STRATEGY and TACTICS
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3217 ▶ |
| Object type | General information |
The American Heritage Dictionary defines tactics as: “The technique or science of securing the objectives defined by strategy”.
Strategy covers long-term planning and thus embeds tactics. Furthermore, various tactics are generally possible in order to reach strategic objectives.
From a most embracing viewpoint strategy, as well as tactics, depends on the best possible knowledge of the considered system, which introduces at least two different, but related, problems:
- the evolving global conditions of the system are rarely known with a sufficient precision, which leaves many times strategy in doubt, or conditional to a subsequent betterment of our knowledge.
- In complex systems, chaotic transformations reflect this insufficient knowledge and may introduce difficulties even at the tactical level.
However the general embedment of short-term trends within long-term ones may be of some help.