Strategy Development at Castle Press
Andy Bailey and Julie Verity

The two cases, New Town Council and Castle Press, illustrate the process of strategy development within different organisational contexts. Both cases are based on the views of the strategy development process as seen by members of the respective top management teams. The Castle Press case describes how five members of the top management team view the process. Both cases are con­ structed around two general themes. The process of strategy development and the organisational context in which it takes place.
The two cases illustrate differences in the strategy development process, demonstrating that the pro­ cess of managing strategy development in one organisation …show more content…
We revise it every year, so it's ongoing. It is continuous, changing annually as we progress.
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

The strategy process is mainly planning. But because we are dealing with global markets and there are always things happening, like economic changes in various parts of the world, we have to react to these rather than plan for them! We might be able to plan that something could happen; but to predict when and where is not so easy - we have to react to these external influences.
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

We are commissioning new books now that will reach a peak of sales in the year 2000. So I think there is too much emphasis on the shmt term. We need to force ourselves to think longer term, not just five years down the line.
MARKETING DIRECTOR

In my view, the information for strategy development tends to be more informal than formal. We are not very good at collating centrally what is key information about the external environment. It tends to be much more in people's heads rather than having a resource that can be consulted and information taken from there.
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

A PARENTAL DRIVE FOR PLANNING

The strong emphasis on planning, while driven from within Castle Press, was reinforced by the corpor­ ate group. At this group level, a recent change in TMT make-up had changed the style of downward communication to Castle senior management.