Pescriptive versus emergent Essays

1193 Words Dec 16th, 2013 5 Pages
Introduction 2
Placing the article in wider literature debate 2
Strengths and Weaknesses 3
Conclusion 4
Works Cited 5

When described with historical perspective since it arrived in the mid 1960s, strategic or prescriptive planning has been embraced as a way of “outflanking competitors with big plays that yield long term rent from a sustainable advantage” (Bhide, 1986). Although it faltered in the 1980s and 1990s mainly due to the unstable economy in that period and the rise of emergent strategy, it is still being practised today (John A Pearce II, 1987). Emergent strategy is the view that “strategy emerges as intentions collide with a changing reality” (Moore, 2011). This literature review places the article
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This shows when actions are taken in responds to a new challenge patterns eventually forms.
However, it would be ignorant and inaccurate to place the article solely as emergent. In this article Mintzberg states there is no such thing as ‘Purely deliberate strategy or a purely emergent one’. [p69] Emergent strategy as an extreme is essentially the absence of strategy (Andrew Inkpen, 1995).
The crafting of strategy is definitely far from deliberate strategy but would be implausible to be classified as purely emergent strategy. In Mintzberg words ‘Strategy making walks on two feet, one deliberate and the other emergent’ In other words learning must be used in conjunction with control. Mintzberg expands on this idea when he said “We think in order to act.....but we also act in order to think.” (Mintzberg, 1994) This in turn converges into practical pattern that becomes strategy.
This article best supports ‘deliberately emergent approach’ or umbrella approach as Mintzberg conveyed the idea that processes should

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