Strategy making: strategic initiative implementation in the context of renewing a firm's sources of competitive advantage

Strategic initiative implementation has evolved in recent years as a new and progressive form of strategy making. In this regard, strategic initiative implementation constitutes one of the central topics of strategic management regarding how firms can renew their most valuable sources of competitive advantage: the firm's idiosyncratic resources and knowledge base. Strategic management concepts and practical guidelines are still lacking on how strategic initiative implementation affects a company's idiosyncratic resources and knowledge base and what kinds of challenging effects may evolve during the strategic initiative implementation. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to enhance our understanding of how strategic initiative implementation affects a firm's most valuable sources of competitive advantage. To achieve this aim, a qualitative case study approach is used to collect empirical evidence and describe the phenomena of strategic initiative related dysfunctions in the context of renewing a firm's sources of competitive advantage. The fieldwork started in October 2004 and finished in June 2007, and it comprised three in-depth case studies, based on three strategic initiatives; namely, the Sun Sigma initiative, the CRM Convergence initiative and the Balanced Scorecard initiative. The collected data were used to conceptualise strategic initiative related dysfunctions in accordance with the principles of grounded theory. The study contributes to the strategy making literature in the area of resource based theory, the theory of dynamic capabilities, and know ledge based theory of the firm by extending the strategic initiative related strategy making concepts through proposing a new theory that depicts the dysfunctional effects of strategic initiative implementation. New relations between the resource based view and the strategic initiative concept are proposed in the context of strategic initiative implementation and the interactions between ongoing initiatives. Furthermore, the study highlights the role and value of strategic initiative related dynamic capabilities. New insights into the challenges and limitations of extending and recombining the emerging knowledge bases from ongoing initiatives depict the evolution of dysfunctional knowledge.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo