Miles and Snow Organizational Strategies

The model of organizational strategies was developed by Raymond E. Miles an Emeritus Professor at University of California and Charles C. Snow a Professor in Business Administration at Penn State University.

The review of the model is based on the book “Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process” published in 1978. Miles and Snow argued that companies develop their adaptive strategies based on their perception of their environment. The different organization types view their environments in different ways, causing them to adopt different strategies. These adaptive strategies allow some organizations to be more adaptive or mere sensitive to their environments than others, and the different organization types represent a range of adaptive companies. Miles and Snow identified four unique strategies that are used by organizations.

Raymond E. Miles was professor emeritus and former dean of the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations from Stanford. He has published five books and over fifty articles based on his research on leadership and managerial philosophies, organizational development, organization design, and alternative arrangements of strategy, structure and process.

Charles C. Snow is the Mellon Foundation Professor of Business Administration and chairman of the Department of Management and Organization at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. He has research and consulting experience in both formulation and implementation of business strategies. He is on the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of World Business, and six other academic journals. He has been a visiting professor at several institutions and has conducted in-company executive education programs for a variety of international organizations.

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