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Penelope Blackwell, director of fundraising, Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland
Tony Elischer makes some interesting comments in his article, but I believe he missed the point at the end. Henry Mintzberg may well have identified the 5Ps of strategy, but more pertinently he also identified that strategy comes in two forms – planned and emergent. Planned strategy is where we aim to go but emergent strategy results from interaction with the external environment, either by taking unexpected opportunities or by reacting to unexpected negatives. (Mintzberg, H & Waters, J.A. (1985) ‘Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent’ Strategic Management Journal, Vol 6 – the paper was based on 10 years of research).Mintzberg went on to define two types of organisation – ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘prospector’(ie emergent) and ‘planned’. Recent research I undertook for my MBA demonstrated that strategy is linked to the control systems of an organisation and that, to flourish, charities which fundraise are naturally ‘entrepreneurial’/ ‘prospectors’. This has implications for how fundraising spend is allocated and whether or not charities are restricted in their fundraising by their ability to pursue emergent strategy.
Tony Elischer responds
I was framing a thought piece not a dissertation, based on practical work in the field! Given the benefit of more words more time and a different written format Penelope's points are very valid. But simply, I was trying to capture some key thoughts to prompt greater thought, interest and challenge around strategy; of course there is more depth and thinking to Porter's work and I would encourage people, if they have time, to explore further, especially around planned and emergent strategies.
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