Dening strategy

Creating a common language of business terminology

he term strategy is a difcult concept to dene in the language of management. How, for example, is strategy distinguishable from planning, management, or for that matter, strategic planning? No single clear denition of the term, as it applies to business theory, exists in current scholarship; different schools of thought dene and use these terms slightly differently. This is a problem that Steven French, of Southern Cross University in Australia, addresses in his article Critiquing the language of strategic management.

Rather than providing any nal denitions himself, French (2009) examines and condenses the most inuential literature on the subject of strategy to nd some common ground. He highlights the current problem that exists between scholarship and business, that business is increasingly focused on operational pragmatism rather than strategic planning. In fact, strategy seems to have been so downgraded in current business operations that even the terminology has become unclear. For example, what separates strategy from strategic planning, or strategic thinking, and do any of these terms apply to modern business practice? French argues that it does, and in order for these concepts to be understood, utilized and applied to corporate development, the terminology must rst be dened. The terms are broadly examined using the most inuential texts available on business theory.

Epistemology
The derivation of the word strategy might provide a good starting point for its denition as it relates to business theory: it is derived from the Greek work strategia or strategos, meaning generalship. Its immediate connotations are therefore military. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary denes strategy in terms of the ofce or command of a general, while in business terminology it describes strategy as a plan for successful action based on the rationality and interdependence of the movers of opposing or competing participants. This is useful, but problems arise when thinking of strategy as distinguishable from planning or management. The word strategy has become twisted through management jargon: for example, Viljoen (1994) suggests that the term strategic has become a term that is applied to make certain management decisions or actions seem more important or impressive (it was a strategic decision). Also, strategy has become confused with objectives and tactics, terms which are implicitly linked to strategy, but only as subsets; objectives and tactics form core facets of a good strategy. Consequently, French breaks down and attempts to separate out the semantics of such terms as they exist in business literature, in order to begin a debate rather than resolve one.

DOI 10.1108/02580540910943488

VOL. 25 NO. 4 2009, pp. 9-11, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0258-0543

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 The overarching problem that French identies is the lack of a coherent discourse of business strategy, within either scholarship or the business world.

Management
One of the earliest denitions of management was provided by Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer, in the early twentieth century. Fayol broke the constituents of management into planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling. This model was distilled into PLOC theory plan, lead, organize, control a model that has been acknowledged and adapted by management and theorists today. French makes the important distinction between management and planning, two concepts that are often confused and compounded to mean the same thing. Management, as Parker (2002) suggests, implies a separation between the actual doing of whatever is being managed (engineering or teaching) and the higher level of function of control. How then can planning be dened?

Planning
Planning, as dened here, constitutes a series of identiable processes, depending on which source you read. It is a fundamental part of the management process, and is perhaps more of a concrete term than strategy. The most exhaustive series of functions of planning is provided by Ginter et al. (1985):
B B B B B B B B

vision and mission; objective setting; external environmental scanning; internal environmental scanning; strategic alternatives (crafting strategy); strategy selection; implementation; and control.

These denitions are helpful, but awed, particularly given part 5, which makes strategy a subset of planning. French resolves this debate by simply suggesting that planning is a process of setting objectives, of analyzing the situation, developing concepts to deal with the situation, and achieving the objectives (strategies) and implementing them.

Strategy
For a coherent denition of strategy French looks to Mintzberg et al. (1998). They dene strategy using the ve Ps: plan, pattern, position, perspective and ploy. Managers differentiate between strategy and planning by dening strategy as a pattern, or a repetition of actions previously undertaken and adapted to new situations. Strategy as a pattern is therefore retrospective; strategy as a plan is forward-looking. A combination of these two, with the critical analysis of internal and external processes, can broadly be dened as strategy.

Strategic management and strategic thinking

While the term strategic planning is dismissed as tautology, the repetition of planning ideas from one annual business cycle to the next, strategic management seems to receive

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 The term strategic as posited in this article becomes a term that describes a holistic long-term approach to all the basic facets of the management and business-development processes.

a more coherent denition. It is described here as the formal ideas of operational planning, extended to the whole rm over a longer time scale. Similarly, strategic thinking becomes a more formal nomenclature for the thinking process that is the driving force of strategy creation. We can see a hierarchical process at work: strategic thinking feeds strategic management, which in turn feeds strategic planning. The term strategic as posited in this article becomes a term that describes a holistic long-term approach to all the basic facets of the management and business-development processes. The overarching problem that French identies is the lack of a coherent discourse of business strategy, within either scholarship or the business world. This problem is compounded by the existence of different schools of thought, which propose sophisticated theories, and each of which uses this terminology in slightly different ways. While this does not appear to be problematic for scholars, it does present difculty to practitioners in the business world. The solution in appreciating the different ideas from these schools is the construction of a common discourse of strategic theory and concepts, dening and using terms that have been commonly dened and agreed upon. This article is the rst step in this process of creating a common language.

Comment
Keywords: Semantics, Critical management, Strategic planning, Strategic management, Thinking This review is of Critiquing the language of strategic management by Steven French. The article examines inuential literature in the eld of business strategy in order to dene a common language for scholars and practitioners alike. French posits this article as the rst step in this process of creating a lexicon of strategic management, and as such, poses no clear denitions or solutions; rather, it invites further discussion, and is a useful overview of existing scholarship.

References
French, S. (2009), Critiquing the language of strategic management, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 6-16. Ginter, P.M., Rucks, C. and Duncan, W.J. (1985), Planners perceptions of the strategic management process, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 22 No. 6, pp. 581-96. Mintzberg, J., Ahlstrand, B. and Lampel, J. (1998), Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management, Prentice-Hall, New York, NY. Parker, M. (2002), Against Management: Organization in the Age of Managerialism, Polity Press, Cambridge. Viljoen, J. (1994), Strategic Management: Planning and Implementing Successful Corporate Strategies, Longman, Melbourne.

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