STRATEGYAT THE LEADING EDGE

NEW RESEARCH & CONFERENCE REPORTS

Strategy Past; Strategy Futures

Peter M c K i e r n a n

AS STRATEGY SCRAMBLES FROM adolescence to adult-

h o o d it is beginning to ask questions about its new
identity. Like m a n y young adults, it is concerned
about its roots and about where it is heading. The
choice of a future direction is influenced by those
origins and the v i e w p o i n t they have formed. This can
be coloured by history, discipline, culture or, simply,
the prevailing ' d o m i n a n t paradigm'. The latter, w h e n
transferred into an organizational 'recipe',* can
induce strong cases of cognitive calcification, so lim-
iting interpretation and creativity. This is as true for
academics as it is for practitioners. In a recent
s u r v e y , t strategy scholars were asked for their per-
ception of seminal contributions to the d e v e l o p m e n t
of thought in the area. A n u m b e r of patterns were
discernible in their answers. First, consensus on a

c o m m o n pathway was limited due to the many disci-

plinary avenues down w h i c h the d e v e l o p m e n t of
strategy has had to travel. So their selections were
many and varied. Second, there was a distinct dif-
ference in the choices by scholars from the strategy

*After the work of Grinyer, P.H. and Spender, J.C., see references.
t C o n d u c t e d by the author in preparation for the 'Historical Evol-
ution of Strategic Management; Volumes I and II', Dartmouth, 1996.

Pergamon Long Range Planning, Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 790 to 798, 1997
PII: S0024-6301(97)00080-0 © 1997 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0024-6301/97 $17.00+0.00
content, and by those from the strategy process, the writings of the great French and German military
schools. The danger herein is the development of an strategists, Foch and von Clausewitz, in the 1 9 th
intellectual schism that could impede the integrative century.
evolution of the field. Third, all quoted contributions We witness that the history of strategy is global
came from the last 30 years, with over 80% of them and not entirely American; ancient and not modern.
in the last decade. This probably reflects the reality However, we can divide the modern contributions
of an emergent subject; with few specialist journals, into four schools of thought; Planning and Practice,
and schools dominated by a handful of authors each Learning, Positioning and Resource-Based. These are
decade since the 1960s. not m u t u a l l y exclusive. There has been active inter-
If we are to search for a strategy future, it is always play between them. A good way to visualize them
helpful to have explored the past. Cummings I sug- is as strands woven together to form a strong rope.
gests that most recent converts to corporate strategy Authors e.g. Andrews, Rumelt, who appear in one
have little knowledge of where the pathways to the have also been influential in others. Nor are they com-
present began. Two generic sources have momentum. plete; other research streams e.g. game theory, have
One is the biological route that recognizes the per- nudged the field along. Yet each captures a part of a
ennial presence of natural competition, acknowl- broad and rich strategy heritage. From a knowledge
edges the partial role of Darwinian selection, builds of each, we can attempt to identify patterns of evol-
to encapsulate Gause's principle of competitive ution that may guide us to some strategy futures.
exclusion and adds the central gifts of imagination
and logic to differentiate the strategist from the rest.
Henderson 2 argues that Darwin is probably a better
guide to business competition than economists are.
The Planning and Practice School
The other source is a more traditional heritage by The Industrial Revolution produced several British
way of military analogy. In the East, China's oldest pioneers in the development of modern management
military classic, 'The Art of War' (c 500 BC), with thought (e.g. Steuart, Smith, Watt, Owen, Arkwright).
its claim that the highest form of leadership is to The principles of authority, specialization, control,
overcome the enemy by strategy, provided a succinct standard operating procedures, personnel policies,
exposition of planning, organization, tactics and the cost accounting, scientific management and planning
seizure of opportunities. In the West, the parallel is were laid down largely as mechanistic procedures
with the ancient Athenian position of 'strategos', (though such concepts were well known to the Sumer-
coined during the democratic reforms of Kleisthenes ians, Egyptians, Hebrews and Chinese in a previous
(508 BC) in reference to the military and political era). Later American contributions (e.g. Towne, Met-
sub-units that formed the Athenian war council. calfe, Halsey, Taylor, the Gilbreths) consolidated this
Certainly, contemporary terminology in strategic science of management in explaining internal organ-
management has a military flavour. Further, it can be izational activities. By the early part of the 2 0 th
argued that in certain areas of the subject e.g. pro- century, this mechanistic approach had embraced the
curement, empowerment, intelligence, control and integration of these activities. But, as Spender 3 points
communications, the military are decades ahead of out:
the academics. Hence, this pathway cannot be denied
'prior to the 1930s, there seemed to be little differencebetween
easily. theories of organizations,their managementand their strategies'.
Fourth, the picture painted had a distinct North
American hue, even among a sample with a pre- As with the military analogy, strategy was essen-
dominance of European authors. Clearly, important tially about large and long term decisions; a view that
inputs to the subject's development have enjoyed that still pervades the literature. Barnard 4 provided the
heritage. But it w o u l d be erroneous to accept, unques- necessary insights. First, he separated organization
tioningly, that any single geographic source has mon- theory from both management and strategy, leaving
opolized the development of the subject. For instance, the latter as a 'function of executive leadership'.
the two major historic strands outlined above have Second, he shifted the debate away from its focus on
different cultural origins. Moreover, m u c h of the efficiency to a focus on effectiveness. This necessi-
Greek inspired military pathway can be traced tated a coupling of the organization to its environ-
through mediaeval Europe where it is pivotal in ment. Such environmental 'fit' formed the bedrock of
Machiavelli's 'Prince'. Drawing on case material from modern analytical approaches to strategy formulation
the 'strategoi', he warned that; and, in conjunction with the efficiency approaches,
'for intellectual training, the Prince must read history, studying opened the way for the introduction of the SWOT
the actions of eminent men to see how they conducted them- technique to the strategists' armoury.
selves during war and to discoverthe reasons for their victories In the modern era, Barnard's contribution is
or their defeats,so he can avoid the latter and imitatethe former'. reflected in the seminal Harvard casebook of Learned,
From here, similar principles can be identified in Christensen, Andrews and Guth 5. Andrews, who

Long Range Planning Voh 30 October 1997

wrote the text, split strategy into formulation and logical engineering manner had a strong attraction to
implementation and, after the influence of Chandler, executives and academics. Hence, the planning
highlighted four components: approach became deeply e m b e d d e d in the strategic
1. what the firm might do (market opportunity); psyche. By the 1990s, it was still the dominant model
2. what the firm could do (corporate competence); in many strategic management texts and course
designs in the Anglo-American world. However,
3. what the firm wants to do (ambition); observations of both the process and effectiveness of
4. what the firm should do (social responsibility). strategy in practice clashed with this rational-analytic
So strategy decisions dealt with the 'fit' between the view. In reality, some 'planned' strategies failed to
external (1 & 4) and the internal (2 & 3) environments. realize their intended outputs and other, successful,
This contribution also borrowed the notion of 'dis- strategies emerged informally. Organizational studies
tinctive competence' from Selznick 6, so emphasizing scholars began to challenge the planners' notions of
competitive advantage from the fertilization of the intentional choice and outcome. They spoke of boun-
resource base (see later). Porter 7 recognises this cre- ded rationality and the role of power, internal politics
ation of competitive advantage, from a clever uti- and chance in strategy decision making. They
lization of a heterogeneous resource set, to be a salient emphasized organizational adaptability, since the
step in the evolution of the subject. Spender 8 traces it rational planning process was constrained by both
to the evolutionary systems models utilized by Hend- external and internal variables whose behaviour was
erson and Follett. Whatever its origin, the resource- unpredictable or simply unknown.
based view developed, subsequently, into a separate The 'learning' school was eclectic in membership. It
field of endeavour in the subject's evolution (see sympathized with the natural selection model, which
later). assumed that the environment was so unpredictable
The sequential nature of activities and the inherent and complex that synoptic models did not present any
logic of the Harvard schema suggested that strategy protection from the constant buffeting organizations
formation could be 'designed '9 from first principles had to face. Each was forced to adapt to survive. Lind-
in a simple, yet informal, way. In a parallel devel- blom 15 had already noted that companies should
opment, Ansoff ~° provided a more systematic model adapt to, or 'muddle through', this complexity. So
of the strategic decisions, characterized by detail and Wildavsky 16 suggested that, in attempting to include
definition in its 'planning' process. The planner was the totality of organizational activity, planning had
more significant than the chief executive; strategy out- dissipated into nothing. The unfortunate planner
put was generic rather than uniquely defined and the could no longer discern its shape; it was b e y o n d
terminology of corporate, rather than business, strat- control, 'located everywhere in general and nowhere
egy was germane. in particular'.
Both approaches stressed environmental appraisal, Empirical investigations 17 showed that companies
market positioning and resource capability in ana- progress using a form of 'logical incrementalism',
lysing the whole organization. These ingredients for- navigating the future by evolutionary adjustments to
m e d the basis of many of the 'planning' texts of the the core business and controlled venturing elsewhere.
1960s and 1970s. 11-13 Such models suggested that Rather than 'muddling', such incrementalism is pur-
well-developed planning systems were indispensable poseful and proactive, integrating the analytical and
to executive management as well as a necessary, but behavioural aspects of strategy formation. Planning is
not sufficient, condition for performance enhance- not rejected but seen as one of many enablers of stra-
ment. They were mechanical, prescriptive and about tegic change. Johnson 18 takes issue with the notion of
corporate, rather than strategic, planning. However, 'logical' within the incrementalist approach, arguing
the chief strategy architects (Chandler, Andrews and that it suggests a degree of rationality which is con-
Ansoff) had established the modern concept of strat- strained in organizations by politics and paradigms.
egy and, as Schendel ~4 acknowledges: The resultant strategy is frequently the result of a
'There is little written today that cannot be traced back to their symbolic, programmatic and cognitive cocktail which
work'. can often appear illogical.
This was quickly spread and developed by the con- As an executive process, strategy formation is
sultancy professionals and organizational planning cloaked in organizational politics; of individuals and
teams w h o provided n e w techniques with which to groups with conflicting demands, of legitimacy, sym-
facilitate its practical implementation (e.g. BCG, bolism, rituals, beliefs, myths and heritage that can
PIMS, Shell's scenarios). expand into a network beyond the bounds of a single
company, through interlocking directorships. Cre-
ditably, strategy scholars 19-21have tried to make sense
The Learning School of this complexity by searching for explanations and
The theoretical ease with which objectives could be patterns. So strategy can be an identifiable pattern in
set, markets appraised and resources deployed in a a series of decisions; a combination of the deliberate

Strategy Past; Strategy Futures

(planning) and the emergent 22 depending on the the challenges to conventional IO thinking came from
organizations' culture and context. In a parallel, but one of Caves's doctoral students, Michael Porter.
unrelated, development, a detailed analysis of the Porter 23 saw the root of competitive strategy as link-
latter was being undertaken by industrial economists. ing the firm to its environment. Industry structure, to
The research propelled market structure to the fore- be analysed by the famous five forces, determined the
front of conceptual activity and paved the way for the extent of competition and so the profit potential. A
positioning school. firm positioned itself within the sector where it could
best defend against or influence these forces, e.g.
behind strong entry barriers. This was an 'outside in'
approach; though Porter paid homage to a capabilities
The Positioning School analysis within the firm. His approach strongly
Arguably, the greatest impact on the modern strategic reflected its American SCP heritage yet it still rep-
management field from the area of industrial organ- resented a dramatic shift in thinking. The SCP school
ization economics (IO) came from Porter. 23'24 The ori- had made environment the key determinant of per-
gins of his work follow a rich vein of US empiricism formance. As Schendel emphasized:
as researchers struggled with the applicability o f m i c o 'by making managerial choice in an explicitly environmental
roeconomic theory in its pure form. Initially, Cham- context the focal point of analysis, Porter succeeded in turning
berlin z5, a Harvard doctoral student, articulated the IO Economics on its head'.
theory of monopolistic competition. He rejected the
restrictive assumptions of prevailing economic the-
ory as 'remote and unreal'. He suggested that the The Resource Based View of the
determination of most prices was the result of both
monopolistic and competitive forces rather than to Firm
be explained by one or the other, as was previously The positioning approach provided prescriptions to
assumed. The linking mechanism was to be a firms' executives in terms of the five force analysis and the
ability to attract customers through product dif- generic strategies of low cost, differentiation and
ferentiation, thus earning quasi m o n o p o l y rents in focus. It took a strong hold in board rooms and busi-
a quasi competitive arena. Mason 26 developed this ness schools. Still, it invoked steady criticism from
theme by analysing firm policies and concluded that the academic fraternity, not least for the lack of any
this required a consideration of how firms react to stable definition of industry or market from w h i c h to
market situations and of the constituent elements of perform the analysis or the restrictive mutual exclu-
market structure, of which product differentiation sivity of its generic strategies. Moreover, strategy
was only one. It was differences in market structure researchers throughout the 1980s confirmed firm
that governed any differences in their policy specific factors as the major determinants of per-
decisions, e.g. on price. There followed a systematic formance differences between firms in the same
investigation of key US industries (aluminum, sector. 28 For an explanation, attention switched to the
tobacco, lead, petroleum) by Harvard economists in analysis of the firms' resource base in the hope of
which Bain 27 challenged traditional price theory by identifying the unique blend and balance which
introducing the threat of potential entrants to a sector. would deliver a competitive advantage. Commonly
He defined and classified entry barriers and intro- referred to as the 'inside-out' view, this school
duced m u c h of the language now familiar to modern emphasized the accumulation of scarce resources
strategists. By establishing a strong positive cor- through skill acquisition and learning, thus placing
relation between industry concentration and pro- the firm at centre stage.
fitability, the notion that market Structure determined The resource based view has a long history. The
firm Conduct and so Performance (the S-C-P model) rich vein can be traced from Marshall, 29-31 through
was indelibly written into the IO folklore. Coase 32 and Andrews 33 to Penrose34:
This Mason-Bain paradigm was refined and tested
over the next two decades. Harvard economists (e.g. 'It is the heterogeneity, not the homogeneity, of productive
resources available...,that gives the firm its unique character'.
Caves, Hunt) began to focus on the changing environ-
mental contexts as firms shifted from unsuccessful Conventional economics focused on a traditional
diversifications in the 1960s and 1970s to leveraged resource base of land, labour and capital, which all
buy-outs and divestments in the later 1970s and early behaved well according to the assumption of dim-
1980s. They incorporated firm behaviours and inishing returns to scale and so could be modelled
mobility into their analyses, breaking with con- easily. Penroses's bundle of resources included man-
ventional oligopolistic thinking by dropping the agement's increasing experience and knowledge of
assumption of firm homogeneity. This led to the intro- the external world which could not. It was the inter-
duction of strategic groups within sectors and to the action of resources with each other and with this
analysis of strategic decision making patterns. One of h u m a n experience that provided firms with unique

Long Range Planning Vol. 30 October 1997

advantages. Transferring and monitoring resources that our studies broaden their notion of rationality to
between firms was thus made difficult, denying rivals include the procedural and intuitive forms. More-
the chance of replication and so securing superior over, care is required in our normative prescriptions
returns. Such complexity needed a n e w articulation which rest on our traditional techniques and models.
and modern scholars were quick to oblige. 35-4° This In essence, we need to know where they work, where
academic discourse was disseminated to the waiting they do not, what adjustments are required, and what
executive audience by Prahalad and Hame141 who saw n e w models are needed.
real sources of competitive advantage as lying in: Perhaps a further consequence of the ubiquitous
'Management's ability to consolidate corporate-wide tech- presence of western management literature is the
nologies and production skills into competencies that empower danger of accepting a restrictive set of 'values' in the
individual businesses to adapt quickly to changing oppor- strategy process and, especially, in corporate govern-
tunities'. ance. There is little mention of ethics in recent strat-
This development of core competencies had been egy writing 42 and so this field is ripe for exploration
witnessed in some of the world's leading organ- and expansion b e y o n d the guidance of Aristotle,
izations (e.g. Honda, Canon, Sony, Yamaha, Bentham and Kant. Strategy decisions have global
Komatsu). Hence, there was some urgency attached and local characteristics. They depend on both an
to its widespread adoption among Western firms. ultimate value, which may be determined by organ-
izational executive ownership, and on what is 'right'
Futures 1 : Planning and Learning Schools in the context, which is probably determined by fea-
As environments become more complex, the limi- tures of the indigenous local culture. Global exposure,
tations of the linear, stage-based model of strategic interlocking directorships, strategic alliances and
management and its associated rational-analytic tech- environmentalism provide a strong incentive for a
niques, developed within the Planning and Practice change of emphasis and for n e w research
school, become pronounced. There is a shift from programmes.
traditional forecasting of the future by extrapolation Second, in building scenarios, organizations filter
of the past to the painting of alternative futures environmental signals and, in a shared way, cog-
through scenario creation. The aim is to improve the nitively de-code information. 43 Cognitive mapping
'fit' between the organization and its environment. has a solid research base in academe yet, because few
This process relies on a variety of internal corporate scholars have been fully conversant with the tech-
perceptions of the future and, through conversation nical aspects of its methodology, it has not been as
rather than quantification, explores the role of lan- widespread as its content deserves. Hence, its results
guage in organizational learning. Language and cul- have not been fully articulated to executive audiences
ture are inextricably b o u n d and, as more attention is in a readily useable format. We should see greater
n o w being given by language scholars to the place of developments in this area with the continued adop-
language in the nation state and the individual, we tion of psychoanalytic techniques in the research pro-
expect to witness increased activity at the organ- cess. The exploration of decision-making and its
izational level in the hope of understanding the 'bounded rationality', of executive politics, of man-
'emotional intelligence' deployed. For instance, agement styles, of managerial elites, of ambitions and
government inward investment programmes have aspirations should all be much improved. In particu-
brought foreign nationals together with indigenous lar, this future could be considerably enhanced by
labour forces. Flexible language can confront inflex- closer liaison with the knowledge base and meth-
ible language, interpretations can become fuzzy and odologies within social anthropology (see Ref. 44),
disputes so arise. especially where group behaviours, pathways to dif-
Further, the current conversations in, and popu- ferent decisions, self reflexivity and cognitive pat-
larity of, organizational learning should enhance two terns are concerned.
other futures. First, modern strategic management
assumes a notion of 'rationality' at the individual or Futures 2: Positioning, Resource-based and
collective level. It is not always clear exactly what Learning Schools
notion of rationality is employed; though there is a Despite the partial demise of the 'positioning' view
sense in which this is dominated by Western philo- and the relative dominance of the resource based view
sophical bases and has an emphasis on the instru- in the early 1990s, each school has dealt with the
mental. There are some parts of our global arena (e.g. same thing, i.e. competitive advantage. The emphasis
Africa, Asia) where 'reason may be the slave of the in each has merely been different, though each has
passions'* rather than of 'moral law'.t This requires recognised the other's territory. For instance, Porter
presents a thorough capabilities analysis in the con-
text of competitor reaction, 23 acknowledges dis-
*David Hume. tinctive competencies as a cornerstone of strategy 4s
tImmanuel Kant. and relates activities analysis to strategic position-

Strategy Past; Strategy Futures

ing. 46 Ironically, he also developed one of the most strategic management. If we accept that organisations
useful tools for internal resource analysis in the value are families of non-linear feed-back loops linked to
chain. 24 A progressive strategy future w o u l d see other families (organizations) by similar loops, they
adherents of the two schools seeking greater inte- should be able to operate a long w a y from equilibrium,
gration to lever their relative strengths. First, they at the border between stability and instability. They
need a common language. will operate in b o u n d e d instability, at the edge of
The traditional emphasis on accounting techniques chaos. This state is difficult to manage. The need for
to measure internal assets has made it difficult to control and integration pulls them towards stability
carry out a full resource audit. Such techniques are and eventual ossification. The need for decent-
essentially historic and so are incongruent with the ralization and innovation pulls them toward insta-
building of future competencies and capabilities. bility and eventual disintegration. The left and the
Moreover, the latter include content that is tacit e.g. right need to remain in balance. As Stacey 52 states:
knowledge, which is not measurable by such con-
'The dynamics of successful organizations are therefore those of
ventional means. A different language is required that irregular cycles and discontinuous trends, falling within quali-
can deal with 'soft' rather than 'hard' resources and tative patterns, fuzzy but recognizable categoriestaking the form
a comprehensive set of n e w measures needs to be of archetypes and templates'.
developed. This requires a multidisciplinary effort.
Second, they need a n e w theory of the firm. At the For strategic management, this means that,
heart of the resource based view is the concept of although some short term control is possible through
imitability. Competitive advantage is built on a traditional techniques, long term development must
unique bundle of assets that is difficult to imitate. Its eschew the type of linear, analytic reasoning that
sustainability depends on the continuous devel- underpins many of these techniques. Waldrop 53
opment of key resources. One is culture and one is warns of the danger of 'locking in' to sub-optimal
knowledge. Culture should be the one resource that schema; generations of strategists could unques-
is impossible to copy. Research into culture by organ- tionably operate stage-based, linear models, becom-
izational theorists (in the Learning school) is reason- ing hooked on these textbook paradigms. Without
ably well developed. However, there has not yet been continued education, the lock in will be reinforced for
sufficient intellectual traffic b e t w e e n the two schools years to come. Pascale 54talked of the Law of Requisite
for cross-fertility to occur. Perhaps disciplinary 'silos' Variety, demanding that any organism must develop
have prevented theory development here. an ability to manage conflict and paradox internally
Organizationally e m b e d d e d knowledge, influenced if it wants to stand any chance of coping with external
by the work of Polanyi 47 on tacit knowledge and Nel- shocks with similar characteristics. In this future, we
son and Winter 48 on organizational routines, became may need to throw off the baggage of a previous econ-
the focus of much resource-based research. But, our omic-strategy generation and embrace self-organ-
knowledge of the anatomy and creation of this knowl- ization, transformation and renewal. This future
edge is embryonic and its exploration has been ham- w o u l d link strongly to the next. It remains on its own
pered by measurement problems (see above). Though as it requires a change in the mindset of many modern
fresh research in this area has broken n e w ground 49 strategists. Change or not, the next future will have to
towards a knowledge-based theory of the firm, much be faced.
work still remains to be done to progress this strategy
future. Futures 4: External Pull and Complexity
Any evolutionary strategy future w o u l d foster Strategists will have to react to the p h e n o m e n o n of
closer integration of all the schools. Linking the out- change in contemporary society. The march towards
side-in (Positioning) with the inside-out (Resource liberal democracy, the growth of the nation state and
Based) is one obvious route. Academic initiatives 5°'51 tribalism, the de-militarization of the international
have already begun and must be sustained as they lag community, the emergence of trading blocs and mega-
behind global business practice, which has followed markets (e.g. China and India), the fight against
this path for a generation. poverty, the fight for sustainable development, the
drift from national to regional government and the
Future 3: Chaos and Complexity proliferation of privatization and de-regulation pro-
The above futures build on the relevant historic tracks vide an engaging complexity at the general environ-
and are part of a traditional evolution. They involve mental level. At the operating level, the digital
the development of the subject as a capstone disci- telecommunications revolution will continue to lib-
pline, borrowing partial analyses from adjacent social erate individuals from their corporate parents
and mainstream sciences. This broadening should be through efficient personal communication systems
accompanied by a deepening of already established bringing with it n e w work patterns. Consequent de-
knowledge. An alternative future w o u l d break with centralization could stimulate increased activity in
this linear tradition and embrace a radical route for small cells linked together by networks, so trans-

Long Range Planning Vol. 30 October 1997

forming intra and inter company relationships. Stra- The world presents a complex agenda where generic
tegists will have to grapple with virtual organizations, treatments can lead to inappropriate solutions. Stra-
outsourcing, increased mobility of labour and a need tegists should ensure that organizations do things dif-
for continuous education and training as the rapidity ferently to remain competitive and responsible.
of technology and knowledge flows quickly erodes These strategy futures are a combination of the evol-
contemporary skills and abilities. The structure of utionary and the revolutionary. The former predict
industries as well as companies will change dra- that we will do more of the same ourselves; inte-
matically. grating schools and disciplines, accepting partial
The challenge for strategists will be to search for analyses from further cognate areas and generally
patterns in this complexity; 53 to start with uncer- tweaking things at the margin. This may be good
tainty; to embrace conversation and stories; to better enough if we get the odd breakthrough. The latter is
understand intuition and to prevent it from potential a call to drop the baggage, to accept that linearity can't
contamination from the 'engineering' toolbox. cope with complexity, to adjourn our deepening of
generic strategies, to become analytically 'softer', to
experiment and to end any pretension that our work
in strategy is novel. That would be an acceptance of
Conclusion the lessons of history of the Chinese, of the Egyptians,
Many tools and techniques are concerned with the of the Greeks. Our strategy rope has a circular and
provision of operational efficiency. They come and repetitive pattern. If we continue to do the same
go. Trainers and consultants assure that the latest things with it, let us hope it's strong enough.
versions are dispersed widely to organizations, who,
I am grateful for the commentsof my colleaguesPeter Grinyer,Joe
in turn, appear to have voracious appetites for them. Lampel and James Urquart on previous drafts of this paper.
Organizations end up doing things in the same way,
especially w h e n financial observers force upon them PETER MCKIERNANis Professor of Management at the
similar output measures. Yet, these sorts of efficiency University of St. Andrews, Scotland and Visiting Pro-
gains are a means to an end. Strategy is not about this fessor of Strategic Management at the University of
inward imitation. There is a paradox of progress here. Warwick, England.

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