Strategic management and the mintzberg school of strategic studies: a literature review

Abstract

Strategic management is a management technique that outlines what an organization does, its reason for existence, and the goals it wants to achieve in the future. When creating strategies to achieve goals in an organization, the first stage involves planning these strategies within the framework of the company's vision, then implementing these planned strategies, and finally, reviewing and monitoring the results of the implementation. Strategic management is a management technique used in making future-oriented decisions in an organization. (Aktan, 2003; Karakaş, 2003; Dinçer, 2003).
These schools, known in the literature as Mintzberg's ten strategic schools, have developed and emerged after the 1960s, contributing to the strategic management literature with different perspectives. Each school has made different contributions to strategy and introduced new concepts. Some of these schools take a predictive approach, focusing on how strategy should (ideally) be formulated. Others, with a descriptive approach, are more concerned with how strategy actually is than how it should be. The later emerging school is the integration school, which attempts to unite all other schools under a single umbrella. This school tries to integrate the strategy-making process, the scope of strategies, organizational structures, and the different elements related to their relationships within separate phases or periods (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel, 1998: 5-6). This study will theoretically examine Minzberg schools of thought as an element of strategic management and offer some recommendations.