Samuel Doria Medina's Management Trajectory: A Clue to the Mintzberg-Ansoff-Goold Polemic

An outstanding feature of this book is that it offers a deep insight into the working of a strategy direction-setting by a visionary CEO supported by the implementational process of the corporate centre staff. This insight sheds light on the centre’s value-creation process, which includes core competence, sense-making, parenting roles, and strategic management styles as well as the organisational and implementational design for both divisional and multi-business corporations. Multiple survey interviews with the CEO and his staff as well as industry specialists and experts from multiple fields and policy incumbents, a qustionnaire survey with the stake holding members, a bibliographical survey, and a document search were carried out with a view to deductive/inductive inferences and hypothesis/construct–creation/verification purposes. The analysis here demonstrates, first, that Bowlby’s attachment theory, sense-making, and conviction narrative clarify the personality traits underpinning managerial stability; and, second, that Max Joseph’s trading asset logic can nicely combine with core competence theory as a binding logic of multi-business practices. It empirically verifies the dictum that excellent though daring strategy must be grounded in solid administrative and financial implementational realities. The book provides a framework for future organisational design including management control tools as it creates a new understanding of business and corporate strategies.