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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Concepts of strategy

Tessin Retail has a mature, stable market and a hierarchical culture, and the board wants consistency of direction. A new director proposes using only the strategy as variety lens to guide strategy making. What is the most appropriate advice based on the Johnson, Scholes and Whittington approach?

The best advice is to use the lenses together. Johnson, Scholes and Whittington present design, experience, variety and discourse as complementary views, each highlighting different aspects of strategy, so relying on only one lens would give an incomplete picture of how Tessin's strategy develops.

  1. AAccept the proposal, since the variety lens is the only lens that explains real organisations
  2. BReject the proposal, since the design lens is the only valid lens for stable markets
  3. CUse the lenses together, as each reveals different aspects of strategy and no single lens gives a complete pictureCorrect
  4. DUse the discourse lens alone, because language is the only controllable element

Explanation

Johnson, Scholes and Whittington present the lenses as complementary views; each highlights different aspects and limitations, so using several gives richer insight. Choosing one lens exclusively, as the other options suggest, would ignore aspects of strategy the others reveal.

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