Strategic managers are constantly looking for efficiencies and improvements. But energy is consumed in efforts to co-ordinate the organisation structure. Strategic managers need to be generalists. Those lower down are often specialist having only the authority delegated to them down the chain of command. Strategy-making, in the MB, is theoretically made at the top.
Top managers receive relevant information from below.
The assumptions are clear Strategy is made at the top and separated from operations where programmes are implemented. Mintzberg on looking into actual businesses however found that these planning processes tended to operationalise strategy rather than innovate for new strategy. Planning emphasised analysis and incremental changes more than imagining and generating ideas for new radical strategy. This is not a problem if the environment of Machine Bureaucracy is stable. An MB needs an efficient management information system.