peters and Waterman's success stories went in to decline causing him to revisit and reverse his thinking. Peters and Waterman were caught out here by changing industry competition and complacency.
Tom Peters went on in 'Thriving on Chaos' to stress that there is also a need for challenge in realigning management thinking and breaking up the corporate mind-set especially in the more mature organizations.
Peters used the success of this later book to build a platform for world-wide Peters workshops to spread the doctrine of striving on chaos. He continues to attack corporate soft spots that hinder a company's competitive advantage.
Stakeholder analysis was to a great extent devised by Nigel Piercy. His stakeholder analysis grid is key to understanding the needs of internal stakeholders when it comes to specific strategic decisions.
A stakeholder can be defined as anyone inside or outside of the business who is either a decision maker, adviser, implementer or person affected by a strategy and of how it will be implemented.
The grid can be used:
- to analyze stakeholder positions (and their underlying motivations)
- to anticipate changes in who they are, or in their position
- to devise cunning influencing plans
- to reduce and dissolve organizational politics.
Quinn explained how strategic decisions typically evolve in a part random or erratic and part logical way. Quinn coined the term logical incrementalism to capture this idea. Clearly strategic decisions had some logic to them, otherwise strategic action would be foolish.
Whilst being influenced significantly by Braybrooke and Lindblom, Quinn incorporated within his theory of strategic decisions both random and logical elements.
Quinn's view was that managers tended to make strategic decisions according to perceptions of incremental opportunities which appeared to add to what they already had. Partly driven by their business legacy and pertly by the change and incremental profit top managers were attracted to piecemeal strategies.
The practical advantages of logical incrementalism are:
- Strategic decisions tend to be made on the basis of existing competencies and knowledge thus reducing exposure.
- By making them incrementally, this made it more possible to digest their implementation (as managers would have to execute strategies before moving onto new ones)
- Their economic value could in theory be targeted monitored and controlled
- This style of strategy provides ample opportunity to learn.
Some of the practical disadvantages of logical incrementalism are:
- Managers might not anticipate where a particular decision might lead them next. Like a poor chess player, managers would tend to think about their current move primarily, their next move a little and not thought to other moves.
- Where are series of strategic moves did not fit together well then this would over time create something of a strategic mess.
Quinn's work was amply researched. In his study of strategic decision making in major corporations there was ample evidence of logical incrementalism at work. But this just shows how managers typically do it it does not mean that it cannot be done any other way. It does not mean that they should not do it any other way!
