Unit 2: Strategy and Stakeholder Management

Unit 2a Strategy: Conceptualizing Strategy

• This unit focuses on conceptualizing strategy, specifically understanding strategic purpose.
• A lecture on campus is part of this unit.

Unit 2b Strategy: Stakeholder Management

• Includes watching videos:
  • "Central tenets of stakeholder theory" (2 minutes 57 seconds)
  • "BBC2: Turkey: Empire of Erdoğan" (11 minutes 8 seconds)
• Reading: Bridoux, F., & Stoelhorst, J. (2022). Stakeholder theory, strategy, and organization: Past, present, and future. Strategic Organization, 20(4), 797-809.
• Doing 5 practice multiple-choice questions (MCQs) available on Moodle.

Unit 2 Themes

• Exploring the concept of strategic purpose.
• Identifying strategic purpose through words and actions.
• Evaluating if organizations consistently fulfill their strategic purpose.

Unit 2 ILOs

• Critically discuss the nature of management.
• Describe key concepts and theories related to various strategy areas (e.g., entrepreneurship, marketing, international business).
• Demonstrate understanding by providing examples from various business contexts.
• Evaluate and synthesize competing concepts and theories.

What is Strategy?

• Strategy defines the long-term direction of an organization, encompassing both deliberate and emergent approaches.
• It involves managing people, relationships, and resources effectively.
• A key aspect of strategy is its practical application and managing the complexities involved in strategy.
• Strategy centers around rising to challenges and accomplishing significant outcomes.
• Strategy is the determination of an organization's fundamental objectives, courses of action and resource allocation.

Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy

• Deliberate strategy is a rational and analytical approach, with precise intentions defined before action is taken.
• Emergent strategy is a reactive and learning-based approach, emerging from and adapting to opportunities.
• Realizing a intended strategy depends on factors like the alignment of organizational members and the benign environment.

Strategy Characteristics

• Deliberate (rational-analytic): Precise intentions, agreement among stakeholders, benign and predictable environment. Emphasis on tools and techniques for analysis, logical top-down cascade through organization.
• Emergent (learning-): Absence of precise initial intentions; flexibility is key; emerging from opportunities. Often innovative, leveraging serendipity and luck.

Case Examples

• Rational-analytic: Bank of England setting interest rates, license-seeking for exploration work, awarding take-off and landing slots at Glasgow Airport.
• Emergent-learning: IKEA's flat-packing approach to selling furniture, Decca Records rejecting The Beatles, Westminster government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Strategy without a Plan

• Without a plan, decision-making within an organization may be uncoordinated, inconsistent and conflicting.
• A well-defined roadmap facilitates successful execution.

Strategy (over) Emphasizing Planning

• Plans often promote inflexibility.
• Planning can negatively affect commitment to strategy making.
• Plans can become bureaucratic in the strategy process, functioning as control rather than facilitation tools.

Strategy: Perhaps a Wee Bit of Both

• Real-world strategies often have characteristics of both planning and learning.
• Leadership cannot foresee and preempt all decisions of other stakeholders, and organizations aren't solely reliant on central leadership to govern them.

Karl Weick (1995) on Plans

• The concept of plans and their role are analyzed.

Defining Strategic Purpose

• Strategic purpose affirms the reason for an organization’s existence.
• It outlines activities, goals and how an organization creates value for its stakeholders (both financial and non-financial).

Understanding Strategic Purpose

• Purpose should cover how an organization's actions make a difference and for whom.
• This is done by establishing mission, vision, value statements and corporate goals.

Profit vs. Purpose

• Contrast between profit-focused and purpose-driven businesses.
• A quote by Milton Friedman on the sole objective of a business is profitability.

John Lewis Partnership: A Partnership with Purpose

• An example of a company emphasizing a partnership/purpose over profit.
• The John Lewis Partnership values collaboration among partners.

Strategic Purpose: Can It Change Over Time?

• Strategic purpose is linked to organizational identity.
• The evolving purpose can necessitate evaluation and adaptation for ongoing organizational success.

Maintaining Strategic Purpose Over Time (Glasgow Celtic FC Case)

• Example of how a company can maintain its purpose, even through major historical and organizational changes.

Critically evaluating strategic purpose

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is analyzed.
• Research on CSR and its real-world effectiveness is assessed.
• The role of Corporate Governance in relation to strategy is examined.

Unit 2a Summary

• What do we mean by ‘strategic purpose’?
• How do organizations define their 'strategic purpose' (mission, vision, values)?
• How can we identify strategic purpose through words and actions?
• Do organizations always successfully fulfil strategic purpose?

Unit 2a ILOs Summary

• Critically discuss the nature of management
• Describe key concepts and theories related to strategy areas.
• Demonstrate understanding of theories by drawing on examples.
• Evaulate and synthesise competing concepts and theories

Unit 2a References

• Provides a list of sources used for the unit.

This quiz covers key concepts in conceptualizing strategy, focusing on strategic purpose and stakeholder management. It includes video content and readings related to stakeholder theory and practice MCQs to reinforce your understanding. Test your knowledge on evaluating organizations' strategic alignment and management practices.