Strategy Process: Shaping the Contours of the Field (Strategic Management Society)

This book provides an overarching framework for cumulating the knowledge in the strategy process field.Provides an overarching framework within which to review the strategy process field. Identifies useful areas in which new research contributions can be made. Helps in the appropriate design of this research. Includes ten papers written by both North American and European scholars. Part of the Strategic Management Society series. The tired debates continue: Is strategy emergent or planned? Is it set bottom-up or top-down? Is it rational or political? It is all of these, and more. Nevertheless, reconciling the varied and often contradictory findings into coherent guidelines for action has been difficult. Also, scholars who write about the process of strategic change seem disconnected from their colleagues who write about the relatively steady-state processes of protecting and extending an existing strategy. But what if change is frequent, as in many businesses? What then is the process of continuous change and renewal? The purpose of this book is to offer an organizing framework that defines the contours of the strategy process field. It seeks to offer a "living" document that can form the basis for continuous refinement of the fields agenda. It is be based on the emerging consensus reached when strategy process researchers and practitioners met first in Vancouver on the sidelines of the SMS meeting and then in St. Gallen at the SMS mini conference hosted by IMD and the University of St. Gallen The 3rd book in the Blackwell SMS series, "Strategy Process" includes content at the cutting edge of the contemporary strategic management field. For example, it examines the evolution of resources under market liberalization and the evolution of strategic networks. Other critical topics include establishing organizational routines and capabilities for developing strategy and the effects of organizational culture and organizational learning on strategic decisions. Chapters are written by established strategic management scholars, Camillus (University of Pittsburgh), Lyles (Indiana University), Volberda (Erasmus University) and Baden-Fuller (City University, London) and young scholars such as Cuervo-Cazurra (University of Minnesota) and Siggelkow (Wharton). The book expands the horizons on the processes for developing strategy and should serve as a source book for strategic management scholars and thoughtful executives. Despite voluminous research, managing the process through which firms shape, implement and change strategy remains ill understood "The framework offered in the book provides a basis for the continuous refinement of the field's research agenda. It has been shared with strategy process researchers and practitioners at the Strategic Management Society's meetings and mini-conference on strategy process research. The book itself comprises nine papers written by North American and European scholars, and is clustered into four streams that follow from the framework: chapters that track strategy content longitudinally; chapters that study the impact of important strategy process elements on performance; chapters that study the links between a firm's context and process elements; and chapters that seek to study context/process/outcomes.". "The editors provide a commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of each stream."--BOOK JACKET.

Four editors from Switzerland, two from the International Institute for Management Development and two from the U. of St. Gallen, bring together a collection of 11 European and American essays that they believe collectively map the contours of the strategy management process field. Topics include the management of strategic initiatives, the social construction of organizational capabilities, organizational learning, and implementing and changing strategy. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The label strategy process, to some, is an oxymoron.