Undoubtedly, strategy is one of those areas of organisational studies which have continued to receive immense interest from academics and practitioners alike. Resultantly, new texts on organisational strategy and strategic management see the light of day every quarter. Stanley Abraham’s new book is, however, not run-of-the-mill complex text and has been written clearly and lucidly with a specific audience in mind. It is specifically aimed at explaining the strategic planning process to practitioners in practical, do-able steps. While the book has been positioned also as a text for MBA programmes, I found it sufficiently lacking in theory to not make it suitable for business programmes. Books aimed at business courses must ideally have essential doses of underlying theory, accompanied by management tools and strategic planning practice. Having said that, I must concur that there were ample links to suitable case studies to make the text suitable for use as a supportive text in strategy.
The book is an intelligent one; one that explores trends in strategic planning and provides an interesting cross-section of case studies to supplement the underlying concepts. It is impressive in its practicality, and the references to case studies are appropriate and detailed enough: not giving excessive detail, yet providing enough insights to the reader to understand the phenomenon in question.
The author is a senior academic and a practitioner and in his own words, the purpose of the book is “[…] how to do a strategic analysis, and by extension, strategic planning”. The book is logically structured, concise and crisply written. The narrative remains clearly focused on the needs of the manager–practitioner, and nowhere does one find complicated narratives. What is most important is that the book makes it a point to clarify exactly what it is that managers must aim to gain from the strategic analysis and strategic planning process, before going into the details of the processes involved. This is probably the kind of book that will be read often, will be kept for immediate reference and be remembered for its uncomplicated, clear way of explaining the complex process that strategic planning is.
