Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

7.4 Coupling and Dependence: When Solutions Become Infrastructure

Once coherent sequences of action persist, they begin to connect with wider organizational arrangements. The next step in the causal spine is, therefore, infrastructural dependence. A response that has been repeated and linked into a stable sequence becomes more difficult to change when other systems, processes, and actors begin to rely on it. At that point, it no longer remains local. It becomes infrastructural.

Architectural coupling occurs through several mechanisms. First, solutions become integrated with existing systems and processes. A temporary workaround for a platform constraint, for example, may be incorporated into data pipelines, reporting systems, and decision-making processes. As these integrations accumulate, the solution becomes a necessary condition for the functioning of multiple systems, making it costly to remove or replace.

Second, solutions become dependent on subsequent adaptations. When new solutions are developed, they often build on existing ones, creating layers of interdependence. This layering produces what can be described as nested dependencies, where each solution depends on those that came before it and supports those that come after. These nested structures make it difficult to change any single element without cascading effects throughout the system.

Third, solutions become boundary objects that coordinate action across different parts of the organization (Carlile, 2002). A data format, a reporting template, or a coordination protocol may serve as a shared reference point that enables different teams to work together. As these boundary objects become established, they create network effects that reinforce their persistence. Changing them would require renegotiating shared understandings across multiple groups, creating significant coordination costs.

Recent research on digital transformation in complex systems highlights the role of criticality control in shaping architectural coupling (Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2021). In safety-critical systems, solutions must maintain certain properties, such as reliability, predictability, and safety, that constrain how they can be modified. This creates a tension between generativity, understood as the ability to evolve and adapt, and criticality, understood as the need to maintain essential properties. Organizations manage this tension by selectively incorporating innovations that preserve critical functionality while enabling controlled evolution.

The central point is that dependence changes the status of a solution. A response stabilizes not only because it is repeated, but because other activities begin to rely on it. Once it is tied into reporting systems, workflows, interfaces, and cross-unit coordination, changing it requires changing much more than the original response itself. The cost of isolated revision rises sharply. This marks the next step in the causal spine. Repeated and coherent action becomes difficult to reverse once it is embedded in a wider system of interdependence. What was persistent becomes infrastructural.

From a configurational perspective, interdependence is not a secondary feature of organization. It is one of the conditions under which configurations achieve durability. As multiple elements become mutually dependent, firms often carry forward arrangements that are only partially efficient because the wider structure has become too entangled to revise piecemeal. Architectural coupling, therefore, marks the shift from persistence to infrastructural embeddedness. This mechanism should be distinguished from path coherence. Path coherence creates predictability within action sequences, whereas architectural coupling operates across sequences by linking them through shared systems, dependencies, and coordinating structures. The two mechanisms may reinforce one another when coherent paths become inputs into other paths, but they may also generate tension: highly coherent and self-contained paths may resist broader coupling, while tightly coupled architectures may disrupt path coherence when dependencies shift. The balance between these forces helps shape whether stabilization produces more modular or more integrated structural outcomes.

The outcome is often a functional but uneven architecture. It works because many elements have become mutually adjusted over time, not because they were designed as an integrated whole from the outset. This is an important step toward the chapter’s later claim that stabilization produces patchwork rather than elegant design.

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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