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.

  • Hammer and Champy (1993, 2001) define reengineering, or business reengineering, as ""the...
  • See reflexivity.
  • Something that is reflexive is directed back on itself. Reflexivity occurs in a social system when...
  • Regulative ideas are to be distinguished from constitutive ideas. A constitutive idea, or...
  • A reified symbol throws together the gesture with an aspect of the context, that is an abstract-...
  • To reify refers to taking the abstract or conceptual, such as the perspective of an organization as...
  • See causal loop diagram.
  • Resource-based view of capability -- Penrose -- Resources consist of a bundle of potential services...
  • Resource rigidity is one dimension of organizational rigidity, one of the factors of organizational...
  • See resource-based view.
  • The resource-based view of the firm and strategy, in contrast to the product, or positional, view...
  • Responsive processes refers to a view of organizational dynamics and a way of thinking about those...
  • See organizing process and evolutionary algorithm.
  • See selection.
  • The definition is ... from Elroy Dimson at the London Business School: Risk means more things can...
  • Routines are repeated patterns of response involving interdependent activities that become...
  • Routine rigidity is one dimension of organizational rigidity, one of the factors of organizational...
  • See ""Structure-Conduct-Performance.""
  • Scarcity means that what everybody wants adds up to more than there is. (Sowell, 2007, p 3)
  • In the field of psychology schema (pl. schemata) refers to patterns or thought structures that...
  • Common schools of management include classical, neoclassical, and total quality management. See...
  • ""The investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and...
  • The science of Man is about how we see ourselves - and how we wish to see ourselves - and the world...
  • Source: Stacey, 2000, pp 61-64 Engineers developed scientific management in the early 20th century...
  • ""The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic...
  • The term search comes from the realm of evolutionary economics. It relates to an organization...
  • One of the elements of the evolutionary algorithm -- variation, selection, retention. Source:...
  • ""Me"" is the concept of an individual's recognition of themselves as a single agent among, but...
  • Source: (Mitchell, The 2,000 Percent Solution, Authors Choice Press of iUniverse, 1999, 2003, p 221...
  • Self-organization is a process in which local interaction between parts of an organization...
  • Wheatley's Views on self-organizing systems (Wheatley, 2005, pp 36-44) -- Wheatley's views on self...
  • See self-organization. Order in complex systems -- ""Order is the unique ability of living systems...
  • The creative process produces spontaneous novelty. It is inextricably linked with destruction,...
  • See knowledge.
  • The cybernetic sender-receiver model of communication is a cognitive model consistent with systems...
  • See Weick, 1979, pp 134. ""How can I/we know what I/we/they think/feel/want until I/we/they see/...
  • Services are a type of economic offering. Both goods and commodities are configured to enable the...
  • Single loop learning is so called because the causal loop diagram of this learning process has one...
  • Six-sigma is a method for achieving process excellence. Six-sigma described -- Source: At 3M, A...
  • See skepticism.
  • In contrast to realism, which posits that the human mind has an innate ability to see reality as it...
  • The notion that the characteristics of multiple people interacting are distinct from individuals....
  • ""...social architecture is that which provides context (or meaning) and commitment to its...
  • See organizations, elements of organizing.
  • See organizational forms.
  • Social responsibility is the notion that a company is responsible to society in an explicit way to...
  • The scheme used here for defining a social system is the one presented by Jamshid Gharajedaghi (...
  • See technology.
  • See value for a discussion of societal value related to social responsibility.
  • In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their...
  • Stakeholders are the social actors (meaning groups of individuals or other organizations) who play...
  • Concise Statement of Strategy -- Collis, 2008 provides a guide for a concise statement of strategy...
  • Involving or containing randomness -- one or more random variables. Involving chance. Conjecture...
  • Stocks and flows is a systems thinking tool at the core of operational thinking. It depicts the...
  • Peter Guber (Guber, 2007) notes that storytelling is central to business executives and...
  • Strategic pertains to the activities of the business which defines how it will compete and...
  • Strategic assessment is done to understand the existing business organization. There are two types...
  • Strategic capabilities refer to the capabilities of the members of the organization that enable the...
  • Strategic choice is a systemic theory of strategy. This theory is built on a notion of interaction...
  • Where there is strategic planning, there is a need for strategic control. ""The impetus for...
  • (Source: Burgelman, 2007) Strategic dynamics describes the nature of change affecting a company....
  • A concept of the market of factors from which competitive advantage may be sought and purchased,...
  • In order to lead the business to its greatest competitive advantage, there must be a mechanism to...
  • The business model elements, their structure, and their interrelationships that form the strategic...
  • The strategic focus is the ""sweet spot"" where an organization's distinctive competencies are used...
  • Gary Hamel's and C.K. Prahalad's term for what guides and shapes an organization to achieve...
  • It is ambiguous where strategic leadership ends and strategic management begins. There is...
  • See environment for the interpretive perspective of the organization and its strategic management...
  • The strategic management principles and activities is one of the three fundamental elements making...
  • See strategic management competency for an explanation of the body of knowledge and for an overview...
  • A strategic management competency is the competency of a business organization to achieve and...
  • See strategic management competency for an explanation of the discipline and for an overview of...
  • See strategic management competency for a perspective of how the strategic management framework...
  • The strategic management methodology is the method for embedding a strategic management competency...
  • See strategic management activities.
  • The strategic management process described herein does not fit the notion of a linear process and...
  • Strategic phenomena -- (Stacey, 2003, pp 2-6, 12-13) Understanding the phenomena of interest to a...
  • Strategic planning, in most of its various forms, tends to do just what the name implies - plan a...
  • A strategic thinking definition (Abraham, Stan, Stretching strategic thinking, Strategy...
  • ... or transformation of the firm. Pettigrew's View -- ""There is no pretence to see strategic...
  • The strategist is the one who forms strategy -- he or she is in charge of the overall strategic...
  • Strategy is an ambiguous term due to its multiple definitionsnew and application to diverse...
  • The objective of strategy is to create advantage, sustain advantage, and renew advantage in order...
  • Strategy execution plans and deploys the business design and related strategy, exploits the...
  • While strategy execution makes the future, strategy formation determines both where to explore and...
  • Strategy formation creates strategy, designing new businesses and organizations to carry out those...
  • Criteria for a theory of why firms choose and successfully implement strategy (Porter, 1991) -- A...
  • Structural thinking is a type of systems thinking that gets to the heart of the matter as to how...
  • Conceptualization of social systems (Giddens, 1984, pp 23-26) - Structure(s) - the rules...
  • Chandler define structure as the design of the organization through which strategy is administered...
  • Structure architecture encompasses all the business model elements associated with the structure...
  • Structure is one of the four primary aspects of the business organization - purpose, function,...
  • The structure inquiry focuses on the business organization's resources that produce the enable the...
  • The Structure-Conduct-Performance (S-C-P) paradigm of strategy assumes market structure would...
  • The agent doing the examination of an object. Alone amongst terrestrial matter humans are both...
  • qualitative - the way things look, feel, smell, etc. to an individual Subjectivity is an integral...
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