Some Thoughts on the Development of Disciplines, with Particular Attention to Behavioral Strategy

4区 管理学 Q3 Economics, Econometrics and Finance
J. March
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引用次数: 5

Abstract

Abstract The earliest contributors to discussions of strategy were advisors to military leaders, and that model was carried into early business schools, where the teachers of strategy were, for the most part, people with extensive experience as executives or advisors to them. The key course materials were anecdotes and cases, and the standard intellectual discourse was organized around recollected episodes in organizational history. The central contributions of the early teaching of strategy were consciousness of the complications introduced by complexity, competition, and attention to the second-order surprises of intentional action. There was neither a pretense of theory nor a significant involvement in research. Although it shared in the onus of a general academic skepticism about the academic legitimacy of research on business, the “discipline” of strategy sought to emulate the attributes of more established disciplines. The new field was typified by an early open interdisciplinary flavor that facilitated the differentiation of a new field, and a subsequent refinement that restricted access. By the start of the twenty-first century, this process had run much of its course, and the field of strategy had taken its place as a reasonably respectable academic specialty. The history of an emphasis on real organizations in real situations led to an openness to anchors drawn from sources other than conventional economics. These included particularly the theory of games, the evolutionary theory of the firm, and the behavioral theory of organizations. The struggle for respectability in economics was repeatedly frustrated by the difficulty of discovering a formulation that honored the litany of economics while fitting the observations of real strategy making. The future seems likely to be more of the same, a combination of efforts to secure recognition through emulation of the standards and barriers to entry that characterize established disciplines, and of exploratory gambits that are mostly destined to be forgotten. The optimal balance is likely to be as elusive as it is in other domains.
关于学科发展的几点思考,特别是行为策略
讨论战略的最早贡献者是军事领导人的顾问,这种模式被带入了早期的商学院,在那里,战略教师在很大程度上是具有丰富经验的高管或顾问。主要的课程材料是轶事和案例,标准的知识话语是围绕组织历史上的回忆事件组织的。早期战略教学的主要贡献是意识到复杂性、竞争带来的复杂性,以及对有意行动的二阶意外的关注。既没有假装理论,也没有大量参与研究。尽管它分担了对商业研究的学术合法性普遍持怀疑态度的学术责任,但战略“学科”试图模仿更成熟学科的属性。新领域的典型特征是早期开放的跨学科风格,促进了新领域的区分,随后的细化限制了访问。到21世纪初,这一过程已经完成了大部分,战略领域已经成为一个相当受人尊敬的学术专业。强调真实情况下的真实组织的历史导致了对传统经济学以外来源的锚的开放。其中特别包括博弈论、企业进化理论和组织行为理论。在经济学中争取体面的斗争一再受挫,因为很难找到一个既尊重经济学的冗长论述,又符合实际战略制定的观察结果的公式。未来似乎更有可能是相同的,通过模仿标准和进入门槛来获得认可的努力,以及大多数注定要被遗忘的探索策略,将这些努力结合起来。最佳平衡很可能像在其他领域一样难以捉摸。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.00
自引率
0.00%
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期刊介绍: Advances in Strategic Management is dedicated to communicating innovative, new research that advances theory and practice in Strategic Management. The domain of the series encompasses, but is not limited to, corporate and business unit strategy, strategic organization and process, alliances and networks, and competitive dynamics. The series is committed to expanding the scope of Strategic Management theory and analysis and enriching practice by: -Encouraging multitheoretical approaches that span multiple social science disciplines -Welcoming papers using a diversity of innovative research methods -Creating focused volumes that explore in depth promising new research directions, consolidate research streams, and address significant current theoretical and practical problems.
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