A Sociological Approach to Organizational Strategy

Abstract

Many global business organizations today use strategy as one of their preferred means of coping with the risk and uncertainty associated with an inability to accurately predict the future. Currently, the most popular metaphors for framing organizational strategies are rooted in war or sports. Use of these particular metaphors to guide leaders' thinking processes can bias strategy into unproductive, win-lose, us or them, competitively-oriented categories. The field of biology suggests a different metaphor that may better suit current environmental realities. This paper proposes a set of ecology-based principles and tools that organizations can use to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.