What is strategy?

Thinking about strategy generates many controversial questions. This course, What is strategy?, focuses on practitioner views of strategy. You will learn about application of its major theoretical advances in professional life. The course provides definitions of the concept of strategy and strategy-related vocabulary and examines Mintzberg’s five Ps framework.

This course comprises two parts. In the first part, the concept of strategy is defined and the strategy-related vocabulary spanning such terms as mission, vision, aims and objectives, and control is introduced. The second part centres on Henry Mintzberg’s five Ps framework, discussing the five different forms of strategy including plan, ploy, pattern, position and perspective. A particular emphasis is made on practitioner views of strategy as well as application of its major theoretical advances in professional life.

In this course also, the term strategy has been defined as well as major terms in its vocabulary: mission, vision, aims and objectives. Drawing on Mintzberg (1996), it showed that strategy may be conceived of as a composite of five interrelated facets, namely, plan, ploy, pattern, position and perspective.

Thinking about strategy is clearly a lot more complicated and challenging than merely mastering a set of formulae or analytical tools, which can be applied in order to guarantee success. Instead, one of the interesting things about strategy is that it generates so many controversial questions, which require us to synthesise our other areas of knowledge and expertise, and acknowledge our particular standpoints and situations. What academics and practitioners argue as being appropriate strategy has a lot to do with their convictions about how the world works and what they see as important.