On the way to open strategy: Challenges and lessons learnt in a B2B context

Description

Due to complex and uncertain environments, more and more companies are forced to rethink strategizing and to consider opening up their strategy process to include stakeholders with the objective to get more innovative and diverse inputs. To date, however, little is known about the dynamics in an open strategy process. Therefore, the aim of this longitudinal study is to analyse how B2B companies can engage with open strategizing with different internal and external stakeholders over time. Initial findings indicate that the open strategy process develops incrementally with a focus on internal stakeholders in the beginning. The progress in open strategizing seems to depend on individual persons who promote open strategy internally. Our initial findings outline, that the inclusion and transparency of internal stakeholders brings along some challenges, referred to as dilemmas of open strategy. We found – for example – that a dynamic of more or less inclusion is necessary even among internal stakeholders, and that this procedure can lead to conflicts. At the same time, it became apparent that a high level of transparency and an advance clarification of the dynamics of the open strategy process (mixture of open and closed activities), can address this problem. This means participating stakeholders need to be informed about (e.g. information policies, participation policies, decision-making policies which were decided in a closed way) to ensure transparency also regarding procedural and organizational aspects of the open strategy process.

Period	08 Jul 2022
Event title	38th EGOS Colloquium - Organizing: The beauty of imperfection
Event type	Conference
Location	AustriaShow on map