Practising Strategy: A Southern African Context 2e - Couverture souple

Botha, Tersia; Venter, Peet

 
9781485125150: Practising Strategy: A Southern African Context 2e

Synopsis


A question that I was asked often when writing and compiling this book (and that, in all honesty, I had asked myself more than once) was: why another strategy book? There were, after all, quite a number of books, international and local, already available on the South African market. It became clear that we had to position this book definitively to make a unique contribution to the extant body of knowledge.


So how, then, is this book different? We believe that there are five key aspects:
A cursory rew of strategic management books shows that the focus is very strongly on the process of strategy formulation, i.e. the thinking and ytical aspects of strategic management, as opposed to the 'doing' part of strategy, which is often dealt with in one or two chapters towards the end. Given that it is the greatest challenge to managers in the 21st century and the greatest reason for strategy failure, we decided to focus on strategy implementation instead.
Most strategic management books portray strategic management as a neat, ytical and rational process that flows from top to bottom in the organisation. Rather than promoting the unrealistic idea of strategy as a purely rational and deliberate outcome, we acknowledge and explore the idea that strategy is often emergent, messy and experimental, and above all a human activity.
Top management has long been regarded as the custodians of strategy. The idea that there are other strategists (human and non-human actors) such as middle managers and consultants that influence the strategic direction of the organisation and distribution of resources emerged only relatively recently, and we include this factor.
We focus on strategy as something that people 'do' rather than something that an organisation 'possesses'. Since people are the building blocks of strategy, we recognise that strategy is both a cognitive and political activity.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.