Towards An Organic perspective on strateg. The Mechanistic perspective

Strategic Management Journal

Strat. Mgmt. J., 23: 561–594 (2002)

Published online 28 March 2002 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/smj.239

The strategy field’s core issues—the concept of strategy, causal models relating strategy to other constructs, and models of strategic management and choice—have been previously addressed by two key progressions. The mechanistic perspective based on disciplinary-based theories, the design model, and a view of strategy as a planned posture, has provided a unified view, but a narrow and increasingly less pertinent one. The advent of organic developments that included strategy process research, evolutionary and process models, and interactive and integrative views, has provided richness and pertinence, but not a unified perspective. These two progressions marked an epistemological shift from mechanistic to organic assumptions: from discrete to incessant time, from directional to interactive flow, and from differentiated to integrated constructs and models. Building on this shift, this paper proposes an organic perspective that combines the insights and coherence of the mechanistic perspective with the more relevant organic ideas. It makes use of the organic assumptions to advance a view of strategy as an adaptive coordination, introduce the Organization–Environment–Strategy–Performance (OESP) integrative theoretical model, and present an organic model of strategic management. The organic perspective provides a basis for an upgraded, more unified, and better-attuned view on strategy’s core issues. Copyright  2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Final revision received 25 October 2001

shared assumptions, its concepts, theories, and models have mutually reinforced one another, and facilitated better communication, generation, and exchange of ideas. Yet, despite its many contributions and achievements, the tenets of the mechanistic perspective have been increasingly questioned. Its simple assumptions, better suited to a relatively stable and predictable world and to the early stages of the field’s development, seem to be at odds with the more complex and constantly changing observed behavior of individuals, firms, and markets. Furthermore, critics have described it as static (e.g., Pettigrew, 1992), linear (e.g., Henderson and Mitchell, 1997), and fragmented (e.g., Schendel, 1994).

Prompted by the limitations of the mechanistic perspective, and inspired by the advent of new ideas in the social and natural sciences, the field’s second broad progression saw the emergence and spread of organic developments. Key developments included research on strategy formation and implementation (e.g., Quinn, 1980; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985), evolutionary ideas and process models (e.g., Nelson and Winter, 1982; Van de Ven, 1992; Barnett and Burgelman, 1996), the recognition of reciprocal and interactive relationships between strategy and other constructs (e.g., Tirole, 1989; Henderson and Mitchell, 1997), and integrative research (e.g., Baden-Fuller and Stopford, 1994). These research streams have introduced more dynamic and eclectic views of key constructs, offered new views of strategy formation, highlighted the importance of strategy processes especially against rational unitary actor models, and portrayed a more complex view of causality. Moreover, they have shifted the focus from strategic choice to strategic change, and given much more recognition to ‘soft’ variables and to the messy side of reality.