3. Taking these two questions together, it can be seen that there are two parallel,
competing and, to an extent, interacting streams of ideas.
The first, the Prescriptive stream, sees strategy as a controlled, intentional,
prescriptive process, based on a rational model of decision making, which
produces complete deliberate strategies (Ansoff, 1965; Argenti, 1974; Steiner,
1969).
The second, the Analytical stream, which is more interested in understanding
how organizations actually formulate strategy rather than prescribing how they
should formulate it, argues that it is the outcome of the complex social and
political processes involved in organizational decision-making (Hamel and
Prahalad, 1989; Miles and Snow, 1978; Mintzberg et al, 2009; Pettigrew, 1980;
Quinn, 1980a).
Approaches to Strategy