Kenneth Richmond Andrews (May 24, 1916 – September 4, 2005), was an American academic who, along with H. Igor Ansoff and Alfred D. Chandler, was credited with the foundational role in introducing and popularizing the concept of

business strategy In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessmen ...

Education, military service, and employment at Harvard Business School

Andrews graduated from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

in 1937 with a master's degree in English. He went on to pursue a PhD in English at the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...

but was drafted into the

Army Air Force The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. He served at the Statistical Control School, held at the campus of the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

and taught by members of the faculty. Andrews retired from the army at the rank of

Major Major ( commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicato ...

and joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1946, to teach Administrative Practices to MBA students. He completed his Phd dissertation on Mark Twain in 1948. By approximately 1950 he was a significant member of the small team developing HBS's Business Policy course.

Harvard Business School and Business Strategy

In 1965 the highly influential text-book "Business Policy: Text and Cases" was published, acknowledging Andrews as the author of the text portion. The text portion was also published separately under Andrews' name in 1971. Several editions of both books appeared through the 1980s. In addition to being perhaps the earliest concept of business strategy to be taught routinely in formal courses, the specific view of strategy formation Andrews taught appears to have provided many of the underlying precepts of what strategy is, for several branches of the strategy literature. Although he introduced a number of strategy precepts, Andrews did not set out a detailed concept of what strategy is. Instead he said that he chose to "sidestep the problem of drawing distinctions between objectives, policy and programs of action" Furthermore Andrews did not claim to originate all of the precepts he set out, and it has been noted that some had been introduced previously by

Philip Selznick Philip Selznick (January 8, 1919 – June 12, 2010) was professor of sociology and law at the University of California, Berkeley. A noted author in organizational theory, sociology of law and public administration, Selznick's work was groundbrea ...

in 1957 or Alfred D. Chandler in 1962. Despite sharing a number of Andrews' basic precepts, one major branch of the literature differed strongly from him with regard to how strategy forms. Andrews prescribed that strategy should be deliberately and consciously decided and adopted by management.

Henry Mintzberg Henry Mintzberg (born September 2, 1939) is a Canadian academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, ...

, however, teaches that in reality strategy often emerges from actions and behaviours at various organizational levels, and furthermore that this is desirable. Thus if both views are recognized there are two major types of process through which strategy may be formed: deliberate, and emergent. There has been vigorous debate concerning the extent to which each of these strategy formation processes is usual or appropriate.Ansoff, H. Igor, 1991, Critique of Henry Mintzberg’s ‘The Design School: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management’, ''

Strategic Management Journal The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is a professional society for the advancement of strategic management. The society consists of nearly 3,000 members representing various backgrounds and perspectives from more than eighty different countries. ...

'', vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 449–461. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.4250120605/abstract

Bibliography

* Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1951, Executive training by the case method, Harvard Business Review, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 58–70. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1971, The concept of corporate strategy, Richard D. Irwin, Homewood. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1971, New horizons in corporate strategy, McKinsey Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 34–43. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1973, Can the best corporations be made moral?, Harvard Business Review, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 57–64. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1980, Directors’ responsibility for corporate strategy, Harvard Business Review, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 30–42. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1981, Corporate strategy as a vital function of the board, Harvard Business Review, vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 174–180. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1981, Replaying the board’s role in formulating strategy, Harvard Business Review, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 18–23. * Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, 1984, Corporate strategy: the essential intangibles, McKinsey Quarterly, no. 4, pp. 43–49. * Learned, Edmund Philip, Christensen, C. Roland, Andrews, Kenneth Richmond, and Guth, William D., 1965, Business policy: Text and cases, Irwin, Homewood.

References

External links

Kenneth Andrews papers
at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School {{DEFAULTSORT:Andrews, Kenneth R 1916 births 2005 deaths Harvard Business School faculty Wesleyan University alumni American business writers United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II United States Army Air Forces officers