Title: Open Strategy: Rhetoric or Reality?

Author: Josh Morton (Loughborough University – School of Business and Economics)

Abstract: This research intends to extend research into the open strategy phenomenon by establishing a ‘rhetoric or reality’ approach to analyzing primarily one in-depth, longitudinal case study. This means a main objective of finding out more about the process of open strategy initiatives and to establish how the ideas collected from a wider range of organizational actors do, if at all, lead to new strategic directions. Our primary research question therefore asks ‘What practices do organizational actors engage in to construct strategic ideas in open strategy initiatives, and how are these ideas subsequently used by the organization?’. Addressing this question and emphasizing the episodic nature of open strategy will be especially important as open strategy becomes a more ubiquitous feature of organizational life, and needs not only a more confined definition, but also means of systematic analysis, helping to discover more about how those involved in open strategy contribute, and to what extent the actual initiatives are effective in informing future strategies.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.