Strategy School 10: The Configuration School

10. The Configuration School: (Strategy formation as a process of transformation)

This post is continuation of my previous posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

This school differs from all the others in one fundamental respect: it offers the possibility of reconciliation, one way to integrate the messages of the other schools.
Among the types of stages within an organization we find:

• Stage of development
• Stage of stability
• Stage of adaptation
• Stage of struggle
• Stage of revolution

Premises of the Configuration School

• Most of the time, an organization can be described in terms of some kind of stable configuration of its characteristics: for a period of time, it adopts a particular form of structure matched to a particular type of context which causes it to engage in particular behaviours that give rise to a particular set of strategies
• These periods of stability are interrupted occasionally by some processes of transformation- a quantum leap to another configuration
• These successive states of configuration and periods of transformation may order themselves over time into pattern sequences, for example describing life cycles of organizations
• The key to strategic management, therefore, is to sustain stability or at least adaptable strategic change most of the time, but periodically to recognize the need for transformation and be able to manage that disruptive process without destroying the organization
• Accordingly, the process of strategy making can be one of conceptual designing or formal planning
• The resulting strategies take the form of plans or patterns, positions or perspectives.

Critique of the Configuration School

• Organizations come in “many shades of gray and not just black and white”!

Thank you very much,

RamP!