Strategy tools’ use in the largest companies in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Bruno José Olim Marote Gomes de
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/2496
• topic: Strategy; Strategy tools; Strategizing; Estratégia; Ferramentas estratégicas

Strategy as practice is an emergent view in strategy research that focuses on the practical things of strategy, that is, the practitioners, the practices and the praxis. In this perspective, strategy tools such as SWOT Analysis, Scenario Analysis or Balanced Scorecard are strategic practices around which strategic activities take place. This dissertation departs from a practice perspective to examine the use of strategy tools in the largest companies in Portugal. The main goal is to find the most popular strategy tools and to describe their use in companies. This is relevant since it is reported in the literature that companies invest vast resources to acquire and implement these tools. Moreover, strategy tools are important vehicles to turn theories actionable in practice. It was adopted a mixed method research that comprises the utilisation of two data collection techniques. Firstly, a questionnaire was applied to obtain a broad overview about the use of strategy tools. Secondly, seven interviews were done in different companies to better understand the questionnaire results and to get more detailed information about strategy tools’ use. In terms of results, we found that SWOT Analysis, Scenario Analysis and Brainstorming are the most popular strategy tools in the largest companies operating in Portugal. Regarding strategy tools choice, we detected that managers’ prime concern is rationality and efficiency. In the deployment of strategy tools, we discovered that managers typically adapt them to their needs and challenges. Finally, this research suggests a framework to analyse the use of strategy tools. Our model comprises four elements: strategy tools, strategy practitioners, context and praxis.