Survival in Chaos: A Study of Strategy Formation in a Turbulent Business Environment

Abstract: Since the late 1960’s, the hydromechanical term turbulence has been a part of the business administration vocabulary, but until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, a relatively small amount of research was dedicated to this field. These studies and more contemporary ones conclude that where the business environment is paradoxical and of fast- changing and chaotic nature, successful corporate strategies are shaped by strategic flexibility founded in high innovation rates, networks and alliances, and organisational elasticity and adaptiveness. From this perspective, the purpose of this study was to track and examine the strategy formation processes of a company operating in a turbulent context, and to contribute to an understanding of how these turbulent conditions can be managed. The study was conducted with a hermeneutic, systems- oriented, longitudinal case-study method and with a contextcontent- process perspective in which the process was the key factor. To a large extent, our conclusions coincide with those of other researchers. Forming multidimensional networks and alliances coloured by voluntary initiatives and full attention seem to be an extremely important contribution to survival in turbulent contexts. Nevertheless, it is equally important to break up and build new alliances as the initial objectives of the arrangement have expired or been reached. Furthermore, in contrast to other researchers’ observations, we conclude that high innovation rates do not necessarily lead to a greater potential to be successful in a turbulent context. The issue is instead to present a product offering flexible in itself developed and marketed by a flexible organisation. Innovation rates are decided by self-initiated and unofficial activity on part of the r&d teams and other coworkers, and management’s task is to facilitate for this corporate creativity to develop.