Lilla Hortoványi

Strategy Without Templates

Adaptation in Digital Environments

10.1 Epistemic Reorientation: From Alignment to Viability

Classical strategy theory typically evaluates effectiveness through the idea of alignment. Porter’s (1996) concept of fit framed competitive advantage as the outcome of internal consistency among activities and their match with environmental conditions. Configuration theory extended this logic by arguing that superior performance depends on coherent gestalts that align structure, strategy, and environment. This alignment imperative rests on two assumptions. First, environments must be stable enough to allow deliberate design. Second, firms must have enough foresight to identify desirable or optimal configurations.

In template-free digital environments, both assumptions weaken sharply. As Chapters 6 through 9 showed, firms operate through ongoing experimentation, recursive stabilization, partial integration, and mediated feedback. These processes do not generate neatly aligned systems. They generate heterogeneous and path-dependent structures that reflect accumulated adaptations more than deliberate design. Under such conditions, alignment is not the most useful criterion of effectiveness. In many cases, it is neither fully achievable nor even desirable. Therefore, strategic effectiveness must be redefined.

Recent work on digital ecosystems helps with this redefinition. The OCO theory of digital transformation identifies three interdependent mechanisms – orientation, cooperation, and orchestration – that connect an organization’s transformation outcomes to the depth of its ecosystem integration (Oberländer et al., 2024). This perspective shifts attention away from internal fit alone and toward ecosystem-enabled viability and responsiveness. The relevant question is no longer simply whether a firm’s activities align internally. It is also whether the firm can orient itself toward ecosystem opportunities, cooperate effectively with external actors, and orchestrate resources across organizational boundaries. Effectiveness thus becomes a multi-level phenomenon shaped by interactions between organizational and ecosystem levels.

This shift suggests three alternative criteria for strategic effectiveness. The first is viability rather than optimality. Firms in these environments usually do not optimize in any stable sense. More often, they seek to remain operational under changing constraints. The core question is not whether a configuration is optimal, but whether it is viable here and now. Viability is a threshold concept. A configuration is viable when it generates enough value, coordination, and adaptability to sustain operations and preserve room for further adjustment. This redefines effectiveness as the ability to sustain action under constraint rather than to achieve optimal alignment.

The second criterion is responsiveness rather than prediction. When foresight is limited, effectiveness depends less on accurate forecasting and more on the capacity to detect and respond to emerging signals. Liang et al. (2022) argues that digital agility rests on capabilities such as modularity, platform orientation, concurrency through data, and cultural support for ambidexterity. These capabilities matter because they support timely response even when causal understanding is incomplete. Responsiveness, therefore, functions as a practical substitute for prediction under conditions of uncertainty.

The third criterion is adaptability rather than consistency. In template-free environments, coherence does not mainly come from stable design. It comes from the ability to reconfigure without collapse. De Rouw et al. (2026) propose an iterative landscape approach to digital transformation that treats transformation as a moving balance across objectives, implementation choices, complexity, and maturity. This view supports ongoing steering rather than fixed alignment. Organizations navigate transformation by continuously adjusting how these dimensions relate to one another. Adaptability thus becomes a condition for maintaining viability over time.

These three criteria – viability, responsiveness, and adaptability – together form an alternative evaluative framework for strategy. They shift attention away from static states and toward dynamic capacities of adjustment. Strategic effectiveness becomes trajectory-based rather than state-based.

This reorientation also changes how strategy should be assessed. It becomes difficult to evaluate strategic effectiveness at a single point in time. A configuration that looks suboptimal at time T may later prove valuable if it enables a flexible trajectory from T to T+n. By contrast, a configuration that appears highly efficient at one moment may later turn out to be fragile if it locks the firm into an inflexible path. Strategic effectiveness, therefore, becomes a property of trajectories rather than isolated states. Longitudinal assessment becomes more meaningful than cross-sectional comparison.

This point also raises doubts about the universal value of benchmarking. If effectiveness depends on situated viability, responsiveness, and adaptability, then comparison across firms becomes more difficult. What counts as viable depends on the firm’s constraints, history, ecosystem position, and capabilities. What counts as responsive depends on timing, architecture, and signal quality. What counts as adaptable depends on what has already stabilized and what remains open to revision. Strategic effectiveness thus becomes deeply situated. That does not make comparison impossible, but it does make decontextualized benchmarking much less reliable than classical strategy often assumes.

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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