Fred Nikols’ Definitionsof Strategy

I would imagine that strategy has been defined by many different people in many different facets of business and life.   In Fred Nikols’ article he defines and outlines nine different definition and theories about strategy, including his own.   Some were discussing different facets of business like corporate strategy or customer intimacy strategy while others described military strategy. In the end, many of these definition and concepts of strategy seemed to be painting similar pictures.   A few definitions that Nickols picked out that were the most similar in nature were B.H. Liddell Hart’s, Michael Porter’s, and Henry Mintzberg’s. All three of the theorists alluded to the fact that strategy is the planning and using of a firms resources in order to reach the firms desired goals.   B.H. Liddell Hart is more directly referring to the allocation of resources during war time in order to effectively win the war.   Mintzberg ,Andrews and Porter see strategy as more of a mesh between the means of which a firms uses to reach its goals and the goals themselves.   Andrews states, “Corporate strategy is the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals its objectives, purposes, or goals, and produces the principal policies and plans for achieving those goals.”   Benjamin Tregoe and John Zimmerman cast a different light on the meaning of strategy, making it sound more like strategy is more of a corporate culture than a specific plan.   They formulated a definition that claims that strategy is a blueprint for choices that effect the nature of the organization.   For Tregoe and Zimmerman, strategy is more about the guidelines through which you make your decisions than the means to the ends of the organization.   What makes Tregoe and Zimmerman’s definition more credible are the driving forces of strategy that they lay out in their definition.   Michel Roberts agrees with these driving forces of strategy that Tregoe and Zimmerman proposed but he added one and altered a... [continues]

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