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Five Steps to Strategic Action
Brodwin, David R., and L. J. Bourgeois
26/3  (Spring 1984): 176-190

The article presents five approaches to developing and implementing strategy represent a range of techniques. Through extensive interviews, most managers indicated to sociologists that one of these five approaches predominates in their company, although often one or two of the other approaches may also play a limited role. The choice of method should depend on the size of the company, the degree of diversification, the degree of geographical dispersion, the stability of the business environment, and, finally, the managerial style currently embodied in the company's culture. The research suggests that the Commander, Change, and Collaborative Approaches can be effective for smaller companies and more complex corporations use firms in stable industries while the Cultural and Crescive alternatives. Business strategy was once a science of classification: divide the businesses into four piles; get rid of some and nurture others. Now it has become a much more subtle enterprise. Considerations of motivation and the politics of organizations are inescapable. Culture is discovered to have a decisive effect, a finding that should shock no one. It becomes impossible to separate the underlying economic merits of strategy from the drive and dedication of the person who proposes it.

 

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