ABSTRACT
Strategy is a term that all business people believe they know and understand (O’Regan and Ghobadian, 2002). When speaking about management concepts such as Total Quality Management or business strategy, strategy has different connotations, and there is little agreement in terms of defining what it is, despite decades of development. It is therefore very important to provide a definition that suits the purpose of this section of the book, which is related to strategic quality planning (SQP). The concept of a strategy has its origins in the military, perhaps with Sun Tzu’s introduction to the The Art of the War, written in 551 B.C. (Tzu, 2001). In this context, strategy refers to an army’s ability to use its available resources to defeat enemies. This same idea can be extrapolated to business activities; however, its use in this context refers to the ability of business organizations to outperform their rivals in a competitive market.
