نقش مدیریت پورتفوی پروژه در پرورش استراتژی عمدی و در حال ظهور The role of project portfolio management in fostering both deliberate and emergent strategy

1. Introduction Almost 40 years since Mintzberg introduced the concept of emergent strategy (Mintzberg, 1978; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985), the impetus to understand the complexity of strategy processes, both deliberate and emergent, is strong and growing (Vaara and Whittington, 2012). Acting alone, formal and rigid strategy processes have been shown to be insufficient in shaping strategy in response to change (McKiernan and Morris, 1994; Parnell et al., 2012). In today’s volatile and unforgiving competitive environment, it might be the emergent strategic processes that are particularly relevant for organizational adaptability and survival (Chari et al., 2014; Hamel, 2009; Thomas and D’Aveni, 2009; Whittington et al., 2016). Emergent strategies are realized in absence of or despite formal strategic intention and by nature fall outside traditional strategy processes; this makes it difficult to control their influence and has prompted exploration of alternate methods to manage ‘planned emergence’ (Grant, 2003; Levina and Su, 2008). This study explores how strategic control mechanisms implemented at the portfolio level can influence organizational performance by not only measuring performance, but also providing impetus and direction for change and emergence in strategic processes (Bititci et al., 2012; Thomas and Ambrosini, 2015). The bulk of strategic management research focuses on deliberate strategies and strategy content and formulation, while strategy implementation is sometimes portrayed as an autonomous activity and is not subjected to much scrutiny (Bower and Gilbert, 2005; Hrebiniak, 2006; Hutzschenreuter and Kleindienst, 2006; Raes et al., 2011). However, according to Mankins and Steele (2005), firms realize only 63% of their strategies’ potential value, and Johnson (2004) reports that 66% of corporate strategy is never implemented. Despite warnings that it is more difficult to make strategy work than to develop it (Hrebiniak, 2006), approaches to implementing strategy tend to take a narrow view and look for the best way to implement the deliberate strategy, rather than to consider other possibilities such as the role of emergence (Meskendahl, 2010; Morgan et al., 2008; Unger et al., 2012).