Ten Schools of Strategy - MBA Knowledge Base (2024)

Strategy is considered as one of the interesting and engaging subject to discuss in business management schools. The strategy can be described or can be explained as a detail and systematic plan of particular action that has to be performed when it is required or when a requirement is envisaged. Different types of strategic problems form part of the strategic management process. Is it necessary for the companies or the organizations to focus more on the market share or focus on the revenue capital of the company or the organization? What are the plans and the processes required and necessary for the organization to focus on as to reach its goal and to reach the market shares? The great authors of Strategy Safari like Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel have explained strategies in their own words with their experiences. The strategy is explained in different approaches which includes design school, positioning school, and planning school, learning school or emergent school, configuration school or transformation school, cultural school, cognitive school, environmental school, power school and entrepreneurial school. Each of these schools describes the strategy as follows:

1. Design school: According to the design school, the strategy has been described as a series of different operations performed to achieve the fit between the internal capabilities and external possibilities of an organization.
2. Positioning school: According to the positioning school, the strategy has been described as analytical process. It also mentions that strategy depends on the appropriate position or place of the firm in the market and within the industry.
3. Planning school: According to the planning school, the strategy is described as which highly praises the beneficial quality or advantage of the formal strategic planning arms itself with SWOT analyses and checklist.
4. Learning school or Emergent school: According to the learning school, the strategy is described as an emergent process. An emergent process can be thought some like an existence process. That means the existence of the strategies appear as more people come to learn or know about the situation that has risen and as well as about the organizations capabilities and the way of their dealing with the raised situations.
5. Configuration school or Transformation school: According to the configuration school, the strategy can be described as a process of transformation which means or which tells about the process that transforms the organization. It also describes the similar quality of strategies which were interrupted by the leaps to the new ones.
6. Cultural school: According to the cultural school, the strategy can be described as collective process and cooperative process.
7. Cognitive school: According to the cognitive school, the strategy can be described as a mental process. It also analyses the peoples awareness about the patterns and how they process they process the information.
8. Environmental school: According to the environmental school, the strategy can be described as reactive process. This means that how the strategy becomes the response of the focused environment.
9. Power school: According to the power school, the strategy can be described as a process of negotiation. That means, the process negotiation is processed or developed between the power holder who are present in the company and external stakeholders.
10. Entrepreneurial school: According to the entrepreneurial school, the strategy can be described as a visionary process. In other words it can be described as the importance given to the role played by the leader in the organization.