Henry Mintzberg's Ten Schools of Thought on Strategic Management

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Ten Schools of Thought
Mintzberg’s Ten Schools of Thought
in Strategic Management
May 30, 2013
Developed by Henry Mintzberg, the Ten Schools of Thought framework breaks
down the field of Strategic Management into 10 categories, from Positioning to
Entrepreneurial to Configuration. This document explains each School, its origins,
benefit and limitations, related analyses/frameworks, and other attributes. Also
includes PowerPoint templates for illustrating this model in your presentation.
ORIGINAL PROJECT DETAILS
http://pptlab.com/ppt/Business-Framework-Ten-Schools-of-Thought-36

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presentation design service. Get consulting-quality
presentations at a fraction of the cost!
Each month, we will create well over 50 slides of for our members.
As a member, you will drive what business slides we create by
submitting your own presentation projects to our team. All
presentations will be created by a team of management
consultants and follow the Consulting Presentation Framework.
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Contents
 Overview 4
 Ten Schools of Thought 12
 Templates 33

The Ten Schools of Thought model breaks down the field of Strategic
Management into 10 categories of thinking
Executive Summary
The Ten Schools of Thought model from Henry Mintzberg is a framework
that can be used to categorize the field of Strategic Management.
It describes each school in context and provides a critique. Thus,
it acts as a very good overview to the entire field of Strategic
Management.
While academics and consultants keep focusing on these
narrow perspectives, business managers will be better
served if they strive to see the wider picture. Some of
strategic management's greatest failings, in fact,
occurred when one of these concepts was taken too
seriously.
These 10 Schools of Thought are as follows:
• The Design School
• The Planning School
• The Positioning School
• The Entrepreneurial School
• The Cognitive School
•The Learning School
•The Power School
•The Cultural School
•The Environmental School
•The Configuration School
Design
Planning
Position-
ing
Entrepre-
neurial
Cognitive
Learning
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur-
ation
Strategic
Management

Ten Schools of Thought – School Overviews (2 of 2)
THE LEARNING SCHOOL .
• This school sees strategy formation as an emergent process
• The management pays close attention over time to what does work, and what doesn't
work
• They incorporate these 'lessons learned' into their overall plan of action
THE POWER SCHOOL .
• This school sees strategy formation as a process of negotiation
• The strategy is developed as a process of negotiation between power holders within
the company, and/or between the company and its external stakeholders
• This school sees strategy formation as a collective process
• Strategy formation is viewed as a fundamentally collective and cooperative process
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
SCHOOL .
• This school sees strategy formation as a reactive process
• The strategy is a response to the challenges imposed by the external environment
• Whereas other schools see the environment as a factor, the environmental school sees
it as an actor
THE CONFIGURATION
SCHOOL .
• This school sees strategy formation as a process of transformation
• Strategy formation is a process of transforming the organization from one type of
decision-making structure into another
THE CULTURAL SCHOOL
SCHOOL DESCRIPTION
THIS IS A PARTIAL PREVIEW
You can download the full document at http://PPTLab.com.
PPT Lab is a crowdsourced presentation design service.

The 2x2 below depicts how the 10 schools differ in their focus across the
dimensions of the External World and Internal Processes
External (World) vs. Internal (Processes)
INTERNAL PROCESSES
EXTERNAL
WORLD
Rational Natural
Comprehensible,
Controllable
Unpredictable,
Confusing
Positioning
Planning
Design
Entrepreneurial
Power (macro)
Configuration
Cultural
Power (micro)
Learning
Cognitive
Environmental
No one view is
complete by itself—
strategy formulation
should borrow ideas
and analyses from
multiple Schools of
Thought

Non-realized
strategies
There is often a disconnect between the company’s Realized Strategy and
its original Intended Strategy
Deliberate vs. Realized Strategy
DELIBERATE
STRATEGYINTENDED
STRATEGY
EMERGENT
STRATEGIES
REALIZED
STRATEGY
The disconnect arises during the execution process, because different people along
the way will interpret the organization’s strategic direction differently.
Source: Strategy Safari, Mintzberg, 2002
time

This school sees Strategy Formulation as a formal
process
School of Planning (1 of 2)
This approach embraces the adage: a stitch in time saves nine.
OVERVIEW
• This school grew in parallel with the
design school, but the Planning
School predominated by the mid-
1970's and though it faltered in the
1980's it continues to be an
important influence today
• It reflects most of the design school's
assumptions except a rather
significant one: that the process was
not just cerebral but formal,
decomposable into distinct steps,
delineated by checklists, and
supported by techniques
• This meant that staff planners
replaced senior managers as the key
players in the process
INTENDED STRATEGY
• Formalize
REALIZED STRATEGY
• Program (rather
than formulate)
SCHOOL CATEGORY
 Prescriptive  Descriptive
BASE PRINCIPLE
• Some links to urban planning, system theory, & cybernetics

SOURCE OF THIS SCHOOL
• I.Ansoff
Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

School of Planning (2 of 2)
Champions of this school include “professional" managers, MBAs, staff experts
(especially in finance), consultants, and government controllers.
LIMITATIONS
 Neither supports real-time strategy making nor
encourages creative accidents
 Strategy can become too static
 The risk exists of Groupthink
 Predicting is difficult
 Top managers must create the strategy from an ivory
tower
BENEFITS
 Provides clear direction
 Enables firm resource allocation
 Analysts can pre-screen the facts and they can judge
the crafted strategies
 Offers control
VS
ANALYSES/FRAMEWORKS USED
• Theory of Mechanistic and Organic Systems
• Parenting Styles
• Levers of Control
• Scenario Planning
Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

This school sees Strategy Formulation as an analytical
process
School of Positioning (1 of 2)
This approach embraces the adage: Nothing but the facts.
OVERVIEW
• This was the dominant view of strategy
formulation in the 1980s
• It was given impetus especially by
Michael Porter in 1980, following earlier
work on strategic positioning in
academe and in consulting, all preceded
by a long literature on military strategy,
dating back to 500 BC and that of Sun
Tzu, author of The Art of War
• In this view, strategy reduces to generic
positions selected through formalized
analysis of industry situations—hence,
planners became analysts
• This proved especially lucrative to
consultants and academics alike, who
could sink their teeth into hard data and
so promote their "scientific truths" to
companies and journals alike
INTENDED STRATEGY
• Analyze
REALIZED STRATEGY
• Calculate (rather
than create or
commit)
SCHOOL CATEGORY
BASE PRINCIPLE
• Economics, industrial organization, and military history

• Sun Tzu's “Art of War,” Michael Porter, Purdue University
Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

School of Positioning (2 of 2)
Champions of this school include analytical people, consulting boutiques, and writers.
LIMITATIONS
 Strategy is reduced to generic positions selected
through formalized analysis of industry situations
 Neglects power, politics, culture, social elements
 Is biased towards large firms
 Is too number-oriented
BENEFITS
 This school made Strategic Management into a
science, enabling future progress
 Provides content in a systematic way to the existing
way of looking at strategy
 Focuses on hard (economic) facts
 It is particularly useful in early stages of strategy
development when data is analyzed
VS
• Competitive Advantage (Porter)
• Porter’s Five Forces
• Value Chain (Porter)
• BCG Growth-Share Matrix
• Game Theory
• Art of War (Sun Tzu)
Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

This school sees Strategy Formulation as formal process
School of Configuration (1 of 2)
This approach embraces the adage: To everything, there is a season.
OVERVIEW
• This school enjoys the most extensive
and integrative literature and practice at
present
• One side of this school, more academic
and descriptive, sees organization as
configuration (coherent clusters of
characteristics and behaviors)
• If organizations can be described by
such states, then change must be
described as rather dramatic
transformation
• Therefore, a literature and practice of
transformation developed as the other
side of the coin
• These two very different literatures and
practices nevertheless complement one
another and so belong to the same
school
INTENDED STRATEGY
• Integrate and
Transform
REALIZED STRATEGY
• Lump (rather than
Split and Adapt)
SCHOOL CATEGORY
BASE PRINCIPLE
• History

• A. D. Chandler, McGill University, R. E. Milles, C. C. Snow

Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

School of Configuration (2 of 2)
Champions of this school include Lumpers, Integrators, and Change Agents.
LIMITATIONS
 In reality there are many shades of grey, not just a
limited number of valid configurations
 Pattern is in the eye of the beholder
 If you describe the reality by using configurations, you
are distorting the reality in order to explain it
 Polarized between two approaches favoring either
radical or incremental change
BENEFITS
 Caters to how strategy and organizational
development are closely integrated and should be
reconciled
 The way of strategy formation must adapt to its own
time and context, while it takes one or more of the 10
mentioned forms
 Strategy formation itself has configurations
VS
• Organizational Configurations
• Chaos Theory
• Catastrophe Theory
• Disruptive Innovation
Design
Plannin
g
Position
-ing
Entrepre
-neurial
Cogni-
tive
Learnin
g
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur
-ation
Strategic
Manage-
ment

Contents
 Overview
 Ten Schools of Thought
 Templates

Insert headline
10 Schools of Thought - TEMPLATE
Design
Planning
Position-
ing
Entrepre-
neurial
Cognitive
Learning
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur-
ation
Strategic
Management
Insert bumper.

Insert headline
Design
Planning
Position-
ing
Entrepre-
neurial
Cognitive
Learning
Power
Cultural
Environ-
mental
Configur-
ation
Strategic
Management
• Insert filler text

Insert headline
Insert bumper.
DESIGN
CHOOL
PLANNING
SCHOOL
POSITIONING
SCHOOL
ENTREPRENEURIAL
SCHOOL
COGNITIVE
SCHOOL
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LEARNING
SCHOOL
POWER
SCHOOL
CULTURAL
SCHOOL
ENVIRONMENTAL
SCHOOL
CONFIGURATION
SCHOOL
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Insert headline
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
DESIGN
CHOOL
PLANNING
SCHOOL
POSITIONING
SCHOOL
ENTREPRENEURIAL
SCHOOL
COGNITIVE
SCHOOL
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LEARNING
SCHOOL
POWER
SCHOOL
CULTURAL
SCHOOL
ENVIRONMENTAL
SCHOOL
CONFIGURATION
SCHOOL
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PPT Lab (www.pptlab.com) is the only crowdsourced
presentation design service. Get consulting-quality
presentations at a fraction of the cost!
Each month, we will create well over 50 slides of for our members.
As a member, you will drive what business slides we create by
submitting your own presentation projects to our team. All
presentations will be created by a team of management
consultants and follow the Consulting Presentation Framework.
www.PPTLab.com
support@pptlab.com

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