Strategy: Where is the Pattern?

Abstract

Strategy as an academic subject and as a concern for practitioners has grown in importance over the last decade. A review of the strategy literature reveals that the model employed by most current schools of thought concentrates on the notion of the firm attempting to control its own destiny in the face of a hostile and faceless environment. In this paper we seek to explore an alternative view of strategy which acknowledges the limitations of a theoretical and managerial discourse that emphasizes the dichotomy between the firm and the environment and constitutes the firm as the locus of strategic control. Starting with a processual definition of strategy as consistency in a pattern of firm actions, we discuss the sources of consistency; cognitive, cultural, political, economic, market relationship, institutional relationship and network structures, and show that they can stem from outside the firm as well as within.