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How Do Firms Manage Strategic Dualities? A Process Perspective

    Published Online:23 Nov 2015https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2014.0123

    Abstract

    In a complex business environment, firms frequently have to manage strategic dualities—pairs of imperatives that are equally important but to some degree in conflict with one another. While there is a sizable empirical and theoretical literature in this area, research that seeks to understand how firms manage strategic dualities in practice is underdeveloped. We address this gap in knowledge through a detailed longitudinal analysis of one firm, Softcorp, conducted in real time. Softcorp’s executives were faced with the well-known global integration/local responsiveness duality, which they sought to resolve by creating an unusual Dual Headquarters that oriented employees across the firm toward a dual focus on Europe and Asia. We describe the sequence of changes (which we label counterweight, hybrid engine, and flywheel) that allowed Softcorp to successfully achieve its dual orientation, and we describe how these findings can potentially contribute to several bodies of theory (paradox, ambidexterity, and the attention-based view of the firm) and also to management practice.

    The paper by Birkinshaw and his colleagues provides interesting insights into an important problem that is not well understood: how a multinational firm can balance pressures for local responsiveness and global integration through the effective creation of dual headquarters. It is the direct and rich focus on “how” in the context of dual headquarters that creates value and with “how” mapping to crucial process considerations. By using a qualitative study, the authors identify a number of specific activities that are useful for implementation and also surface dynamic forces within sets of temporally linked activities that are quite interesting. These dynamics have implications for a number of theoretical traditions and research streams, which could result in meaningful downstream theory building and empirical work.

    C. Chet Miller, Action Editor

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