Strategic Management

Management Major Comprehensive Exam (GRAD 889 – Practice)
Please submit a written response to the question found below.  A complete citation page or pages should be added at the end of the total written response.  These pages as well as the title page are not included in the 5-page guideline.  Do NOT include your name on any page but the title page.  Please utilize the following guidelines: Times New Roman Font, 10-point, double-spaced, 1-inch margins with appropriate citations. Please provide a title page at the beginning utilizing the following format:
Management Major Question:
Respond to the question including all sub-parts:
1.  Formal strategic planning has both its proponents and detractors.  Tom Peters has suggested that it is almost laughable to think that an organization can realistically plan for the future.  On the other hand, Japanese companies have tried to develop 50-year plans.  Henry Mintzberg has suggested that strategy is a combination of the planned and the emergent.  Jeff Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton claim that very little is really new and that academics and consultants have an interest making up new terms and concepts without relying enough on evidence-based management. And yet with these varied perspectives, strategic management has become a prominent and growing field in the study of management.
Please respond to the following questions regarding strategic management.  Make sure to cite relevant literature to defend your positions taken in your answers:
a.  Strategic planning has developed as a distinctive discipline.  Is this justified? Explain your answer.
b.  What specific value added has the discipline contributed?
c.  Of what practical significance (if any) is the strategic managementliterature to executives?
d.  Describe three major gaps in the literature in your opinion on strategy that need to be filled or at least need much more work?  Why?