Strategy-Intended and Emergent

Strategy:
Intended &
Emergent
Strategy
• In business, the terms corporate strategy, organizational strategy,
and strategic planning refer to the specific initiatives a company
undertakes to work toward and achieve its strategic goals. No matter
your business's size, understanding the underlying strategy that
guides it is an integral part of being an effective leader and manager.
Strategy
• Corporate strategy often varies from business to business and
depends on several factors.
• While there are numerous frameworks you can use to interpret your
organization’s strategy, one effective way of doing so is through the
lens of emergent versus deliberate strategy.
Strategic Planning
• Strategic planning is the art of creating specific business strategies,
implementing them, and evaluating the results of executing the plan,
in regard to a company’s overall long-term goals or desires.
• It is a concept that focuses on integrating various departments (such
as accounting and finance, marketing, and human resources) within a
company to accomplish its strategic goals.
• The term strategic planning is essentially synonymous with strategic
management.
Strategic Planning
• Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using

available knowledge to document a business's intended direction.
This process is used to-
• prioritize efforts,
• effectively allocate resources,
• align shareholders and employees on the organization’s goals, and
• ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.
Emergent and Deliberate
Strategies
Intended Deliberate Realized

Strategy Strategy Strategy
Unrealized Emergent
Strategy Strategy
From “Strategy Formation in an Adhocracy” by Henry Mintzberg and Alexandra McHugh, Administrative Science Quarterly,
Vol. 30, No. 2, June 1985. Reprinted by permission of Administrative Science Quarterly.
Few Instances:
• A few years ago, a consultant posed a question to thousands of
executives: “Is your industry facing overcapacity and fierce price
competition?” All but one said “YES.”
• The only “no” came from the manager of a unique operation—the Panama
Canal and even there, they are building a second one connecting the
Atlantic to Pacific oceans scheduled to open in 2015. This manager was
fortunate to be in charge of a venture whose services are desperately
needed by shipping companies and that offers the only simple route linking
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
• The canal’s current success will be challenged with this second goes into
operation. With the current increase in globalization, the additional boat
transportation make both canals appear to be guaranteed to have many
customers for as long as anyone can see into the future.
• When an organization’s environment is stable and predictable, strategic
planning can provide enough of a strategy for the organization to gain and
maintain success.
• The executives leading the organization can simply create a plan and
execute it, and they can be confident that their plan will not be
undermined by changes over time. But as the consultant’s experience
shows, only a few executives—such as the manager of the Panama Canal—
enjoy a stable and predictable situation.
• Because change affects the strategies of almost all organizations,
understanding the concepts of intended, emergent, and realized strategies
is important. Also relevant are deliberate and non-realized strategies. The
relationships among these five concepts are presented as below:
Strategic Planning and Learning: Intended, Emergent,
and Realized Strategies
• Strategic planning, usually in the form of a business plan, is a key aspect

of creating a new venture. Many well-known firms, however, owe their
success more to their ability to adapt than their original plan.
• Most firms begin by pursuing their plans (also known as intended
strategy), but unexpected opportunities that arise over time can lead
firms in much different directions than could have ever been anticipated
(emergent strategy).
• Ultimately, the intended and emergent strategies each contribute to a
firm’s realized strategy. In the cases below, the original intended
strategy can barely be detected within today’s strategy.
Strategic Planning and Learning: Intended,
Emergent, and Realized Strategies
Intended Strategy Emergent Strategy Realized Strategy
The company changed its

Dave McConnell aspired to The perfume McConnell name to Avon in 1939, and
be a writer. When his books gave out with his books it’s direct marketing system
weren’t selling, he decided were popular, inspiring the remained popular for
to give out perfume as a foundation of the California decades. Avon is now
gimmick. Perfume Company. available online and in retail
outlets worldwide.
When father and son team

ESPN is now billed as the
Scott and Don Rasmussen As the network became
worldwide leader in sports,
were fired from New successful, ESPN branched
owning several ESPN
England Whalers, they out beyond the local softball
affiliates as well as
envisioned a cable television games and demolition
production of ESPN
network that focused on derbies that were first
magazine, ESPN radio, and
sports events in the state of broadcasted.
broadcasting for ABC.
Connecticut.
Intended Strategies
An Intended Strategy is the strategy that an organization hopes to execute.

Intended strategies are usually described in detail within an organization’s
strategic plan.
When a strategic plan is created for a new venture, it is called a business
plan.
As an undergraduate student at Yale in 1965, Frederick Smith had to
complete a business plan for a proposed company as a class project. His
plan described a delivery system that would gain efficiency by routing
packages through a central hub and then pass them to their destinations. A
few years later, Smith started Federal Express (FedEx), a company whose
strategy closely followed the plan laid out in his class project.
Intended Strategies
Today, Frederick Smith’s personal

wealth has surpassed $2 billion, and
FedEx ranks eighth among the
World’s Most Admired Companies
according to Fortune magazine.
Certainly, Smith’s intended strategy

has worked out far better than even
he could have dreamed (Donahoe,
2011).
Emergent Strategies
• It is an unplanned strategy that arises in response to unexpected opportunities

and challenges. Sometimes emergent strategies result in disasters.
• In the mid-1980s, FedEx deviated from its intended strategy’s focus on package
delivery to capitalize on an emerging technology: facsimile (fax) machines.
• The firm developed a service called ZapMail that involved documents being sent
electronically via fax machines between FedEx offices and then being delivered
to customers’ offices.
Emergent Strategies
• FedEx executives hoped that ZapMail would be a success because it
reduced the delivery time of a document from overnight to just a couple of
hours. Unfortunately, however, the ZapMail system had many technical
problems that frustrated customers.
• Even worse, FedEx failed to anticipate that many businesses would simply
purchase their own fax machines. ZapMail was shut down before long, and
FedEx lost hundreds of millions of dollars following its failed emergent
strategy.
• In retrospect, FedEx had made a costly mistake by venturing outside of the

domain that was central to its intended strategy: package delivery (Funding
Universe).
Realized Strategies
• A Realized Strategy is the strategy that an organization actually follows. Realized
strategies are a product of a firm’s intended strategy (i.e., what the firm planned
to do), the firm’s (i.e., the parts of the intended strategy that the firm continues to
pursue over time), and its emergent strategy (i.e., what the firm did in reaction to
unexpected opportunities and challenges).
• In the case of FedEx, the intended strategy devised by its founder many years ago
—fast package delivery via a centralized hub—remains a primary driver of the
firm’s realized strategy.
• For Southern Bloomers Manufacturing Company, realized strategy has been

shaped greatly by both its intended and emergent strategies, which centre on
Men’s innerwear and gun-cleaning patches.
Non-Realized Strategies
In other cases, firms’ original intended strategies are long forgotten. A Non-realized
Strategies refers to the abandoned parts of the intended strategy.
When aspiring author David McConnell was struggling to sell his books, he decided
to offer complimentary perfume as a sales gimmick. McConnell’s books never did
escape the stench of failure, but his perfumes soon took on the sweet smell of
success.
The California Perfume Company was formed to market the perfumes; this firm
evolved into the personal care products juggernaut known today as Avon.
For McConnell, his dream to be a successful writer was a non-realized strategy,

but through Avon, a successful realized strategy was driven almost entirely by
opportunistically capitalizing on change through emergent strategy.
Figure : The Social Network demonstrates how founder Mark Zuckerberg’s
intended strategy gave way to an emergent strategy via the creation of Facebook
Levels of Strategy
•Functional-Level Strategy
Manufacturing
Marketing
Materials Management
Research and Development
Human Resources
• Business-Level Strategy
Cost Leadership
Differentiation
Market Niche Focus
• Corporate-Level Strategy
• Vertical Integration
• Diversification
• Strategic Alliances
• Acquisitions
• New Ventures
• Business Portfolio Restructuring
• Global Strategies
• Multidomestic
• International
• Global
• Transnational
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Strategy:

• Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using

Intended Deliberate Realized

• Strategic planning, usually in the form of a business plan, is a key aspect

The company changed its

When father and son team

An Intended Strategy is the strategy that an organization hopes to execute.

Today, Frederick Smith’s personal

Certainly, Smith’s intended strategy

• It is an unplanned strategy that arises in response to unexpected opportunities

• In retrospect, FedEx had made a costly mistake by venturing outside of the

• For Southern Bloomers Manufacturing Company, realized strategy has been

For McConnell, his dream to be a successful writer was a non-realized strategy,

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