The Strategy Pathfinder, 3rd Edition

Pathways to Strategy

Strategy Is About Winning

Alfred Chandler, writing in 1962, outlined what many regard as the “classical” definition of strategy: “a strategy is the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals”.

However, many other cultures had developed earlier definitions related to military practice. The word strategy was coined to name a new military and political leadership position developed in the Greek city of Athens in the 6th century BC, as a combination of the words stratos, which meant “army” (or more correctly an army spread out over the ground), and agein, meaning “to lead”. In another continent at about the same time, the military philosopher Sun Tzu defined strategy as “. . . the great work of the organization. In situations of life or death, it is the Tao of survival or extinction”.

In the 1980s, writers sought to refine our views of what strategy was about. The Japanese-American scholar Kenichi Ohmae described strategy as “. . . the plan enabling a company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its competitors”. While the world's most highly regarded management guru, Peter Drucker, suggested that a strategy was “. . . a firm's theory about how to gain competitive advantages” over its competition.

By the end of the 1980s, new types of strategy scholar, more schooled in human and organisational behaviour ...