Mintzberg Strategy As A Pattern Of Decision Essay

Question 1:
Hayes and Wheelright (1984) and Mintzberg (1987) spoke of strategy as a pattern of decisions. What do they mean by this? (5 Marks)
Strategy is the pattern of decisions determining the organization’s objectives, purposes, or goals. It outlines the principal policies and plans for achieving those goals, and clearly defines the range of businesses the organization has to pursue. Strategy as a pattern of decisions also highlights the nature of human and economic organization it intends to be, and the nature of the economic and noneconomic contribution it intends to make towards its stakeholders, mainly, the shareholders, customers, employees, and communities[1].
Mintzberg (1987), characterizing ten ‘schools of thought’ in his consideration

According to Johnson and Scholes (2002), core competences ‘create and sustain the ability to meet the critical success factors of particular customer groups better than the providers in ways that are difficult to imitate’. Unlike other physical assets that a company may possess, core competence is an asset that only improves and enhances with its application in the organization. Therefore, it should be continuously applied and shared, and at the same time, fostered and safeguarded. Diversification decisions of organizations, along with market entry conditions, may be directed by the core competence as well. A few or even one core competence can give rise to an immensely diversified portfolio for an organization. For example, 3M identified the link between its substrates, adhesives, and coatings, resulting in products ranging from pressure sensitive tapes, to coated abrasives, to even “post-it” sticky

Prahalad and Gary Hamel highlights that core competencies form the basis for competitive advantage in an organization, enabling it to introduce a variety of new products and services. Core competencies lead to core product development. Core products are not end user products but the products that would be used in order to make a large number of end user products. For example, Honda realized that their core competency lies in internal combustion engines, and therefore, their core product is engines which they use in all their products (cars, motorcycles, agriculture equipment). Thus, engines are key to their process focus.
When the focus is core competencies rather than the product itself, the organization is able to grow with change in technology. For example, for a typewriter company, having the focus as typewriter is an imprudent decision because typewriter as a technology has faced out. As a result, the organization would have gone out of business too as its focus is the outcome of the business and not the core competency of the business. However, had the organization recognised its core competency and focussed on that instead, it would have survived the tide of