Encouraging emergence of cross-business strategic initiatives

J. Ignacio Canales and Adrián Caldart

European Management Journal, 2017, vol. 35, issue 3, 300-313

Abstract: We explore how strategic initiatives emerge at the business unit level in the context of multi-business firms. Findings show that such initiatives create cross-business synergies in the absence of any direct intervention from the headquarters. Four factors appeared to foster the development of autonomous cross-business collaboration: a sense of urgency at the level of the firm, the existence of a few broad but strong corporate strategic guidelines, the existence of a set of cross-business integration mechanisms, and an organizational culture promoting collaboration. Our findings suggest that, in addition to developing and enforcing top-down cross-business initiatives, headquarters would benefit from acknowledging the importance of business units' local knowledge by creating an organizational environment characterized by the four conditions identified in this paper.

Keywords: Corporate strategy; Multi-business corporations; Autonomous initiatives; Cross business strategic initiatives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eurman:v:35:y:2017:i:3:p:300-313

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DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2016.10.003

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