Günter Müller-Stewens

Ecosystems are an increasingly important phenomenon, but we know surprisingly little about the processes and practices underlying ecosystem emergence. This paper aims to provide further insights about how incumbents proactively engage in the creation of ecosystems, by studying in-depth and in real time the transformation of an automotive supplier from a hierarchically organized value chain to an ecosystem. We draw on institutional theory to conceptualize ecosystem emergence as a form of radical institutional change that requires the development of a new institutional logic. Our emerging findings indicate that ecosystem emergence is influenced by (i) multiple nested organizational fields, (ii) sector-wide change templates which create isomorphic pressures across different fields, (iii) an unowned change process whose evolution can be shaped with participative and collaborative strategizing.

Corporate functions are the headquarters functions in a divisionalised company. These functions, such as corporate Finance, HR, IT, Marketing, and Strategy, have been increasing in their numbers, size and influence. While they can add significant value as part of the ‘corporate parent', they also often subtract value, interfering in unhelpful ways and imposing bureaucracy and delays. Our research, with 30 European companies, exposed four typical value traps that are the root causes of subtracted value. These value traps appear to occur because of the different challenges that corporate functions face at different stages in their life cycle.

Corporate strategy departments as a collective of strategy professionals need to integrate organizational unit managers in strategy-making through participation. However, research on how they are doing it and how effective such integration efforts are is scarce. Addressing this gap, we propose a measure for integration effectiveness from a unit manager perspective. We identify integration effectiveness as a multidimensional construct consisting of a relational, cognitive, and functional dimension. The way how the strategy department exploits its capabilities along these dimensions leads to four characteristic effectiveness states: seminal, lagging, routine, and rushed. This conceptualization is based on an in-depth case study of a global multibusiness automotive company with empirical evidence from 43 interviews with unit managers and a pilot-test including initial construct validation (EFA).

Value creation through the corporate strategy function (CSF) and its measurement has received little attention in strategic management research. This article should fill this gap by starting to develop the Strategic Impact Measure (SIM). Applying the strategy as practice perspective and drawing on an in depth case study of a global multi-business automotive company (AutoCorp) with empirical evidence of 43 interviews, we find that strategic impact is a collective and multidimensional construct consisting of a relational, cognitive and functional dimension. The extent of these dimensions is reflected in the four strategic impact levels ‘power', ‘rush', ‘poor', and ‘routine'. After having inductively developed the construct strategic impact from the data, we pilot measured the SIM at AutoCorp and validated the results in an exploratory factor analysis. -> nominated for Practical Implications Award