Evolutionary Strategic Planning
The argument is that long term planning is a bit of a waste of time because the world is such an unpredictable place how can we get anything useful out of the limited amount of information we have available?
The strongly competitive dynamic environment of the modern world changes so fast you cannot plan for it, only companies that accidentally develop a strategy that is successful will survive, the business world killing off those not able to adapt and change to new circumstances fats enough. All management can do is try and react to the present environment as efficiently as possible.
Darwin would be proud.
Money is still the driving force here (as per the classical approach), the difference is that top management does not have the ability to plan and act in order to maximize returns - but markets can.
Whatever methods managers adopt only the ones that work best will survive, i.e. come up with a plan, stick with it and the market will either let the company survive and prosper or wither and die.
From Gause's (1934) 'principle of competitive exclusion' if you put to different species of the same genus in a dish then they will survive, put two of the same species in the dish neither will survive. Coexistence is impossible if organisms make their living in the same way. Henderson (1989) extends this that for a business to survive (in a competitive environment) it must have a strategy of differentiation.
Can large, complex companies adapt fast enough to changing market forces (or do they become dinosaurs)? A successful company (organism) is more likely to succeed through luck than good judgement. It is better to be in the right place at the right time.
If an organization becomes a perfect fit for a certain market then they will prosper in the short term but be let stranded in the long term. A company that invests in research and diversification for the long term can always be undercut in the short term by a low cost producer.
In a competitive environment, strategies might be able to produce short term benefits but competitors will quickly imitate and catch up. Except for a small number of companies with significant market power, economy/efficiency is the best strategy (Williamson, 1991).
One comment here is that the numbers of companies forming and failing are complementary indicators of economic health and dynamism. Firms that have not adapted to the new conditions perish and new ones emerge to take advantage of new opportunities.
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