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obscurity. These readers are also likely to know and of conflicts which are typical of academic
that my entire professional career has been life. Therefore, Henry's generalization from a
focused on helping organizations manage their sample of one requires factual support.
strategic behavior in unpredictable environments. Such support is not offered. Instead, Mintzberg
Thus, if I am to accept Henry's verdict, I have attempts to minimize evidence to the contrary.
spent 40 years contributing solutions which are Since world-wide visibility of Michael Porter
not useful in the practice of strategic management. cannot be left unnoticed, Mintzberg tries to
Therefore, it should not be surprising that I minimize his influence on The Design School on
rise in defense of at least one prescriptive school the grounds that the HBS classic text on policy
(the one to which I belong) in an effort to set devotes only one chapter to Porter. Thus the
the record straight and thus salvage a lifetime of reader is asked to believe that Porter's influence
work which has received a modicum of acceptance in the Harvard Business School has been confined
by practicing managers. to one chapter in a book!
In situations like the present, it is easy to fall
prey to a game of polemic charge-countercharge
in the hope that the louder voice will carry the Proof by implied intent
day. I will attempt to avoid this trap in two ways. Having chosen Andrews as the 'mouthpiece' of
First, I will show that the methodology by which the Design School, Mintzberg uses Andrews'
Mintzberg disposes of the prescriptive school will own writings to prove that the school 'refused
hardly stand its day in the court of logic, and itself the chance to adapt' over time.
persuasiveness. Second, I will offer evidence of This is done by challenging Andrews' state-
repeated instances in which Mintzberg's key ments which suggest that the School's original
assertions are factually wrong. Thirdly, I will design principles should be enlarged and modi-
fault Henry on the fact that, having confined the fied.
prescriptive schools to a narrow context, he does The methodology is simple. First, having
not place his own in an appropriate context. quoted a paragraph from Andrews, which sug-
Finally, I will identify the context which is gests to an intelligent reader that the Design
appropriate for Henry's prescriptions. It is ironic School did indeed continue to elaborate the
that this context will appear very similar to the original principles, Henry asserts (without any
context to which he confines the prescriptive further evidence) that Andrews did not really
schools, but is somewhat larger in scope. Thus, mean what he said!
to borrow a phrase which Henry uses in his An example of one of several such 'proofs'
critique of Professor Kenneth Andrews, his paper should suffice to illustrate this 'methodology'.
emerges as 'a caricature of his own model.' According to Mintzberg the second design prin-
ciple advanced by the Design School (1990: 176)
is as follows:
different views which led to different 'design was drastically different from that of the
principles,' thus denying Mintzberg's assertion Design School.
that all prescriptive schools were alike. 2. The same book presented a structured
The second fact which contradicts Mititzberg's method for analytic strategy formulation
assertion should have been known to him, (which was a codification of its author's
because it is discussed at length in a book practical experience), a procedure which at
published in 1965 (Ansoff, 1965), which he the time was being used in practice but
references in his paper. was considered impossible at The Harvard
This fact is that the concept of strengths and Business School (Ansoff, 1965).
weaknesses, ascribed by Mintzberg to the Design 3. In 1978, the concept of strengths and
School, was conceptually criticized in this book, weaknesses was replaced by a comprehensive
and a detailed alternative method was proposed concept of Organizational Capability,
for identifying future strengths and weaknesses (Ansoff, 1978).
of an organization. Incidentally, this method met 4. The original concept that strategy formulation
(in 1965) many of the objections which Mintzberg should be centralized in the hands of the
makes in 1990 to the strengths/weaknesses con- CEO was replaced by the concept strategic
cept of The Design School. bi-centralization (Ansoff, 1984).
5. The concept of Strategic Myopia of key
strategic managers and of resistance to stra-
Factual contradiction of assertion that all of the tegic change were formulated and a practical
prescriptive schools denied themselves a chance procedure developed for overcoming both
to adopt with times of them during strategy formulation and
implementation (Ansoff, 1984).
One factual counterexample will suffice to prove 6. A diagnostic procedure was developed for
this assertion false. In this example, I will briefiy seqttencing strategy/structure development,
trace the evolution of one of the prescriptive according to the degree of urgency of strategic
schools, which through the years, has stayed in response being experienced by a firm.
close touch with the changing practice of strategic (Ansoff, Declerck and Hayes, 1974).
management, adopted many prescriptions which 7. In 1972 the overall perspective of the subject
have emerged in practice, and in recent years was broadened from strategy formulation to
made several original contributions to the practice the overall process by which organizations
of management. adapt and succeed in turbulent environments,
I will refer to this School as the School of and the concept of Strategic Management
Holistic Strategic Management. (Because of his was introduced (Ansoff, 1972).
off-handed dismissal of 'the other' prescriptive 8. The concept of real time response was
schools, it is not possible to tell whether Mintzberg developed, as an alternative to periodic
is aware of the existence of this school.) However, strategy planning, and three practical real
as shown below, its origins and its progress are time response procedures were proposed: (i)
well documented. Strong Signal Issue Management; (ii) Weak
The extent of progress of The School of Signal Issue Management; and (iii) Surprise
Strategic Management between 1965 and 1990 Management (Ansoff, 1984; Ansoff, Kirsch
can be assessed by comparing two books by this and Roventa, 1980).
author: Corporate Strategy, first published in 9. In 1979 an applied theory of strategic behavior
1965 (Ansoff, 1965) and Implanting Strategic was developed and published (Ansoff, 1979).
Management, which first appeared in 1984 10. A Strategic Success Hypothesis, which is a
(Ansoff, 1984). keystone of this theory, was repeatedly tested
Following are the milestones of the School's and validated in a variety of organizational
Evolutioti: types and several countries. (Hatziantoniou,
1986; Salameh, 1987; Sullivan, 1987; Chab-
1. As already discussed in a book published in ane, 1987; Lewis, 1989; Jaja, 1990; Ansoff
1965 (Ansoff, 1965), this School enunciated and McDonnell, 1990; Ansoff, Sullivan et
a concept of strengths and weaknesses which al., 1990.)
Critique of 'The Design School' 453
11. Based on the findings of this research a The critique is not confined to proving that The
practical Strategic Diagnosis procedure was Design School's and other prescriptive Schools'
developed for determining the strategy and principles are wrong. Interwoven with the critique
capability changes which an organization will are Mintzberg's own descriptive assertions about
have to make in order to succeed in the the real world, which he proceeds to convert into
future (Ansoff, 1984; Ansoff and McDonnell, prescriptions for the manner in which strategy
1990). formation should take place in organizations.
12. Interactive Computer Software for strategy These prescriptions are sprinkled throughout the
formulation in turbulent environment was text and they are not summarized, nor logically
developed (Ansoff, 1986) and marketed. connected.
Therefore, the summary given below is this
In summary, at least one prescriptive school writer's attempt at a faithful summary of Henry's
cannot be accused of having been a carbon copy proposals.
of The Design School, either at its inception, nor
during its subsequent evolution. Thus Mintzberg's 1. The central prescription is that, with minor
assertion that all prescriptive Schools 'have exceptions, all organizations should use what
accepted the premises' of The Design School and Mintzberg calls the 'emergent strategy'
that they 'denied themselves the chance to adapt' approach to strategy formation, using trial
is demonstrated to be false. and experience process.
Many additional counterexamples can be found 2. The output of this process is an observable
in the bibliography attached to Mintzberg's paper. strategy which is the logic pattern underlying
One of these deserves particular attention because the historical sequence of successful trials.
it occurred within the Harvard Business School. 3. Except for minor exceptions, this strategy
It is found in the work of Michael Porter. should not be made explicit:
Having banished Porter from the design school,
Mintzberg totally ignores his massive and distinc-
tive contribution to the literature on strategy Explicit Strategies are blinders designed to
formulation which certainly does not qualify focus direction and so to block out peripheral
vision (1990: 184).
for inclusion among the original design school
principles at the Harvard Business School.
Items 10 and 11 above show that The Holistic 4. It is not possible to formulate strategy in
Strategic Management School, not only contrib- unpredictable environments:
uted new prescriptive principles, but also empiri-
cally identified the types of strategic behavior
and their appropriate contexts which lead to . . .during periods of unpredict-
organizational success. These findings will be ability. . . .(organizations) cannot possibly hope
used later in this paper for defining the appropri- to articulate any viable strategy (1990: 184).
ate context for Mintzberg's Model.
5. Nor is it possible to formulate a viable strategy
in predictable environments:
MINTZBERG'S MODEL OF STRATEGY
FORMATION
The point we wish to emphasize is: how could
the firm have known ahead of time? The
Mintzberg leaves the reader in no doubt about discovery of what business it (firm) was to be
his central theme: in could not be undertaken on paper, but had
to benefit from the results of testing and
experience (1990: 182).
Our critique of the Design School revolves
around one central theme: its promotion of The same quotation logically gives rise to the
thought independent of action, strategy forma-
tion above all as a process of conception, rather following conclusion, which is not articulated by
than as one of learning (Mintzberg, 1990: 182). Mintzberg:
454 H. Igor Ansoff
6. It is not possible to forecast the future with With these two exceptions recognized, we can
complete confidence. infer the following prescription implied by Mintz-
berg:
Mintzberg's concern with managers' need 'to
be sure,' and his assertion that they 'cannot' act 10. The 'emerging strategy approach' should be
before they are 'sure,' permeates the paper and used in all situations with the exception of
is used as a basis for several descriptions and the two specified above.
prescriptions, including the following:
In summary, Henry's prescription can be
7. Managers should not make statements about named as one of implicit strategy formation,
the future if they are not totally sure of what under which strategy need not be a part
they are saying. of manager's concern, except under special
8. Managers should not evaluate their organi- circumstances. Managers should allow strategy
zation's strengths and weaknesses until they and capabilities to evolve organically, through
become evident from the trial and error trial and experience, and focus their attention on
experience. the operating efficiency of the organization.
9. In complex organizations it is not possible to Thus, Mintzberg prescribes a world free of
plan and coordinate an organization-wide explicit strategy formulation and free of strategic
process of strategy formulation. This assertion managers.
is contained in the following quotation from
Brian Quinn, used and approved by Mintz-
berg: CRITIQUE OF MINTZBERG'S MODEL
It is virtually impossible for a manager to While reading the first part of the paper, one
orchestrate all internal decisions, external wonders why Mintzberg went to such length to
environmental events, behavioral and power prove that the prescriptive schools were identical
relationships, technical and informational needs,
and actions of intelligent opponents so that they and have jointly 'denied themselves' the oppor-
come together at a precise moment (Quinn, tunity to adapt to the changing times.
1978: 184). The reason becomes clear in the second part:
Mintzberg is now free to criticize all of the
Mintzberg makes no direct reference to the prescriptive schools as if they were still adhering
context in which his prescriptive principles should to their original design principles of 1965.
be used. But in his concern with what to do with In the light of the methodological and factual
The Design School, after he has demolished it, deficiencies pointed out earlier in this paper, it
he does identify two contexts in which the is hardly worthwhile to challenge Mintzberg's
explicit strategy formulation championed by the criticisms of the original design principles, since
prescriptive schools may be applicable. they have been outstripped by developments,
One of these contexts is: both in the practice of strategic management and
in the writings of the prescriptive schools of
thought. But Henry's own model of reality
a new organization. . . .(during). . . .the period
of initial conception of strategy. . . . (1990: 191). summarized in the preceding pages cries out for
a critical appraisal. It is to this task that we now
turn our attention.
(In this case Mintzberg implicitly suspends his As a person who has spent over 40 years of
earlier claim that in unpredictable environments his life as manager, consultant, educator, and a
strategy cannot be formulated and allows the close observer of the business scene, I have
founding entrepreneur to have a 'vision'.) difficulty accepting Henry's model as description
The other context is one in which: of strategic management reality.
And yet, Henry is an intellectually outstanding
the design school model would seem to apply
person, globally respected, and recognized as
best. . .(is when) an organization (is) coming one of the leading contributors to the literature
out of a period of changing circumstances and on strategic management.
into one of operating stability (1990: 191). As I studied his paper several explanations of
Critique of 'The Design School' 455
this apparent paradox became clear. In the the t940s the environment of many business
following pages I will present these explanations. firms has progressively become more and more
As before, I will base my critique on methodo- turbulent, unpredictable, and surpriseful. On
logical deficiencies and on factual contradictions the other hand, the not-for-profit organization
between Henry's claims and the real world of had enjoyed a relatively placid environment
strategic management. until the t970s (Ansoff, 1984).
2. Within the two classes of organizations, the
environments of different industries became
Self-denial of a chance to study business
differentiated. At one extreme, some organiza-
environment tions continue to enjoy a relatively placid
It is strange how in his paper Mintzberg repeatedly existence and at the other extreme are
commits sins of which he accuses the Design and organizations which are experiencing very high
the other prescriptive schools. One of these is turbulence (Ansoff, 1984).
the accusation directed at the Design School that 3. The level of environmental turbulence has
it 'slight(s) the environment in favor of a focus become a driving force which dictates strategic
on the organization' (1990: 182). responses necessary for success (Ansoff and
Henry's paper shows that he commits the same Sullivan, 1990).
sin. Below is the sum total of his references to 4. In high turbulence environments success comes
the environment. to firms which use strategies which are
One learns that managers: discontinuous from their historical strategies
(Ansoff and Sullivan, 1990; Ansoff et al.,
cannot be sure of the future. Sometimes organiza- 1990).
tions need to function during periods of unpre- 5. In low turbulent environments success comes
dictability. Sometimes organizations come out to firms which use strategies of incremental
of a period of changing circumstances into a
period of operating stability. development of their historically successful
product-development, (op cit.).
6. The final characteristic of the environment
Nothing is said about how often is 'sometime', neglected by Mintzberg is the acceleration of
what is meant by 'unpredictability', by 'changing the speed of change in the environment which
circumstances' or how long and how prevalent has occurred during the past 30 years (Drucker,
are the 'periods of operating stability.' 1980).
The only complete sentence devoted to the
environment does not help very much: The latter aspect of the environment puts in
doubt the major prescription which Mintzberg
. . . .environment is not some kind of pear to offers in his paper. In turbulent environments,
be plucked from the tree of external appraisal, the speed with which changes develop is such
but a major and sometimes unpredictable that firms which use the 'emerging strategy
force. . . (1990: 185). formation' advocated by Mintzberg endanger
their own survival. The reason is that when they
This cryptic statement begs all kinds of questions: arrive on a market with a new product/service,
whose environment is being discussed, what kind such firms find the market pre-empted by more
of influence does the force exert on organizations; foresightful competitors, who had planned their
under what circumstances is it exerted; what strategic moves in advance.
impact does it have on strategic behavior, etc? Thus, the first reason for the contradictions
This slight of the environment is unfortunate. between Mintzberg's picture of reality and the
If Henry had taken the minimum trouble to observable real world is his failure to observe
peruse the cover pages of Business Week for the the current business environment.
past 4-5 years, he would have easily found
answers to most of the above questions. In brief,
Failure to meet validity tests for prescriptive
he would have found the following information.
and descriptive observations
1. In today's world, different types of organiza- To be valid, a descriptive observation must meet
tions have different environments. Thus, since a single test: it must be an accurate observation
456 H. Igor Ansoff
necessary, revises the strategy in the light of model is valid. It is curious because, as already
experience. discussed in this paper, Mintzberg does identify
Thus, use of explicit strategy in successful the context for the Design School Model. And
practice is not rigid and does not foreclose in his other work he was one of the first
attention to new opportunities which are outside researchers to call attention to the importance
the scope of strategy. But use of explicit strategy of contextual view of organizational structures
does control erratic deviations from the strategy. (Mintzberg, 1979).
This point was well made in a quotation from His failure to identify the context for his own
Andrews used and rejected by Mintzberg: work is damaging because it exposes his model
to counterexamples from the entire field of
Strategy will evolve over time, no matter what. 'organizationatives' and from the complete range
. . . .But the elucidation of goals can transcend of organizational settings. As a result, in the
incrementalism (and). . .result in the deliberate absence of contextual limits, Mintzberg inadver-
amendment of strategy or in curtailment of
strategic erosion (Christensen et al., 1982: tently ventures to make comments on contexts
553-554). to which he has had little exposure.
And yet, it is the opinion of this writer that,
if streamlined and put into proper context,
Use of strategic control converts the rational Mintzberg's model of strategy has demonstrable
learning mode into a more sophisticated one. validity, both descriptively and prescriptively,
The model becomes a chain of cognition-trial- and represents an insightful and important
cognition-trial etc. We will refer to it as strategic contribution to Strategic Management. In the
learning model (See Chapters 2.6, 2.9, 5.3 in remainder of this paper I will describe the
Ansoff and McDonnell, 1990). appropriate descriptive and prescriptive contexts
Finally, Mintzberg attacks the rational model for Mintzberg's model.
of learning by pointing out that it decouples
strategy formulation from implementation, which
causes organizational resistance and even failure VALID CONTEXT FOR MINTZBERG'S
of implementation. PRESCRIPTIVE MODEL
This point underlines the irony of Mintzberg's
insistence on criticizing outdated original prin- Modiiication of Mintzberg's Model
ciples of the Design School without acquainting A complete description of Mintzberg's Mode!
himself with their subsequent evolution. As was presented in this paper. From this model we
discussed earlier in this paper, the problem of abstract the following core concepts which can
resistance to change has been recognized and be shown to be valid in specified contexts.
treated back in the 1980s without abandoning
explicit strategy formulation (Ansoff, Part 6, 1. To succeed, an organization should use the
1984). 'emergent strategy' trial and experience pro-
In summary, Mintzberg's 'proofs' that the cess of strategy formation.
rational model of learning does not apply to 2. No attempt should be made to formulate the
strategic management are contradicted by facts firm's strategy in advance of the trial and
of management practice. And his insistence on experience process.
universal use of the existential model invites 3. No formal organization-wide strategic planning
managements to abdicate their role as strategic should be used.
thinkers, and to confine their attention to 4. Except under special circumstances, the strat-
optimizing the operating behavior of their organi- egy which is implicit in the historical sequence
zations. of successful trials should not be made explicit.
referred to earlier in this paper. A somewhat identical with the type of strategic aggressiveness
more detailed description follows. which was found to optimize firms' success in
The research was addressed to testing the the extrapolative environment.
Strategic Success Hypothesis which was proposed Thus, empirical research described above shows
by Ansoff in 1979. The Hypothesis states that that Mintzberg's Prescriptive Model is a valid
an organization will optimize its success when prescription for organizations which seek to
the aggressiveness of its strategic behavior in the optimize their performance in environments in
environment and its openness to the external which strategic changes are incremental and the
environment are both aligned with the turbulence speed of the changes is slower than the speed of
level of the organization's external environment. the organizational response.
The key contextual variable in this research It should be noted that, except for difference in
was the concept of environmental turbulence the language (academic vs. practical), Mintzberg's
which is an enlargement of the concepts of model is identical to the injunction to firms to
unpredictability and uncertainty used by Mintz- 'stick to their strategic knitting' which was offered
berg. in a world famous book The Search of Excellence
In the research, five distinctive levels of by Peters and Waterman (Peters and Waterman,
observable environmental turbulence were iden- 1982).
tified, ranging from stable to creative. For the (It should further be noted that, while rec-
purpose of identification of context it is useful ommending conservative strategic behavior,
to aggregate turbulence levels into two categories: Peters and Waterman recommend very aggressive
(1) Incremental turbulence in which environmental competitive behavior by firms which aspire to
changes are a logical evolution of the historical succeed in extrapolative environments, a matter
change process, and the speed of the changes is not mentioned by Mintzberg.)
slower than the response time of the organiza- The size of the domain of applicability of
tions; and (2) Discontinuous turbulence in which Mintzberg's model to the business sector can be
successive changes are discontinuous from the determined from an extensive unpublished survey
preceding ones, and speed of change is greater by this author (which was briefiy described in
than the speed of the organizations' response. the introduction of this paper). According to the
To date the Strategic Success Hypothesis has survey, roughly 20 percent of the firms in
been empirically tested in six different settings: developed economies will need to use the
Mintzberg/Peters/Waterman model in order to
1. A cross-section of U.S. firms (Hatziantoniou, succeed in the 1990s.
1986) It must be mentioned that, in discontinuous
environments, which constitute the remaining 80
2. Banks in United Arab Emirates (Salameh, percent of the sample, the research described
1987) above (and the aftermath of the Peters-Waterman
3. Public Service Organizations in the U.S. research) both show that firms which persist in
(Sullivan, 1987) 'sticking to their strategic knitting' will not
4. Parastatal firms in Algeria (Chabane, 1987) be among the successful performers and may
5. Banks in San Diego County (Lewis, 1989) jeopardize their own survival.
6. Major U.S. banks (Jaja, 1990) Finally it is necessary to recognize that the
In all six settings, the hypothesis was statistically context of the descriptive validity of Mintzberg's
sustained in all settings at 0.05 or better is much larger than the prescriptive. This context
confidence level. And the levels of success includesfirmswhich are successful in the extrapo-
in organizations which are aligned with the lative business environments (in the business
environment were substantially higher than in jargon those are called market driven firms);
organizations which were out of alignment firms in discontinuous environments which are
(Ansoff and Sullivan, 1990; Ansoff, Sullivan et suffering from loss of competitiveness; and, in
al., 1990). 1990, it includes a majority of the not-for-profit
The relevance of the research results to organizations in the U.S.
Mintzberg's model lies in the fact that Mintzberg's Thus the paradox of a world-famous researcher
prescription for strategy formation is virtually opening himself to criticism could have been
460 H. Igor Ansoff
avoided if Henry had stuck to his own strategic the 'emerging strategy' model is a valid
knitting which is a deep knowledge of descriptive prescription for success in incremented
strategic behavior, particularly in not-for-profit environments, a valid description of poorly
organizations. performing firms in discontinuous environ-
ments, and a valid description of the behavior
of a majority of not-for-profit organizations.
CONCLUSIONS
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turbulence, corporate strategic profile,and company Peters, T. and R. Waterman, tn Search of Excellence.
performance. Unpublished D.B.A. dissertation. Harper and Row, New York, 1982.
United States International University, San Diego, Salameh, T. T. 'Analysis and financial performance
of the banking industry in United Arab Emirates: A
1986.
strategic management study'. Unpublished D.B.A.
Jaja, R. M. 'Technology and banking: The implications dissertation. United States International University,
of technology myopia on banking financial perform- San Diego, 1987.
ance, A strategic management analysis'. Unpub- Schwartz, P. 'Accepting the rise in forecasting'. The
lished D.B.A. dissertation. United States Inter- New York Times Forum, September 2, 1990, p. 13.
national University, San Diego, 1990. Steiner, G. A. and H. Schollhammer. 'Pitfalls in
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of the banking industry in California: A strategic Planning, 8 (2), 1975, pp. 2-12.
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tation. United States International University, San of income derived from subsidy and strategic
Diego, 1989. performance of a federal agency under the Commer-
Mintzberg,. H. The Structuring of Organizations, cial Activities Program', Unpublished D.B.A. dis-
Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979. sertation. United States International University,
Mintzberg, H. 'Crafting strategy'. Harvard Business San Diego, 1987.
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