احیای حکمت عملی در مدیریت استراتژیک

Contemporary strategic management, despite remarkable advances in quantitative modeling and the development of sophisticated analytical frameworks, has fallen into an epistemic crisis rooted in positivist reductionism. This crisis manifests as a widening gap between strategy theory and strategic practice, wherein complex statistical models and one-size-fits-all prescriptions fail to capture the depth, complexity, and value-laden nature of organizational reality. This editorial, recognizing this epistemic deadlock, offers an integrated framework for escape, built upon three foundational pillars: phronesis (practical wisdom) as interpreted by Bent Flyvbjerg, Roy Bhaskar's layered ontology of critical realism, and the Strategy as Practice (SAP) approach.

The central argument is that for strategic management to "matter" in today's world of ambiguity, complexity, and value tensions (the VUCA world), it must recover practical reason and transcend purely technical-instrumental rationality. Flyvbjerg demonstrates that the social sciences, and by extension management studies, should return to the Aristotelian tradition of phronesis rather than unsuccessfully imitating the natural sciences. Phronesis represents the capacity for situated, value-aware, and wise judgment in particular situations that cannot be reduced to general rules. From this perspective, an expert strategist is not someone who knows more complex models but someone who possesses the capacity for intuitive-rational problem diagnosis, sensitivity to context, tolerance of ambiguity, and responsibility for the value consequences of their decisions. Flyvbjerg proposes four key questions for developing phronetic strategies: analysis of trends and the current situation, analysis of power relations and stakeholder interests, explicit value judgment about desirability, and orientation toward action. Traditional strategic management addresses only the first two questions (and even these in an uncritical manner) while evading the final two questions—which are precisely where phronesis emerges.

Alongside phronesis, Bhaskar's critical realism provides the necessary ontological tools for uncovering hidden causal mechanisms. Bhaskar divides the world into three layers: the empirical (what we sense and experience), the actual (events that occur, whether experienced or not), and the deep/real (mechanisms, structures, and causal forces that may be activated or deactivated). The epistemic fallacy consists of reducing being to what can be experienced or measured—the very mistake that positivist strategic management repeatedly commits. In strategic practice, this means that the relationship between strategy and performance is not linear but mechanism-based and context-dependent. A "best practice" may succeed in one context and fail in another, not because of measurement error but because different mechanisms are activated or deactivated. The task of the researcher and strategist is retroduction: asking, "What must exist for this observed phenomenon to be possible?"

The third approach, Strategy as Practice (SAP), brings strategic management down from the abstract level of the firm and industry to the level of the actions, interactions, and everyday practices of real strategists. The three foundational concepts of SAP are: praxis (the actual activities and actions of strategists), practices (the tools, concepts, procedures, and socio-cultural rules), and practitioners (individuals with specific skills, backgrounds, and interests). SAP's connection to phronesis is twofold: first, Whittington explicitly cites Flyvbjerg and the concept of phronesis as one of SAP's theoretical foundations; and second, drawing on the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, SAP demonstrates how strategists move from the novice level (rule-following) to the expert level (intuition grounded in phronesis). Moreover, SAP takes seriously the role of power in the strategizing process, showing that power is not merely exercised from above but is reproduced in the everyday interactions of strategists; that strategic tools themselves carry power relations and legitimize dominant discourse; and that some voices are systematically excluded or marginalized from the strategy process.

The integrated framework resulting from the synthesis of these three intellectual currents encompasses four layers: ontological, epistemological, normative, and practice-operational. This framework enables managers to move from superficial correlations to the identification of hidden causal mechanisms; to move from value concealment to explicit ethical and political judgment about the desirability of strategies; and to move from macro, abstract analysis down to the actual actions, tools, and interactions of strategists. For researchers, this framework does not represent a paradigm shift but rather the completion and enrichment of the existing paradigm, calling them to inquire into mechanisms, make their values explicit, and enter the field of practice.