Prescriptive and Descriptive Schools of Strategy – Similarities and Differences
Strategy is a direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which achieves
advantage in changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences with
the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. Having strategy in an organization is very important
because it helps on how to meet the goals in consideration with the organization’s situation. An
organization strategy answers all questions about fundamental business whether to concentrate in
single business or build a group of several businesses, either to go for a broad range of customers
or to concentrate on a market niche, either to focus on a wide or narrow product line, whether to
base on competitive advantage with low cost or product differentiation.
An organization has to know deeply everything concerned strategic management, strategic
levels, and has to reach to the level of achievement of the strategic goals. Organizations also use
strategy as the most important tool for planning different activities accordingly in order to meet
their objectives. Strategic management plays different roles in the organization which include
defined organization business, stating the organization mission and forming strategic vision,
evaluate performance, reviewing new developments and initiating corrective adjustments.
Different organizations look the business strategy in different image; this is because each of
those organizations has got its own formation and way to implement its own strategy. Some
organizations take business strategy as a mixture of luck and judgement or opportunism and design
but others say it more based on the arts than science, to know which way is perfect really depends
on the way a certain organization use to implement and review its strategy.
Strategy can be formulated by three different levels which are named as corporate level,
business unit level and functional or fundamental level. Corporate level strategy basically deals
with the selection of business in which an organisation will compete and with the development of
portfolio of that business. It is also concerned with searching and explaining the things that are
responsible in corporate, these are like identifying overall goals of the corporation ,types of
business in which the organization should be involved and the overall way in which the business
should be integrated and managed. Coming down to the second level of strategy which is business
unit level, this literally deals with developing and sustaining a competitive advantage for the goods
that are produced by the company. According to Michael Porter, the three generic strategies which
are identified in this level are cost leadership, differentiation and focus, these can be implemented
so as to create a competitive advantage and defend against the adverse effects of the five forces.
The last level on the levels of strategy is the functional level; this level includes the operation
divisions and departments. The strategic issues at the functional level are related to business
processes and the value chain. Functional level strategies in marketing, finance, operations and
human resources involve the development and coordination of resources through which business
unit level strategies can be executed efficiently and effectively.
Prescriptive and Descriptive Schools of Strategy
Henry Mintzberg divided strategy into two groups which are prescriptive schools which
involves design school, planning school and position school. And the other group is descriptive
schools which include entrepreneurial school, cognitive school, learning school, power school,
cultural school, environmental school and configuration school.
1. The design school is responsible for the development of the Strength
Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) model. In this model the strengths and
weaknesses of a company are mapped together with the opportunities and threats in the
market place. The data can be used to analyse various strategic options which both exploit
the internal opportunities and anticipate the market situation.
2. The planning school mostly relates with the assumptions the design school
and support techniques especially the objectives, budgets, programs and operating plans of
an organization, which mean that staff planners replace senior managers and act as key
players in the organization.
3. The Positioning School, In this view strategy reduced to positions of
generic which are chosen through formalized analysis of industry condition and therefore
planners became analysts.
4. The Cognitive School, on this descriptive school, there was interest in the
origin of strategies and if strategies developed in people mind as models what could be
understood about those mental processes? And even continuing today the research has
grown steadily on cognitive biases in strategy making and on cognition as information
processing. Also another new branch of cognitive school focus more on subjective
interpretative view of the strategy process that cognition is used to construct strategies as
creative interpretations rather than to map reality in objective way.
5. The Learning School, among all schools which have been discussed
learning school became a absolute wave and challenged the wide-reaching prescriptive
schools moving back to early work on concept like emerging strategy or the growing of
each person’s decisions rather than being perfectly formulated example act in order to think
as much as think in order to act.
6. The Power School, this absolutely small but a bit different school which
focused on strategy making from the power which is in two senses that is micro power and
macro power. The first power which is micro power looks on the development of strategies
within the organization and it is the process involving bargaining, persuasion, and
confrontation among inside actors. And the second one macro power this treats the
organization as an entity which uses its authority over others organizations and among its
partners in alliances, joint ventures, and so on to negotiate collective strategies for the
organization interests.
7. The Cultural School, this school goes opposite to the power school that
based on individual interest and fragmentation. Also it explains the norms and attitudes
that one carry while implementing the strategy the culture conditions have to be taken into
consideration since organization culture differentiates one organisation consistency over a
long period of time. There by to change the culture is an Art of challenge to the organisation
to make its organisation adapt changes.
8. The last one is environmental school. This school takes strategic formation
as a reactive process. This school has got the origin in contingency theory, which developed
to go against the confident assertions of classical management that there is only one best
way to run the organization.
Prescriptive school of strategy is a special course of action design to achieve objectives, this
school deals with strategy formulation than with how they necessarily do form.
In prescriptive approach the strategy development is a systematic way and deterministic
process whereby it helps to analyze the organization internal and external environment which can
help them to formulate strategy based on their organization environment. The organization plans
in this school can take long period to come up with final decisions before implement strategy. In
this school senior manager is in charge of decide the final objectives and plans before put into
action in different levels of the organization.
Prescriptive school also is giving guidelines or framework process that should be followed
to design a strategy, in this case he refer this process as the architect who is building a house based
on the design which hes formulated before.
In prescriptive model the strategic formation in this school has taken different approaches
and process that rational and fact based analysis of the options will deliver the strategy that is most
like to be successful, it explain different approaches which strategic process has to follow in order
to come up with the good strategies, example the model has use different techniques to come up
with the write strategies, one of the technique has being explain by Michael porter five forces, this
can be used in this school in order to analyze its existing competitors.
The strategy formation in prescriptive school is a logical approach which allows the
organization to devise predictive and pre-emptive strategies from which they can meet new
opportunities in future. For example easy jet in 1995 has introduced low cost flights which has
allow the company to take advantage of more cost conscious in the market.
Therefore this approach has made possible for the company to organize activities and
exercise a greater degree of control over different businesses. Also the prescriptive strategy model
contain many assumptions that are unsustainable in today’s business world, based on its approach
that strategy development is always deliberate and that strategy are implemented according to the
organization plans. Prescriptive strategy model can therefore be described as a more detached and
systematic process of formal top down rational planning process for development and
implementation of strategies which related to the mission and objectives of the organization, and
the process of strategic making is supported by techniques with consideration of objectives,
programs, budgets and operating plans. This process help the organization realizing organization
problems, establishing and evaluating the planning criteria and create alternative.
In comparison with the prescriptive strategy, the second group referring to Mintzberg is
known as descriptive schools of strategy. This can well be defined as the strategic formation which
deals with the broad influence of strategic direction of the firm. Strategic formation in descriptive
based on the mental process. Also it analyse how people perceive patterns and process of
formation.
According to Mintzberg the descriptive strategy may be different from prescriptive strategy
in a way that they have different approaches and applications in the real life. In the descriptive
strategy approach, the strategy formation can be done using the past experience; therefore the
strategy which can be formed using this school can be through the process of learning, adjustments
and experimentation. In additional to that Mintzberg insisted that in this school strategy can be
unplanned, developing incrementally over time as business actions adapt to changing reality, the
strategic formation process did not identify a final objective with a specific strategy to achieve this
which means it relies on the developing strategies whose final outcome may not be known.
On the other hand descriptive strategy is basically focused on the past evidence. Unlike the
descriptive, the prescriptive takes other factors in account while analyzing multiple criteria and
conflicting objections. then select exactly what strategy can do realistically based on the objectives
listed. A descriptive approach makes decisions on different topics based on past experience. If it
was positive, and then the decision is made. If it is negative then a different decisions made.
Prescriptive strategy go passing all options and analyse them before deciding based on all factors
which one is the best option to use.
Also by adopting Mintzberg analogy, prescriptive strategy is said to biblical in its approach,
it appears at a point in time and is governed by a set of rule s, fully formulated and ready to
implement .While the descriptive strategy is Darwinian in approach, an emerging and changing
strategy that survives by adapting as the environment itself changes. Given the need for an
organisation to have a corporate strategy, much has really been about the process of achieving
these strategies. No common way agreement on the way this can be done.
In additional to that, the descriptive schools of thought are more realistic side of strategy. As
they are not bound by any law. They are capable of changing the environment in their own favor
as a great entrepreneur is capable of doing it. It is very much clearly and easily visible in the
making of McDonald’s and Benetton who are led by great entrepreneurs. While, keeping in mind
the factor of environment, it is sometimes considered to be as in-comprehensive, which is dealt by
Cognitive and Learning schools. These thoughts bring ahead the relevance of emerging with time
and regards learning as an ongoing process. These schools emphasizes on making a broad policy
and leaving some space for change in the middle due to the belief that a change might arise from
any sub-system within any department in the organisation. These thoughts are clearly visible in
case of the entrance of HONDA motors in the USA market which became successful with time
and emerged as leaders in the market.
