Acclaim about the Book

By Harry Sminia, Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (July 31, 2014), Hardcover: 180 pages, Language: English, ISBN-10: 1138778826, ISBN-13: 978-1138778825

‘This important and useful book examines six different ways of doing strategic management. It focuses on how strategy is actually practiced and provides a repertoire of models and illustrations for engaging in these practices.’ - Andrew H. Van de Ven, Professor, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA.

What are the Details of the Book?

If you want to acquire knowledge on strategy, read this book. If you want to grow as a C level leader, read this book. If you want to read contemporary case studies on strategy and leadership, read this book. Harry Sminia's authored book The Strategic Manager is divided into eight chapters.

What is Inside?

Strategy is something with which managers regularly engage throughout their working lives, yet it is often written and researched as though periodic box-ticking exercises are the only show in town. This textbook provides students and professionals with a solid understanding of the strategic management theories, along with the tools needed to apply them and contribute toward successful organisations.

The author unfolds that he has written this book out of frustration. He found what is available in strategic management textbooks to be less and less relevant. He starts from how strategy is realised in the business world and applies the key theories to provide a rounded understanding. Contemporary cases studies are provided to help readers visualise the application of strategic thinking. Including the various stakeholders, organisational politics and culture, the author opens a window to the real world of strategic management in this book.

Strategy Takeaways

Strategy scholars engage in research to find out what theories might be the most worthwhile.

Strategic planning and Ansoff entered into an intense debate about whether strategic planning has anything to do with strategic management at all (Ansoff 1991, 1994; Mintzberg 1990, 1991, 1994a, 1994b). As can be expected, Ansoff sees it as the cornerstone of strategic management. To Mintzberg, strategic planning is an oxymoron – a term that denies itself – because the flexibility inherent in strategy as dealing with an unknown future contradicts with the inflexibility of mapping the future out in a plan.

Many organisations are less bothered about competition but need to be concerned about their performance and about their continued ability to perform. Two of these theoretical approaches featured in this book are the ‘stakeholder approach’ and ‘institutional theory’. Both approaches also have their specific take on the environment, the organisation itself and the strategies the organisation can pursue.

The author ridicules PEST as it does not tell the strategist anything and does not give any indication of what to do or what is implied if something has been categorised as political, economic, social or technological.

Strategy scholars do their best to get at the relevant things and each scholar has an equally valid argument to back up the choices they make in their abstracting and focusing.

A strategist in charge of a firm or organisation is actually supposed to know the situation the firm or organisation is in. Managers are supposed to know the extent of the match or mismatch between the environment, the firm or organisations and its strategy. And they are expected to have ideas about how these three elements should be matched up. Simultaneously, the world moves on. The influence of governments and supragovernmental bodies varies over time. Local, regional, national and global economies experience upturns and downturns. Societies change. Fashion changes. New technologies are developed and others become obsolete. The availability of natural resources fluctuates. Natural disasters happen. Governments introduce new legislation all the time. And many more things happen and can be expected to happen.

The core of the industrial organisation approach is found in two books Michael Porter published in 1980 and in 1985, respectively. The 1980 book introduced the five forces framework and the generic strategies. The 1985 book added the value chain and the value system.

Vertical integration means that the firm takes activities in house that are done by either suppliers (backward integration) or buyers (forward integration).

Rolex company has a history that goes back to 1905. The company claims to be the inventor of the wristwatch. It was the first to make the wristwatch waterproof, the first to integrate the day/date in the movement and the first to perfect a selfwinding movement to become mass producible.

Past success is not necessarily an indicator of future performance.

If a firm is able to combine exploration with exploitation, it is said to be ‘ambidextrous’. This is not an easy thing to do because the requirements of exploitation – doing the same thing over and over again – contradict exploration – actively looking for things to change.

As there is a static resource-based view and a dynamic resource-based view, there are two ways to go here. The static resource-based view is more of an add-on to marketing-based strategic thinking or the industrial organisation approach.

An organisation's existence only makes sense if it is worthwhile in the eyes of its stakeholders.

The basic ideas that management thought is prestructured are derived from cognitive psychology (Sims and Gioia, 1986). Things like ‘schemas’ (a mental structure which serves to organise knowledge), ‘implicit theory’ (scheme of naïve, personal collections of assumptions of how things are related and how the organisation works) and ‘scripts’ (a specific scheme about how events are supposed to organise into sequences) are already in strategists’ minds and inform how they make sense of the world.

Opportunities have a positive ring to them and threats are perceived as negative. When somebody labels issues positively or negatively, it reveals his way of thinking. Also imagine for instance a CEO qualifying something as an opportunity instead of a threat.

A struggle ensues between challengers and incumbents, and sometimes a new order will replace the old one. And again this process features power, politics ambiguity, conflict and controversy.

Institutional theory covers the three ingredients of strategic management – strategy, environment and organisation – in a very specific manner.

The notion of organisational culture is closely related to the concepts of vision and visionary leadership. A vision is ‘a mental image of a desirable future state’ (Bennis and Nanus 1985:86) The visionary leader is the person who articulates this ‘desirable future state’ and who is expected to inspire others to follow him. In essence, a vision is a definition of a future situation to which the organisation is supposed to aspire.

What is the Recommendation?

This book is written in a conversational tone. It hits the bull's eye. It contains lots of case studies that help understand concepts and theories easily. It contains diagrams to get across the content. The author argues and justifies his concepts and arguments. He articulates his ideas effectively. It is a thought provoking book for students and leaders. It is an ideal book for executive education. It is worth investing your time to read and update tools and techniques on strategy and leadership. This book is useful for students, strategy scholars, practitioners, researchers, leaders and CEOs. Enjoy reading this book!

‘The Strategic Manager provides a useful bridge between theory and practice through a range of real-life case studies. This approach is not just helpful for MBA students, but also any business executive involved in developing and applying growth strategies in a commercial environment.’ - Kevin Thomas, CEO, Support Services Division, Babcock International Group plc.