Strategy School 7: The Power School

7. The Power School (Strategy formation as a process of negotiation)
This post is continuation of my series of posts on strategy, based on Mintzberg's book Strategy Safari.

Politics thus becomes synonymous with the exploitation of power in other than purely economic ways. This would obviously include clandestine moves to subvert competition, but it also include cooperative arrangements designed for the same effect (such as alliances). Power relations can surround organizations; they can also infuse them. Need to note two types of power relations:

• Micro Power deals with politics within the organization and
• Macro Power concerns the use of power by the organization

Premises of the power school

• Strategy formation is shaped by power and politics, whether as a process inside the organization or as a behaviour of the organization itself in its external environment.
• The strategies that may result from such a process tend to become emergent, and take the form of positions and ploys more than perspectives
• Micro Power sees strategy making as an interplay and sometimes direct confrontation, in the form of political games
• Macro Power sees the organization as promoting its own welfare by controlling or cooperating with other organizations, through the use of strategic manoeuvring as well as collective strategies in various kinds of networks and alliances

Critique of the power school

• While it is true that political dimension can have a positive role in organizations, this can also be the source of a great deal of wastage and distortion in organizations.

Thank you very much,

RamP!