MGCR 423 QUESTIONS WITH VERIFIED ANSWERS
Mintzberg - "Crafting Strategy" - Answers - -Equates the process of strategy making to
the process of making pottery.
-strategies are patterns that are put into action over time; but strategies may emerge in
a different direction than tradition has previously held
-strategy making must be a deliberate process; thought must precede action. But
"strategies can form as well as be formulated"
-strategies can emerge any time and at any place; errors themselves may become
chances for opportunity. The image of a craftsman is someone who is dedicated,
passionate, intimately involved with the materials, has a personal touch, has mastered
the detail of their art, and is experienced. The strategist must also be someone who is
involved and connected with their industry and who is personally involved with the
industrial processes (rather than a detached manager). Finally, just as a craftsman may
see things that other people miss, the strategist must be able to see emerging patterns
and guide them into place as strategies.
"Management and Magic" - Gimpl and Dakin - Answers - -Paradox: the more
unpredictable the world becomes, the more we seek out and rely upon forecasts and
predictions to determine what we should do.
-Planning and forecasting are a manifestation of anxiety-relieving superstitious
behavior, and have the same function that magical rites have.
-"Illusion of Control"; the belief that events are causally related when objectively they
are not. These are easy to establish under conditions of uncertainty and are highly
resistant to change.
-Improving Decision Making: Logical Incrementalism: Be vague and imprecise in your
decisions in ambiguous situations, and constantly refine and reshape your strategy as
new information appears.
Take adequate precautions by ensuring a sufficient number of alternative courses of
action.
Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom - Answers - -Black Swans: the world is random,
intrinsically unknowable. You will never be able to control randomness.
-Most economists and almost all bankers are subhuman and very, very dangerous.
They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled by sophisticated
mathematical models and elaborate risk-management systems.
Why the A**holes are Winning: Money Trumps All - Pfeffer - Answers - -Corporate
performance and reputation are not that highly correlated (Amazon ex.)
-numerous behaviors suggest that it seemingly doesn't matter what an individual or a
company does, to human beings or the environment, as long as they are sufficiently rich
and successful
,-Moreover, because money can serve as a signal of competence and worth, no amount
of money is ever enough
-The motivation for people to believe that the world is a just and fair place is from
people's desire for a sense of controllability.
The acceptance of the unacceptable:
-People who experience a misfortune often have negative traits attributed to them by
others as a way of explaining why they 'deserved' their misfortune.
-People who experience good fortune will have positive attributes applied to them so as
to make sense of their success. And it is always possible to reconstruct facts to put
them in a positive light, thereby justifying the success of the successful
-moral rationalization and moral decoupling
-People have a motivation to achieve cognitive consistency; Consistency in attitudes
and beliefs by rationalizing bad behavior as not being so bad in light of this person
achieving financial success/social status.
-People infer traits of social actors from the outcomes those actors have obtained...
great success and performance create their own reality.
-A successful social actor can say or do almost anything, as the success makes the
statements true and the behavior intelligent.
-People have a powerful motive to self-enhance and feel good about themselves by
associating with successful individuals and organizations.
-The focus on maximizing shareholder value helps to legitimize, create, and perpetuate
institutions that thereby ensure their continued dominance, contribute to why money
trumps all.
How Organizational Studies Got Off Track:
-Focus
Strategy Bites Back - Mintzberg - Answers - What's in a Buzzword? - Lucy Kellaway
-Buzzwords can be ambiguous enough to be unchallengeable
-Words such as deliver, value, solutions, to drive, to leverage, to unleash, unparalleled,
and track record are words overly used in reports that don't actually have any meaning.
The Economist
-Very few managers ever refer to their corporate strategy.
-How a company views strategy depends largely on its circumstances.
-All firms should try to exploit and hone their skills, but there is no single way to
approach the future.
*What is Strategy? -John Kay
-Strategy translates to expensive or important
-There is more vacuity about strategy than about any other topic in business today.
-Because strategy is based on distinctive capabilities, there are no generic strategies,
there are many interpretations of strategy, strategy is what is right for you.
*Strategy As a LBD - Jeanne Liedtka
-Like a LBD, strategy should focus on basic elements of an enduring nature,
incorporating a versatility and openness that invites their 'wearers' to add the
adornments they saw fit to the occasion at hand.
, -A strategy that would make us feel better about ourselves when we worked with it, in a
quiet way that emphasized our positives while acknowledging our flaws, all in the
service of offering us hope for a better/thinner tomorrow.
The CEO As Strategist - Porter
-The CEO doesn't have to invent the strategy, but has to be a strong leader who is
willing to make the ultimate act of choice.
-The critical job of a leader is to provide the discipline and the glue that keeps such a
unique position/strategy sustained over time.
-Great leaders are able to enforce trade off's, based on what ideas are consistent with
their strategy.
-Leader has to make sure that everyone understands the strategy.
-Strategy is something that a company is continually getting bet
Foreseeing the Problem of Conformity in Strategy - Vit - Answers - -The strategy
student is exposed to reductionist frameworks, checklists and generic recipes without
questioning their underlying taken-for-grantedness.
-Implicit assumptions behind the dominant model:
1. If managers use the prescribed model, they will be more competitive and achieve
greater shareholder wealth creation than those that do not.
2. Assumes that the organization is a subject that can act upon the world and 'make' the
'right' optimal rational strategic choices (analysis formulation and optimized action vs.
emergent strategies and unintended actions).
3. Hard data and analysis are relied upon and ignores soft data and intuition. The model
is also assumed to be a top-down activity reserved for senior management, when in
reality many organizations create loose boundaries and use individuals on the bottom to
help create new visions of their futures.
4. Temperal-centric in that it assumes that it is the most advanced and contemporary
way of dealing with strategy. USA-centric in that these models became embedded
within business schools in the US, and schools outside the US engaged in mimetic
perpetuation of the dominant model.
5. Old ideas are modified incrementally; stasis is maintained in many large
organizations by the 'strategic management process' until crisis causes change to
happen in quantum leaps.
-De-freezing: describing prescription
-Re-freezing: prescribing description
Building Your Companies Vision - Collins & Porras - Answers - -Companies that enjoy
enduring success have core values and a core purpose that remain fixed while their
business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world.
-Preserving the core while stimulating progress.
-Vision provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate
progress toward.
-Vision consists of core ideology and envisioned future
-Core ideology (Yin) defines what we stand for and why we exist. It provides the glue
that holds an organization together through time. It is unchanging and complements
Mintzberg - "Crafting Strategy" - Answers - -Equates the process of strategy making to
the process of making pottery.
-strategies are patterns that are put into action over time; but strategies may emerge in
a different direction than tradition has previously held
-strategy making must be a deliberate process; thought must precede action. But
"strategies can form as well as be formulated"
-strategies can emerge any time and at any place; errors themselves may become
chances for opportunity. The image of a craftsman is someone who is dedicated,
passionate, intimately involved with the materials, has a personal touch, has mastered
the detail of their art, and is experienced. The strategist must also be someone who is
involved and connected with their industry and who is personally involved with the
industrial processes (rather than a detached manager). Finally, just as a craftsman may
see things that other people miss, the strategist must be able to see emerging patterns
and guide them into place as strategies.
"Management and Magic" - Gimpl and Dakin - Answers - -Paradox: the more
unpredictable the world becomes, the more we seek out and rely upon forecasts and
predictions to determine what we should do.
-Planning and forecasting are a manifestation of anxiety-relieving superstitious
behavior, and have the same function that magical rites have.
-"Illusion of Control"; the belief that events are causally related when objectively they
are not. These are easy to establish under conditions of uncertainty and are highly
resistant to change.
-Improving Decision Making: Logical Incrementalism: Be vague and imprecise in your
decisions in ambiguous situations, and constantly refine and reshape your strategy as
new information appears.
Take adequate precautions by ensuring a sufficient number of alternative courses of
action.
Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom - Answers - -Black Swans: the world is random,
intrinsically unknowable. You will never be able to control randomness.
-Most economists and almost all bankers are subhuman and very, very dangerous.
They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled by sophisticated
mathematical models and elaborate risk-management systems.
Why the A**holes are Winning: Money Trumps All - Pfeffer - Answers - -Corporate
performance and reputation are not that highly correlated (Amazon ex.)
-numerous behaviors suggest that it seemingly doesn't matter what an individual or a
company does, to human beings or the environment, as long as they are sufficiently rich
and successful
,-Moreover, because money can serve as a signal of competence and worth, no amount
of money is ever enough
-The motivation for people to believe that the world is a just and fair place is from
people's desire for a sense of controllability.
The acceptance of the unacceptable:
-People who experience a misfortune often have negative traits attributed to them by
others as a way of explaining why they 'deserved' their misfortune.
-People who experience good fortune will have positive attributes applied to them so as
to make sense of their success. And it is always possible to reconstruct facts to put
them in a positive light, thereby justifying the success of the successful
-moral rationalization and moral decoupling
-People have a motivation to achieve cognitive consistency; Consistency in attitudes
and beliefs by rationalizing bad behavior as not being so bad in light of this person
achieving financial success/social status.
-People infer traits of social actors from the outcomes those actors have obtained...
great success and performance create their own reality.
-A successful social actor can say or do almost anything, as the success makes the
statements true and the behavior intelligent.
-People have a powerful motive to self-enhance and feel good about themselves by
associating with successful individuals and organizations.
-The focus on maximizing shareholder value helps to legitimize, create, and perpetuate
institutions that thereby ensure their continued dominance, contribute to why money
trumps all.
How Organizational Studies Got Off Track:
-Focus
Strategy Bites Back - Mintzberg - Answers - What's in a Buzzword? - Lucy Kellaway
-Buzzwords can be ambiguous enough to be unchallengeable
-Words such as deliver, value, solutions, to drive, to leverage, to unleash, unparalleled,
and track record are words overly used in reports that don't actually have any meaning.
The Economist
-Very few managers ever refer to their corporate strategy.
-How a company views strategy depends largely on its circumstances.
-All firms should try to exploit and hone their skills, but there is no single way to
approach the future.
*What is Strategy? -John Kay
-Strategy translates to expensive or important
-There is more vacuity about strategy than about any other topic in business today.
-Because strategy is based on distinctive capabilities, there are no generic strategies,
there are many interpretations of strategy, strategy is what is right for you.
*Strategy As a LBD - Jeanne Liedtka
-Like a LBD, strategy should focus on basic elements of an enduring nature,
incorporating a versatility and openness that invites their 'wearers' to add the
adornments they saw fit to the occasion at hand.
, -A strategy that would make us feel better about ourselves when we worked with it, in a
quiet way that emphasized our positives while acknowledging our flaws, all in the
service of offering us hope for a better/thinner tomorrow.
The CEO As Strategist - Porter
-The CEO doesn't have to invent the strategy, but has to be a strong leader who is
willing to make the ultimate act of choice.
-The critical job of a leader is to provide the discipline and the glue that keeps such a
unique position/strategy sustained over time.
-Great leaders are able to enforce trade off's, based on what ideas are consistent with
their strategy.
-Leader has to make sure that everyone understands the strategy.
-Strategy is something that a company is continually getting bet
Foreseeing the Problem of Conformity in Strategy - Vit - Answers - -The strategy
student is exposed to reductionist frameworks, checklists and generic recipes without
questioning their underlying taken-for-grantedness.
-Implicit assumptions behind the dominant model:
1. If managers use the prescribed model, they will be more competitive and achieve
greater shareholder wealth creation than those that do not.
2. Assumes that the organization is a subject that can act upon the world and 'make' the
'right' optimal rational strategic choices (analysis formulation and optimized action vs.
emergent strategies and unintended actions).
3. Hard data and analysis are relied upon and ignores soft data and intuition. The model
is also assumed to be a top-down activity reserved for senior management, when in
reality many organizations create loose boundaries and use individuals on the bottom to
help create new visions of their futures.
4. Temperal-centric in that it assumes that it is the most advanced and contemporary
way of dealing with strategy. USA-centric in that these models became embedded
within business schools in the US, and schools outside the US engaged in mimetic
perpetuation of the dominant model.
5. Old ideas are modified incrementally; stasis is maintained in many large
organizations by the 'strategic management process' until crisis causes change to
happen in quantum leaps.
-De-freezing: describing prescription
-Re-freezing: prescribing description
Building Your Companies Vision - Collins & Porras - Answers - -Companies that enjoy
enduring success have core values and a core purpose that remain fixed while their
business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world.
-Preserving the core while stimulating progress.
-Vision provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate
progress toward.
-Vision consists of core ideology and envisioned future
-Core ideology (Yin) defines what we stand for and why we exist. It provides the glue
that holds an organization together through time. It is unchanging and complements
