Mapping the Mind of the Strategist: A Quantitative Methodology for Measuring the Strategic Beliefs of Executives

Deze studie gaat over het in kaart brengen van het denken van de strateeg – het kwantitatief meten van de denkbeelden van leidinggevenden over de beste manier waarop strategische vraagstukken zouden moeten worden benaderd. De doelstelling was om een betrouwbaar instrument te ontwikkelen waarmee deze strategische denkbeelden zouden kunnen worden gemeten, op een wijze dat het herbruikbaar zou zijn in een brede scala van cognitieve onderzoeken. Het zou een Hofstede-achtig, universeel instrument moeten zijn, dat strategische denkbeelden in kaart zou kunnen brengen over branche- en landsgrenzen heen. Om dit te bereiken werd een conceptueel kader geconstrueerd, bestaand uit tien afzonderlijke dimensies waarlangs de strategiepercepties van leidinggevenden kunnen verschillen. Voor elke dimensie werden de twee polen (ook wel strategie perspectieven genoemd) kwalitatief beschreven en daarna omgezet in kwantitatieve meetschalen. Tijdens de studie werden deze twintig schalen bijeengebracht in een internet-gebaseerd enquête instrument, de Strategy Profiler, die gebruikt werd om de percepties van enkele honderden managers te meten. Als afronding van de studie werd ook exploratief gekeken naar de mogelijke samenhang tussen allerlei persoonlijke karakteristieken en het hebben van specifieke strategie-perspectieven. Er werd gevonden dat enkele contextuele variabelen van managers zoals hun functioneel gebied en nationaliteit, significant gecorreleerd waren met een brede scala strategische denkbeelden. Dit resultaat geeft aan dat verder onderzoek naar de invloed van omgevingsfactoren (functie, organisatie, industrie en nationaliteit) op de strategievoorkeuren van leidinggevenden gewenst is.

Ron Meyer is managing director of Strategy Works, an international strategy consulting and coaching firm, specialized in facilitating boardroom decision-making and guiding companies through processes of strategic renewal (www.strategy-works.com). He is also director of the Strategy Academy, an international research and training company, dedicated to improving companies’ competences in the areas of strategy, leadership and business innovation (www.strategy-academy.org). Ron studied Political Science at the University of Alberta in his native Canada. After receiving his bachelor's degree he moved to the Netherlands and got his MBA at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. From 1987 to 1998 he was a professor of strategic management at the Rotterdam School of Management / Erasmus Graduate School of Management. During this period he taught strategy in 15 countries, at universities and in companies, and acted as consultant to a wide variety of firms. For two years he was also Associate Director of RSM, in charge of managing the MBA Program. Since establishing Strategy Works and the Strategy Academy in 1998, together with Bob de Wit, Ron has remained associated with RSM as Adjunct Professor. However, most of his time is spent managing the two companies, and working as consultant / coach and trainer. He works with many top international companies on such topics as corporate strategy, business innovation, strategic alliances and strategies for growth, but his clients also include various mid-sized companies, searching for ways to grow and internationalize. Ron has given seminars and training courses to hundreds of companies around the world and lectured at more than 30 universities. He has written numerous articles and books, among which the internationally leading textbook on strategic manage-ment, Strategy - Process, Content, Context: An International Perspective, together with Bob de Wit. Over 125.000 copies have been sold so far and the book is used at more than 200 business schools around the world. In 2005 the 2nd edition was published of another book with Bob de Wit, Strategy Synthesis: Resolving Strategy Paradoxes to Create Competitive Advantage.

This study is about mapping the mind of the strategist – quantitatively measuring the core beliefs that executives have about the best way to approach strategic issues. The objective is to develop a reliable instrument for measuring these strategy beliefs, which can be reused across a broad range of cognitive studies. The intention is to create a Hofstede-like universal instrument for quantitatively capturing strategic beliefs of executives across any range of industries and cultures. To achieve this, a comprehensive conceptual framework is presented consisting of ten distinct dimensions along which executives can have differing cognitive preconceptions. For each of the ten dimensions, the opposite poles (referred to as strategy perspectives) are qualitatively described and then translated into quantitative measurement scales. During the study, these twenty scales were brought together in a web-based survey instrument, the Strategy Profiler, which was used to quantitatively map hundreds of individual executives’ strategy beliefs. The study concludes with some exploratory research into the factors correlated with specific strategy beliefs. It is found that contextual variables such as functional and national background are significantly correlated with a large number of strategic beliefs. This suggests that further research into the impact of executives’ environments (functional area, organization, industry and national context) on their strategic beliefs seem very promising.