ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a Canadian electricity utility owned by its provincial government, labelled ‘Canpower’. In some respects an electricity utility has strategy formulation and testing concerns which are particularly difficult. The chapter focuses on structuring top-down formulation of corporate strategy in a way which facilitates integrating bottom-up strategy formation and collectively testing the resulting overall corporate strategic plans. ‘Strategy’ is used in the usual plain English sense of ‘choices involving decisions with important, broad or long-term implications’. ‘Corporate strategy formulation’ assumes a broad plain English interpretation of ‘formulation’ in the ‘setting forth in a systematic manner’ sense. Strategy formulation and testing also involves ‘management levels’ and associated ‘management structures’ to deal with the integration of top-down and bottom-up strategy formulation and testing processes. Pearce Ivor wanted Carl to test Canpower’s frameworks and models for strategy formulation with respect to corporate uncertainty, risk, opportunity, and underlying complexity management.
