Strategic Management as Wayfinding: The Doing of Strategy Work

Harry Sminia () and Julia Corvalán
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Harry Sminia: Strathclyde Business School
Julia Corvalán: Fundacion Paraguaya

Chapter Chapter 5 in The Palgrave Handbook of Strategy, Change and Transformational Project Leadership, 2026, pp 109-127 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter develops wayfinding as a mode of strategic management to provide an alternative to strategic planning. Strategic planning is developed from a substantialist perspective that presumes business reality exists of knowable entities to which change happens. Dealing with change then has developed into an understanding of having dynamic capability which ultimately is about top management who are seen as doing the strategic thinking and acting on behalf of the firm by sensing, seizing, and maintaining changes to competitiveness. Wayfinding is based on a processual worldview that takes any substantiality as only being temporarily and as coming into existence because of an underlying process. The focus of strategy then should be on this process, with wayfinding dealing with change through doing strategy work and practical coping by way of a continuous questioning and problem-solving. If strategic planning is engaged with finding competitive advantage in the competitive patterns, as these are presumed to exist, wayfinding is engaging with the patterning by which competitiveness emerges.

Keywords: Dynamic capability; Strategic planning; Strategy work; Practical coping; Wayfinding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-95-3588-0_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-3588-0_5

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