Deterministic Approaches to Strategy
This school considers that events are determined by preceding events, therefore freedom of choice is illusory. The application of determinism in strategic management, suggests that management has a passive role and is largely unable to influence change and long term survival. However, a more balanced view might consider that although the external environment acts on internal company resources in a deterministic fashion, these resources have been built up through past experiences and learning by a non-Darwinian process.
Darwinian theory suggests that the origin of adaptations lies in natural selection acting on hereditary variations that are in their origin non-adaptive (Maynard Smith, 1975). Therefore, the natural environment is the adaptive force acting on many variations of organisms, only the organisms that fit with the environment survive. Therefore the external environment is the ultimate selecting force and the individual does not possess the capacity to adapt itself. In an organizational context this view of evolution considers that environmental change, resource specificity and structural inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1984) emphasises selection. This view is prevalent in the population ecology literature.
From this perspective, knowledge management is of little value, because the external environment ultimately determines success of organizations. In the age of the computer, knowledge about a mechanical typewriter is unlikely to be useful. Therefore, from this perspective knowledge management should not be considered in isolation, but integrated with corporate and business strategies to provide a wider picture. However, due to resource specificity and structural inertia even strategies at another hierarchical level may not be effective in response to change. The answer to these problems may be a maintenance of organizational flexibility (Evans, 1991; Sanchez, 1995).
The main advantage of this school is that there is a comprehension of the influence of links between the external environment to the internal environment. The disadvantages are that it undermines the effectiveness of rational choice, learning and proactive development by management.