Toward a Social System Theory of Corporate Strategy

In the past decade, writers in the field of business policy have increasingly emphasized the need for top-level managers to attend to the formulation of corporate strategy for time horizons extending 5 years and beyond and to the design of management systems to implement that strategy. Special attention has been given by these writers to the development of models or approaches that would help managers address the problems of strategy formulation and implementation more analytically. Thus, most of the recent writing in the field has been normative in character; that is, it defines a problem for top-level managers to attend to, and it tells them how they should go about thinking about that problem. The writings of Ansoff, Katz, Learned et al., Guth, and Newman and Logan1 are representative of the mainstream of thought on the subject. All agree on the need for managerial attention to the problems of strategy formulation and implementation. All agree on the basic intellectual tasks that strategy formulation and implementation involve, that is: (1) the assessment of environmental conditions and trends and the identification of opportunity and threat; (2) the determination of comparative strengths and weaknesses of the organization for competing in particular product-market areas; (3) the identification of the objectives, goals, and values to be served by the organization; (4) the identification of the requirements of a chosen strategy for particular management systems to implement that strategy effectively and efficiently. Major differences between the approaches or theories of the authors lie principally in the degree of analytical rigor they prescribe. Learned et al., for example, prescribe a broader, less conceptually rigorous approach than does Ansoff. To illustrate, in defining corporate strategy, Learned et al. state: For us. strateyv is the Dattern of objectives. DurDoses. or goals and