What's Your Competitive Advantage?

Chapter 4

Strategy-guided change

The competitive strategy approach considers both the direction the system needs to head and the change processes involved in moving the system. The literature on organisational change is extensive. Given the complex nature of firms and their contexts, we focus on prior theory that acknowledges emergence and incremental approaches to change. In particular, we build on two important contributions: Henry Mintzberg’s notion of emergent strategy as a ‘pattern in a stream of decisions’ and James Brian Quinn’s ‘logical incrementalism’.²⁸

Mintzberg’s ‘patterning’ corresponds to our idea of strategy-guided change: the strategy shapes the emerging pattern of decisions and actions. Quinn’s logical incrementalism recognises ...