Paper info

REAL MECHANISMS OF STRATEGIC ACTING

Stefanos Mouzas

The paper was published at the 17th IMP-conference in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

This paper deals with real and contemporary ways of strategic acting in manufacturer-retailernetworks. Key objective of the study is to explore and describe how organisations developand implement strategies to achieve their objectives. Its empirical basis is defined byembedded case studies in the markets of fast moving consumer goods in Germany.Following the epistemology of critical realism, the paper attempts to extend the perspective ofthe network approach by utilising the recent advances in the area of corporate finance. Basedon what organisations in reality do, strategy is not seen as the ultimate concept of thecompany's positioning in the market but as an inventive stream of finding and doing what ispossible for each organisation in its respective network. While organisations react to events asthey unfold, strategic acting takes the form of creating and exercising a number of real optionsthat best reflect the organisations? strengths and their capacities derived from networkmembership.