The (Still Missing) Relational View of Strategy

Abstract

This proposal is an incipient attempt at the consolidation of what Axelsson (1992) calls the ‘missing’ perspective in the Strategic Management field. By building upon the basic and realistic premise of a ‘co-opetitive’ business world wherein competition and cooperation coexist alongside (even within the same interfirm relationship), such a perspective ought to advocate the view of strategy as a pattern of converging decisions and actions of the firm with a twofold purpose: (i) the (mostly passive and/or reactive) fit to a slowly changing, largely faceless and intractable environment and (ii) the (primarily proactive) interrelation with and shaping of a full-face, rapidly changing context.