Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

7.6 Increasing Returns: From Temporary to Permanent

Repeated use, coherent sequencing, infrastructural dependence, and external filtering increase the likelihood that a response will persist. Yet persistence is not the same as permanence. The next step in the chapter’s causal sequence is formal embedding, where continued use gives way to structural consolidation. This is the point at which a response crosses from continued use into a more formal and difficult-to-reverse presence within the organization. Two mechanisms are central here: objectification and increasing returns.

Objectification refers to the process by which practices become materialized in artifacts, roles, metrics, and formal procedures (Abeygunasekera et al., 2022). When a solution is objectified, it becomes independent of the individuals who developed it and takes on a reality of its own. This materialization has several effects. First, it makes the solution visible and communicable, allowing it to be taught, documented, and replicated. Second, it creates accountability structures, as the objectified solution becomes a standard against which performance is measured. Third, it generates legitimacy, as the solution is recognized as an official part of the organization’s operations.

The process of objectification unfolds through several stages. Initially, solutions emerge as habitualized responses to recurring problems, namely patterned behaviors that develop through repetition but remain informal and individual-specific. As these behaviors prove effective, they become generalized and shared across actors, moving from individual habits to collective practices. At this stage, the solution remains provisional and open to modification.

The critical transition occurs when the solution is objectified, that is, codified in documentation, embedded in systems, assigned to roles, or measured through metrics. At this point, the solution no longer persists only because it is used. It persists because it is built into how the organization operates. This objectification transforms the solution from a provisional practice into a formal structure. Once objectified, the solution becomes resistant to change, as modifying it requires not just changing behavior but also updating documentation, reconfiguring systems, redefining roles, and revising metrics.

Increasing returns provide reinforcing mechanism that stabilizes this transition. Once a solution is objectified, it generates benefits that grow with continued use. These benefits may include coordination efficiencies, learning effects, network externalities, and complementary investments. As more actors adopt the objectified solution, these benefits increase, creating positive feedback that reinforces its continued use. The more the solution is used, the more costly it becomes to abandon.

Research on crisis coordination demonstrates how objectification and increasing returns interact to stabilize coordination structures (Frykmer et al., 2023). Following a decisive triggering event, namely the 2018 wildfires in Sweden, coordination offices emerged as provisional responses to coordination failures. These offices became institutionalized through increasing returns linked to incentives, commitments to norms and identities, and the objectification of shared ideas and routines. As the coordination offices proved effective, they were formalized, assigned resources, and integrated into professional norms, creating increasing returns that made them central to the crisis management system.

This threshold logic is important because it explains why some responses remain revisable while others become difficult to challenge. Repetition can stabilize a practice informally, but formal embedding changes its status. Once a response is written into systems, roles, rules, templates, and metrics, it no longer survives simply because people continue to use it. It survives because other organizational elements now depend on it.

From a theoretical standpoint, this strengthens the chapter’s core claim. Stabilization is not reducible to vague inertia. It occurs through identifiable mechanisms. A response crosses from repeated use into formal presence, and increasing returns then make continued reliance progressively more attractive relative to alternatives. This marks the transition from persistence to structural lock-in. At that point, what persists is not merely a habit, but a formally embedded structural element.

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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