مطالعات مدیریت راهبردی (Sep 2022)
Typology of open strategy underlying theories
Abstract
Aim and Introduction: Today, the concept of openness has spread in organizations and organizations have shown a special interest in open approaches. One of these open principles in organizations in the strategic field known through transparency and participation in strategy processes, which is called open strategy. This emerging phenomenon mentioned in various theoretical perspectives that need to be further understood. The purpose of this study is typology and content analysis of open strategy underlying theories, which based on qualitative content analysis using the deductive method. Methodology: The present study is fundamental based on purpose, based on the nature of data, qualitative and based on data collection methods. In addition, the method of doing it is descriptive analysis and the method of data analysis is using qualitative content analysis. The present study based on qualitative content analysis with a structuring approach and using a deductive method. To find the articles, various methods such as searching the Scopus database and strategy experts used using snowball sampling techniques and theory. Reputable English scientific articles were examined with the Scopus index and the search in this database was done with the focus on the keyword "Open Strategy" in the period 1990 to 2020. The articles obtained according to the purpose of the research and based on internal criteria (in terms of the articles being more comprehensive, articles published in reputable journals, highly cited articles and main authors, analytical articles in this field and influential articles introduced by other researches and It was also evaluated with the help of the research focal group (experts) and finally based on the mentioned criteria and after the final screening, 26 important English articles with high quality and in line with the research objectives were selected for data extraction. Findings: The results show that different theories and perspectives have directly and indirectly emphasized the openness of the strategy. In other words, in general, different theories are explicitly or implicitly influential in the field of open strategy. In total, 32 types of theories are effective in the field of open strategy, which were divided by the authors into 8 different theoretical approaches.The 8 theoretical approaches are: practical approaches, communication-based approaches, meaning-related approaches, stakeholder-related approaches, institutional approaches, knowledge/information-based approaches, resource-based approaches, and industrial organization-related approaches. From the intersection of 8 identified theoretical approaches and 2 introduced contextual dimensions, 16 types of open strategy contextual theories were obtained. These results show that open strategy, according to its theoretical basis, can be used as open strategy building methods, communication phenomenon, open meaning-making processes, new forms of stakeholder participation, institutionalized expectations, new order of information and knowledge flow, open source access and interactive competition. Introduce in the form of internal stakeholders or external stakeholders. Discussion and Conclusion: The task of open strategy in the simplest sense is to increase transparency and participation in strategic issues (internal and external stakeholders) that need to be further understood. In this article, an attempt made to identify the underlying strategies of open strategy and to provide a typology of this emerging literature using the method of qualitative content analysis. The main definition of open strategy according to the literature in this field based on the basic principles of transparency and inclusiveness of participation, while it said that the activity and practice of openness are in dynamic, non-uniform and heterogeneous sets. In other words, in a relatively comprehensive definition, it can be stated, "open strategy is a dynamic set of activities that allows for strategic transparency and / or inclusion of internal and / or external stakeholders with the help of information technology tools." In total, 32 theories are influential in the field of open strategy, some of which have been direct and more explicit and some of which have been implicit. The diversity and breadth mentioned around open strategy is inevitable. One way to recognize the diversity of these factors and issues is to classify them based on certain criteria. Therefore, for this purpose, in the present study, a two-dimensional matrix introduced and the typology of theories was structured based on two dimensions of theoretical approach and context. From the first dimension, for the typology of theories, there were different theoretical approaches to open strategy. For this purpose, the underlying theories of open strategy were divided into 8 relatively different theoretical approaches. Also, in terms of context, two modes of focusing on the internal environment of the company (equivalent to the scope of the company's internal stakeholders) and focusing on the external environment of the company (equivalent to the scope of the external stakeholders of the company) were introduced. Then, from the intersection of 8 theoretical approaches and 2 introduced contextual dimensions, 16 types of open strategy grounding theories were obtained. These types show that open strategy can be studied and developed as 8 different concepts based on the internal environment of the company (internal stakeholders) or the external environment of the company (external stakeholders). These results also show that in general, open strategy, according to its theoretical basis, can be used as open strategy methods, communication phenomenon, open meaning-making processes, new forms of stakeholder participation, institutionalized expectations, new order of information and knowledge flow, access to open resources. In addition, introduce interactive competition in the form of internal stakeholders or external stakeholders. Given that various theories refer to open strategy in some way, among them, practice approaches, knowledge-based approach theories, and resource-based approaches have provided useful starting points. It can also be said that among these, practice approaches, stakeholder approaches, institutional approaches and knowledge / information based approaches are more important and significant approaches that researchers can pay more attention to in their future research.
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