The "missing" perspective in strategic management

• Main Author: Sousa, Filipe
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/5136
• topic: Strategic management; Firm; .; Faculdade de Ciências Sociais

The firm is not an independent entity striving for survival in a hostile environment. Instead, the firm is embedded in intricate business networks while operating in competitive markets. The firm is strongly connected to several counterparts via lasting cooperative relationships and engaged in purely arm’s-length relations with some of its suppliers and customers. Since all firms are interdependent, their strategy cannot be a tool deployed at will in zero-sum games. A new, essentially relational conception of strategy is in demand. This conceptual paper aims to consolidate the so-called ‘missing’ perspective in the Strategic Management field. By building upon the realistic premise of a ‘co-opetitive’ business world wherein inter-firm competition and cooperation coexist, that missing perspective ought to depict strategy as a pattern of decisions and actions with a twofold purpose: firstly, the firm’s (reactive) adaptation to a largely anonymous and unresponsive environment; and secondly, the (proactive) interrelation of the firm with and the shaping of a full-faced and changing business context.