Product Description

“Henry Mintzberg’s views are a breath of fresh air which can only encourage the good guys.” The Observer

 “My favourite management book of the last 25 years? No contest. The Rise & Fall of Strategic Planning.” Tom Peters, managment guru

Strategy is the most prestigious but also the most confusing part of business. Managers are constantly bombarded with new jargon and the latest fads promising the magic bullet for every strategic problem. The world of strategy can seem to be an impenetrable jungle. Strategy Safari presents a powerful antidote to the dilemma of needing to know about strategy and yet not being able to find any comprehensible guidelines. This revised edition is a comprehensive, colourful and illuminating tour through the wilds of strategic management.

In this provocative, jargon-free and extremely readable guide, top strategy authors Mintzberg, Ahlstrand & Lampel clearly set out and critique each of the ten major schools of strategic management thinking to help you grasp what you really need to know.

Take the strategy safari – your business will thank you for it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18056 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Review

"Mintzberg is one of the best guides for an analysis of strategy and this book is the perfect starting point for someone interested in understanding more about it." - Director Magazine, January 2009 (readership 173,000)

From the Back Cover

"Henry Mintzberg's views are a breath of fresh air which can only encourage the good guys." The Observer

Strategy Safari – gives you the ‘big ten’ in the strategy jungle

In this revised edition of the original, ground-breaking Strategy Safari, Henry Mintzberg, described by Tom Peters as ‘perhaps the world’s premier management thinker’ and his equally maverick co-authors continue to blaze a trail through the jungle of strategy. This provocative, jargon-free and readable guide clearly sets out and critiques each of the ten major schools of strategic management to help you grasp what you really need to know. Whether you are an ambitious manager or a bewildered student, Strategy Safari is your indispensable guide to strategy.

Take the strategy safari – your business will thank you for it

SEE THE NEW COMPANION WEBSITE, INCLUDING INSTRUCTOR’S MANUAL, AT WWW.PEARSON-BOOKS.COM/STRATEGYSAFARI

About the Author

"Henry Mintzberg is perhaps the world's premier management thinker" a Carlsberg-style endorsement of the author from Tom Peters, management guru

Henry Mintzberg is one of today’s best-known and most controversial management thinkers. Currently Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, he is always interesting and usually controversial and holds the management and strategy communities in thrall. He claims to spend his public life dealing with organizations, and his private life escaping from them.

Bruce Ahlstrand likes to prospect for strategy gems in unlikely places - from the game of Texas Hold’em to the Greek tragedies. He has a D.Phil. from Oxford University and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. Bruce is the author is currently a professor of management at Trent University in Ontario, Canada.

Joe Lampel began his career believing that strategy is the answer, but has recently concluded that it may be the answer to the wrong question. He first began to suspect this terrible truth during the long journey that produced the first edition of Strategy Safari. Further research, and numerous publications in journals that are well received in polite academic society, only served to confirm this belief. Joe was awarded a PhD in management by McGill University for good

Customer Reviews

The essential guide to senior management's biggest challenge
When senior managers and executives discuss strategy, the results are often unhelpful or unenlightening. This is bad enough in a single company, but in a merger or formal partnership it can quickly result in energy sapping discussions which lead nowhere.

One of the main reasons is that there are so many deeply held views of what strategy is.

If you are a senior manager and have ever faced such a situation, then this book should be at the top of your list.

Authoritative but entertaining, it overviews and critiques the ten schools of strategic thinking which are common in the business world today. Read once through quickly, it will open your eyes to the key thoughts and terminology which characterise each school - in turn explaining why otherwise flexible colleagues can become intransigent over the meaning of a single word.

A more careful rereading will enable you to gain an overview of how different kinds of strategy relate to each other, when one school is preferable to another, and the pitfalls of following any one school slavishly.

At a further level, this book carefully refers by page number to the key texts in each of the schools. It therefore becomes an extended bibliographic study guide to a much deeper immersion in underlying theory.

Mintzberg and his co-authors have worked very hard to keep this text lucid and relatively short. It is nonetheless detailed and rewarding. If you are not sure about this book, there is a summary paper in the FT's Mastering Strategy, which should help to make up your mind.

Strategic schools summed up in one easy, slim volume
I admit that I started reading this as a fan of Mintzberg's easy to read and sometimes funny style. As a business school student, the schools of strategy were not hanging together for me. One text would present a number of broad schools, another would sub-divide them, and of course they would both call some of them by different names. This book starts by introducing the different schools and how they came about, then discusses each in turn, then (hallelujah!) provides a really clear table at the back of the book showing how they differ. It has made my studies easier, though I admit to bias and being a fan to start with.

MBA in a volume
If like me you are doing your MBA, this is one of two essential books (the other being the book of MBA models.) This is a potted history of strategic thinking, not sufficient on its own to develop your dissertation according to one school of thought, but an excellent starter for ten and a superb context in which to place the evolution of corporate strategy.