Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

7.8 Routinization and Path Dependence Revisited

The mechanism-based theory developed in this chapter extends existing theories of routines and path dependence by making the causal process of stabilization more explicit. Traditional accounts often explain persistence through general notions such as reinforcement, inertia, or lock-in. The present chapter specifies how temporary responses move from viability to repetition, from repetition to coherent paths, from coherent paths to infrastructural dependence, from there to external filtering and formal embedding, and finally into layered architecture. This sequence makes explicit how adaptation is progressively converted into structure.

First, the chapter shows that stabilization operates through recursive and cumulative mechanisms rather than through deliberate design. Organizational architecture does not have to be planned in order to become durable. It can emerge from repeated adaptive responses that gradually acquire persistence, dependence, and formal status. Durability, in this sense, is not designed but built through accumulation. This shifts the analysis from design to historical formation.

Second, the chapter extends existing work on digital transformation by showing that stabilization is shaped not only by internal repetition and coupling, but also by external platform governance. This matters because standard accounts of path dependence often focus on internal reinforcement. In digitally mediated environments, however, external systems help determine which responses can be retained, scaled, and institutionalized. Stabilization is, therefore, co-produced by the firm and the infrastructures on which it depends. External selection is not an additional influence. It is part of the mechanism through which persistence is formed.

Third, the chapter strengthens the link between adaptation and configuration. It shows that enduring organizational structures do not arise outside adaptation, but from it. What becomes durable is not necessarily what is best in the abstract, but what becomes viable, repeatable, connected, externally reinforced, formally embedded, and increasingly costly to remove. Configurations, therefore, reflect the ordered accumulation of these mechanisms rather than the outcome of ex ante alignment. Structure is, therefore, the accumulated historical residue of adaptation once it has become hard to reverse.

Fourth, the chapter clarifies why many digital organizations do not converge toward elegant integrated designs. As structure is built through cumulative responses to changing constraints, the outcome is often layered and uneven. This helps explain why firms may remain functional and durable even when their internal arrangements appear patchy, partially fitted, or historically improvised. Patchwork is not a temporary imperfection waiting to be replaced by perfect integration. It is a stable outcome of the stabilization process itself. In many cases, it is the actual organizational form through which durability is achieved.

These implications matter beyond the chapter itself because they reposition the broader argument of the book. If adaptation in template-free environments unfolds through experimentation, then organizational durability cannot be treated as a separate phenomenon. It must be theorized as the structural outcome of repeated adaptive movement. The present chapter, therefore, links the dynamic logic of strategy without foresight to a structural logic of persistence. It shows how enacted responses are progressively retained, connected, and embedded until they form durable configurations.

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//

BibTeX EndNote Mendeley Zotero