VRC is a family owned business which has been manufacturing racing cycles for over a century. Over the years, the company has been relatively successful, although its growth has tended to happen in what can only be explained as an unplanned, ad hoc, and opportunistic way. To some extent the developments have been as a result of the personal interests of F, the owner and Managing Director, who was a former road racing cyclist.
Distinguish among the way strategy is currently developed in VRC Company and the approach the Business Consultant is recommending.
The way strategy currently develops in VRC Company would seem to be characterised by the emergent approach to strategy development. This perspective was suggested by Mintzberg and is based on the notion that most of what organisations intend to occur, often does not happen. Indeed very few methods followed by organisations are consciously planned but rather emerge.
Emergent strategies result from a number of ad-hoc choices or responses to circumstances. They can be explained as developing out of patterns or behaviours that are realised despite, or in the absence of, specific intentions. This means that they just happen along the method with differing degrees of management intervention. The role of the manager is to craft a vision by moulding the organisation and its strategy.