Towards An Organic perspective on strateg. The Mechanistic perspective, страница 21

We see the paper’s chief contribution in proposing an extension and alternative to the mechanistic perspective and one that potentially offers a more dynamic, integrative, and appropriate framework for the phenomena and questions of interest to the field. The focus on organic ideas as desirable for the field’s development is meant to reduce the perceived asymmetry between their potential and actual use, and to suggest that relying solely on mechanistic ideas may lead into a blind alley. The organic perspective provides a coherent yet distinct view on the field’s core concerns and a means to generate and exchange ideas, facilitate interdisciplinary work, and increase the compatibility between what we study, teach, and practice.

The organic perspective is consistent with prior advocates of integration (e.g., Barney and Zajac, 1994) and dynamics (Porter, 1991). Yet it also extends these works. It gives a more concrete meaning to the notion of dynamics by combining issues related to time, such as process and history, with those related to flow, such as interaction and feedback. It further provides substance to the notion of integration by offering broadly defined constructs, establishing their interrelationships, and showing how diverse models can be unified. Moreover, it joins prior proposals to combine both dynamics and integration (e.g., Bourgeois, 1984; Bowman and Hurrey, 1993; MacIntosh, and MacLean, 1999). It particularly puts to use, updates, and elaborates the work of Bourgeois (1984), among the first to highlight the need for the field to move from mechanistic to organic views.^[16]

Though they provide different perspectives on the same issues, there are many ways in which organic and mechanistic ideas complement each other. Particularly, the questions of how a particular firm succeeded or failed, and what were the contributing historical conditions and developments, go hand in hand with the question of whether its fortunes came about because of a brilliant strategy, superior resources, favorable environment, or pure luck. Moreover, rational analysis is incomplete if it fails to account for the social nature of reality. In turn, the use of analysis and logical baselines can inform attempts to influence or develop actual behavior of individuals and social systems.

The organic perspective also offers several implications for the development of practice. When employed as a way of thinking, it encourages managers to think and act in ways that are more allocentric, holistic, process-oriented, entrepreneurial, and creative. It sensitizes them to issues of timing, critical intervention points, interaction, and the recognition of temporal patterns and sequences. However, unless organic ideas are supplemented by the applicable analytic models, strategic analysis and management risk becoming exclusively an art. Although good beginnings have been made by options thinking, new analytic models that can help strategic managers better deal with uncertainty, rapid change, and turning points are badly needed. Traditional analytic tools can also be improved. For example, models of internal analysis should move beyond the analysis of resources and activities to include other organizational aspects, and to highlight the role of organization as a context, process, and product of strategy. Similarly, models that integrate sociological and economic aspects of the environment, or that move beyond traditional life-cycle conceptions of its evolution, are lacking. Moreover, although SWOT analysis is still useful, it can no longer serve as a primary model to guide strategic choice (Hill and Westbrook, 1997).

What general directions for a new research agenda for the field of strategy can be derived from the organic perspective? We divide these into conduct and substance implications while recognizing that some implications contain a little of both.