The character and significance of strategy process research

Abstract

This essay discusses the character and significance of strategy process research. Process research in strategic management is paradigmatically diverse and empirically complex. Strategy process research has been narrow in its focus and its undoubted contribution has sometimes been obscured by the lack of explicit discourse about its analytical foundations. The essay draws on a wide range of social science ideas to lay out a set of internally consistent insights and assumptions to guide thinking and empirical inquiry about the analysis of process issues in strategic management. The essay also provides a guide to the eight papers contained in this special issue.