Enduring scholarly interest in the process of strategy making stems from an abiding assumption that some ways of strategizing are more efficacious than others. Expressions of interest in and endorsements of the strategy process are abundant in the adacemic literature. For senior managers and leaders, the question of how to make effective strategies stands usually at the top of their agenda. Not surprisingly then, the quest to uncover stable principles of good strategy making has attracted much support and interest over the years. Researchers who responded to the strategy process challenge have known many moments of exhilaration and dillusion. Scholarly insights took long to accumulate, perhaps too long to serve as the sole basis for helping the eager practitioner in search of simpler but applicable advice. As a result, a significant and often highly visible part of the field is characterized by a controversial normative orientation. But beneath this dramatic and unstable facade lifes a gradual, patient, and seemingly more stable, hard-at-work, academic enterprise. Scholarly strategy process research apparently goes on, perhaps more than ever, suggesting that there is something fundamental and deeply interesting and profound about how strategies are made, where they originate in organizations, and how the process about how strategy making impacts the performance of organizations. -- from back cover.
