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This article reports on functional executives and the importance of strategy in management. The role of strategists in business operations is changing due to shifting social and environmental processes. The article discusses organizational change in the U.S. and Great Britain and how these Senior Strategy Directors (SSDs) are involved in the connectedness of strategy, as well as their business contributions, capabilities, and activities. Information is also provided on management teams, job titles, diplomacy, and job stress.

Whereas tensions arising from the pursuit of ambidexterity have been documented, how these are interpreted and managed by actors themselves remains largely unexplored. Based on in-depth case research in a large Scandinavian-based telecommunications organization pursuing ambidexterity, we identify a path-dependent process of tension interpretation and tension management at different levels of the organization. Our findings suggest that, in the context of an ambidextrous strategy, actors are actively involved in managing arising tensions based on their differing interpretations of these tensions (where ambidextrous demands are seen as complementary, conflicting or interrelated). We find that these interpretations are influenced by actors’ strategic orientation and organizational level. Our study extends understanding of the pursuit of ambidexterity in practice, offering a pluralist, path-dependent perspective of how actors perceive and deal with ambidexterity tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to lay the foundations to develop a dominant logic and a common thematic framework of strategic innovation (SI) and to encourage consensus over the field's core foundation of main themes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores the intersection between the constituent fields of strategic management and innovation management through a concept mapping process. The paper categorizes the main themes and search for common ground in order to develop the core thematic framework of SI. The paper looks at the sub-themes of SI in published research and develops a more detailed framework. The conceptual categories derived from the process are then placed in a logical sequence according to how they occur in practice or in the order of how the concepts develop from one other. Findings – The results yield seven main themes that form the main taxonomy of SI: types of SI, environmental analysis of SI, SI planning, enabling SI, collaborative networks, managing knowledge, and strategic outcomes. Research limitations/implications – The new thematic framework the paper is proposing for SI remains preliminary in nature and would need to be tried and tested by researchers and practitioners in order to gain acceptability. Academic rigor and methodological structure are not sufficient to determine whether our conceptual framework will become widely diffused in academia and industry. It would have to pass through an emergent, evolutionary process of selection, adoption and an inevitable degree of change and adaptation, just like any other innovation. Practical implications – The practical implications concern the production of instructive material and the application of strategic management initiatives in industry. The proposed themes and sub-themes can serve as a logical framework to develop and update publications, which have been instrumental in their own right to shape the field. The paper also provides a checklist of potential research projects in SI, which will improve and strengthen the field. The new framework provides a comprehensive checklist of strategic management initiatives that will help industry to initiate, plan and execute effective innovation strategies. Originality/value – The concept mapping of the themes of SI yields a new dominant logic, which will influence the evolution of the field and its relevance to both academia and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]