Talk:Strategic management

Proposing new edits via BRD

The article is built on solid foundations. Like every other article, it can be improved. I noted several breaches of neutrality in this article as well as potentially important elements that are missing:

(1) Strategic management is not the exclusive prerogative of for-profit corporations with "owners" (i.e. shareholders), as the introductory definition suggests. NGOs, universities, government agencies have strategies too, and managers inside them working to design and implement them. This is uncontroversial and does not constitute an opinion. Implying that strategic management is only relevant to shareholder-owned corporations, by contrast, represents a very strong opinion underpinned by problematic bias, namely the idea that you can't exhibit strategic behavior unless your organization has shareholders. This is a political standpoint that has long been debunked in economics and the social sciences. The leading journal in the field, for instance, recently had a special on public and non-profit organizations (https://cdn.strategicmanagement.net/conferences/smj/overview/special-issues/past-special-issues/_rightColumn/past-special-issues/value-creation/s3file.pdf).

(2) Similarly, the idea that only "top" managers are involved in strategic management has been debunked decades ago. Strategy involves middle management, especially when it comes to implementation, but more generally it involves everyone in the organization since a significant portion of strategy is not a "top-down" thing but "emerging" from the bottom up, as research by Burgelman (among many others) demonstrated almost forty years ago (https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.29.12.1349). This is one of the most foundational ideas in the field of strategic management. Not controversial, not an opinion.

(3) Strategic management is intimately tied to the goal of organizational adaptation, as was argued (quite uncontroversially) by strategy scholar Chakravarthy in 1982 (https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMR.1982.4285438). The idea that firms and other organizations must "adapt" to survive when their environment changes underpins most strategic management thinking. The emphasis on Porter in the opening paragraph is understandable but also reflective of a strong bias favoring approaches coming from industrial organization and economics. Strategic management is a diverse field that draws on evolutionary theory too (inspired by biology and ecology), not on just on economics. The introduction should reflect that to enhance neutrality.

(4) The prominent promotion of James Collins is debatable. He has never published a single piece of strategic management research in a peer-reviewed outlet. His "airport books" have been very successful, yet their arguments have, for the most part, been debunked by studies that rely on the scientific method (as opposed to rhetoric and the convenient selection of a few illustrative cases plagued the "survivor bias"; see, for example, this critique: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27747475). He's a consultant who's selling his services and this entry is essentially promoting them, despite evidence that they probably shouldn't be (and no evidence that they should be). To my knowledge, no serious business program teaches "Good to Great" as part of its curriculum.

Finally, a note on process: Editors play an important role as stewards. When an addition could be improved, it is great for the contributor to know why it's been reverted. When a contributor then takes into account the reason mentioned by the editor and, based on that, proposes a revised contribution that addresses the issue previously raised, I wonder whether reverting it again is the best way to improve an entry? I'm a strong advocate of a more collaborative approach (as opposed to a top-down "I revert because I can" approach ;)

If an editor justifies a reverting with a comment, and that comment is 1) addressed in a subsequent suggested edit, 2) backed by solid references, 3) incremental and rather uncontroversial, then we would probably be able to build knowledge together in a smoother fashion. As per Wikipedia guidelines, "consider reverting only when necessary" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discuss_cycle).

Also, as a side note, there are other approaches to BRD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discuss_cycle#Alternatives)

Awaiting feedback on 1-2-3-4 in the next few days. Please back with evidence. Will then proceed with edits. Thank you all and looking forward to collaborating respectfully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LaurAWiki1991 (talk • contribs) 16:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this talk page entry change on my watch list. As far as I can see you are making changes to promote a specific take on strategic management based on a limited reference base - indeed it looks a little like citation spam. Very happy to look at individual proposals for changes or questons in individual references -----Snowded ^TALK 05:57, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Snowded: been watching for awhile, this editor appears to be making agf effort to add to and improve the article. Are the sources not RS? Do they not support LaurAWiki1991's edits? Can you provide specific examples/quotes of what you are objecting to? Thanks - wolf 07:22, 14 February 2021 (UTC) (talk page stalker)

@Snowded: Just to summarize: (1) you missed the talk page entirely (for an entire week) despite being the one requesting it; (2) but you did not miss the opportunity to reverse most changes within hours, despite no one having expressed any issues with them (3) your reversals are without any serious justification, and you are not at all engaging with the very Talk Page that YOU requested. That page backed each suggested edit with robust sources and evidence to which you have nothing to add. From the looks of it, you are merely reversing because you can, which would appear to go against Wikipedia's guidelines. For instance, please provide some solid evidence, references, or quotes by authority figures in Strategic Management who claim that strategic management only and exclusively concerns initiatives implemented "on behalf of owners", de facto excluding all organizations that do not have shareholders (see (1) above in BRD Talk section). If you can't provide such evidence then please let people who actually did the background research and actually follow due Wikipedia process make the needed edits to improve this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LaurAWiki1991 (talk • contribs) 10:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I have a lot of articles on watch so missing one from time to time will happen. I went through the changes and accepted some of the edits. Otherwise we had he insertion of a definition from one obscure author which limited the definition so I restored the original. On the question of owners that doesn't as a word mean shareholders so it covers not for profit as well. I would accept stakeholders as an alternative. Overall this is a field highly vulnerable to using single sources to promote a specific point of view. So using Henri's Strategy Safari is one thing - as it is a third party source. But a single paper by a single academic - no. To illustrate my point the phrase "Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks" was replaced by a single model based on of adaption based on a single 1982 article entitled "A promising metaphor".

And I don't like Porter much either but his view is dominant and notable so its there. -----Snowded ^TALK 12:13, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Snowded: Brilliant, so please explain to us all, who are the "owners" in a non-profit organization? This law firm specializing on non-profits, for instance, provides an answer that I am expecting you to argue against BEFORE YOU REVERSE MY EDIT AGAIN: "No one person or group of people can own a nonprofit organization", they say, quite uncontroversially (https://cullinanelaw.com/nonprofit-law-basics-who-owns-a-nonprofit). Do non-profits have a strategy? Yes. For example, look up the Chief Strategy Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Leadership/Executive-Leadership-Team/Ankur-Vora). Does the definition you are aggressively protecting currently cover non-profits and their practice of strategic management? No, and you still are unwilling to explain why it shouldn't. You are aggressively pushing your own opinion here, which is that an organization without owners is not concerned by, and does not exercise strategic management. Furthermore, you are unable to provide any evidence to support your narrow perspective and are in denial of the evidence (and, honestly, commonsense) provided on the Talk Page. You are both incorrect about the facts and in violation of Wikipedia's guidelines for collaborating towards improving entries. I am not sure what your agenda is but your attitude, at this point, is clearly hurting this community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LaurAWiki1991 (talk • contribs) 14:28, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Snowded, thanks for the reply. @LaurAWiki1991, please see your talk page for a note about signing your posts and indenting them. Thanks - wolf 16:39, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not obliged to respond to a series of aggressive statements and nonsensical accusations. Try and keep your comments here to clear proposals for changes and do not comment on the motivation of other editors.-----Snowded ^TALK 17:53, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: thank you so much for the tips! @Snowded: managers acting "on behalf of stakeholders"? I must have missed something, who proposed this edit and what consensus was there around it? It would appear to be just you. The wording is so vague that it's essentially the same as "[blank]", which was my initial suggestion... except that your wording precludes a scenario wherein managers might be acting on behalf of no one else but themselves, a scenario that has long been recognized in organizational economics (by agency theory) and that we know exists at scale in the real world. But, as long as you feel good about winning your "revert war"... On a related note, it's interesting to see that your two most significant additions (>1,000 characters) this past month are to your own bio and to the entry about a 2x2 you came up with and seem to be exploiting commercially. For the rest, your track record seems to revolve a lot around deleting others' additions to entries, many of which related somehow to your commercial activity. I guess it puts things in perspective.LaurAWiki1991 (talk) 17:00, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Strike the personal attacks and I'll respond on the content issue. Wikipedia is mediated by behavioural standards and you are breaking them-----Snowded ^TALK 10:05, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Moving towards a resolution

@LaurAWiki1991 and Snowded: you two have been at this for awhile now, perhaps it's time to consider other means to move towards a resolution, such as following the steps at WP:Dispute resolution. While I suspect Snowded is already aware of this policy, I would encourage LaurAWiki1991 to read through it carefully. You both should consider the various means available to users there in resolving a dispute. (fyi) - wolf 18:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

LaurAWiki1991 is a very new editor and obviously passionate but their continued posting of personal attacks and slurs needs to stop if they want to edit here. I made a more open change to the text and explained by reasons for that and for refusing the narrow and largely single sourced material being proposed. I haven't seen a response to that and when there is one I will respond. -----Snowded ^TALK 09:59, 1 March 2021 (UTC)