HOW STRATEGY-MAKING PROCESSES CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Strategy-making is usually portrayed in dichotomous terms: rational vs. incremental, or formulation vs. implementation. It may, however, be more valid to think of organizations as entities capable of developing resources and skills in multiple strategy-making process modes. This paper first develops measures to identify firms with different levels and types of strategy-making process 'capability' then examines empirically their relationships to five dimensions of perceived performance, using data collected from a sample of 285 top managers. Results indicate that firms with high process capability-the simultaneous use of multiple strategy-making process modes-outperform single-mode or less process-capable organizations.