Governing Strategy Dynamics

The object of the article is a company’s strategic management processes. The aim is to propose a dynamic model to explain how a company’s realised strategy does emerge from interactions of purposes, tensions, and pressures dynamically interplaying. The paper contributes to strategy literature in two directions. First, we expect the model will be useful to management as a reference frame for understanding and efficiently governing a company strategy-making behaviour, both in cases in which the aim is to transform it radically, and when it is to be innovated by means of gradual evolutive change. Second, the model constitutes a set of hypotheses to orient further empirical and theoretical analysis. The analysis which we conduct, examining theoretic contributions and empirical settings, is strongly influenced by the assumption that the subject of the strategic government of companies may benefit from a systemic approach which considers the dynamic interaction among the many processes which impact a company’s situation. Markedly, the strategic processes we focuse on are the learning processes which lie at the origin of top management’s strategic intents and mental models; the managerial processes in which top management’s actions are made clear; the entrepreneurial behaviour both induced by top management or which develops autonomously. All these processes unfold in environmental contexts which are usually intensely changeable.