The Poverty of Strategy (CDC Research Colloquium)
Robin Holt (University of Bristol)
14. May
At least since the ancient Greeks, strategists have sought to direct and distinguish organized activity through planned, rational decision-making, through the imaginative creation of vision, or through the assertion of will. In all cases, strategy impoverishes, not because it only ever offers limited view of organized life, but because it is dedicated to concealing these limits behind grand generalities.
The situation is exacerbated when machines and algorithms, not humans, organize. In their book on The Poverty of Strategy: Organization and the Shadows of Technology, Holt and Zundel attempt to rescue strategy by isolating what, they argue, remains its essence: strategy is a continual organizational struggle towards authenticity. This, too, is a condition of poverty, but one that sets in place an unhomely condition of questionability as opposed to one of distinctive settlement. It is the sole gift of strategy to thoughtfully refuse rather than impose, organizational imperatives.
- 14.05.
- 12-2 h
- C40.320