The Practice of Strategy – Jarratt & Stiles article.

How do managers differ in the way that they use strategic tools?

According to Jarratt and Stiles (2010) article, managers differ in their use of
strategic tools in three practices namely; imposed, routinized and reflective.

Imposed practice: managers here (excluding external and internal stakeholder

engagement) keep on increasing the current company’s competitive strategies
aligned with the profit outcomes. Managers see the business environment as
stable and need to keep on improving and adding competitive strategies.

Routinized practice: here strategic managers use collaborating numerous

techniques. It consists of a more stakeholder driven (interaction with customers
and amongst teams within the company). Routinized practice also highlights the
coalition gap between the stakeholders and the company. It is guided by vital
factors such as where the company global positioning is, how the company can
grow with the use of numerical data, customer engagement and communication
in building trust.

Reflective practice: here strategic managers have an active system (represented

by collective structures, strategy leaders and practices) that reflects or
challenges ‘set theoretical’ practices and structures or methods in a complex
environment. This can be seen in Case 4 that see the need to go beyond the
traditional strategies. Reflective practice also sees strategic managers looking
into possible future challenges (in terms of competition) and possible company
creative solutions derived from stakeholders’ initiatives.

What influences these differences?

According to the article, Imposed practice can be seen to be influenced by a

mature market with high regulations leaving the market growth locally, very
restricted. Therefore, for growth to happen, expanding internationally (via
acquisitions and focusing on market concentration and size) was the only
option. This resulted in incremental change in competitive strategies. In
reflective practice, it can be seen that due to a complex environment, there was
a need to constantly re-strategize and revisit strategies or methods (based on
previous experiences) to overcome the challenges from the environment. For
Routinized practice, this was in influenced by a predicable environment.