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The Concept of Strategy 40 Years Later: Showcase Symposium, featuring Profs. Bower, Schendel and Donaldson

  • 1.  The Concept of Strategy 40 Years Later: Showcase Symposium, featuring Profs. Bower, Schendel and Donaldson

    Posted 08-09-2011 10:04
    You are cordially invited to attend:

    The Concept of Strategy 40 Years Later:     
    What Happened to Andrews's Vision for Business Policy?

    Panelists: Joseph Bower (Harvard U.); Dan Schendel (Purdue U.); Tom Donaldson (U. of Pennsylvania)
    Chair: Robert Phillips     (U. of Richmond)
    Program Session #: 1001

    Time/Place: 3:00-4:30 pm Monday, August 15, at the San Antonio Convention Center, Room 204 B

    Do not miss this Showcase Symposium, jointly sponsored by BPS and SIM, featuring three groundbreaking scholars of Business Policy, Strategy and Ethics.  The panelists will offer their perspectives on the transformation a nd future directions of the field of strategy, reflecting on its values-grounded foundations in Kenneth Andrews's conception of business policy as set forth in the 1971 classic, The Concept of Corporate Strategy, and the seminal case book, Business Policy: Text and Cases.  

    NB: Please bring your questions. Following the presentations, the session will open up for Q&A with the audience.

    ABSTRACT

          The Andrews approach to business policy begins with the leader's responsibility for the quality of purpose. The construction of an analytic framework to fulfill that responsibility starts with SWOT analysis to identify alternatives available to a firm for generating the highest possible profit, but the strategic inquiry was never meant to end there. In The Concept of Corporate Strategy, Andrews (1971: 118) calls for strategists to go beyond "what [they] might and can do" to consider they "want" to do according to their personal values as well as "what [they] ought to do-from the viewpoint of various leaders and segments of society and their standards of right and wrong." 

          This Symposium will feature a discussion of the importance of the values dimension of Andrews's business policy vision, including reflections on how attention to values became deemphasized in the academic field of strategy and how the lack of attention to values by corporations might have contributed to the financial and other recent business crises. Panelists will also discuss what it takes to reinvigorate corporations with a conception of strategy that takes stock of internal and external values.