Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

6.1 Epistemic Displacement: From Design to Enactment

Classical strategy theory is organized around a sequence in which analysis precedes action. Within that logic, the firm evaluates its environment, defines objectives, compares alternatives, and then designs a course of action. This sequence presupposes more than uncertainty reduction. It presupposes that the environment remains stable enough, legible enough, and comparable enough for ex ante reasoning to provide meaningful guidance. Strategic planning, positioning, and scenario analysis all depend, explicitly or implicitly, on this condition.

In template-free environments, the conditions that previously allowed knowledge to guide action in advance no longer hold. The first mechanism, epistemic displacement, captures the shift from design-based knowledge generation to enactment-based knowledge generation. The point is not that analysis becomes irrelevant. Rather, its temporal position changes. Analysis can no longer reliably precede action in a comprehensive way. It increasingly follows action as interpretation, reconstruction, and adjustment. Knowledge is, therefore, no longer a prerequisite of action but an outcome generated through it.

Two processes drive this displacement. First, organizational sensing and response become partially decentered as digital infrastructures, data systems, and platform-mediated feedback participate in the production of strategic signals (Organization Science, 2022). Relevant information is no longer located solely in managerial cognition or formal analysis. It emerges through the interaction between organizational action and system-level responses. Second, digital environments are often non-stationary. Interaction rules are modified through platform governance, algorithmic mediation, changing access conditions, and evolving data architectures (Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2021). APIs change, ranking criteria shift, and data visibility is restructured. Under such conditions, the durability of previously valid knowledge declines, and the reliability of forward-looking design weakens with it.

The implication is not merely that prediction becomes harder. It is that the object of prediction itself is unstable. Firms cannot fully know in advance what will count as a valid move under current conditions. The environment they analyze is not necessarily the environment they subsequently face. Knowledge, therefore, emerges increasingly through action itself. Strategy shifts from design toward enactment, in which action becomes a means of probing the environment, eliciting feedback, and generating situated understanding.

This shift redefines the relationship between knowing and doing. In classical models, knowing is expected to guide doing. Here, doing becomes a necessary condition for knowing. Knowledge remains possible, but it becomes more provisional, more situated, and less transferable. Planning is not eliminated, but its role becomes narrower. It can coordinate intent and allocate attention, yet it can no longer fully specify action in advance. Strategic rationality, therefore, shifts from predictive accuracy to adaptive responsiveness.

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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