Strategy includes both goals and actions (Chandler, 1962; Andrews, 1971; Porter, 1980). Goals ‘state what is to be achieved and when results are to be accomplished, but do not state how the results are to be achieved’ (Quinn, 1980). Actions are a general label for bundles, sets, or sequences of resource deployments, initiatives, responses, moves, deals, investments, and developments. They include firm ‘conduct’ or external (i.e., interorganizational) actions as viewed in the SCP and in the new industrial organization literature (e.g., Shapiro, 1989), political and legal actions, and major internal administrative actions. This part of the definition emphasizes what the firm does over time: its actions and behaviors.
Goals and actions correspond to three traditional elements of strategy content (i.e., strategic choice): goals (e.g., vision), postures (e.g., scope or competitive position), and moves (e.g., joint ventures). These elements constitute a means–ends hierarchy (Simon, 1976), in which postures are intermediate goals coordinated by higher-level goals (e.g., profitability) and major policies that affect the firm’s overall direction and viability (Quinn, 1980). Postures, in turn, guide lower-level policies and actions, such as new product development and human resource management (Porter, 1980). Specific moves are means to achieve goals directly or indirectly through the creation, sustenance, and change of postures, or through changes in the firm’s resource mix.[7] In this means–ends chain, higher levels in the hierarchy change less frequently. They provide direction, integration, and consistency for lower levels, which constitute more detailed means and actions for reaching ends. Yet, despite this hierarchy, the relationship between strategy and tactics is dialectical rather than linear: available means constrain strategy (Harkabi, 1997) and lower-level managerial initiatives can converge into and shape higher-level strategies (Bower, 1970; Burgelman, 1983).8
Coordination is a term used to distinguish strategy from random behaviors and completely autonomous actions (e.g., Quinn, 1980; MacCrimmon, 1993). Strategy coordinates goals and means, internal resources and administrative infrastructure, specific courses of actions, and internal and external aspects of managing change. A firm’s coordinated action (i.e., realized strategy) can be based on a mix of coordinating mechanisms (Thompson, 1967). It can be recognized retrospectively as a pattern in a stream of actions (Andrews, 1971; Quinn, 1980; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). Coordinated action can be guided by a plan (i.e., intended strategy) in which long-term goals, intentions, and means are specified prior to actions. It can be centralized and stem from core managerial values or from a guiding sense of purpose. Alternatively, it can be based on improvisation, mutual adjustment to internal and external developments, or the (unexpected) interaction of agents (e.g., individuals) responding to simple rules.9
Strategy also includes both the firm’s location and direction within the environment. Spatial coordination, or strategy states, and temporal coordination, or strategy paths, are therefore complementary facets. Strategy states (i.e., postures) represent a view of the firm’s coordinated
us to view strategy also in relation to other potentially related strategies.
8 We see the idea that goals always dictate everything else as misguided. Rather, in some circumstances, intentions can be more malleable than resource stocks or environmental contingencies. Consequently, we view goals not only as constraints on subsequent decisions and strategies but also as variables.
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