See below from the discussion forum. Can you respond 

A business strategy is a ‘long-term direction of an organisation (Whittington, et al., 2020: 5). It is outward looking and defines how an organisation will differentiate itself from its competitors (Hambrick & Fredrickson, 2001: 52). As Henderson says, each competitor operating in the same market must be ‘different enough to have a unique advantage’ (1989: 140).

There are two defined approaches for creating this advantage, deliberate and emergent strategy development. Deliberate development is based on strategic leadership and planning, and is as the result of considered decisions. (Whittington, et al., 2020: 405). In this way, it is a top-down approach often adopted by company founders or in large multi-national companies such as Siemens where strategy development is the remit of the managing board (Whittington, et al., 2020: 409). In contrast, emergent development evolves over time and includes ‘experimentation and learning’ (Whittington, et al., 2020:412). It is more collaborative and allows an organisation to react to an ‘evolving reality’ (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985: 271). This was the case for Pfizer who repurposed their strategy for Viagra when it assessed the side effects for what was originally high-blood-pressure drug (Kodama, 2016: 39)

The methodology for planning a strategy is dependent how predictable an industry’s environment is and how easily an organisation can influence that environment (Whittington et. al., 2020: 424). It is often the case that organisations utilise a combination of deliberate and emergent strategy development or shift from an emergent to a deliberate strategy over time.

Departments operating in silos are detrimental to an emergent strategy development process. In a survey, PwC identified that over 60 per cent of organisations recognise that achieving strategic goals is dependent on cross-function collaboration yet more than a half of companies operate in departmental silos (2016:6).

Does anyone have examples of organisations overcoming silos so that an emergent strategy can thrive?

References

Hambrick, D.C. & Fredrickson, J. W. (2001 Academy of Management Executive. Nov2001, Vol. 15 Issue 4, p48-59.

Henderson, B. (1989) The Origin of Strategy. Harvard Business Review, November/December 1989.

Kodama, M. (2016) Interactive Business Communities: Accelerating Corporate Innovation Through Boundary Networks. Routledge (New York).

Mintzberg, H. & Waters, J.A. (1985) Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 6, 257-272 (1985)

PwC (2016) Dealing with market disruption: Seven strategies for breaking down silos. Available at: https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/gx/en/insights/2016/dealing-market-disruption/dealing-with-market-disruption.pdf [Accessed 26 January 2022].

Whittington, R., Regnér, P., Angwin, D., Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2020) Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases (12th edition). Pearson (Harlow).