Towards An Organic perspective on strateg. The Mechanistic perspective, страница 2

Collectively, the organic developments represented an important shift in the underlying epistemological assumptions of the mechanistic perspective concerning time, flow, and coupling within and across models. First, the view of time in the mechanistic perspective is discrete or synchronic: it focuses on a single occurrence of a set of givens at a particular time. As a result, it is essentially timeless: it pays little attention to past and future, process, lags and duration, and the creation of new entities. By contrast, organic ideas adopt an incessant and diachronic concept of time: concepts and relationships are part of continuous processes and iterated sequences, and entities are created rather than given.^[1] Second, the mechanistic perspective contrasts with organic ideas in its directional view of flow. It often presents a linear and sequential view of events and causality, and highlights deterministic causes of behavior (Bourgeois, 1984). By implication, it pays less attention to interaction, feedback and to multiple, reciprocal, and endogenous influences. Lastly, although early concepts of strategy emphasized its integrative nature (e.g., Andrews, 1971), the mechanistic perspective is characterized by internal differentiation: the constructs in both explanatory and prescriptive models are more developed and better specified than the relationships that hold them together. By contrast, organic ideas emphasize integrated (i.e., problemcentered, multilevel and relational) views of strategy phenomena and concepts.

The move to organic epistemological assumptions offers several advantages to the field of strategy. First, it reflects a growing appreciation of the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of strategy. Second, it maintains continuity since it builds on, rather than rejects, lower-level mechanistic conceptions (Boulding, 1956). Finally, as changes, conflict, and interdependence are the chief concerns of modern firms and strategy itself, organic assumptions seem to hold a natural appeal. Nonetheless, organic developments have been only partially assimilated into the mainstream of the strategy field. Furthermore, the field has experienced a growing separation between prevalent analytic and prescriptive models and the new concepts and descriptive ideas.

Against this backdrop, and to capitalize on the relative strengths of the two progressions, this paper outlines an organic perspective on strategy core issues.^[2] Being organic, the new perspective derives its internal consistency from organic epistemological assumptions on time, flow, and construct coupling. Paralleling the mechanistic perspective, it provides a unified set of conceptual, explanatory, and prescriptive elements. Particularly, it introduces a concept of strategy as an adaptive coordination of goals and actions. It presents the Organization–Environment–Strategy–Performance (OESP) model, an integrative theoretical structure that links different middle-range theories and synthesizes mechanistic and organic ideas. Lastly, it includes an organic model of the strategic management process in which the iterative and integrative qualities of the process are stressed. These three parts of the organic perspective are internally compatible, represent the field’s continuity and progress, and are better suited to a more complex, interconnected, uncertain and everchanging world.^[3]

The development of an organic perspective can contribute to the field in several respects.^[4] First, without sacrificing key insights and contributions of the mechanistic perspective and its attention to prescription, an organic perspective can help renew mechanistic concepts and models by aligning them with organic themes. Second, an organic perspective can integrate various research streams that share its epistemological orientation, and foster cross-fertilization of conceptual, theoretical, and analytic models. Lastly, beyond renewal and integration the organic perspective can stimulate new ideas and applications. Once the organic set of assumptions on time, flow, and coupling have been isolated from their original contributions they can be applied and recombined in ways other than the one described here.^[5]