Emergent strategy

Emergent strategy describes patterns in organizational actions that arise without prior explicit intention, developing through accumulated decisions and adaptations rather than formal planning. Henry Mintzberg and James Waters introduced the concept in their 1985 Strategic Management Journal article "Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent."^[1] The framework challenged prevailing assumptions that effective strategy always flows from top-down analytical processes.

Theoretical foundations

Mintzberg and Waters defined strategy as "a pattern in a stream of decisions." This behavioral definition differs from planning-based views that equate strategy with intended plans. Realized strategies may match intentions (deliberate strategy) or emerge independently (emergent strategy). Most real-world strategies combine both elements.

For a purely deliberate strategy to exist, three conditions must be met:

• Precise intentions must be articulated before action
• Intentions must be shared by all organizational members
• Intentions must be realized exactly as intended without external interference

These conditions rarely occur completely. Environmental changes, implementation problems, and learning during execution alter realized strategies from original plans.

For a purely emergent strategy:

• Patterns must emerge in organizational actions
• These patterns must develop in the absence of explicit intentions about them
• Consistency must exist despite the lack of central direction

Pure emergence also remains rare. Some intentions guide most organizational action, even if outcomes differ substantially from plans.

Strategy continuum

Mintzberg and Waters identified eight strategy types along the deliberate-emergent continuum:

Planned strategy

Formal plans created by central leadership, communicated throughout the organization, and implemented with minimal deviation. This type requires stable, predictable environments. Defense contracting and heavily regulated industries sometimes approximate planned strategies.

Entrepreneurial strategy

Vision originates with a single leader who maintains control over strategy. Intentions exist but may adapt opportunistically. Start-up companies often exhibit this pattern, with founders adjusting direction based on market feedback while maintaining core vision.

Ideological strategy

Shared beliefs among organizational members generate consistent behavior without detailed plans. Strong organizational cultures can coordinate action. Religious organizations and mission-driven nonprofits may develop ideological strategies.

Umbrella strategy

Leaders establish general guidelines while allowing flexibility in specifics. Senior management sets boundaries within which others operate. This partially deliberate, partially emergent approach suits complex organizations facing diverse conditions. Corporate headquarters might mandate financial targets while allowing divisions discretion over how to achieve them.

Process strategy

Leadership controls process rather than content. Hiring decisions, training programs, and structural choices shape who makes decisions and how. Outcomes emerge from these processes rather than predetermined plans.

Unconnected strategy

Subunits pursue strategies loosely connected to organizational direction. Large diversified corporations may contain divisions following independent paths. This fragmentation produces emergent patterns at the corporate level even if divisions act deliberately.

Consensus strategy

Mutual adjustment among actors produces convergent patterns without central direction. Professional organizations where experts exercise autonomous judgment may develop strategies through collective accommodation.

Imposed strategy

External forces dictate strategic direction. Regulatory mandates, competitive pressures, or environmental constraints leave organizations little choice. Emergence occurs because external imposition rather than internal intention shapes behavior.

Practical applications

Recognizing emergent patterns

Managers benefit from detecting emergent strategies early. Successful experiments by frontline employees may signal promising directions. Intel's transformation from memory chips to microprocessors began with sales personnel pursuing opportunities corporate strategy had not anticipated. Andy Grove later described this as "strategic inflection points" requiring recognition of emerging realities.

Balancing deliberate and emergent elements

Effective organizations combine intentional direction with adaptive flexibility. Overly rigid adherence to plans prevents learning. Complete absence of direction produces incoherence. The optimal balance varies by environment stability and organizational capabilities.

Honda's entry into the US motorcycle market illustrates this balance. The company initially planned to sell large motorcycles but found unexpected demand for smaller Super Cub models. Adapting to this emergent opportunity proved more successful than persisting with original intentions. BCG later analyzed this case as demonstrating emergent strategy advantages.

Learning from failure

Not all emergent strategies succeed. FedEx launched ZapMail in 1984 to transmit documents electronically between offices. Technical problems and the spread of affordable fax machines doomed the venture. Recognizing when to abandon emerging directions requires judgment equal to recognizing promising ones.

Criticisms and limitations

Some scholars argue emergent strategy overemphasizes retrospective rationalization. Identifying patterns after the fact does not prove they emerged organically. Organizations may construct emergence narratives to explain outcomes that actually resulted from luck or external factors.

The concept may undervalue deliberate planning benefits. Complex organizations require coordination that emergence alone cannot provide. Infrastructure investments, major acquisitions, and regulatory compliance demand explicit planning.

{{{Concept}}} Primary topic {{{list1}}} Related topics {{{list2}}} Methods and techniques {{{list3}}}

References

• Mintzberg, H. & Waters, J.A. (1985). "Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent." Strategic Management Journal, 6(3), 257-272.
• Mintzberg, H. (1994). The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Free Press.
• Pascale, R.T. (1984). "Perspectives on Strategy: The Real Story Behind Honda's Success." California Management Review, 26(3), 47-72.
• Quinn, J.B. (1980). Strategies for Change: Logical Incrementalism. Irwin.

Footnotes

[1] Mintzberg developed these ideas through extensive research on how organizations actually make strategic decisions, contrasting observed behavior with prescriptive planning models dominant in business school curricula during the 1970s and 1980s.