Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

7.9 Boundary Conditions and Future Research Directions

While the mechanism-based theory of stabilization developed in this chapter provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how temporary responses become enduring structures, several limitations and opportunities for future research remain.

First, the theory is based primarily on conceptual integration of existing research rather than systematic empirical testing. Future research should develop empirical measures for key concepts, particularly objectification events, path coherence, and architectural coupling, and test their causal relationships through longitudinal studies.

Second, the theory does not fully specify the dynamic thresholds that trigger transitions from provisional to permanent. While the concepts of objectification and increasing returns provide a framework for understanding these transitions, the specific conditions that determine when responses cross these thresholds remain underspecified. Future research should develop more formal models that specify the parameters governing threshold dynamics, including the role of network effects, coordination costs, and external constraints.

Third, the theory focuses primarily on stabilization mechanisms without fully addressing the conditions under which destabilization occurs. While the chapter discusses the tension between stability and change, it does not provide a complete framework for understanding how organizations break out of path-dependent trajectories. Therefore, future research should investigate the mechanisms of destabilization, including the role of crises, technological disruptions, and deliberate interventions in creating windows of opportunity for structural change.

Fourth, the theory emphasizes the role of platform governance in shaping stabilization but does not fully explore the diversity of governance mechanisms across different types of platforms. Future research should investigate how different platform architectures, business models, and governance structures create different stabilization dynamics. This would provide a more nuanced understanding of how platform-mediated constraints shape organizational trajectories.

Fifth, the theory does not fully address the role of distributed agency in producing unintended stabilization. While the concept of externally mediated stabilization highlights the role of platforms, it does not fully explain how decentralized actions by multiple actors generate system-level lock-in in the absence of centralized design or owner intent. Therefore, future research should develop more explicit microfoundational accounts of how distributed agency produces emergent stabilization, particularly in contexts where no single actor controls the system.

Finally, the theory focuses primarily on digital environments and may not fully generalize to other contexts. More specifically, the theory developed here applies most directly to firms operating within established digital platform ecosystems, such as app developers and e-commerce sellers, where external governance is salient to stabilization. It may apply less directly to platform owners themselves, whose stabilization processes involve different asymmetries of control and rule-setting power, and less directly also to firms in non-digital sectors where platform dependence is weak or absent. Therefore, future research should examine these boundary conditions more explicitly and identify contexts in which alternative stabilization mechanisms dominate.

Future research should examine whether the mechanisms identified here operate similarly in non-digital settings, or whether digital infrastructures create distinctive stabilization dynamics. Such work would help clarify the boundary conditions of the theory and identify which features of digital environments most strongly shape the stabilization of temporary responses.

The argument advanced here is not intended as an exhaustive account, but as a specification of the generative logic through which temporary responses become durable structures. Its contribution lies in making this process analytically visible and theoretically tractable. The framework establishes a basis on which further refinement can proceed, by identifying where boundary conditions can be clarified, where threshold dynamics can be more precisely traced, and where variation across empirical contexts can be systematically examined. In this sense, the chapter does not close the question of stabilization. It defines it in a way that allows it to be studied with greater precision.

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