The Age of Strategy: From Drucker and Design to Planning and Porter

Abstract

By the 1990s, Strategic Management had emerged and consolidated itself as a “capstone” element of many business and management school degree programs, most notably on MBA courses. This chapter follows the development of the strategic management discipline from the late 1930s to the early 1990s by considering some of the most important works in the field, demonstrating how strategy detached itself from the broader managerial and societal concern of organizational purpose reflected in the works of authors in the field before 1975. It narrowed in focus to become a purely economic construct, with the effect of hiving off governance and leadership as entirely separate academic subfields.