Relationships Among Strategic Thinking Characteristics: A Correspondence Analysis Approach

Abstract

Strategic thinking is a complex construct that refers to the cognitive activities of individual strategists. A literature review has identified five dimensions of strategic thinking, each exhibiting a dual nature: attitude towards the environment (confrontational vs. cooperative); level of participation (individual vs. collective); approach to change (exploitation vs. exploration); information processing style (intuitive vs. analytical); and level of flexibility (planned vs. emergent). This article aims to identify how these individual characteristics of strategic thinking cluster and whether recurring patterns can be observed, leading to a typology of strategic thinkers. The study adopts an exploratory approach, with quantitative research conducted on a sample of strategic thinkers in Poland (n=184) using an original validated scale. To identify relationships between the characteristics of strategic thinking, statistical methods for dependency analysis of categorical traits were applied, including multidimensional correspondence analysis and cluster analysis. The research identified three types of strategic thinkers, with correspondence analysis most clearly indicating a type embodied by a confrontational, intuitive, exploring, and planning individualist leader. The quality of the mappings obtained through multidimensional correspondence analysis demonstrates the utility of this method for profiling strategic thinking styles, while hierarchical cluster analysis effectively supports the interpretation of the correspondence analysis results.

Keywords

• strategic thinking
• correspondence analysis
• strategists
• strategic thinkers
• strategic thinking scale