Open Strategy

Open Strategy is a new approach in strategy practice and research. Traditionally the development of organizational strategies was the exclusive task of top managers behind closed boardrooms doors. However, most recently organizations are increasingly opening up their strategy processes. They are involving a greater number of diverse actors outside top management teams in creating their strategies. This could include employees from different functions and hierarchical levels or externals actors such as customer, suppliers, start-ups, experts or even competitors. Organizations thereby rely on digital technologies such as e.g. strategy jams, wikis, blogs online community or contest platforms or prediction markets. Open Strategy echoes wider movements within our societies requesting increased diversity, inclusion and transparency. While openness brings fresh ideas and new perspectives and increased acceptance and commitment of those involved, executives might also associate it with loss of control, and the risk of complex and lengthy processes. Open Strategy fundamentally changes strategists work, and challenges powerful traditional assumptions based on exclusivity and secrecy, exercised and taught over decades. However, research on Open Strategy is still in its beginnings and we need to know more about this new approach to strategizing. This project has the goal to better understand what drives organizations to open up their strategy process and what are the particular outcomes especially in terms of improved strategy implementation. Thereby we particularly focus on the individuals involved and asks the following questions: 1) How do personalities of executives impact their decisions to open up the strategy process in their organization? What are specific psychological characteristics that could influence such a decision for or against Open Strategy? 2) How can involvement of employees in the strategy process improve their individua l understanding and acceptance of s strategy? Does this lead to faster and more successful realization of strategy? To answer these questions this project will combine multiple innovative research methods. We will crawl digital platforms for social media profiling to get insights in executives personalities and we will apply machine-learning to determine the openness of organizations. In addition, we will conduct experiments in labs and organizations to investigate the consequences of different tools and ways to involve people in the strategy process.