European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp.
507–519, 2005
doi:10.1016/j.emj.2005.09.006
The Field of Strategy:
In Search of a
Walking Stick
TAIEB HAFSI, H.E.C. Montreal
HOWARD THOMAS, Warwick Business School
The question of whether there is an academic field
of strategy is important. It is the question that
defines the area of strategic management and all
the research and teaching that takes place under
its name. In this paper we argue that there is a field
of strategy, but it is still underdeveloped despite an
incredible surge of research in the last twenty
years. We believe that most strategy research does
not really address the defining issues and that it
has become less and less relevant to practising
managers. There has been a drift to traditional
social science approaches because of the complexity
of strategic issues. This has increased confusion
among practitioners and academics alike. Despite
the fact that practice and theory are not well con-
nected and that strategic management has so far
failed to produce the volume of useful results
expected by managers, the search for truly useful
‘walking sticks’ for strategists will succeed, thus,
enabling them to combine theory with practice.
Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Strategy, Strategic management, Field
of Strategy, Walking stick, Research in Strategy,
Strategic practice, Corporate strategy
Introduction
After more than twenty years as dedicated research-
ers in the field of strategy, the authors are wondering
if the academic field of strategy really does exist.
Excellent and exhaustive reviews by many distin-
guished academics (e.g., Pettigrew et al., 2002 and
various authors in the European Management Review
– Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2004, European Management
Journal) take note of the extreme diversity of the re-
search but shy away from providing a convincing
framework to clarify what the field is all about.
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain
0263-2373 $30.00
At a recent meeting of strategy researchers we posed
the question ‘‘How should we define the academic
field of strategy?’’ The answers were somewhat ten-
tative, to the surprise of everyone attending, includ-
ing us. Apparently, we are not even sure if we
agree on the same definition of strategy. There is
no lack of available definitions. Anyone with any
claim to recognition in ‘‘the field’’ has provided
one; Andrews (1987) has traditionally been consid-
ered one of the more complete definitions.1
Yet all these definitions remain so vague and so gen-
eral that they provide little help. Most of the defini-
tions are either descriptive of the strategy-making
process or tautological in nature, saying basically
that strategy is the set of decisions that makes an
organization successful, or strategy is what top man-
agers do. Such a lack of clarity in the basic concept
makes the search for meaningful research findings
and hence theory construction difficult.
In probing further into definitions of strategy, one is
faced with a multiplicity of strategies: some are cor-
porate, others business, still others functionally-
related. Each author has a different definition. To
compound the problem, each of the functional fields
of management has its own strategy arm – marketing
strategy, financial strategy, production strategy, and
so on, each have their own journals and set of dedi-
cated scholars. This proliferation inevitably leads to
the question: ‘‘What is strategy anyway?’’
The more convincing definitions are also the more
troubling for researchers. One manager at a Harvard
conference argued that strategy is made up of
‘‘messy, unsolved and perhaps undefined problems of
importance characterizing business management’’. Joe
Bower, one of the leading Harvard academics, ar-
gued (1982) that ‘‘the charter of business policy (as strat-
egy was originally known) is to focus on the life and death
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THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
issues of central interest to top management. . . to help top
management to deal with these issues effectively, profit-
ably, and morally.’’ He went so far as to say that any-
thing that can be made orderly and systematic
should be left to the functional areas and considered
out of the field of strategy.
The question of whether there is an academic field of
strategy is important. In this paper we argue that
there is a field of strategy, but it is still underdevel-
oped despite an incredible surge of research in the
last twenty years. We believe that most strategy re-
search does not really address the defining issues.
As a result there are serious methodological deficien-
cies. First, and following on from the basic problem
of the definition of strategy, there is no common
understanding of the set of theoretical propositions
in the field. Authors tend to construct their own
propositions without consistency from one study to
the next or one author to the next. Second, the under-
standing of the scope of the field, its phenomena, and
its research methods are borrowed crudely from the
more established social sciences.
To make our argument, we go first through a histor-
ical discussion of the field’s knowledge develop-
ment, describing the approaches that have
dominated research, teaching, and practice. We ob-
serve that there has been a drift to the traditional so-
cial sciences because of the complexity of strategic
issues. This has increased confusion among practitio-
ners and academics alike. We argue further that the
real challenge is to devise a new approach to the-
ory-building that brings the field of strategy closer
to reality. To suggest the nature of such an approach,
we go back to the issues that have dominated debates
among early general management scholars.
The Nature of Strategic Issues
About thirty years ago, the early courses in strategic
management in business schools emphasized the
need for coordination among the various activities
of the firm and relied upon case studies, often devel-
oped at the Harvard Business School, to supply rich
descriptions of strategy-related issues. Taking and
implementing decisions that required integration
across functions and levels was seen as a huge and
sometimes elusive challenge. Students were intro-
duced to the challenge early in the MBA program,
with the study of a very simple case. The situation
of the Harvard case study involving Midway Foods
was typical. Midway was a small Chicago firm, with
100 employees. It produced a range of sweets, mostly
chocolate bars. The first ‘A’ case was so simple that
most students had a hard time staying interested.
In it were described the industry, the firm history,
its nature and operations, its purpose and its market-
ing strategy. The case ended with a short discussion
with Kramer, the company president. Most students
508
wondered what was expected of them in such a sim-
ple and general case. Midway was, however, pecu-
liar because of Kramer’s expressed concern about
defining the business and any decisions being consis-
tent with such a definition.
The students were then exposed to additional infor-
mation about Midway’s management. Progressing
to the ‘B’ case brought new challenges, with the
opportunity to acquire a competitor. Should Midway
do this? The ‘C’ case highlighted the different per-
spectives of the four functional departments. The stu-
dents discovered that each department had its own
mission, operating methods, and operational prob-
lems. More important, each functional manager had
his own managerial and personal philosophy. The
‘D’ case was a meeting showing how difficult it
was for these managers to work together. Finally
the ‘El’ and ‘E2’ cases presented the President, the
individual responsible for coordinating a whole that
now seemed much more complex than it had seemed
at first, facing decisions that could make or break
Midway Foods.
Most teachers of strategic management have con-
ducted discussions of the Midway type to expose
students to the complexity of top management is-
sues. It is not so much the operations or the market-
ing or the finances or human resources or power,
motivation, leadership, or many other issues, but
the combination of all these that make the top man-
agement job so intractable, sometimes confusing
and always complex.
An academic field of strategy should be capable of
providing guidance (which we describe using the
metaphor ‘walking sticks’ for strategy) to the
bewildered and shaky students and practitioners
facing similar and, more realistically, much more
complex issues than those described in Midway
Foods. Some guidance has been provided by differ-
ent concepts of strategy advanced over the last fifty
years or so.
Concepts of Strategy
The conceptualization of strategy has taken two
broad routes. The first can be called the Holistic ap-
proach, an all-embracing concept but one that stays
close to reality. The emphasis was on general theo-
ries to better understand: (i) the challenges of manag-
ing the organization as a whole and (ii) the nature of
top management roles and behaviours (see for exam-
ple Barnard, 1938 and Selznick, 1957). The second
route, more contemporary, can be called the Analytic
approach. It has followed traditional scientific meth-
ods and approaches characterised by the deconstruc-
tion of strategic problems and a focus on identifying
specific relationships that are part of broader strate-
gic phenomena (see Thompson, 1967). With a good
understanding of the analytical components of strat-
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
 THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
egy it is then claimed that strategic behaviour can be
predicted. However, this claim has not been
substantiated.
Historically, the first Holistic approach dominated
the field until the end of the 1970s, while the second
Analytic approach has emerged out of Thompson’s
synthesis (1967) and his guiding efforts within the
pages of the influential journal Administrative Science
Quarterly (ASQ) to encourage the development of an
‘‘administrative science’’. The Analytic approach has
also been the dominant focus of the Strategic Manage-
ment Journal (SMJ) since its’ launch in 1980 (see Fur-
rer et al., 2005).
The Holistic Approach
The holistic approach can be traced back to the 1930s
and 1940s when there were heated debates around
the ‘‘Scientific Management’’ viewpoint of Frederick
Taylor and the ‘‘Human Relations’’ movement
(Roethlisberger, 1977). The simple, but precise and
surprisingly effective, formulae of Taylorism con-
tained their own limitations in businesses that were
becoming increasingly complicated. Mayo’s famous
interpretations of the Hawthorne results (1933)
showed that simplicity had its limitations and that
the complex and changing nature of humans in-
volved in collective endeavours required corre-
spondingly complex theories. The term ‘collective
action’ became used to refer to these people-related
aspects of organisational life.
Mayo’s suggestions generated an unprecedented
wave of multidisciplinary debates. Professor W.J.
Henderson’s Harvard University faculty seminar on
‘‘practical sociology’’, in the 1930s, forced everyone
to consider ‘collective action’ in its entirety. As a
trained physician, Henderson was able to inculcate
some cross-fertilisation between research practices
in the well-defined field of medicine and in the ill-
defined field of organizations, as well as introducing
broader theory. Barnard’s ‘‘The Functions of the Exec-
utive’’ (1938) became a classic of this approach.
Barnard’s formidable attempt at reconciling scientific
management and human relations re-conceptualized
the problem of collective action. It proposed a new,
almost revolutionary, vision together with a research
framework that was more clinical than analytic. He
suggested that the dominance of Taylor’s views
had led to looking at the problem of collective action
upside-down. He put it back on its feet by proposing
his theory of cooperation that redefined the relation-
ship between authority and human behaviour within
collective action and proposed ways to manage it.
His work is still very influential. Barnard was the
first of a long tradition of scholars (Simon, 1945; Selz-
nick, 1957; Crozier, 1963) who have emphasized the
study of the organization as a whole.
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
The basic hypothesis of the holistic approach is very
like the more modern systems view of the world
(Checkland, 1981). Its central idea is that collective
action cannot be understood if it is broken down into
parts to be studied separately. As reality is complex,
it is more appropriate to study it in its totality. This
means not only studying all the parts together but
also their inter-relationships, even if the result is an
incomplete and imperfect understanding. Theory
developed in this way was therefore utilitarian, al-
ways temporary, but an essential help for those will-
ing to face complexity.
Roethlisberger (1977) described how Henderson’s
conceptual scheme of a social system, inspired a
whole generation of scholars and practitioners. Hen-
derson (1935) in following the practices of research in
medicine drew on the principles of Hippocrates.
According to him, ‘‘interactions between persons’’ were
the essence of collective human action. They in-
volved mutual adaptation and skill and also strong
sentiments. ‘‘To understand such complex phenomena,
both theory and practice were necessary. . .’’ and the
method of Hippocrates was the only method that
succeeded widely and generally:
‘‘The first element of that method is hard, persistent, intel-
ligent, responsible, unremitting labour in the sick room, not
in the library. . . The second element of that method is accu-
rate observation of things and events, selection guided by
judgment born of familiarity and experience, of the salient
and the recurrent phenomena, and their classification and
methodical exploitation. The third element of that method
is the judicious construction of a theory – not a philosoph-
ical theory, nor a grand effort of the imagination, nor a
quasi-religious dogma, but a modest pedestrian affair or
perhaps I had better say, a useful walking stick to help on
the way – and the use thereof. All this may be summed
in a word: The physician must have first, intimate, habitual,
intuitive familiarity with things; secondly, systematic knowledge
of things; and thirdly, an effective way of thinking about things.’’
(p. 67)
The characteristics of Henderson’s scheme are thus:
1. The need for a conceptual scheme for the purpose
of investigation;
2. The conceptual scheme is a matter of convenience
and utility, not truth or falsity, nor a theory;
3. It is a way of thinking to be practised, not just
talked about;
4. It is to be practised in relation to real-world
phenomena;
5. It is to be used as long as it is useful; and
6. One should be ready to let go when a more useful
way of thinking takes over.
The manager, in this view, is in a situation that is
similar to that of Hippocrates’s physicians. But his
situation may at times be even more confusing. Stu-
dents working on Midway, for example, realize very
quickly that they need an instrument to make sense
of the multiple challenges involved in managing a
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THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
whole organization. That is how the concept of strat-
egy was introduced. It became the ‘walking stick’ that
helped a generation of students and managers find
their way. The concept of strategy, as a walking stick,
dominated our thinking for several decades. It has
survived scientifically-minded criticisms because of
its usefulness as a powerful problem-solving theory
of decision (Bower, 1970). Nevertheless, scholars felt
unhappy with such a primitive instrument that was
not amenable to analytical research. The search for
a new, more science-based walking stick was in the
works.
The Analytic Approach
In the 1970s the analytic approach took over from the
holistic approach. This was based on the premise that
the concept of strategy, as defined until then, had be-
come obsolete. It was argued that the holistic ap-
proach did not allow the generalizations and the
predictions that both practitioners and researchers
were looking for. (Similarly, it can be argued that
medicine is currently undergoing a shift from its clin-
ical basis, i.e. treatments based upon specific patient
symptoms, towards a more ‘evidence-based’ ap-
proach that allows greater generalisation.) Under
pressure from the more advanced social sciences,
such as economics, sociology and psychology,
researchers in strategy and in general management
have re-examined the specific set of theoretical prop-
ositions that make up strategy.
Simon (1945), and more importantly Thompson
(1967) were the source of inspiration of the analytical
movement. Contingency theory, general and global
in nature, was the natural vehicle to use in going
from holistic statements about organizations to a
more positivistic approach containing cause and ef-
fect. In particular, Thompson’s chapters in his cele-
brated Organizations in Action broke down the
organisational problem into ready-to-be-tested prop-
ositions. This formidable theoretical endeavour gave
rise to an exciting research agenda that was commu-
nicated through Administrative Science Quarterly to a
generation of young and bright scholars.
Thompson has succeeded beyond his dreams. Re-
search on each of the elements described in his book
has literally exploded. A look at the main general
management journals shows an increasing tendency
toward specialization and the testing of cause and ef-
fect relations. From 1980–1990 Strategic Management
Journal (S.M.J.) articles became increasingly quantita-
tive and dominated by systematic and formalized
analyses. Furrer et al. (2005) reinforced this finding
in another extensive study of research in SMJ over
a twenty-year period. The academic field of strategy
has become characterized by quantitative analyses. A
consequence of this is the endless search for ‘‘proxy’’
variables used as simplistic surrogates for the more
510
complex variables that in reality lie at the heart of
behaviour of organizations.
A major landmark in the development of the field of
strategy was the foundation of the Strategic Manage-
ment Society and its journal, the Strategic Management
Journal. In their attempt to provide some structure to
the field, Schendel and Hofer (1979) and their associ-
ates in the Strategic Management Society founding
meeting actually added to the fragmentation process
by proposing a vision of strategy as an assemblage of
theories and methodologies. This fragmentation was
reinforced in another seminal strategy research con-
ference which took place in California in 1990: the
Fundamental Issues in Strategy Conference. Rumelt,
Schendel and Teece (1991) start off their book of this
conference with a provocative statement: ‘‘What will
most benefit strategic management, we suggest, is not a
unifying paradigm (our emphasis), but the articulation
of fundamental issues underlying the field and a refocus-
ing of research to confront them’’ (p. 1).
Ever since Thompson, and aided by the formation of
the Strategic Management Society, the amount of
knowledge generated from research conducted in
this analytical vein has been considerable. However,
as results have accumulated, so also have inconsis-
tencies and contradictions. These have been topics
for extensive and frequent debates, both methodol-
ogy and content-based, reflected in many of the
SMJ special issues. It has become more and more dif-
ficult to come up with any form of synthesis (unify-
ing paradigm) within any of the sub-fields of
strategy. A synthesis of the whole field seems out
of the question. As Schendel (a Founder of the Strate-
gic Management Society and current long-time Edi-
tor of SMJ) states in an introduction to the SMJ
Summer 1994 special edition on The Search for
New Paradigms: ‘‘The Guest Editors report much dis-
agreement about models, methods, assumptions, issues
and challenges, and little agreement. . .The state of strat-
egy during the 1990s, can aptly be described as ‘the best
of times and the worst of times’’ (p. 2). Two academics
very concerned to link research with management
practice (Prahalad and Hamel, 1994) have also stated:
‘‘We believe this turmoil in the field, in research and prac-
tice, is a reason for optimism. . . Many of the assumptions
that were embedded in traditional strategy models may be
incomplete and/or outdated as we approach the competitive
milieu. We will argue that the need for strategic thinking
and behaviour among managers has never been more
urgent’’.
To generate the kind of strategic thinking called for
by these authors, research has to play a unique and
important role, providing rich descriptions, synthe-
ses, possible cause and effect relationships and more
importantly tools for inquiry. Yet many scholars who
favour holistic, integrative perspectives often involv-
ing qualitative research methods, must be increas-
ingly uncomfortable and at a disadvantage when
submitting a manuscript to a strategy journal with
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
 THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
a positivist research tradition. Those who publish
most frequently today in strategy are also well-recog-
nized contributors to discipline-based fields such as
psychology, sociology, economics and political sci-
ence. This again begs the question of what is strategy.
It feels like a vast array of diverse and uncoordinated
detailed observations that are scientifically respect-
able, yet incoherent in practice. The old idea of a
walking stick, this time to make sense of all this seem-
ingly incoherent knowledge, suddenly seems very
attractive and urgently needed.
In Search of a New Walking Stick:
Science in Strategic Management
Thompson (1967) asserted forcefully that:
‘‘No useful theory can rest on the assumption that everything is
unique. It is probably inevitable that the early history of a scien-
tific endeavour will be characterized by the opposite assumption,
and by the search for universals. . . the discovery of universal ele-
ments is necessary, but alone it provides a static understanding.
To get leverage on a topic, we must begin to see some of the uni-
versal elements as capable of variation. . .
The economist, sociologist, political scientist, or social psy-
chologist will each find that I have overlooked refinements and
intricacies of concepts that he knows well. I have done so deliber-
ately, in order to achieve generality across typical categories
of organizations. . . My focus is on the behaviour of
organizations.’’
Thompson recognized that the complex questions
with which management practitioners and research-
ers alike have to wrestle have neither the level of
elegance nor the structure to which the purist
might aspire. Yet the researcher cannot be content
with individual case analyses; these are always
situation-specific and rarely amenable to general-
izations.
Thompson did not ignore the strategy problem. In-
deed, the last chapter of his seminal 1967 book pro-
vides a striking expression of the nature of strategic
management. In particular he emphasizes the need
for integration (‘co-alignment’):
‘‘The basic function of administration appears to be co-align-
ment, not merely of people (in coalitions) but of institutionalized
action – of technology and task environment into a viable
domain, and of organizational design and structure appropriate
to it. Administration, when it works well, keeps the organization
at the nexus of the several necessary streams of action. Paradox-
ically, the administrative process must reduce uncertainty but at
the same time search for flexibility.’’
After Thompson, quantitative research, which gener-
ally focused on interactions between limited num-
bers of variables and was therefore held to be more
precise, dominated the field. But there have also been
some holistic conceptual developments. These can be
clustered into four groups of research:
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
(1) Chandler’s (1962) study of American firm
growth and the development of the divisional
structure reinforced by Mintzberg (1978), and
Rumelt (1974, 1982);
(2) Bower’s study of the resource allocation process
in large diversified firms, followed by many oth-
ers of which Burgelman (1983) is a good
example;
(3) Miles and Snow’s (1978) study of organizational
strategic adaptation; and finally,
(4) Contributions relating to the Montreal school of
configurations (Miller 1996).
Despite closely reflecting the realities of the ‘co-align-
ment’ that Thompson talked about, these studies
have been relegated to the background or reinter-
preted as frameworks for content-based quantitative
research.
A more realistic sense of the kind of research that has
taken place is evident in the Strategic Management
Journal’s index of topics for the 1990s. It shows more
than a thousand different topics addressed by only a
little less than a thousand authors. Such a variety
suggests a Tower of Babel populated by strategy
researchers. A closer look shows that the field is
spread all over the traditional disciplines and func-
tional areas. Of all the articles examined in this ten
year period, about 60% can be related to specific dis-
ciplines. Economics alone represents the bulk of all
these articles. Indeed, Furrer et al. (2005) in their re-
view of SMJ research from 1980–2002, have to use
very broad categories to be able to group the topics
of the articles published. Many academics (we men-
tioned Schendel, 1994 and Prahalad & Hamel,
1994), believe that this is acceptable and even a stim-
ulus to research and creative practice. If that is the
case, 25 years after the creation of the Strategic Man-
agement Society, we have no indication of any posi-
tive effects on the practice of strategic management.
Prahalad and Hamel (1994) recognized that ‘‘Even
well-known consulting firms, such as McKinsey and Bos-
ton Consulting Group (BCG), who built their reputations
on strategy consulting, started to de-emphasize their strat-
egy focus. . . Academic disillusionment with the value of
strategy literature and schools of thought, while not as
widespread, followed quickly’’ (p. 5).
Imagine a practitioner, concerned about managing a
whole organization, confronted with these strategic
management research results. What would the find-
ings mean? There are almost no syntheses of research
that lead to common frameworks or practical guid-
ance, nor are there reviews that summarise and accu-
mulate findings from different studies researching
the same topic. Occasionally there are furious de-
bates on the nature of particular ideas or on the nat-
ure of strategy itself without any clear resolution.
When it comes to teaching, academics struggle to
provide a common, practical meaning to all these
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THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
findings. An examination of the textbooks used in
MBA programs shows an incredible diversity. Be-
sides the classic Harvard Business School’s text and
cases, a few others are still concerned about provid-
ing a synthesis (e.g., McGee, Thomas & Wilson,
2005; Johnson, Scholes and Whittington, 2004; Hafsi
et al., 2000). However, most others are specialized
(e.g., Grant, 2005), if interesting, views on strategic
management, some of which have been popularized
by well-known gurus like Gary Hamel and C. K.
Prahalad, Tom Peters, Michael Porter and Peter
Senge. We are back to the situation of students trying
to make sense of Midway. The problems are easy to
state, yet difficult to deal with.
The actual behaviour of business organizations is lar-
gely situation-specific and is therefore the result of
combinations of circumstances that cannot be com-
prehended and predicted by the existing science.
The paradox is that we need to accept the differentiat-
ing logic of unique circumstances without losing sight
of the whole. This is an old problem for which the old
concept of strategy was much better suited than to-
day’s technically sophisticated research methods.
In our opinion, the tragedy of the field is precisely that
academics are no more able than practitioners to live
with the paradox of reality: we can all understand
the individual case but cannot understand the whole.
The nuances of individual cases make strategic man-
agement what it is, but the search for clear-cut and
generalisable answers is destroying the essence of
strategy. The search for generalisable knowledge has
led to research methods that probe for deep under-
standing of the behaviour of those elements of reality
that can be isolated or modelled. Nevertheless, we
know that this process of segregating and separating
the various factors is not even a defensible second best
approach to research. It might even be said to be a
‘‘first worst’’ because it pushes reality so far away.
Since little of strategy is understood from research,
one might expect more attention to skills or practical
(clinical) knowledge. Yet, academics clearly favour
analytical knowledge, even if often irrelevant.
So: Where is the Field of Strategy?
Having been deeply critical of the approach of aca-
demics to strategy, we are back to our first question:
what is the academic field of strategy? Is it deep research
on a limited number of variables and their effects? Is
it the reporting of the experiences and experiments
by practitioners (sometimes carefully crafted and re-
ported in detail), systematic examination and classifi-
cation of these experiences, together with the search
for patterns or decision heuristics? It is a matter of
considerable regret that academics and practitioners
will almost always choose opposing answers.
First, let’s say what the field is not. On the basis of
simple commonsense, it cannot be reduced to the
512
specialized analytical research of the conventional
disciplines. What would then be the difference be-
tween the strategy researcher and his colleague of
the conventional disciplines? Strategy would become
a discipline like others in which strategic behaviours
can be reduced to microcosms of cause and effect
whose joint effect is simply cumulative. By contrast,
strategy in practice is about the behaviour of the
whole, and within which there is complex interaction
between the parts. The specialised contributions of
the sort that we have discussed are best considered
as contributions to the related disciplinary field. Con-
vergence with other disciplines may be about pre-
venting strategy researchers from avoiding the
rigorous scrutiny of their research methods by
researchers in other disciplines. However, if strategy
is about the behaviour of the whole, and built upon
the complex interaction of its parts, then it should
be simple common sense to observe that analytical
reduction methods completely miss the point. They
neglect the complex interaction of the whole which
is the raison d’être of strategic management.
Neither can the academic field of strategy be reduced
to the strategic approach of the practitioner. Practitio-
ners are entitled to believe that academics are proba-
bly less qualified than they to articulate such an
approach, since they do not practice it, nor know
well enough the reality to which it is applied. The
search for knowledge in strategic management
should therefore follow a different path. A meaning-
ful approach should reconcile the findings of re-
search with practical concerns. However, the
meaning and relevance of academic disciplinary re-
search for the improvement of management practice
are not obvious. First, disciplinary research results
do not apply directly, except in combination with
other findings. Second, applying them requires some
familiarity with the phenomena concerned.
As we said earlier, this is very similar to what hap-
pens in medicine. The medical researcher is faced
with the same difficulty. In medicine, it is accepted
that the researcher can belong to a discipline, while
the practitioner, with the help of his association, is
in charge of translating knowledge from research to
improve his practice. And even there, in actual prac-
tice, the physician is often confused when faced with
the multiplicity and sometimes-contradictory find-
ings of research. For example, are some specific foods
or drugs good or bad for health, for whom, and in
what circumstances? These are daily questions to
which clear answers are often not available.
We believe that, in strategic management, the variety
of relevant phenomena is even greater, because the
researcher is not only concerned about the individ-
ual’s health, but also about the collective action of
many individuals. Compared to medicine, we are
still in the position of beginners. We cannot even
begin to lose our credibility with managers, since
we have none, even though, as gurus, sorcerers or
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
 THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
prophets, we may still impress the naive, as witch-
doctors impressed primitive tribes.
The objective of research in strategy does however
exist. It has two elements:
1. Discovering, through the practice of managers,
unusual regularities and patterns, specifying them
and submitting them to analysis and debate. This
systematic effort is scientific, because it helps
describe and thus discover the varied nature of
the phenomena to which managers are exposed.
It can also help conduct an orderly discussion of
the reasons that explain results.
2. Experimentation and modelling in an attempt to
predict the behaviour of organizations.
This is both practical and scientific. It obviously deals
with practical phenomena. In addition it requires
methods of research that use both heuristics (i.e.
the ability to discover through experience) and
experimental research methods for assessing and
quantifying regularities. In both of these elements,
it is possible to call on the findings of the disciplines
in an organized search for meaning. The nature of
this work is to be compared to what has been done
for some of the natural sciences, for improved under-
standing of complexity and the development of sci-
entific approaches to deal with it (Waldrop, 1992).
It is indeed a relevant example for us, because strate-
gic management phenomena, deal with unclear, non-
linear cause-effect relationships. As a consequence,
the combination of research results that come to bear
on reality can be neither direct nor linear, but crea-
tive in the scientific sense of the word.
Similarly, the methodological nature of the strategic
management researcher contribution is fundamental.
In strategy, we are not dealing with a traditional sci-
ence but with a science of complexity. Thus, con-
fronted with small samples replete with rich data,
informed with a multiplicity of partial disciplinary
research results, the strategy researcher has to invent
an approach that links together this array of partial
and limited research results; then test the output
for rationality and validity; then build the needed
heuristics that link the data and the new knowledge
base; and constantly adjust both to reach convincing
results.
Researchers in strategy, therefore, must be formida-
ble intellectuals. They must have both the encyclo-
paedic knowledge needed to comprehend the
results of the normal science, and the familiarity
and intimacy with real phenomena that together
stimulate creativity in the search for explanations
and heuristics. The practitioner of management also
has to reach convincing explanations and has to de-
velop and use (personal) heuristics. But there are dif-
ferences: (1) the practitioner does not have to justify
intellectually his decisions, but (2) must answer to
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
stakeholders for the consequences of his decisions.
However, researcher and practitioner have a com-
mon problem – both muddle along in the dark.
To respond to the challenge, both practitioners and
researchers need a walking stick, a common walking
stick. For the practitioners of strategy the objective is
to guide decisions and their implementation, while
for the researcher in strategy the objective is to devel-
op the approach to find the general patterns behind
these decisions and their implementation, and to gen-
erate heuristics that provide the link from patterns
(theories) to practice in specific situations, that is to
inform and guide practice.
A Walking Stick for Researchers
in Strategy
How to build research in strategy? Researchers in the
field cannot ignore the specialized discipline-based
research. They must take its results as a starting
point. But they must go beyond it to creatively give
meaning to reality and guide practice. A general
framework is needed to use specialized research
and also to generate research specifically designed
to deal with reality in all its complexity. This calls
for researchers who are generalists concerned about
syntheses (see Bower, 1970; Miles and Snow, 1978;
Mintzberg, 1978; Miller, 1996). Walking sticks for
both practitioners and researchers should be the cre-
ation of such researchers. Their goal is to represent
reality by taking into account disciplinary research,
but going beyond it in a search for convincing expla-
nations of reality.
Given the complexity of strategic management real-
ity, it should be clear that the most appropriate
frameworks are not those that emphasize the content
of strategy, since strategy is by definition situational
and contingent. Rather, they must help reveal the
mysterious mechanisms that lead to the formation
of strategy and to its evolution over time. Patterns of
strategic content can however be useful segments
of a process-based conceptual framework.
To illustrate this idea of a strategic management
walking stick, we developed from a comprehensive
literature review a framework that suggests that
strategy research can be clustered into two basic
groupings:
1. Intellectual aspects intended to provide understand-
ing, tools and mechanisms by which coordination
and convergence of collective action is ensured;
2. Practical aspects designed to achieve that intended
convergence.
The intellectual aspects underlying strategy provide
meaning and feed the intuition of both scholars and
513
THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
practitioners, but strategy is mostly a practice. It is in
dealing with reality that strategy is both shaped and
used. The intellectual aspects provide also the
‘‘facts’’ that should guide the systematic build up
of convergence.
The intellectual aspects are a synthesis of accumu-
lated knowledge. A study of the literature that has
inspired strategy (see Hafsi et al., 2000 for details)
suggests five different segments:
Strategy as a Leader’s Statement
Ever since Barnard (1938) and Selznick (1957), top
managers are seen as playing a critical role in an
organization’s behaviour. Akio Morita and Masaru
Ibuka of Sony, Edgar Hoover of the FBI, William
Ruckelshaus of the EPA, or Jack Welch of GE exem-
plify leaders’ decisive roles. The literature is replete
with theories and examples which all show how
strategy is often an expression of the leaders’ will, be-
liefs and values (see in particular Collins, 2001). The
Harvardien School of Strategy has built the whole
idea of strategy from the top manager’s perspectives
(Andrews, 1987). Bower, as we mentioned earlier has
made it clearer, emphasizing the need for judgement
at the top and equating those judgemental issues
with strategy. The more academic literature has
shown that leaders’ obsessions (Noël, 1989), their
values and beliefs (Selznick, 1957), in general their
inner life (Kets de Vries and Miller, 1984; Kets de Vries,
1980; Lapierre, 1994; Zaleznik, 1989), their demo-
graphic characteristics such as age, training, experi-
ence, social origins (Hambrick and Mason, 1984),
their intellectual journeys and their quest for ratio-
nality (Frederickson and laquinto, 1989), their emo-
tion, their level of cognitive complexity or maturity
(Greiner and Bhambri, 1989), their attitudes towards
change, the stability of their career (Miller, 1990) and
their sex, all have a decisive and empirically tested
influence. Therefore, understanding an organiza-
tion’s strategy starts with a better understanding of
who the leaders are.
Strategy as a Community’s Statement
But strategy is not just the expression of a leader. It is
also the expression of a community. The level of
cooperation is related to how much strategy ex-
presses a community’s norms, values and beliefs.
In his description of Honda’s strategy in the motor-
cycle industry, Pascale (1990) has shown how much
trial and error is involved in strategy formation. Tri-
als and errors cannot lead to fruitful results unless
organization members are willing to collaborate, un-
less the strategy is in fact their creation. Cooperation
is intimately related to how much individual organi-
zation members share the vision, the underlying val-
ues and beliefs, and how much they are involved in
the strategy making process. Thus strategy is the
514
management of the internal community’s integrity,
of its willingness to contribute and to pursue all ave-
nues leading to the organization’s survival and pros-
perity (Barnard, 1938).
Another aspect of the community is brought up
when one thinks of the organization as a coalition
(Cyert and March, 1963). The various groups and
individuals of the organization have differing goals
and interests. Strategy helps build the coalitions that
will allow the pursuit of common goals. Again, the
literature is full of descriptions of how the groups
and individuals build or fail to build the frameworks
that could lead the organisation to success. The re-
source dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978), and the stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2004),
highlight the political give and take that leads to sta-
ble and powerful organizations. But power and influ-
ence are unequally distributed. They are related to
stakes controlled by the actors (Crozier, 1963). Sex,
ethnic support, education, professional skills, capital,
control over important zones of uncertainty for the
organization, outside recognition, structure, etc., all
contribute to setting the stage for the development
of the strategic consensus that provide direction to
the organization and facilitates the coordination of
its activities. And as shown by Fligstein (1987) in
the case of the 100 largest US companies, the consen-
sus changes with time.
Finally, community is also expressed through the
organizational cultures. A homogeneous culture has
been described as being the source of success in
implementing strategy (see for example Peters and
Waterman, 1983; Hampden-Turner, 1992), but also
a source of problems when the environment is
changing fast (Nadler and Tushman, 1986 among
many). Subcultures express a community’s degree
of diversity. They are often critical in strategy-mak-
ing as they have to be taken into account for both for-
mulating and executing a vision (Jorgensen, 1989).
Success stories of Japanese companies (Hafsi, 1989)
and of American ones (Collins, 2001) as well have
often been suggestive of the powerful role of a com-
munitarian behaviour. The Wachlike, Lipton, Rosen
and Katz law firm described by Starbuck (1993)
exemplifies the importance of a community in driv-
ing success.
The internal community is therefore at the heart of
the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. Strat-
egy cannot be conceived properly without leaving in
its statements ample space for the expression of its
members’ collective identity.
Strategy as a Guiding Track
Strategy is also a beacon, a guide when things get
murkier, when the road ahead is hard to assess. In
his study of the history of Bishop University at Len-
noxville, Canada, W. Taylor (1983) has shown that
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
 THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
over a 50 year period, the decisions made followed
the same pattern. Whether this is seen as isomor-
phism over time or strong culture (DiMaggio and
Powell, 1983), the strategy provides often a lasting
set of rules and norms by which reality is translated
and dealt with. Such a perspective emphasizes the
consistency or coherence in decision-making, and is
at the very heart of the idea of strategy (Andrews,
1987). The descriptions that have been provided of
GE’s history (Aguilar, 1988) show how much strat-
egy has been mostly a guide for business decisions,
in particular, the more recent Welch era has brought
to the fore several simplified expressions of strategy
that all emphasize the need to guide the organization
in a coherent way. For example, Welch has described
strategy as follows: ‘‘To be number 1 or number 2 in
all our business, be better than the best, while
remaining in three areas of activities: traditional,
high technology and services.’’ These were meant
to be the references against which each organization
member could judge the consistency and value to the
organization of his/her activities. The idea of guid-
ing track leads to strong configurations. Miller
(1996) has shown that the guiding patterns can be
so strong as to lead to oversimplification and some-
times the demise of the organization. The guiding
track is not always a systematic construction. It can
emerge as a result of the members’ initiatives and
as a result of historical incidents and accidents
(Greenwood and Hinings, 1988).
Strategy as the Building of Competitive Advantage
Strategy is of course often seen as a quest for compet-
itive advantage. The early version of the concept of
strategy (Learned et al., 1965) as well as the more re-
cent Resource-based view of the firm (Wernerfelt,
1984), all suggest the need to match resources to envi-
ronmental opportunities. How organizations do that
is at the heart of strategic management. Resources
which provide competitive advantage happen to be
soft and hard to imitate. This is never easy to assess.
Managers build uniqueness without a clear sense of
what may lead to success. They take risks and in so
doing their intuition is at least as important as their
analytical skills. Building unique resources involves
an attention to intermediate processes and both to
their resource composition and to their response to
market demands (Ray et al., 2004).
A competitive advantage is built on a clear under-
standing of the firms’ functional characteristics, and
of their inter-relationships. This leads to the value
chain configuration (Porter, 1985), which is most
appropriate to market value creation and capture.
This suggests that a competitive advantage requires
integrating activities both at the level of the business
and at the level of business functions. The business
level is concerned about positioning among compet-
itors, and the functional level is concerned about pro-
ductivity and organizational effectiveness. That’s
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
why one can talk about a functional strategy, which
is an attempt to actualize at its level the stated corpo-
rate values. As an example, financial strategy could
aim at providing a high level of financial flexibility,
while HRM may be concerned about hiring, and con-
tributing to maintain the willingness to cooperate of
key personnel, thus contributing to operational
flexibility.
Strategy as a Relationship to the Environment
Finally, the environment is a critical factor for sur-
vival. It generates most of the uncertainty for the
organization (Thompson, 1967). To deal with such
an uncertainty, one needs to understand and concep-
tualize the threat and the opportunities that are con-
stantly presented to the organization.
The environment is sometimes seen as a hard fact,
unavoidable. This is for example the case when a
new regulation changes the competitive game, or
when a competitor comes up with a crippling inno-
vation. In such a case, strategy is mostly an ability
to adapt. At least five theoretical lines of research
have provided meaning to this deterministic view
of environment. The first emphasizes competitive
natural selection as in an ecological niche (Hannan
and Freeman, 1984). Organizations are selected in
or out depending on their ability to respond to the
environmental requirements. Adaptation is seen as
the name of the game, but organizations have limited
control over the selection process. The population
ecology of organization is one of the most determin-
istic of all environment-based organizational theo-
ries. Less deterministic, but still emphasizing the
environment’s dominance is the contingency theory
of organizations (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967;
Thompson, 1967), Environmental uncertainty is dealt
with through structural and strategic adjustments
and continual co-alignment. The relationship be-
tween environment, strategy and structure has been
widely documented and empirically verified (see
Venkatraman and Prescott, 1990).
A deterministic is the Carnegie perspective. Simon’s
(1945) and later Cyert and March’s (1963) view of the
environment and most importantly of the organiza-
tion’s ability to respond to its demands is related to
the ability to adapt the organizational routines or
premises. The rigidities and infightings, among coali-
tion members, that take place in most organizations,
prevent them from adapting. The only way to make
adjustments is through continual adjustment of orga-
nizational routines. Agency and strategic choice
(Hrebeniak and Joyce, 1985) are reduced to the abil-
ity to make changes to the norms and routines that
affect the organization’s behaviour.
Industrial organization and in particular Porter
(1980) provide a no less deterministic theory of envi-
ronmental influence on the organization. But Porter’s
515
THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
work has actually increased the ability to affect the
competitive environment by providing a framework
that enhances the understanding of its dynamics.
Understanding the environment leaves managers
free to create ways, strategies, to deal with it.
Finally, the resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and
Salancik, 1978) offers a view of the environment cen-
tered on those environment forces or stakeholders
that provide the firm with resources. Understanding
the motivations, power positions and relative or mu-
tual dependences of the organization on these forces
may help devise a strategy to enhance the organiza-
tion’s power, and its ability to survive.
But the environment is also in the eye of the beholder
(Weick, 1979). It is enacted by managers through the
filters that come from their cognitive make up or
from the cultural-cognitive influences that come to
bear on them. This may explain isomorphism in
strategy-making (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). These
factors explain why the same environment may be
seen as a source of opportunity by some managers
and a source of threats by others. Clearly, in such a
perspective, strategy-making leads us back to the lea-
der and his/her own make up.
These intellectual aspects are of course intimately re-
lated to the practical aspects of individual and collec-
tive actions and their effect on how the organization
functions. They are not action, but the premises upon
which all action come to rest. For example, when
many are to act together, there is a need for practical
ways to keep the action orderly, through goals, struc-
ture and systems (planning, performance measure-
ment and control, rewards and punishments,
training, resource allocation, management informa-
tion and communication). Structure and systems give
organisational life to decision processes that are un-
ique to each situation. Managing these processes is
a critical function of executives. It is through the
combination of management mechanisms that strat-
egy is revealed and given life.
Ultimately, action is a series of decisions. How are
decisions made? What motivates them? How are deci-
sions integrated in specific situations? How are man-
agerial mechanisms used to encourage or orient
decisions? These are some of the questions that come
out of the study of decision and planning models as
integrating tools.
Finally, strategy, in practice, can be seen as a revela-
tion of the widest possible set of influences on action
(academics would use words such as voluntary, sys-
tematic, rational, objective, but also emotional, senti-
mental, affective, intuitive). To represent strategy as
a model or theory of action, one has not only to rec-
ognise and include all these aspects and associate
them in such a way as to recognize how they com-
bine to generate action, but also do this in a suffi-
ciently economical manner so as to be able to
516
Decision
Management making
processes
Relationship to
environment
Competitive
advantage
A guiding track
A community’s statement
A leader’s statement
Figure 1 Strategy as a Theory of Action
recognise patterns among strategies in action. Over-
all, strategy can be seen as a creative but coherent
practice, informed by all the intellectual aspects men-
tioned earlier. The representation of strategy pro-
posed here is shown in Figure 1. The intellectual
dimensions of strategy are represented as layers of
reality, related to life through the mechanisms that
lead to decision and action (i.e. practice), which in
turn feedback to affect the intellectual dimensions.
This construction is drawn from a synthesis of the lit-
erature. It is similar to what dominated the field until
the new strategic management emerged out of the
strategic management movement (which we see as
linked to the foundation of the Strategic Management
Society). This model is a walking stick for the re-
searcher. It can and has been used by students, by
academics and by practitioners, especially when they
are in the process of experimenting and searching for
meaning. Also the model can be easily related to the
disciplines that contribute to strategic management
research. All this makes it a useful guide both for
researchers to make sense of incoming research and
for practitioners to use.
This model is just an example of a useful walking
stick. Managers and academics alike may have many
walking sticks, so it is not the only one available.
Bower (1970) for large diversified firms, or Miles
and Snow (1978) for less complex situations have
outlined models that have been an inspiration and
provided a way to structure many investigations.
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
 THE FIELD OF STRATEGY: IN SEARCH OF A WALKING STICK
Similarly, Mintzberg’s work (1978) and the configu-
ration school contributions, although focused mostly
on strategy content, have provided a map to deal
with the strategy-structure configuration. Many oth-
ers qualify in this search for strategy as a walking
stick, and our call is to give them greater space and
legitimacy.
Conclusion: Moving Closer to Reality
General managers cannot manage a firm for sustain-
able performance and survival if they focus on the
specialized activities of the business functions. They
are forced to integrate them to provide meaning
and justify development of these functions. The con-
cept of strategy is the traditional instrument that
helps in this process. Such a model of strategy re-
mains a ‘‘down to earth’’ instrument. Its general
character is the source of its explanatory power and
of its capacity to guide collective action. We need
to go beyond the ‘‘down-to-earth’’ so that we can
understand the patterns of strategy; so we state as
the raison d’être of the field of strategy: ‘‘helping
through heuristics and creative methodologies to the
understanding and transformation of reality’’.
We fear that if research were to continue to move
away from such a goal, strategic management prac-
tice would be left alone and the academic field would
die. Managers would lose interest in theory that nei-
ther helps to explain reality nor facilitates action de-
signed to influence reality.
This must be a source of major concern about the fu-
ture of strategy as a field of academic teaching and
learned research. From the traditional academic
point of view, it seems much more legitimate to sim-
ply consolidate disciplinary research on the mistaken
basis that strategy research conceived in any other
way looks like a pale reflection of proper academic
standards. It takes deliberately deviant behaviour to
innovate and resist these powerful isomorphic pres-
sures. We should not only conceive our research bet-
ter so that the understanding and transformation of
reality is not relegated to the background, but be-
comes centre stage. Also, we should work at devel-
oping more and better ways to integrate and
reconcile research findings and relate them to
practice.
Indeed the ways to reconcile and integrate research
cannot be completely different from ways to help
managers in their practice. The academic study of
the strategic management of organizations should
be devoted to the development of the conceptual
frameworks needed to bring together research and
practice. As a vehicle for policy thinking and dia-
logue, the model described in this paper is but a sim-
ple example of the direction that research should
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005
take. The most powerful models should emphasize
strategy process leaving the specialized research to
deal with content.
The field of strategy has no future except to become
close to reality. Its methods should be those that
incorporate complexity. Therefore, they will often
be qualitative, and when possible experimental, to
better represent reality and its dynamics. Despite
the fact that practice and theory are not well con-
nected and that strategic management has so far
failed to produce the volume of useful results ex-
pected by management, perhaps one day these strat-
egy research methods will be powerful enough to
provide managers with truly useful walking sticks.
Acknowledgements
The authors are extremely grateful to John McGee,
Professor of Strategic Management at Warwick Busi-
ness School, who significantly improved the read-
ability of the text.
Note
1. Corporate strategy is the pattern of decisions in a company that
determines and reveals its objectives, purposes, or goals,
produces the principal policies and plans for achieving these
goals, and defines the range of business the company is to
pursue, the kind of economic and human organization it is or
intends to be, and the nature of the economic and noneconomic
contributions it intends to make to its shareholders, employees,
customers, and communities.
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TAIEB HAFSI, HEC HOWARD THOMAS,

Montreal, 3000 Way of Warwick Business School.
the Coast-Holy-Catherine, University of Warwick,
Montreal, Quebec H3T Gibbet’s Hill Road, Cov-
A7, Canada. E-mail: entry CV4 7AL, UK. E-
Taieb.Hafsi@hec.ca mail: Howard.Thomas@
wbs.ac.uk
Taıeb Hafsi holds the
Walter J. Somers Chair of Howard Thomas is Pro-
International Manage- fessor of Strategic Man-
ment at HEC Montreal, agement and Dean of
and is Co-ordinator of the Warwick Business School
Strategos Research Group. with past senior appoint-
His research interests include corporate strategy, ments at the University of Illinois at Urbana—
organization, governance and management by the Champaign, Australian Graduate School of Manage-
State. ment, and London Business School. A prolific author,
his research includes competitive strategy, risk analy-
sis, strategic change, international management and
decision theory.

European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 507–519, October 2005 519