Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

11.2.3 Beyond Organizational Coherence: Structural Heterogeneity as Condition

Organization theory has long treated coherence and integration as markers of organizational quality. From contingency theory’s emphasis on fit between structure and environment (Lawrence & Lorenz, 1967) to configuration theory’s focus on gestalts (Miller, 1996), the field has assumed that effective organizations achieve internal consistency and alignment among their elements. Fragmentation, inconsistency, and partial integration have been understood as problems to be solved or as transitional states on the path toward greater coherence.

The patchwork perspective developed in Chapter 8 inverts this assumption. It demonstrates that in template-free digital environments, partial integration is not a failure of management or a temporary condition awaiting resolution. It is a fundamental structural outcome of adaptation under constraint. Digital organizations assemble heterogeneous elements – legacy systems and new platforms, standardized processes and experimental practices, centralized control and distributed autonomy – that cannot be fully harmonized because they originate from different logics, serve different purposes, and operate on different temporal rhythms.

Recent research on organizational paradox and ambidexterity supports this reconceptualization. Smith and Lewis (2011) show that organizations can sustain contradictory commitments without resolving them into a singular logic. Firms manage multiple temporal processes simultaneously, maintaining fast-moving experimental layers alongside slow-moving structural cores (Beane & Leonardi, 2022; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013). Keller et al. (2022) show that capabilities often develop in parallel rather than replacing each other, creating repertoires rather than singular competencies.

The patchwork perspective extends these insights by showing that partial integration is not merely a response to paradox or a strategy for ambidexterity. It is a structural condition of organizing in environments where complete integration is constrained by external dependencies, platform architectures, and algorithmic governance. Firms do not fully control the elements they must coordinate. They cannot redesign their entire systems to achieve coherence because many components are externally governed, deeply path-dependent, or operationally necessary despite their incompatibility with other elements.

This reconceptualization fundamentally challenges the assumption that alignment is always desirable or achievable. It suggests that organizational effectiveness in template-free environments depends not on eliminating fragmentation, but on curating enough coherence to preserve operational viability while tolerating productive inconsistency. It implies that management’s role shifts from designing integrated systems to orchestrating workable connections among heterogeneous elements. It opens new questions about how firms maintain identity, coordinate action, and sustain performance when they cannot achieve the internal coherence that traditional theory prescribes.

Tartalomjegyzék

Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2026

ISBN: 978 963 664 204 4

Gazdaság

What happens when understanding comes only after action has already begun?

Traditional strategy rests on the assumption that organizations can understand their environment before deciding how to act. Yet the conditions that once allowed organizations to rely on benchmarking, best practices, and proven strategic templates can no longer be taken for granted. Today, organizations increasingly face situations for which no clear roadmap exists. Established assumptions become less reliable, familiar reference points lose their clarity, and strategic decisions must be made before their consequences can be fully understood.

Strategy Without Templates explores how organizations learn, adapt, and navigate environments in which uncertainty is pervasive and established templates are absent or no longer sufficient. Instead of treating strategy as a process of prediction and planning, the book explores how strategic paths take shape through action, experimentation, adjustment, and learning.

A central insight in the book is that temporary solutions are often necessary. What begins as a practical response to an immediate challenge may gradually shape future possibilities in unexpected ways. Some solutions create new opportunities and sources of advantage. Others become constraints that are difficult to overcome.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/hortovanyi-strategy-without-templates//

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