The Corporate Strategy Department as an Integrative Device: Integration Effectiveness from a Unit Manager Perspective

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).