Strategic management

What is strategy?

Strategy is “…the direction and scope of an organization over a long term, achieving advantage in a changing environment with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations through its configuration of resources and competences” [1] . Metaphors help the management to cope with the key challenges in developing management strategy. These include assurance and management of creative insight as well as sense making.

These days, businesses are operating in a disordered manner, with organizations seeking procedures that will allow them to enhance their performance and competitiveness[5]. There is strength in the argument that managers cannot operate as scientists. This is because they operate in complex and unpredictable market environments.

They have their own limitations as far as their judgment is concerned. Nevertheless, upper management still expects them to conceive new creative solutions with their limited resources. This is a psychological process, intuitive and symbolic and not merely institutional, formal, conscious, or rational.

Real conditions demand autonomous personal judgment. This is the key quality enabling strategic decisions[6]. There is much literature available on strategy development with rich ‘rational’ analytical tools, such as SWOT analysis. However, there are not many tools available aimed at intuitive, symbolic, or pre-rational aspects of strategy.

One of the few that is, is metaphorical thinking. Managers can use metaphors to improve their thinking and sense-making abilities. These metaphors pertain to implicit assumptions, intuition, creativity, and reflexivity.

Strategic management literature and bibliography

[1] Johnson G., Scholes K., Whittington R., Exploring Corporate Strategy, 8th ed, Pearson Education 2008, p. 3.

[2] Porter M.E., The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy, „Harvard Business Review”, January 2008, pp. 86-104.

[3] Amernic J., Craig R., Tourish D., The transformational leader as pedagogue, physician, architect, commander, and saint: Five root metaphors in Jack Welch’s letters to stockholders of General Electric, "Human Relations", No. 60(12), 2007, pp. 1839–1872.

[4] Oliver R.W., Real Time Strategy: Strategy as Sports! War!… Food?, „Journal of Business Strategies”, No. 20(5), 1999, pp. 8–10; see also Ghyczy von T., The fruitful flaws of strategy metaphors, „Harvard Business Review”, Vol. 81, No.9, 2003, pp. 86–94.

[5] Dodd S., Metaphors and meaning: A grounded cultural model of US entrepreneurship, „Journal of Business Venturing”, No. 17, 2000, pp. 519-535.

[6] Brownlie I., Principles of Public International Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1998.