Body of Knowledge Guide

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The purpose of this guide is to help users of the Body of Knowledge understand the strategic management concepts and themes by organizing the terms by theme.

The research that created this Body of Knowledge was instrumental in creating regenerative managing. Follow the link here to find out more about it:

An Introduction to Regenerative Managing

The terms in the Body of Knowledge are related to one anther. They are part of broader conceptual themes. A given term may belong to more than one theme. For example, the term 'business model' belongs to multiple themes -- the inquiry theme, the business organization theme, and the strategic framework themes.

Following are some themes and a hierarchy of terms related to each theme.

  • Complexity theory enables understanding the realities of the evolutionary, dynamic, and complex...
  • The comprehensive inquiry is the holistic inquiry of the business organization, covering all its...
  • See framework.
  • Configuration refers to how the components, parts, or elements of a system fit together. Highly...
  • Consciousness relates to a person knowing what they are doing and what to expect from their...
  • See organizing.
  • Consilience, or the unity of knowledge (literally a ""jumping together"" of knowledge), has its...
  • The business organization can be described as a constellation of variables -- variables whose...
  • A constitutive idea, or hypothesis, is a statement of what actually happens in reality. For...
  • Same as bounded design. See idealized design.
  • A construct is a representation of a concept, such as a conceptual representation of a business...
  • Context is the setting or circumstances of the actions. Each organization has a unique and...
  • ...strategists ""observe the winners and look for what makes them win. The most basic method in...
  • Three classifications of conversational processes -- Conversation, the dynamics of the process of...
  • A core competency is a competency critical to the strategic success of a business organization....
  • Corporate strategy pertains to the overall enterprise consisting of more than one business unit....
  • Coupling refers to the joining together and complementarity of the elements, or variables, of an...
  • See strategic management activities for explainations of the four stages of strategic management...
  • Schumpeter (Schumpeter, 1942) theorized that profit motivates the innovation which is the precursor...
  • From: Tharp, Twyla, (2008), Creativity Step by Step, Harvard Business Review, April 2008, 47-51...
  • The term cultural web comes from Johnson, Gerry, (1987), Strategic Change and the Management...
  • Culture explains why an organization does what it does. It is the sum total of shared ideas,...
  • The business model elements, their structure, and their interrelationships that form the culture of...
  • Culture emerges from the fundamental organizational processes of the business organization. These...
  • A ""culture of discipline"" is Jim Collins' description of what ""great"" companies have that makes...
  • Facts, measurements, or statistics used for reference or analysis. Stored observations. Symbols...
  • Philosophy - any fact assumed to be a matter of direct observation or any proposition assumed or...
  • David Ricardo (18th April, 1772-11th September, 1823), a political economist, is often credited...
  • Decision, or decision making, is the process of making a choice in the face of uncertainty, doubt...
  • Reflecting on how decisions are actually made, how decisions actually happen, provides a...
  • See March, 1994, pp 57-58. When individuals and organizations fulfill identities, the follow rules...
  • Decision theory is an interdisciplinary area of study with how decision makers make decisions, how...
  • Deduction, or deductive reasoning, is reasoning in which the conclusions must follow logically from...
  • The primary function of a definition is to help us to distinguish one phenomenon from another. (...
  • Descriptive refers to the quality describing. A description of something, a description of what ""...
  • ""Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and...
  • The philosophical doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, have sufficient...
  • Development is an increase in capability and competence. Development is primarily a matter for...
  • There is the Kantian dualistic view of dialectic and the Hegelian paradoxical view. Kant -- In the...
  • At the heart of any theory of strategy and organizational change is how it treats opposing ideas...
  • Difference refers to one side of the organization dynamic interplay of stability and change,...
  • Discipline has two distinct meanings -- Controlled behavior -- Great discipline is required to...
  • See pluralism.
  • Discontinuous change, or discontinuous technological change, refers to external changes that...
  • Discourse is the conversational form in a community of practice. Discourse is of central...
  • Discovery involves the obtaining of knowledge, learning of, or find out of something previously...
  • Disruptive innovation changes the shape of markets and industries. There are three things that can...
  • ...disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually...
  • A distinctive competency is a competency unique to a business organization, a competency superior...
  • Diversity, true diversity, is required for the creation of novelty by an organization. This...
  • Double loop learning is a learning process which introduces the possibility to change the decision...
  • In general, the view that the world consists of or is explicable as two fundamental mutually...
  • ""A dynamic capability is a learned and stable pattern of collective activity through which the...
  • See complexity.
  • Dynamics refers to patterns of movement over time, for example, whether the pattern is regular or...
  • Dynamism - the rate and unpredictability of technical change in the environment (Dess and Beard...
  • See offering.
  • See economic rent and economic value added.
  • What firms earn over and above the cost of capital employed in their business (Kay, 1999) ...""...
  • Economic value is the difference between the perceived benefits gained by a customer who purchases...
  • EVA, economic value added, is a phrase coined by the Stern Stewart consultancy to describe its...
  • See wisdom.
  • Economics is ""The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of...
  • Economies of scale occur when firms are able to lower their unit costs due to being larger. This...
  • The state of an organization from which both stability and novelty arises. Systemic view -- From...
  • Effectiveness is doing the right thing. The effectiveness of behavior necessarily takes the value...
  • Efficiency is doing things right. The efficiency of a course of action is usually measured either...
  • See causality.
  • Source: Wikipedia contributors, ""Efficient Cause,"" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en....
  • This is a characteristic of a complex system. See complex adaptive system.
  • Emotional intelligence is an ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the...
  • Quoted from: Bennis and Nanus, 1985, pp 61 - 63 Positive self-regard is related to maturity, but...
  • In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience in...
  • Empiricism is a doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience. It is associated...
  • See environment under views of.
  • See organizing process and evolutionary algorithm.
  • Measuring enterprise value is challenging. There are no perfect measures. Several measures...
  • An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material...
  • An entrepreneur often sees new patterns where others see existing patterns or chaos -- seeing the...
  • From a systems perspective, or that of a business organization, the environment is everything of...
  • The environment of business-organizations are subject to ongoing change. This change maybe be slow...
  • An organization's envisioned future is made up of its vision and ambitious goals in pursuit of that...
  • Epistemology can be called the theory of knowledge. It is a branch of Western philosophy that...
  • A condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced...
  • Kant distinguished between knowledge and ethics. 'While the power of representing truth is...
  • In the view of complex responsive processes, evaluative themes are the basis of our choices of...
  • See evolutionary algorithm.
  • See Zollo, 2002 for a description of the knowledge evolution cycle. See dynamic capability for how...
  • The evolution, as defined by the algorithm below, is at the heart of evolutionary economics, the...
  • Conventional, or neo-classical, economics has its roots in physics. Its assumptions and attributes...
  • Source: Burgelman, 2002. This is a conceptual framework for studying the role of strategy-making...
  • Strategy-making and evolutionary organization theory -- (Source: Burgelman, 2002, p 6-7)....
  • Existential philosophy stresses the importance and robustness of individual choice. See...
  • Experiences are a type of economic offering. Experiences are staged for guests. Experiences are...
  • Explicit choices are found in calculated decisions about alternative investments and competitive...
  • Explicit knowledge is where the elements making up the knowledge are stated clearly and precisely...
  • Exploitation refers to learning and knowledge development intended to increase organizational...
  • Exploration refers to learning and knowledge development intended to increase organizational...
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