Strategy Implementation Revisited: A Conceptual Review and Empirical Investigation of How Firms Implement Corporate Strategies

Strategy implementation is a crucial management task that impacts overall firm success. Despite its importance, literature has put a greater emphasis on strategy formulation. This is surprising since empirical studies and anecdotal evidence suggests that strategies often fail because of poor implementation (failure rates range between 50% and 70%) rather than inadequate strategies.

Further research is thus important from a theoretical as well as managerial point of view. While formulating a strategy is already difficult, strategy implementation faces many unique challenges, e.g. a long time span, unpredictable developments, and a large number of stakeholders. Literature has in particular paid little attention to strategy implementation in M-Form organizations. This is astonishing since the M-Form has become the dominant organizational form, diverse sets of businesses and complex organizational structures further complicate the implementation of (corporate) strategies, and investors have begun to judge the ability of firms to deliver on their promises by demanding regular updates of strategy implementation efforts.

This proposed research project addresses these shortcomings in the strategy implementation literature. I propose to examine the following research question: what is the role of corporate programs in strategy implementation? More specifically, this research projects seeks improve our understanding of (1) why and when firms set up dedicated, but temporary structures to coordinate their numerous strategy implementation efforts and (2) how do announcements of such dedicated strategy implementation vehicles influence investor and market perceptions. By examining a major structural choice in strategy implementation and the signaling effects of it, this research project will make important contributions to literature on strategy implementation in M-form organizations and to the nascent literature stream of programs.