Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

4.3.3 From Isomorphism to Divergence

This shift has major implications for imitation theories. In stable environments, imitation often leads toward convergence because firms facing similar conditions can benefit from adopting similar solutions (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Under strong configurational coupling, by contrast, imitation often generates divergence rather than convergence.

When firms imitate successful competitors, they typically reproduce observable practices, such as pricing structures, organizational forms, digital tools, engagement routines, or growth metrics. However, these practices are enacted within different histories, infrastructures, and ecosystems, resulting in structural misalignment. The imitated practice is not wrong in itself. It is simply detached from the configuration that originally made it viable.

This misalignment appears in at least three ways. First, functional incoherence, as practices lose effectiveness because they no longer align with the surrounding architecture. Second, resource misallocation, as firms allocate attention and investment to replicating visible practices whose effectiveness does not transfer across configurations, rather than addressing their own binding constraints. Third, strategic drift, as repeated borrowing of external models gradually distances the firm from configurations that might actually be viable given its own position.

The consequence is counterintuitive but theoretically important. Surface similarity can conceal underlying divergence. Digitally mediated markets often display firms that look strategically similar, for example, using the same platforms, similar offers, similar channels, and similar rhetoric, yet produce sharply different outcomes. This variance should not be attributed only to better or worse execution. It reflects differences in underlying configurational conditions.

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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