Perspectivas teóricas do mainstream da administração estratégica: uma meta-síntese

Abstract

In the last decade, many articles were published in order to review the development of strategic management (SM) research. These papers recognize the inquiry about the underlying causes for performance differences between firms as a distinctive motivation of SM. The research strand called “strategy content” is identified as the mainstream and it emphasizes substantive aspects (i.e. kinds of structures and strategies) in explaining firm performance heterogeneity. In fact, there is a clear convergence between these articles in what refers to the theoretical evolution of this important strand of inquiry. Nevertheless, none of these works provides a synthesis of this convergent pattern by its own. The aim of this paper is to synthesize this implicitly shared view of the SM mainstream’s theoretical development, reflecting upon the main shifts that took place. Thus, it is proposed a framework based on SM literature reviews to characterize the main theoretical perspectives of the strategy-as-content research strand and to ground analyses about its evolution in the last decades. For each perspective, the framework identifies most important bibliographies, main constructs used to explain differences in firm performance, as well as the most important theoretical contributions. Patterns in the mainstream theoretical development are also discussed and promising research avenues are highlighted. We expect that this paper may contribute both to better inform strategy-makers about what, in synthesis, may influence the performance of their firms and to provide a structure for new researchers entering the field to define the theoretical platform of their research efforts.