Management theory
Henry Mintzberg
b. 1939
Emergent strategy is nearly a definition of the Current: what an organisation does repeatedly becomes what it is doing strategically, whatever the deck says.
Read alongside: Shape
- Start with
- The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)
- Where they resist the book
- Mintzberg still defends deliberate strategy in stable pockets. Emergence is his correction, not his replacement.
Works worth the time
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning · 1994
Emergent strategy argued against the planning apparatus, from inside the field.
Read further
- McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management: Henry Mintzberg ↗
McGill University
- Wikipedia: Henry Mintzberg ↗
Wikipedia
Where Mintzberg appears
Strategy is a pattern in a stream of behaviour.
Mintzberg's emergent strategy is nearly a definition of the Current: what an organisation does repeatedly becomes what it is doing strategically, whatever the deck says. Heifetz's regulation of distress describes shaping as pacing — enough disturbance to provoke work, not enough to trigger flight.