Abstract
Competitive advantages of organizations are becoming temporary and transient in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. At the same time, there is both practical and research evidence that long-term oriented organizations outperform and deliver wider benefits to stakeholders than short-term oriented ones. Based on this, organizations should aim at stretching competitive advantages towards viability advantage.
Viability advantage can be developed by widening arenas of managerial work towards strategic management (e.g. developing dynamic capabilities) and institutional management (e.g. impacting industry rules, even creating new industries) in addition to focusing on business management and operational effectiveness.
Open strategizing, involving external network partners and enhancing internal horizontal collaboration by developing “silo solvents”, is a promising vehicle for developing innovativeness and execution power needed for creating and sustaining viability advantage. Open strategizing is an ongoing process of launching and executing strategic initiatives, “tiger pounce strategies” that result in innovative, value capturing business/operation models.
For making viability advantage real, open strategizing must be driven and powered by strategic thinking. Management systems and processes should support opening strategists’ minds rather than being blinders as is the case of many template-driven planning systems. Strategic thinking fosters viability mindset. This reinforces sustainable strategizing.
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Notes
- 1.
Hofstede’s seminal work on national cultures implied four dimensions for comparing cultural attributes. Being concerned about potential Western bias in Hofstede’s (1980) instrument Hofstede and Bond analysed Chinese culture. They found one unique cultural dimension which called Confucian dynamism, although Hofstede later called it “long-term orientation.” This national culture dimension describes the extent to which individuals within the culture focus on the short-term and immediate consequences versus take a long-term focus.
- 2.
For more information see Chap. 3.
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Santalainen, T. (2019). Sustainable Strategizing: Extending Competitive Advantages to Viability Advantage. In: Wunder, T. (eds) Rethinking Strategic Management. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06014-5_5
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