Creating, Capturing and Protecting Value A Property Rights-based View of CompetitiveStrategy

This paper develops a property rights-based view of strategy (the “PRV”). A property right (or economic right) is an individual’s net valuation, in expected terms, of the ability to directly consume the services of an asset (including, e.g., a monopoly position) or consume it indirectly through exchange. Resources expended on exchanging, protecting and capturing such rights are transaction costs; thus, we directly link property rights, transaction costs, and economic value. We assume that all relevant exchange is costly and that all agents maximize their property rights. This implies that economizing with transaction costs may be a distinct source of value, and potentially of sustained competitive advantage. Moreover, strategizing may be understood as revolving around influencing impediments (i.e., transaction costs) to value creation. Expectations and contracting also become crucial parts of processes of creating, protecting and capturing value. We use these insights to derive a number of refutable propositions, and argue that key insights from both industrial organization economics and the resource-based view are consistent with the PRV.Property rights, transaction costs, industrial organization

Strategists in an uncertain world

Referring to the conceptual framework for strategy-as-practice (Whittington 2006, Jarzabkowski et al. 2007), this paper aims at investigating the practioners-practices couple, by analysing the main and recurrent individual characteristics of practitioners and the way they interact with their troubled environment and the strategy formation process of the organization (formalization, intuition, market or organization-focused, communication mode, ...). Hence, we focus on strategists and their strategizing practices.strategizing; strategists

"Theories are made only to die in the war of time": Guy Debord & the Situationist International as Strategic Thinkers

The Situationist International has been one of the main reference points during the past forty more years within social movement organizing, cultural studies, social theory, and philosophy concerned with the development of the city. While the SI have been understood in many ways, as inheritors as elaborators of a unorthodox Marxist politics drawing heavily from the history of the avant-garde, relatively little attention has been paid to the specifically strategic dimension of their thought and practice. This is surprising, particular in Debord?s case, given how much his work also draws from the history of military strategy. This paper particular will examine the strategic aspects of Debord and the SI?s thought and politics and how they rethinking the nature of strategy through collective forms of aesthetic-political practice

How should a small company interact in its business network to sustain its exchange effectiveness?

This paper investigates the dynamic alignment of network and business\ud development of two small firms in the printing industry. Developments are\ud followed over more than 8 years. The aim of the paper is to understand how\ud small firms can manage their network relations by maintaining both their\ud efficiency in existing business and flexibility to develop new business. The case comparison suggests that different networking approaches drive business\ud development. For successful business development both strong and varied ties\ud as well as the existence of different intermediary functions of partners are\ud necessary

Strategy Research and the Market Process Perspective

We argue that strategizing fundamentally concerns disequilibrium phenomena, such as discovery, innovation, resource-combination, imagination - in short, entrepreneurship. Therefore, the understanding of strategizing is likely to be led astray by drawing too heavily on equilibrium theories. Arguably, the three dominant economic approaches to strategy - the Porter industry analysis approach, the new industrial organization, and the ressourcebased approach - are characterized precisely by their strong reliance on equilibrium methodology. We argue that the market process approach in its Austrian version offers much inspiration for bringing process issues to bear on strategy issues.Strategy, organization, competitive advantage.

Micro-political aspects of mandate development and learning in local subsidiaries of multinational corporations

Beyond functional-structuralist approaches this paper sheds some light on micro political aspects of mandate development and learning processes in multinational corporations (MNC). As classical micro-political studies have shown, management behaviour and learning are not only constrained or enabled by certain structural and (national) cultural patterns, but have its own political agendas and are shaped by individual interests which leads to game playing, active or passive resistance and (re)negotiation of the 'rules of the game'. Based on the assumption that actors are neither the organs of given structures nor acting fully autonomous, the paper focuses on how subsidiary managers interpret and integrate individual, organisational as well as home and host country institutional factors into certain strategies of action. By discussing critical events in mini case studies on mandate development and learning in German subsidiaries in France we will highlight the interactive dynamics between key-actors micro-political strategies and particular institutional settings. Here we, firstly, discuss institutionalist approaches and investigate how different forms of home and host country embeddedness do influence the development of distinct managerial competences and decision making strategies at the subsidiary level. The paper refers then to the question how the overall strategy and multinational organisational design and policies relate to individual interests of key subsidiary actors. These can to higher or lower degrees be influenced by e.g. differences in nationalities, professional backgrounds as well as career stages, orientations and aspirations. By integrating these diverse relational layers, the paper will provide a more dynamic actor centred approach stressing both, the micro-political aspects and interactive construction of intra and intersubsidiary power relations, a key variable to explain mandate development and learning processes in MNCs. -- Über funktional-strukturalistische Ansätze hinausgehend, beschäftigt sich dieser Beitrag mit den mikropolitischen Aspekten von Mandatsentwicklungsprozessen in multinationalen Unternehmen. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung stehen die Strategien und Handlungsrationalitäten von Tochtergesellschaftsmanagern im Ausland. Anhand von drei Fallbeispielen zeigt der Beitrag wie Manager deutscher Auslandsgesellschaften in Frankreich individuelle, organisationale und institutionelle Faktoren (Heimat- und Gastlandeffekte) interpretieren und zu einer Handlungsstrategie verbinden. Ausgangspunkt ist dabei zunächst eine Diskussion relevanter Ansätze des Internationalen Managements und der international vergleichenden Organisationsforschung. Diese Ansätze werden um einen mikropolitischen Ansatz erweitert, der auf die spezifische Bedeutung von Nationalzugehörigkeit, professionellem Background und individueller Karriereorientierung bei Tochtergesellschaftsmanagern im Ausland abstellt.

Re-conceptualising strategy in design management education

The aim of this paper is to explain the current place of ‘strategy’ in design management education in the UK. The research questions concern the extent to which design management education meets the needs of future strategic roles in management and secondly the ways in which design management education is keeping abreast with current theory and practice of management strategy. The paper draws on research from a UK research council project, The Metamorphosis of Design Management Network (MDMN).The methodology uses a qualitative approach to analyse the transcripts and activities undertaken in symposia over a five year period from 2007-2012, with a focus on four events held from 2010-12. The findings on education and strategic designer development were matched against the content analysis of strategy in conference papers presented at British Academy of Management from 2009-13. The findings demonstrate the exposure of students to organisations and different design contexts. However other strategic management developments in strategy-as-practice, dynamic capabilities and scenario building provide new opportunities to extend design management education. The conclusion summarises the opportunities for design education and the development of students as strategic designers through new interdisciplinary approaches

A Bourdieusian Perspective on Strategizing

The use and the study of ‘practice’ has been widely developed in organization and strategic management research as an intermediary level of analysis between individuals, organizations, market fields and institutions. Bourdieu’s work has been largely mobilized in these studies, particularly within the attempt to define practice, for example by Jarzabkowski (2004), Johnson et al. (2003), Whittington (1996, 2006), Chia and Holt (2006). However, as asserted by Chia (2004), “advocates of practice-based approaches to strategy research may have underestimated the radical implications of the work of practice social theorists such as Bourdieu […] who they rely upon to justify this turn to practice” (Chia 2004: 30). Yet, authors mainly base on the characteristics of practice and on the relation between practice and habitus to understand how individuals develop their practical capacity to strategizing, but they mainly remain at a descriptive stage. They do not take into account the complete possibilities of the framework, mainly because they neglect the concept of field, which is nevertheless essential to understand the link between individuals and action. As Bourdieu puts it, “the ‘subject’ of what is sometimes called ‘company policy’ is quite simply the field of the firm or, put it more precisely, the structure of the relation of force between the different agents that belong to the firm”(Bourdieu 2005: 69). This highlights the struggling nature of strategy as a practice, a struggle for power, a political fight over time between agents. The aim of this paper is to propose a comprehensive perspective on practice by taking into consideration the core notions of field and habitus. I propose to consider strategizing as a practice. This emphasizes the ‘doing’ of multiple agents; the embodied and tacit aspects; the symbolic violence and power issues at stake. As a consequence, strategizing refers to the practice of motivated agents engaged in struggles and to account more completely for the relation of forces (and their development) between them.Bourdieu; Domination; Field; Habitus; Managers; Practice; Strategy