Strategy Processes in Research and Development Organizations
Project Description
Partners: Austrian Research Centers and SoL Austria
In the last few years one could observe a fundamental shift from strategy content to strategy process research. The change from a market- to a resource- or knowledge-based view of strategy can be seen as an underlying driver of this shift. In our study we concentrate on research and development organisations (R&D organisations). We aim to understand if in these knowledge-based organisations the nature of strategic processes considers the specifics of the knowledge production process and therefore stand in line with the knowledge management process. Interestingly, the results of our study show that the majority of the examined R&D organisations follow a very classical, formal and inflexible strategic planning process in the tradition of strategy content research. The imperatives of planning reliability and strategic control play a major role. There seems to be very little space for strategic learning and the evolution of emergent strategies.
In the last few years one could observe a fundamental shift from strategy content to strategy process research. The change from a market- to a resource- or knowledge-based view of strategy can be seen as an underlying driver of this shift. In our study we concentrate on research and development organisations (R&D organisations). We aim to understand if in these knowledge-based organisations the nature of strategic processes considers the specifics of the knowledge production process and therefore stand in line with the knowledge management process. Interestingly, the results of our study show that the majority of the examined R&D organisations follow a very classical, formal and inflexible strategic planning process in the tradition of strategy content research. The imperatives of planning reliability and strategic control play a major role. There seems to be very little space for strategic learning and the evolution of emergent strategies.
