Contrasting Perspectives of Strategy Making: Applications in ‘Hyper’ Environments

Abstract

We revisit the original meaning of turbulence in the socioecological tradition of organization studies and outline a perspective on strategy making grounded in that tradition. This entails a contrast of the socioecological perspective with the more well-known neoclassical perspective on strategy, based on their core decision premises and their different understandings of environmental turbulence. We argue that while some mainstream strategy approaches have taken important strides toward addressing advanced turbulence, many others remain tethered to the neoclassical origins of the strategy discipline and are insufficiently responsive to the new landscape of strategy that now characterizes many industries. This new landscape is construed as the 'hyper environment', in which positive feedback processes and emergent field effects produce high volatility. We use two case illustrations from the US healthcare sector to examine how neoclassical and socioecological perspectives contribute to strategizing in hyper environments. Implications for strategic management theory and practice flow from this analysis.

The Philosophical Foundations of a Radical Austrian Approach to Entrepreneurship

“…To illustrate how a hermeneutic approach can help entrepreneurship researchers begin to answer the kinds of research questions a radical subjectivist approach raises, we turn to an example of an important entrepreneurial phenomenon that has received increasing attention in recent years: hypercompetition (D'Aveni, 1994;D'Aveni, Dagnino, & Smith, 2008;Organization Science, 1996;Selsky, Goes, & Babüroğlu, 2007;Wiggins & Ruefli, 2005). D'Aveni (1994, pp.…”

“…217-218) defined "hypercompetition" as "an environment characterized by intense and rapid competitive moves, in which competitors must move quickly to build advantages and erode the advantages of their rivals." This disequilibrium environment exhibits the genuine uncertainty and high volatility (Selsky et al, 2007) characteristic of kaleidic processes. But researchers have tended to focus on such environmental factors as givens and have yet to explore adequately the key role of the entrepreneurial imagination in creating the innovations that produce hypercompetitive environments.…”

“…At the firm level, according to its theorists, hypercompetition "requires firms to transform themselves in nontrivial ways, and in particular to create new and complex organizational capabilities" (Craig, 1996, p. 319), yet how they manage to do so has received little scholarly attention. And although many scholars recognize hypercompetition as a disequilibrium phenomenon (D 'Aveni, 1994;Selsky et al, 2007), those who have attempted to grapple with it thus far have relied primarily on equilibrium-based theories (e.g., Craig, 1996;D'Aveni, 1994;Wiggins & Ruefli, 2005).…”

The Moderating Influence of Industry Competition on the Relationship between Corporate Strategy and Organizational Performance

“…The central brute empirical fact in strategy is that some firms outperform others (Jelsky, et al 2007), meaning that, competitive rivalry influences an individual firm's ability to gain and sustain competitive advantage (Powell, 2003). Rivalry results from firms initiating their own competitive actions and responding to actions taken by competitors (Sirmon, et al 2008;Grant, 2013).…”

Conselhos De Administração E Monitoração Da Implementação Estratégica: Um Modelo De Eficácia

“…Em um contexto de maior turbulência, espera-se que as respostas estratégicas da empresa tenham alta repercussão em seu campo social, contribuindo para co-produzir mais turbulência (Selsky, Goes & Babüroglu, 2007 Em suma, a análise do referencial teórico indicou que a natureza e o alcance da atuação dos CAs na monitoração estratégica ainda não estão claramente estabelecidos na literatura, devido à carência de estudos sobre o tema e a uma insuficiente fundamentação teórica. Nesse sentido, propôs-se aqui uma reconceituação do papel do CA nessa tarefa, com base na TPE e em perspectivas de processo estratégico.…”