Kenneth R. Andrews - Harvard Business School and Business Strategy

Harvard Business School and Business Strategy

In 1965 the highly influential text-book "Business Policy: Text and Cases" was published, acknowledging Andrews as the author of the text portion. The text portion was also published separately under Andrews' name in 1971. Several editions of both books appeared through the 1980s.

In addition to being perhaps the earliest concept of business strategy to be taught routinely in formal courses, the specific view of strategy formation Andrews taught appears to have provided many of the underlying precepts of what strategy is, for several branches of the strategy literature. The source document of Chamberlain's Theory of Strategy identifies him as "the most influential of the foundational authors of the strategy literature". Although he introduced a number of strategy precepts, Andrews did not set out a detailed concept of what strategy is. Instead he said that he chose to "sidestep the problem of drawing distinctions between objectives, policy and programs of action" Furthermore Andrews did not claim to originate all of the precepts he set out, and it has been noted that some had been introduced previously by Philip Selznick in 1957 or Alfred D. Chandler in 1962.

Despite sharing a number of Andrews' basic precepts, one major branch of the literature differed strongly from him with regard to how strategy forms. Andrews prescribed that strategy should be deliberately and consciously decided and adopted by management. Henry Mintzberg, however, teaches that in reality strategy often emerges from actions and behaviours at various organizational levels, and furthermore that this is desirable. Thus if both views are recognized there are two major types of process through which strategy may be formed: deliberate, and emergent. There has been vigorous debate concerning the extent to which each of these strategy formation processes is usual or appropriate.