Corporate strategy is supposed to be the means by which an organisation achieves and sustains success. Yet, it rarely rises to that level, despite an abundance of corporate strategy theory and significant research from many organisations over the past few decades. The changes over the years are considered in the form of small, theoretical refinements, rather than large and significant steps required for further management transition (Papers4you.com, 2006).

What explains the relative failure of most organisations to create effective strategy? Part of the problem is that corporations and their managers have great difficulty clearly and consistently defining what corporate strategy is, and much of that struggle can be traced to their interpretation of the word strategy itself.

The original meaning of the word strategy derives from the Geek strategia, which is used in the military terms and represents the ability to employ available resources to win a war. This interpretation has generated problems when such concept is used in a business context because it implies the existence, even the necessity, of opponents. As a result, most managers believed that a corporate strategy implies a strong focus on competition, since competition takes place almost exclusively at the offering level, most organisations concentrate their strategic efforts on constantly improving the goods and services they offer. This overemphasis on the temporary success, however, can often obscure the kind of thinking and emphasis that would lead to sustained success, even a continuous repetition of temporary successes doesn