Business and Management INK

Is There a Strategic Organization in the Behavioral Theory of the Firm? Looking Back and Looking Forward

March 31, 2023 1270

Professor Henrich R. Greve discusses behavioral strategy and answers questions about his paper, “Is there a Strategic Organization in The Behavioral Theory of the Firm? Looking Back and Looking Forward,” published in Strategic Organization.

Questions are great. Sometimes I get asked questions that stimulate ideas that I would not have thought of otherwise and that lead to research. When the editors of the 20th anniversary special issue of Strategic Organization asked me to write about the relation between the behavioral theory of the firm and strategy, it made me wonder whether there was something special about the match between this theory and this field of research.

Why this question? The behavioral theory of the firm fuels an active and growing research agenda found mainly in organization theory, but also with much important work in strategy. So, it is possible that we can simply stand by and let things develop on their own and the synergies between research in these two fields well take care of the rest. Yet somehow, that did not look like the right answer.

The reason is that the basic interests of the fields of strategy and organization theory are different. Obviously not, because that is why they are different fields. To the behavioral theory of the firm, this may not seem to matter because theory is about the mechanisms that drive outcomes in the world, not about the outcomes. It matters for research, though, because different outcomes can be studied depending on the interests of a field. This is a good reason to think of how the behavioral theory of the firm and strategy relate to each other.

The result of our thinking was a series of questions on how strategy is shaped by the mechanisms in the behavioral theory of the firm. This is the right approach because the behavioral theory of the firm is made for explaining what a firm – or any kind of organization – will do. So, it is the kind of theory that can be used for explaining the origins and changes of firm strategy.

There are already partial answers to all of these questions, but still a lot of room for progress. The very short answer is that we developed a framework organized around how strategy is shaped by the 1) organizational structure, 2) organizational decision-makers, 3) organizational history, and 4) organizational environment. The behavioral theory of the firm has useful ideas in each of these factors. The (slightly) longer answer? Please look for it in the short essay coauthored with Cyndi Man Zhang.

Dr. Henrich R. Greve is a professor of entrepreneurship and the academic director of the Rudolf and Valeria Maag INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship.

View all posts by Henrich R. Greve

Related Articles

Boards and Internationalization Speed
Business and Management INK
November 18, 2024

Boards and Internationalization Speed

Read Now
How Managers Can Enhance Trust
Business and Management INK
November 11, 2024

How Managers Can Enhance Trust

Read Now
The Role of Place in Sustainability
Business and Management INK
October 28, 2024

The Role of Place in Sustainability

Read Now
Turning to Glitter in Management Studies – Why We Should Take ‘Unserious’ Glitter Serious to Understand New Management Practices
Business and Management INK
October 24, 2024

Turning to Glitter in Management Studies – Why We Should Take ‘Unserious’ Glitter Serious to Understand New Management Practices

Read Now
Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact

Utilizing Academic-Practitioner Partnering for Societal Impact

In this article, co-authors Natalie Slawinski, Bruna Brito, Jennifer Brenton, and Wendy Smith reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Reflections on deep academic–practitioner partnering for generative societal impact,” published in Strategic Organization.

Read Now
Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics

Trippin’ Forward: Management Research and the Development of Psychedelics

Charlie Smith reflects on his interest in psychedelic research, the topic of his research article, “Psychedelics, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and Employees’ Wellbeing,” published in Journal of Management Inquiry.

Read Now
Using Ethnography to Explore Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities

Using Ethnography to Explore Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities

Co-authors Birgitte Wraae and Nicolai Nybye reflect on the inspiration behind their research article, “Learning to Be “Me,” “the Team,” and “the Company” Through Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities: An Ethnographic Approach,” published in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments