ABSTRACT

Decision-making is the essence of planning, and strategy is a plan. As such, it is applicable across a vast array of human activities. But not all plans are strategic. Most are purely functional, and comprise an acceptable application of means to ends. At this level of simplicity, the plan is little more than a decision or a set of rules for making decisions in specific issue areas. But increasing the number of decisions or decision points, even in a series of connected decisions, cannot properly be called strategy. Nor is the process of decision-making strategy. Strategy is far more comprehensive than that. Nonetheless, wise decision-making is a key element in designing and employing strategy, and so it is vital to strategic theory.