Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

4.3.6 Configurational Uncertainty in Technological Integration

The mechanism of configurational divergence extends beyond the transferability of practices to the role of technologies in strategy. In digital environments, firms do not operate with a fixed set of stable tools, but face multiple, competing technological options whose value cannot be determined in isolation.

Technologies themselves are not inherently constrained to specific contexts. They can be acquired and deployed across a wide range of settings. However, their functioning is inherently interdependent. Their effects emerge only through their interaction with other technologies, existing processes, and human capabilities. As a result, the effectiveness of a given technology cannot be inferred from its standalone properties. It depends on how it is combined, integrated, and enacted within a particular configuration.

This creates a condition of configurational uncertainty in technological integration. Firms must make strategic decisions not only about which technologies to adopt, but about how different elements can work together. Competing technological options do not represent alternative solutions with predictable outcomes, but alternative components whose value depends on how they interact within a broader system. The same technology may enable different outcomes across firms, while different technologies may produce similar outcomes within different configurations.

Under these conditions, strategy cannot be reduced to selecting superior technologies. It becomes a process of assembling and adjusting configurations in which technologies, processes, and human actors jointly produce viable outcomes. The problem of strategy is, therefore, not optimization, but configuration under interdependence.

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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