Abstract: Strategy workshops are critical features of strategic planning processes. The purposes of the workshops usually relates to strategy creation and/or implementation. Two components of interest, influencing both the quality of strategic direction created and the possibilities for the direction to actually be implemented are the perspectives of the participants invited and their capability to share those perspectives through collective thinking. Drawing on a qualitative study, this paper discusses the implication and considerations of inviting a wider circle of participants to the strategy workshops, trying to generate the diversity needed to think innovative and to be able to build the learning needed for the implementation. Moreover this paper discusses the emphasis put on improving the quality of the collective thinking and co-creating in the workshops.

Abstract: Our purpose in this paper is to develop a fuller understanding of how managers in organizations come to understand and pursue a common strategy. Previous theory and research has approached this issue from a cognitive orientation, asserting the importance of consensus, or shared strategic thinking among managers. While not wrong per se, the notion of consensus developed from a decision-making perspective of strategy process that separated decisions from action. We suggest that two-way vertical interactions provide a cognitive basis for legitimizing strategy within the organization while lateral interactions provide a normative basis. Institutional theory holds that legitimacy is acquired either by conforming to the social system in which organizations are embedded, by altering the social system itself, or by a combination of both.

Abstract: Despite ambiguous findings on the performance effects of strategic planning, it still ranks amongst the most prominent strategy tools in organizations. We address the question why organizations implement formal strategic planning processes and provide a holistic explanation for the spread of strategic planning practices moving beyond strategic planning as a tool for efficient strategy making and beyond a focus on financial performance effects as main motivator to engage in strategic planning. By complementing the performance perspective on strategic planning with arguments from an institutional theory perspective and the role of planning as a psychological tool to deal with uncertainty we discuss three core functions of strategic planning practices namely: a rationalistic function, a psychological function, and (3) a legitimacy function.

Abstract: This study develops a more fine-grained understanding of the ways in which decision-makers’ attention capacity limitations to attend to multiple issues shape organizations’ strategic adaptation in the context of a major industry disruption. We argue that taking decision-makers’ attention capacity limitations for granted may have limited our ability to understand how context factors shape executives’ load dynamics which both enable and constrain organizations’ strategic transformation. The paper introduces a cognitive load perspective to predict variation in strategic adaptation. We use qualitative and quantitative data in the context of Swiss private banks’ adaptation to the regulatory, technological, macroeconomic, and globalization issues and discuss implications for our understanding of attention capacity limitations, of the characteristics and impact of strategic issues and agendas on organizational transformation.