The Poverty of Strategy: Organization in the Shadows of Technology (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107150324)

At least since the ancient Greeks, strategists have sought to direct and distinguish organized activity through planned, rational decision-making, through the imaginative creation of vision, or through the assertion of will. In all cases, argue Holt and Zundel, strategy impoverishes, not because it only ever offers limited view of organized life, but because it is dedicated to concealing these limits behind grand generalities. The situation is exacerbated when machines and algorithms, not humans, organize. Holt and Zundel draw on philosophy, literature, media theory, art, mathematics, computing and military thinking in an attempt to rescue strategy by isolating what, they argue, remains its essence: strategy is a continual organizational struggle towards authenticity. This, too, is a condition of poverty, but one that sets in place an unhomely condition of questionability as opposed to one of distinctive settlement. It is, argue Holt and Zundel, the sole gift of strategy to thoughtfully refuse rather than impose, organizational imperatives.

Author: Robin Holt, Mike Zundel
ISBN-10: 1107150329
ISBN-13: 9781107150324
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/29/2023
Pages: 275
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.52lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.88d