Developing a dominant logic of strategic innovation

Purpose: This paper aims to lay the foundations to develop a dominant logic and a common thematic framework of strategic innovation (SI) and to encourage consensus over the field’s core foundation of main themes. Design/methodology/approach: The paper explores the intersection between the constituent fields of strategic management and innovation management through a concept mapping process. The paper categorizes the main themes and search for common ground in order to develop the core thematic framework of SI. The paper looks at the sub-themes of SI in published research and develops a more detailed framework. The conceptual categories derived from the process are then placed in a logical sequence according to how they occur in practice or in the order of how the concepts develop from one other. Findings: The results yield seven main themes that form the main taxonomy of SI: types of SI, environmental analysis of SI, SI planning, enabling SI, collaborative networks, managing knowledge, and strategic outcomes. Research limitations/implications: The new thematic framework the paper is proposing for SI remains preliminary in nature and would need to be tried and tested by researchers and practitioners in order to gain acceptability. Academic rigor and methodological structure are not sufficient to determine whether our conceptual framework will become widely diffused in academia and industry. It would have to pass through an emergent, evolutionary process of selection, adoption and an inevitable degree of change and adaptation, just like any other innovation. Practical implications: The practical implications concern the production of instructive material and the application of strategic management initiatives in industry. The proposed themes and sub-themes can serve as a logical framework to develop and update publications, which have been instrumental in their own right to shape the field. The paper also provides a checklist of potential research projects in SI, which will improve and strengthen the field. The new framework provides a comprehensive checklist of strategic management initiatives that will help industry to initiate, plan and execute effective innovation strategies. Originality/value: The concept mapping of the themes of SI yields a new dominant logic, which will influence the evolution of the field and its relevance to both academia and industry

Becoming salient : the TMT leader’s role in shaping the interpretive context of paradoxical tensions

How do paradoxical tensions become salient in organizations over time? Ambidexterity and paradox studies have, thus far, primarily focused on how tensions inside organizations are managed after they have been rendered salient for actors. Using a longitudinal, embedded case study of four strategic business units (SBUs) within a media organization, we theorize the role of the top management team (TMT) leader’s practices in enabling tensions to become salient for their respective lower level managers when there are initial differences in how tensions are interpreted across levels. Our findings extend a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing by adding interpretive context as an enabling condition that shapes the emergence of salience through the provision of a constellation of cues that guide sensemaking. Informed by a practicebased perspective on paradox, we also contribute a conceptual model of leadership as practice, and outline the implications for ambidexterity studies

Why good things don’t happen:the micro-foundations of routines in the M&A process

Why do organizations reject favorable opportunities - why don't good things happen? To address this question, we examine companies that fail to proceed with major opportunities for strategic renewal. By focusing upon routines in 28 cases of reverse mergers and acquisitions decisions across three continents, the research uncovers the centrality of a hitherto overlooked process, the authorization routine. The characteristics of this routine, and its nested nature, are shown to be critical to whether favorable opportunities are progressed. These findings contribute to the mergers and acquisition literature by extending prior process models and to the routines literature by showing how links and interactions between different layers of routines, and the nature of the routine enactment itself, are important in affecting strategic outcomes

Design-led strategy : how to bring design thinking into the art of strategic management

Design thinking has emerged as an important way for designers to draw on rich customer insights to enhance their products and services. However, design thinking is now also beginning to influence how corporate managers bring customer data into their day-to-day strategic planning. We call this integration of design thinking into the practice of strategic management “Design-Led Strategy” and show how it complements but extends current design-thinking perspectives. Adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective, this article identifies four archetypal practices that managers can use to strategize with design-thinking content. Its findings provide insight into the practices associated with situating design thinking within organizational practice

In pursuit of ambidexterity : managerial reactions to innovation-efficiency tensions

Whereas tensions arising from the pursuit of ambidexterity have been documented, how these are interpreted and managed by actors themselves remains largely unexplored. Based on in-depth case research in a large Scandinavian based telecommunications organization pursuing ambidexterity, we identify a path-dependent process of tension interpretation and tension management at different levels of the organization. Our findings suggest that in the context of an ambidextrous strategy, actors are actively involved in managing arising tensions based on their differing interpretations of these tensions (where ambidextrous demands are seen as complementary, conflicting or interrelated). We find that these interpretations are influenced by actors’ strategic orientation and organizational level. Our study extends understanding of the pursuit of ambidexterity in practice, offering a pluralist, path-dependent perspective of how actors perceive and deal with ambidexterity tensions

Recovering the divide : a review of the big data analytics—strategy relationship

Research on big data analytics has been burgeoning in recent decades, yet its relationship with strategy continues to be overlooked. This paper reviews how big data analytics and strategy are portrayed across 228 articles, identifying two dominant discourses: an input-output discourse that views big data analytics as a computational capability supplementing prospective strategy formulation and an entanglement discourse that theorizes big data analytics as a socially constructed agent that (re)shapes the emergent character of strategy formation. We deconstruct the inherent dichotomies of the input-output/entanglement divide and reveal how both discourses adopt disjointed positions vis-à-vis relational causality and agency. We elaborate a semiotic view of big data analytics and strategy that transcends this standoff and provides a novel theoretical account for conjoined relationality between big data analytics and strategy

Artefact Appropriation in Facilitated Modelling: An Adaptive Structuration Theory Approach

Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of unveiling the black box of Operational Research (OR) practice. However, despite the emerging empirical studies in the area known as ‘Behavioural OR’, there is still a dearth of research into how artefacts are used at the micro-level of OR practice. This paper addresses this gap by using Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) to study the appropriation (use) of artefacts during a Facilitated Modelling (FM) workshop. We argue that the appropriation of artefacts from the workshop participants enables them to engage in negotiation of meaning with action implications effectively, but appropriation occurs at varying intensities (high, medium, low) depending on the issue of concern. Moreover, we identify that artefacts are reproduced if their reproduction is an aim or part of an aim of strategic discourse. Finally, we outline the limitations of our study and future research avenues