History of Strategy Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

History of Strategy - Literature review Example This book, even today, continues to be the strategy bible for some of the best corporate leaders, football coaches, cricket mentors etc. Contributions to strategy were from different domains – military, political, academic and practitioners as well. The word strategy is derived from â€Å"strategos† – a combination of the Latin words â€Å"stratos† meaning an Army and â€Å"agein† which meant to lead. â€Å"Strategos† was used to refer to an Army General in Athens. In 1505 AD, Nicolo Machiavelli, a politician authored a book titled â€Å"The Prince†. This book consisting of 26 chapters dealt with principles of the governance of a kingdom or a State. His strategy of taking control of country by either treating the powerful citizens very well or crushing them completely, gave rise to the Machiavillean philosophy in politics and governance. The academic origins of Strategy can be traced back to the 1960s when Drucker, Ansoff and Chandler studied the prosperity of large successful American corporations before and after the II World War and created a platform for the "Classical School of Business Strategy". Though it had its roots in the Military Strategy, this school has never been replaced by a better total view about strategy. They propounded that Direction setting or â€Å"Strategy formulation† as an important responsibility of top managers. Business practitioners such as Sloan, the President of General Motors from 1923 to 1946, designed the concept of a â€Å"Divisionalised Corporation†. Jones, the Chairman of ICI, contributed his thoughts on how to make the Board of Directors in an organisation work better. Grove, the President & CEO of Intel Corporation presented his insights as to how to run an organisation in an environment of very rapid technological advances. In 1965, Moore, the co-founder of Intel, brought out the very popular Moore’s Law. The law stated that the number of transistors / inch would double every 2 years. This law held good for about sometime but was overshadowed by the giant strides made by chip manufacturers in the technology front, in so much so that Moore himself, publicly acknowleged that technology had far outgrown the Moore’s Law. The present law suggests that the data density per chip doubles every 18 months. The evolution of the concept of Strategic Management travels back to the 1950s, when Ford and the Carnegie Corporation, sponsored research into curriculum of business schools. The major recommendation of the study was to expand business education to include a course on Business Policy which helped application of analytical techniques to businesses. By the 1970s, most of the top B-schools in the world had a course on Business Policy and the focus became wider. By the 1980s, research literature on competitive strategy had grown and the course on Business Policy began to look at the large picture of business. Hence, Business Policy was changed to Strategic Management. Johnson and Scholes (2002) defined Strategy as â€Å"direction and scope of an organisation over the long term†. It would be prudent to compare and contrast Strategic management with Operational Management. While both these concepts dealt with management per se, these two approaches are diametrically opposite. While Operational Management was routine in nature, small in scale, specific to an operation, was