Dissertation: Strategic learning – a route to competitive advantage
Charlotta Sirén asks in her doctoral study what is the role of strategic learning in firm success. Question is addressed in five interconnected articles whose conceptual development is supported by statistical analysis based on data collected from Finnish software firms. Field of the study is management.
– The results indicate that those software companies able to build and leverage strategic learning capabilities in their organizations are those that subsequently perform best, Siren tells.
– There are, however, many factors such as inertial forces related to age and size and the limited nature of strategic learning capabilities that need to be carefully considered and managed in order to maximize the benefits from such higher-order learning.
Dissertation advances scholarly conversations by examining and empirically testing the boundary conditions and contingencies relating to successful strategic learning that is recognized as a vital component of firms’ success.
Contingency factors influence to renewal process
In the first article, the conceptualization of strategic learning along with a validated scale provides both strategy researchers and organizational leaders with a valuable tool to evaluate and manage strategic learning. The second article extends the ambidexterity literature by empirically examining the importance of strategic learning for firms’ exploration and exploitation strategies.
– In the third article I challenge the assumptions of linearity inherent in the majority of management and entrepreneurship studies by showing that contingency factors related to inertia influence the strategic renewal process, says Sirén.
The fourth article suggests that the effective strategic management in dynamic environments is based on a balance between planning that enables direction to realize intentions and emergence that enables strategic learning and responding to unfolding patterns in the industry. In order to provide practical insights, the fifth article sheds light on the best practices among some promising Finnish software companies.
Public examination of a doctoral dissertation of Charlotta Sirén ”Strategic Learning: A Route to Competitive Advantage?” is on Friday, 2 of May at 12 o´clock in Auditorium Kurtén. Professor Matthias Fink from Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, will act as an opponent and professor Marko Kohtamäki as a custor.
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