11 DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS STRATEGIES Csaba Székely University of West-Hungary, Faculty of Economic, Sopron, Hungary Email: szekely@ktk.nyme.hu Summary: The classical management approach focused on the increase of productivity which even at that time could not had been realized without setting objectives and elaborating plans. In Taylor’s era, however, analyses were primarily focused on solving internal problems of the organizations; structure design, organization, performance evaluation and control had become the focus of attention. In general, short-term, operative goals had been set and the implementation of them had been tried to be achieved. The term “strategy” came much later into the focus of attention, only in the 1950s. After recognizing the importance of strategic planning, strategic management has become the most important concept and tool of the corporate governance under competitive conditions. The theory and methods of strategic management have been greatly evolved over the past decades and now strategic management can be considered as the starting point of several new disciplines. But the views on strategies have been also changed: new theories have been developed for the systematization and for their implementation. The presentation discusses the main stages and approaches of the strategic thinking. It deals with the divergences and branching of the strategic management and the professional areas starting thereof. Finally, it attempts to form groups of the existing strategy development approaches. Keywords: strategy, strategic management, competitive strategies, innovation, abduction 1. INTRODUCTION The word strategy is of Greece origin; it is connected with strategics, but in the Ancient China Sun Tzu was also engaged in the art of military leadership 6 . Strategy uses military actions and operations to achieve victory. What Von Clausewitz 7 meant by strategy was „using battles in order to win the war”; i.e. the goal was to reach a long-term success. The term strategy was rooted in the field of economic sciences through the game theory, where “planning of series of defined game-actions are meant by strategy, where each action is formed depending on the possible own actions and the expecting contra-actions” (Chandler, 1962). On the basis of this corporate economics took over the term strategy and it was used in the American universities at first (Chandler, 1962, Ansoff, 1965). The strategic approach has developed one of the most important management functions, the planning. The main task of the corporate governance is to set up future plans and to make decisions in order to implement them. Conscious shaping of the future can be made through elaborating plans and implementing them. Analysing the development of planning approaches, Ackoff (1974) mentions three more basic approaches. 6 Sun Tzu: The Art of the War. Original: 500 B.C. Translated by S.B. Griffith. Oxford University Press, New York, 1963. 7 Von Klausewitz, C.: On War (translated by M. Howard and P. Paret), Princeton University Press, 1976. DOI: 10.17626/dBEM.ICoM.P01.2012.p002 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Repository of the Academy's Library