Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

11.5.5 Cross-Disciplinary Integration

The template-free framework intersects with multiple theoretical traditions beyond strategy and organization theory. Developing these connections would enrich the framework and extend its reach.

Institutional theory offers insights into how norms, rules, and cognitive frameworks shape strategic possibilities (Scott, 2008). How do institutional pressures interact with template-free conditions? Do institutional forces provide stability and referents that counterbalance the absence of strategic templates, or do they themselves become unstable in digital environments? How do firms engage in institutional work to shape the rules governing platform ecosystems?

Organizational learning theory provides frameworks for understanding how organizations develop and modify routines (Levitt & March, 1988; Argote, 2013). How does learning operate when feedback is opaque and causal understanding incomplete? What forms of vicarious learning are possible when successful practices cannot be easily observed or transferred? How do organizations balance single-loop learning, adjusting actions, with double-loop learning, questioning assumptions, under conditions of deep uncertainty?

Complexity theory offers tools for analyzing emergent order in systems with many interacting elements (Anderson, 1999). How do the mechanisms identified in this book relate to complexity theory’s concepts of self-organization, emergence, and adaptation? Can computational modeling help illuminate how different mechanism configurations produce different strategic outcomes? What insights from complexity theory can inform our understanding of partial integration and patchwork coherence?

Economic sociology provides perspectives on how markets are constructed and how economic action is embedded in social structures (Granovetter, 1985; Fligstein, 2001). How are digital markets constituted through platform architectures and algorithmic systems? How do social networks and relational ties shape firms’ capacity to navigate template-free conditions? What role do trust, reputation, and social capital play in enabling coordination within patchwork organizational forms?

Science and technology studies (STS) offer frameworks for understanding how technologies shape and are shaped by social practices (Bijker et al., 2012). How do algorithmic systems become black-boxed, and what are the strategic implications of that black-boxing? How do firms open black boxes when necessary to understand and influence the systems mediating their performance? What forms of technological literacy enable effective navigation of algorithmically mediated environments?

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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