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resources deployments and environmental interactions that indicates how the organization will
achieve its objecWLYHV ́(p.25) 3RUWHU¶V(1980, 1985) QRWLRQ RI ³FRPSHWLWLYH VWUDWHJ\ ́ OLPLWV WKH
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industry competition (Porter, 1985, p.1). This is achieved through the creation of unique competitive
DGYDQWDJHVDQG³«VWUDWHJ\LVWKHURXWHWRFRPSHWLWLYHDGYDQWDJH ́(Porter, 1985, p.25). A host of
other definitions can be recited. But despite their differences, there is a common theme. Strategy is
thought to constitute a logic underlying an organization’s interactions with its environment, and this in
turn guides its deployment of resources.
There is something which can be called an organization, only if an organization can be distinguished
from its environment (Schreyögg & Sydow, 2010). One has to determine what is inside and what is
considered outside of the organization. According to systems theory, the difference between an
organization and its environment is the degree of complexity. All social systems lower their level of
complexity to a level that they can handle. Hence, systems build an inner world of lower complexity;
they build an identity (Seidl, 2005). The outside of the organization is by creation of higher
complexity. This differential requires that a boundary is drawn and maintained between the
organization and its more complex environment. Organizations are boundary-maintaining systems
(Aldrich, 1971). If organizations would react to any event in their environment without any notion of
continuity or pattern, there would be a blurring of what is inside and outside. These organizations
would dissolve in their environment or would not have come to existence in the first place (Schreyögg
& Sydow, 2010).
Strategy as a way of linking a firm to its environment is a principal element in many strategy
definitions (Jemison, 1981b; Miles et al., 1978; Miller & Friesen, 1982; Mintzberg, 1979). This
linking has also been termed organization-environment fit which is considered fundamental to the
discipline of strategic management (Chakravarthy, 1982). First, the field of business policy ± the
initial strategy paradigm (Schendel & Hofer, 1979, p.8) ± waVURRWHGLQWKHFRQFHSWRI³PDWFKLQJ ́RU
³DOLJQLQJ ́organizational resources with environmental opportunities and threats (Andrews, 1971;
Chandler, 1962). Second, being a relatively new area of inquiry, strategic management borrowed
concepts and research methods from related disciplines ± industrial organization (IO) economics
(Porter, 1981), administrative behavior (Jemison, 1981a) and marketing (Biggadike, 1981). Because
the concept of fit is dominant in the parent disciplines, especially in organization theory and IO