Whittington's Four Generic Approaches to Term Paper

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Some of the paradoxes are quite complex and can lead to any kind of discussions, including game theory. I am referring, for example, to the network level strategy, with companies in a constant competition with one another, but needing to cooperate in order to maximize their profits. The prisoners' dilemma comes to mind in this sense, applied to the business environment: if you choose to increase your price, for example, your competitor will increase his as well and it is most likely none will win. On the other hand, if your competitor decreases the price in order to attract more customers, you need to be able to take the right decision keeping in mind that of your opponent.

Globalization vs. localization, national vs., global or control vs. chaos are all paradoxes which companies operating in today's business environment find themselves are facing. If we look at the paradoxes presented by De Wit and Meyer and compare them to Whittington's synthesis, we may indeed arrive at the conclusion that there are two ways in which a strategy-related issue can be seen and analyzed. This goes hand in hand with the example I have previously mentioned in relation to General Electrics.

The decisions that are taken globally, for example, are complementary to those taken at a national level. We may compare this with a pyramid of decisions or with a set of circles with the same center.

A final observation that needs to be made is that Whittington attempts a synthesis of strategy theories and business schools, while De Wit and Meyer's paradoxes seem more connected and related to the actual business practice.
Bibliography

1. Randles, Sally. 2000. Cities in Evolutionary Perspective: Diversity, reflexivity, scale and the making of economic society in Manchester and Lyon. PhD thesis. Chapter 1. Page 23. On the Internet at http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/Sally_Randles/phd/chapter1.pdf

2. Watkins, David; Bhalla, Ajay; Henderson, Steven. A test of the appropriateness of alternative strategic management paradigms in the context of high growth ethnic and non-ethnic family firms. On the Internet at http://www.igw.unisg.ch/rencontres/band2002/F_12_Watkins.pdf

3. Harfield, Toby. 1998. Strategic Management and Michael Porter: a postmodern reading. On the Internet at http://www.management.waikato.ac.nz/Research/ejrot/Vol4_1/Vol4articles/harfield.asp

Randles, Sally. 2000. Cities in Evolutionary Perspective: Diversity, reflexivity, scale and the making of economic society in Manchester and Lyon. PhD thesis. Chapter 1. Page 23. On the Internet at http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/Sally_Randles/phd/chapter1.pdf

Watkins, David; Bhalla, Ajay; Henderson, Steven. A test of the appropriateness of alternative strategic management paradigms in the context of high growth ethnic and non-ethnic family firms. On the Internet at http://www.igw.unisg.ch/rencontres/band2002/F_12_Watkins.pdf

Randles, Sally. 2000. Cities in Evolutionary Perspective: Diversity, reflexivity, scale and the making of economic society in Manchester and Lyon. PhD thesis. Chapter 1. Page 23. On the Internet at http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/Sally_Randles/phd/chapter1.pdf.....

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