Crowdsourcing Strategy

Strategy development has traditionally been exclusive (i.e. job of the top management team) and secretive to protect competitive advantages (Whittington et al., 2011). However, recently strategy appears to be changing dramatically and is being revolutionized. It is apparent that, a number of forces (societal, cultural, organizational and technological) are pushing companies to open their strategy processes. Technologically organizations are increasingly adopting Web 2.0 technologies which have resulted in the emergence of new opportunities for internal collaboration. These new approaches variously labeled as democratizing strategy (Stieger, Matzler, Chatterjee, & Ladstätter-Fussenegger, 2012), open strategy (Whittington, Cailluet, & Yakis-Douglas, 2011), open-source strategy (Newstead & Lanzerotti, 2010), or strategy as a practice of thousands (Dobusch & Müller-Seitz, 2012) - involve a large number of people in generating, discussing, and evaluating strategic ideas. Notably while companies are starting to experiment with this new approach to strategy formulation, it appears that, with the exception of three academic papers (Dobusch & Müller-Seitz, 2012; Stieger, et al., 2012; Whittington, et al., 2011), no attention yet in research has been given towards exploring this phenomenon. We were involved in four open strategy projects in three multinational companies and one medium- sized company. Building on these four case studies (an Austrian medium-sized automation supplier, a leading German car manufacturer, a major European bank, and a German multinational engineering and electronics company), we explicate some important research questions for further investigation into topic of open strategy which is a potentially major new phenomenon in strategy research and practice, raising many questions to be answered (Whittington et al., 2011). The current observable major benefits of open strategy from our preliminary studies are discussed in this proposal and built upon to further explore the phenomenon. Our proposed research employs a multi-method approach in studying the research questions particularly due to the under-researched nature of the open strategy phenomenon. Besides, the multi-method approach a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods enable a better understanding of research problems than the use of either method on its own (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007). Therefore, we deem the mixed methods approach plausible and adequate for the further exploration of the open strategy phenomenon towards gaining a deeper understanding.

Strategy development in organizations has traditionally been an exclusive and secretive task. In the last years however, mostly driven by new technologies, strategy work has changed. Social software offers new opportunities to collaborate and exchange information. More and more companies have started to change the way they develop strategies. With more open, inclusive, and transparent ways of strategizing, companies involve a larger number of employees and external stakeholders in their strategy work. In this research project, we studied how new approaches to strategy changes the way companies formulate and implement strategy. Open practices which ensure increased inclusion of a variety of actors for different strategic purposes such as inter-organizational workshops, internal strategy workshops, jamming, blogging, wikis, ideation contests, crowdsourcing and community platforms or prediction markets are identified and described. Through an extensive analysis of cases, we review these practices and show how they are applied in different phases of the strategy process and who typically is involved. The research project studies how such open practices are the basis for better strategic analysis and strategies as they lead to a greater number and diversity of strategic ideas, more acceptance, or increased commitment and joint sense making. However, also dilemmas of inclusion and associated potential downsides such as increased loss of control, inappropriateness of contributions, information overload and burden, or diverging interests and escalating expectations have been highlighted. These new practices of open strategy lead to a number of questions to be studied. Hence, a research agenda is proposed that identifies critical research questions. These include how the process of opening up needs to be designed, how individuals can be motivated to engage and contribute, for which topics and under which conditions open strategy is a suitable approach, how strategies emerge in such initiatives, the appropriate role of management, as well as how corporate culture affects and is affected by opening strategy work. A research agenda for increasing openness in the strategy process is identified along the following research areas: 1.) participation (inclusion vs. exclusion), 2.) strategy contributions, 3.) social structure, 4.) unpredictability (consensus vs. dissensus), 5.) politization processes, 6.) role of management, and 7.) role of organizational culture. Opening strategy also changes the behaviour and attitudes of leaders and employees. The project shows how leaders can tap into the collective intelligence of their organization by increasing diversity within the organization, promoting independence of individual decision makers, accessing decentralized knowledge, and implementing effective ways to aggregate knowledge. Finally, this research project also shows how individual innovation behaviour of employees can be fostered, how leadership characteristics (personality traits) and employees work ethics influence innovation behaviour.