Maps of urban areas in the UK countryside look similar to histology slides. I reflect on the impact of human activity on our planet and the scars left behind.
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Category: Human
Humanities – anything that relates to human society and culture. Includes politics, economics, anthropology, philosophy and the spiritual.
Mental Health: Anxiety
A brief essay on anxiety – what causes it, how it affects individuals and others, how different ways of thinking or behaving affects anxiety and how anxiety can be managed.
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Mental Health: Stress
An essay on understanding stress in terms of causes and affects, looking at the demands of daily life and how stress can be managed,
Read moreUnderstanding Mental Health
An essay describing mental health, risk factors, historical changes in care, the social context of mental health and the legal context.
Read moreHow Complexity Theory can Enhance the Formation and Implementation of Strategy in an Organisation
This essay discusses the nature of complexity theory and how it may enhance the formation and implementation of strategy in an organisation. Authors such as Michael Porter or Sloan have shaped the established conventional (or Classical) approach to understanding strategy and the analyses here consider how complexity theory contrasts and, yet, complements the Classical perspective.
Read moreBrasil Foods: Overcoming Barriers to Successful Strategy Implementation
In response to BRF 2015 where Brasil Foods sets out its corporate vision: This report explores common barriers to successful implementation of strategy, how they may be overcome and implications for Brasil Foods.
Read moreComparing the Rational and Political Models of Strategic Decision Making
Noorderhaven (1995) defines strategic decisions as those which concern “the goals of an organisation as well as the means to reach these goals”. These decisions are distinguished from the more routine day-day decisions of an organisation because they are often unprecedented and contribute to an organisation’s success: Strategic decisions require substantially more ‘effort’ than routine decisions.
Read moreAssessing the suitability of an integrated cost and differentiation competitive strategy.
Simplistically, cost leadership is a commitment to efficiencies in cost reduction to compete on price and increase profitability. Differentiation is better developing or marketing products for a targeted segment so that the more premium products and services command a higher price.
Read moreA resource-based approach to analysing the strategy of ABC Motors
The RBV approach has evolved into a contemporary set of academic concepts that link an organisation’s performance, i.e. competitive advantage, from its ability to develop and exploit internal resources (e.g. skills, structure, finance etc.) in order to maximise on opportunities or counteract threats in its external environment
Read moreMaking Sense of Apple’s Strategy
Written in response to the article ‘Apple iThrone’ (Jan 29th 2015) in The Economist. The ‘Four Schools’ of Strategy Whittington (2002) proposed four categories of strategy: Classical, Evolutionary, Processual and Systemic. With roots from the Enlightenment and a ‘Scientific Method’ approach, the Classical school is a systematic top-down approach whereby rational strategy formulation, performed by senior managers, is then later performed to maximise profits. The implementation is closely monitored to ensure objectives are reached and sufficient resources available and utilised. The Classical school depends on the “rational economic man” and assumes that people are all motivated uniformly toward profitability. The approach inherently separates the formulation of strategy (by a small few) from the implementation (by the many) and with the goal of long-term planning, does not consider that strategy can emerge from trial and error nor must adapt to a dynamic environment. Whittington describes the Evolutionary perspective where markets determine, in Darwinian fashion, which companies will survive i.e. continue to maximise profitability. As markets determine the strategies companies must adopt, this downplays the value of managers as strategists to concentrating on efficiency e.g. cost control. Similar to Darwin’s Natural Selection, the perspective relies on a diversity of companies/products from which[…]
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