Fairness in Strategy: A Fair Process Evaluation of Strategy Schools

Abstract

The ‘strategy creation’ process – the process of formulating and implementing strategy – has been under critical study for decades for not delivering the desired results. The discussion on how a strategy process should be run has resulted in a number of ‘strategy schools’.

Procedural justice theory is relevant to this discussion. It states that when people impacted by a process consider the process as ‘fair’ they demonstrate a higher level of trust and commitment, and performance increases.

This article evaluates the extent to which traditional ‘strategy schools’ comply with the tenets of procedural justice theory and highlight the non-compliance with these tenets for each of these schools.

The authors then propose a new strategy process model which has a greater fair process dimension than any of the more traditional ‘strategy schools’ and as such offers the potential to bring greater effectiveness to the strategy process.

Keywords: Procedural Justice, Fair Process, Strategy Formulation, Strategy Implementation, Strategy Schools, Change Management