Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

12.3 Redefining Strategic Effectiveness

If strategic practice must be reconceived, then so must the criteria by which it is judged. The question of effectiveness is not merely a downstream implication of the framework: it is one of its central theoretical interventions. If strategy cannot achieve optimal alignment in template-free environments, then effectiveness must be redefined. The framework developed in this book suggests that effectiveness depends on sustaining viability rather than achieving optimality, on maintaining responsiveness rather than accurate prediction, and on preserving adjustability rather than enforcing consistency.

The concept of viability, as developed across this book, is not a synonym for survival or a softer version of performance. It is a composite condition with three constitutive requirements that must be simultaneously maintained: the configuration generates value that is recognized and demanded by customers; it remains operationally feasible to produce that value; and it preserves the capacity to adjust as conditions evolve. These three requirements are interdependent. A configuration that satisfies the first two but not the third may sustain itself in the short run while foreclosing the adaptive options on which continued viability depends.

What is specific to template-free contexts is that even configurations that satisfy value creation and operational feasibility may become ineffective if they restrict the firm’s ability to adjust. This introduces adjustability as a constitutive dimension of effectiveness, not as a secondary capability but as a condition of continued viability. Thus, maintaining the capacity to change becomes part of what it means to be effective. A configuration that appears suboptimal at one moment may prove valuable if it enables a flexible trajectory over time; a configuration that appears highly efficient may prove fragile if it locks the firm into a path where it can no longer exit. The normative emphasis shifts from maximizing current performance to preserving the conditions under which future performance remains possible.

This reconceptualization of effectiveness does not reject capability-based theory. It specifies the boundary conditions under which that theory’s core assumptions – that signals are sufficiently interpretable, that improvement pathways can be identified, and that outcomes can be evaluated against stable benchmarks – are weakened. Dynamic capabilities theory, for instance, rests on the premise that firms can sense opportunities, seize them, and reconfigure their asset base accordingly. In template-free environments, sensing is partial, seizing operates under opacity, and reconfiguration must preserve operability while adjusting structure. The framework developed here does not replace that logic; it specifies how it operates under conditions of partial observability and constrained adjustment.

This reconceptualization creates a direct link between viability and managerial capability. If viability depends on preserving adjustability, then effectiveness rests on the capabilities through which such adjustability is maintained in practice. Two capabilities are central in this respect. First, rapid sensing: managers must detect and interpret emerging signals in time to respond, even when those signals remain incomplete or ambiguous. Second, the capacity to reconfigure without collapse: the ability to adjust structures while maintaining ongoing operations. Therefore, managerial effectiveness is not evaluated by the optimality of individual decisions, but by the extent to which managerial action sustains a viable trajectory over time.

When enacted recurrently, these managerial practices can become embedded in organizational routines, coordination patterns, and recurrent response logics, thereby contributing to organization-level adaptive capacity. In template-free environments, strategic effectiveness depends on preserving viability through adjustability, and the relevant managerial capabilities matter insofar as they become organizationally embedded in recurrent adaptive patterns that sustain viable trajectories under incomplete signals and underspecified evaluation criteria.

The shift from optimality to viability as the central criterion of effectiveness is not a concession to imperfection. It is a theoretically grounded response to the structural conditions under which contemporary firms operate. It reframes what counts as effective performance by shifting attention from the optimization of outcomes to the preservation of viable trajectories under conditions of uncertainty and constraint.

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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