Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

4.3.2 Three Mechanisms of Strong Configurational Coupling

First, data driven path dependence. In platform mediated settings, visibility, ranking, and access are shaped by algorithmic systems that respond to accumulated interaction histories. These histories are not generic. They are firm specific traces of prior actions, user responses, platform evaluations, and iterative adjustments. A strategic move, therefore, does not enter a neutral system. It enters a system already conditioned by a particular history. Two firms may adopt apparently similar strategies and nonetheless obtain different outcomes because the same action is interpreted differently by the surrounding data infrastructure. Strategic effectiveness is thus inseparable from accumulated past interaction.

Second, infrastructural embedding. Digital strategies increasingly depend on integration with APIs, payment systems, authentication tools, data formats, cloud services, and recommendation mechanisms (Tilson et al., 2010). These are not neutral conduits. They shape what the firm can do, how quickly it can do it, how it is evaluated, and which forms of interaction remain available. A strategy deeply embedded in one infrastructural arrangement cannot be moved intact into another one, even when the visible surface of the strategy appears unchanged. What travels is the outward form, not the enabling architecture.

Third, ecosystem position effects. In tightly coupled ecosystems, outcomes depend not only on firm action but on the firm’s relationships with complementors, platform owners, adjacent actors, and governance centers (Jacobides et al., 2018). These relationships are built through repeated interaction, mutual adjustment, and path dependent trust. They determine how a firm’s actions are recognized, supported, or constrained within the system, including access to visibility, coordination, and timing advantages. A strategy that succeeds from one ecosystem position may fail from another because the enabling relationships are not equivalent.

Together, these mechanisms produce strong configurational coupling. Strategy becomes inseparable from the historical, infrastructural, and relational conditions in which it operates. Under such conditions, transferability becomes ontologically problematic. Firms can imitate visible practices, but they cannot easily reproduce the configuration that made those practices effective.

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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