IT and the Executive: Value Chain Analysis
Question: What is a Strategy(1) ?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a strategy as follows:
1: The art of war.
2a: The management of an army or armies in a campaign.
2b: the art of moving troops, ships, aircraft, etc into favourable positions
3: A plan of action or policy in business or politics
So let us now ask this question again, and this time attempt to answer it using a more information systems and business oriented language.
“Strategy is a rule for making decisions under conditions of partial ignorance, whereas policy is a contingent decision. Business strategy is the broad collection of decision rules and guidelines that define a business’s scope and growth direction.” [1]
“Strategy is the pattern of objectives, purposes or goals and major policies and plans for achieving those goals stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or to be in and what kind of company it is or is to be.” [2]
“Strategy formulation involves the interpretation of the environment and the development of consistent patterns in streams of organisational decisions.” [3]
“Strategy is a broad based formula for how business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what policies will be needed to carry out those goals. The essence of formulating competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment.” [4]
“ Strategic decisions are concerned with:
• The scope of an organisation’s activities
• The matching of an organisation’s activities to its environment
• The matching of an organisation’s activities to its resource capabil ...