Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [350]
Mintzberg and Lampel (1999) view the Cultural School, a thin stream of research within the academy, as a mirror image of the Power School. Where participants in the power school jockey for power over others—a divisive process—participants in the Culture School aim for collaboration, continuity, and cohesion within the organization. Thus, highly discontinuous change is discouraged, being seen as leading to dysfunction within the company.
The Environmental School may not be, strictly speaking, a school of strategy theory. The focus of this stream of work is on how companies attempt to make compromises with their environments, maneuvering for advantage and success within the confines of external pressures. Mintzberg and Lampel term this school a “hybrid of the power and cognitive schools (1999, 25).”
Finally, the Configuration School encompasses two distinct programs. The academic focus looks at organizational configurations, the circumstances in which these configurations evolve and prosper, and the differences according to specific operating conditions, such as a service organization versus a start-up manufacturing organization (Mintzberg, 1979; 1983). The second focus is more practitioner-oriented and deals with how organizations transform themselves, with particular emphasis on change management and the process of moving from one configurative posture to another.
As Mintzberg and Lampel (1999) point out, these schools often define strategy narrowly, failing to take into account aspects of strategy and factors that impact strategy not represented in their respective models. Thus, companies may adopt a particular approach to strategy development and execution that leaves out important considerations for that company. For example, large companies in mature markets may not fare well following the entrepreneurial school of strategy. It is likely that the situation for a large firm is too complex for one person to have a comprehensive understanding of all factors that contribute to meeting the company’s objectives and, at the same time, all the strategic answers for the company’s ongoing success.
Marketing and Strategy
To understand how marketing and strategy fit together, one must understand something about marketing and its scope. In recent years, often marketing erroneously has been conceived of as primarily promotion (Perrault et al., 2008, 7). Although advertising and promotion are certainly areas of importance to marketers in persuading customers of a product’s value, a view of marketing that sees the promotion function—advertising, selling, sales promotion—as the primary thrust of marketing is far, far off the mark.
The official (and latest) definition of marketing found on the American Marketing Association’s Web site is, “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (American Marketing Association, 2007). This definition, nearly all-inclusive of business activities, reflects the evolution of thinking about marketing that was broad even in 1952 when General Electric issued its annual report and stated the following:
[The marketing concept] introduces the marketing person at the beginning rather than at the end of the production cycle and integrates marketing into each phase of the business. Thus, marketing, through its studies and research will establish for the engineer, the design and manufacturing person, what the customer wants in a given product, what price he or she is willing to pay, and where and when it will be wanted. Marketing will have authority in product planning, production scheduling, and inventory control, as well as sales, distribution, and servicing of the product. (1952, 21)
An even more restrictive conception of marketing as the four Ps—product,