Revisiting business strategy under discontinuity

Abstract

Purpose – Business strategy and its quest for sustainable competitive advantage and success is challenged by external and internal change, which increasingly takes the form of radical discontinuity. However, emergent strategy models are rising as concepts and constructs, possibly impacting on the advancement of strategic management theory and practices: these tools are the business model (BM), the value network (VN) and resource management (RM). The purpose of this paper is to propose a revisited role for BM design, VN configuration and RM, with specific reference to strategy execution and monitoring under discontinuity. Design/methodology/approach – The study builds its contribution on a theoretical framework (constituted by a literature review on discontinuity, BM, VN and RM), supplemented by two longitudinal case studies on companies which went through several discontinuities affecting their business strategy. Findings – BM, VN and RM are the strategic tools through which a company executes its planned strategy. In addition, radical variations in: BM parameters performance; VN configuration and firms relationships; RM consistency with resources core status, resulting from an external or internal discontinuity, constitute a signalling “vector” of inputs to identify the discontinuity and activate a new strategic re-planning process. Originality/value – By revisiting the role of BM, VN and RM, the study revives the theoretical debate on business strategy under discontinuity, and provides managers with a comprehensive model to concretely employ these three tools for strategy analysis.

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