Mark Hager, Arizona State University
A friend re-posted a meme to her Facebook this afternoon. I guess it resonates with people, since it shows as shared 27,000 times:
This meme is fun because it winks at people who don’t remember to water their plants. “It’s not your fault,” says the wink. “It’s the impossible environment that this poor plant found itself in.” Thing is, failures to water aside, environmental shifts are sometimes the entire explanation for what happens to a plant. Even if you are diligent at watering, the plant is in trouble if a tornado takes out your house.
That makes sense, right? But somehow we seem to forget this when we study and try to explain the behavior of organizations. That’s my read, anyway: These days, scholars tend to focus on the strategic decisions of managers rather than the environments they operate in. This is odd given how nonprofits have struggled through the pandemic, many of which did not have what it takes to thrive in that fast-paced environment.
Continue reading “Strategic Management Only Goes So Far…”
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