Strategic thinking and the IMP approach: A comparative analysis
Introduction
While it would be quite wrong to say that the subject of strategy has received no attention in the writings of those associated with the IMP school of thought (see, for example, Araujo and Easton, 1996, Axelsson, 1992, Jüttner and Schlange, 1996, Mattsson, 1987, Snehota, 1990), it would equally be wrong to contend that strategy is one of the major explicit themes of IMP research. Analysis of the 957 research papers available at the IMP web site (impgroup.org) identified 14 papers (1.5%) with “strategy” in the title and 54 papers (5.6%) with “strategy” in the abstract. By contrast, an analysis of the 887 papers published between 2000 and 2005 (a period roughly equal to that over which the IMP database has accumulated) in three major academic journals in the marketing field (the European Journal of Marketing, the International Marketing Review, and Marketing Intelligence and Planning) found 41 papers (4.6%) with “strategy” in the title and 127 papers (14.3%) with “strategy” in the abstract. There was very little variation in the incidence of “strategy” papers across the three journals.
While making no claim to meeting the highest levels of scientific proof, we conclude nevertheless that there is a prima facie case that the topic of strategy is less popular (by a factor of around three) in the IMP literature than it is in the general academic marketing literature. Notice that the three journals selected for this rough and ready analysis contain predominantly European research with a leavening of work by scholars from other parts of the world — and so to a first approximation mirror the IMP research database. The starting point for this paper is the assertion that too little explicit attention has been paid to the implications of the interaction and networks perspective (or “IMP view”) for strategy. When placed in the context of Hunt and Lambe's (2000) argument that the influence of the marketing field in general on strategy has been marginalized, this suggests that there is considerable room for new research that explicitly adopts an interaction and networks (IMP) approach to strategy. However, we do not wish to constrain our review to any single paradigm within the field of strategy, since we cannot say a priori where the greatest scope for synergy will occur between the interaction and networks perspective and the field of strategy. Rather than focusing on a single sub-field within strategy, we have selected a range of strategic thinkers who cover a period of time (roughly four decades) during which strategic thought has developed rapidly, and a range of approaches including both content and process perspectives on strategy.
The purposes of this paper are (1) to conduct a conceptual and theoretical comparison of the IMP view of strategy with other established schools of thought in strategic management; (2) to identify salient differences and similarities between IMP and those other schools; (3) to consider how the IMP approach can benefit from introducing ideas from these different schools of thought about strategy; and (4) to use this comparison to specify a research agenda looking into the implications for strategy of an interaction and networks perspective on the business world. By doing this we directly address the theme of the 22nd IMP conference: ‘Opening the Network’. Our overall aims are to ‘open the network’ by making the contributions of IMP scholars on strategy more accessible to others who may be able to use the novel insights of the interaction and networks perspective in their strategy research, and to ‘open the network’ by suggesting new directions for strategic research from an IMP perspective inspired by the work of scholars working in different traditions.
We begin by engaging with that body of IMP literature that has explicitly addressed strategy, and so defining what we mean by “the IMP approach to strategy”. Subsequently, we compare the IMP approach to strategy with five major schools of strategic thought, which we identify in terms of their pre-eminent contributor, what one might call five “strategy gurus”. The five strategy gurus addressed in the paper are Igor Ansoff, Michael Porter, Jay Barney, Henry Mintzberg, and Richard Whittington. These five schools of thought have been chosen to represent the historical development of the field of strategic management over a period of roughly four decades — and are discussed in approximate chronological order. The five schools of thought range from the largely normative “rational planning approach” to the far more descriptive approaches espoused by Mintzberg and Whittington. More specifically, the first three schools can be viewed as more ‘content’ based, while Mintzberg represents a strategy process school of thought. The strategy-as-practice perspective (Whittington) is relatively recent and as yet not as established as several of the other schools. The variety provided by the mix of content and process perspectives allows for a thorough comparison with the IMP approach to strategy. From the comparative analysis of IMP thinking with these five schools of thought we draw conclusions about the contribution that IMP researchers have made to the theory of strategy, and about the nature of the empirical research that should be conducted to increase that contribution.
Section snippets
Strategy from an IMP perspective
The strategy literature makes a common distinction between corporate, business, functional and administrative strategy (Spulber, 2004). IMP studies have made most contribution at the level of functional strategy (i.e., marketing and purchasing strategy) and possibly business strategy (Snehota, 1990). One overarching distinction between the IMP approach and most other approaches to strategy concerns the assumptions, whether explicit or implicit, which are made about the extent of control that
Comparison with key perspectives in strategy
In this section of the paper we identify the similarities and differences between the IMP approach to strategy and five influential schools of thought in strategic management. Recognizing that there is a plethora of schools of thought from which to choose, and several different taxonomies of those schools of thought, we have been selective rather than exhaustive in our choice of the schools to include in the analysis. In particular, the five approaches selected for the analysis range from the
Discussion
In Table 1 we present an analysis of the key features of the five schools of thought in strategy that we have considered alongside those of the IMP interaction and networks approach. The table summarizes the main message, key concepts and theoretical backgrounds of the six approaches, next to their views on the cognitive dimension of strategy and their methods and units of analysis. This table is a useful device for assessing the possibilities for creating new linkages between an IMP
Conclusion and implications
In this paper we have attempted to conduct a systematic comparison of strategy from an interaction and networks perspective with five important schools of thought in strategic management. We contend that the issue of strategy has not been adequately addressed by interaction and network researchers, and that one contribution of this paper is to put the issue of strategy within networks firmly on the research agenda. In placing strategy within relationships and networks on the agenda we have had
Enrico Baraldi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Studies and an associate of Uppsala STS Center, Uppsala University (Sweden). His research interests include industrial marketing, product development and technology management, with a special focus on the use of IT systems and biotechnology within business networks. He has published in the Journal of Business Research, Technovation and IMP Journal.
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Enrico Baraldi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Studies and an associate of Uppsala STS Center, Uppsala University (Sweden). His research interests include industrial marketing, product development and technology management, with a special focus on the use of IT systems and biotechnology within business networks. He has published in the Journal of Business Research, Technovation and IMP Journal.
Ross Brennan is a Reader in Marketing at Middlesex University in London. His principal research interests are in business-to-business marketing strategy, the academic/practitioner interface in marketing, and marketing pedagogy. Ross's work has been published in such journals as the Journal of Business Research, the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Management, Business Ethics: A European Review, the Marketing Education Review, and previously in Industrial Marketing Management.
Debbie Harrison is an Associate Professor in Inter-Organisational Relationships at the Norwegian School of Management BI, Norway. She has published articles on the dynamics of network change, relationship dissolution and resource interaction in business networks in the Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Research, and Technology Analysis and Strategic Management.
Annalisa Tunisini is a Professor in Business Management and Industrial Marketing, at the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” (Italy). Her research interests and main publications concern the structure and dynamics of business market contexts. In particular, her research has addressed technological and organizational innovation in industrial companies, supply chain relationships and positioning strategies of small and mid sized companies and dynamics of industrial districts in a network perspective. She is Editor in Chief of the Review of the Italian Marketing Association, a member of the Editorial Board of the IMP Journal and a member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing.
Judy Zolkiewski is a Senior Lecturer in marketing at Manchester Business School, UK. Her research interests are focused on understanding the operation of business-to-business marketing and purchasing, both in the traditional manufacturing and engineering industries and in the evolving business-to-business services sector. She has published in the Journal of Business Marketing, the European Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.