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.

  • See organizational theory.
  • Put Mintzberg's types here. X-ref to M-form, managerial theory of the firm, firm theory of.
  • See organization design.
  • The field of study of organizational action, how and why organizations act the way they do....
  • See form for an explanation distinguishing 'form' or 'organizational form' from terms like M-form,...
  • Weick's commentary (Weick, 1979) -- The phrase organizational behavior is troublesome because one...
  • In The Think Factory, productivity improvement specialist Susan D. Conway describes how successful...
  • Wheatley, Kotter, and Mourkogiannis all present systemic views of organizational change as...
  • See organizational forms.
  • Carroll...
  • Organizational dynamics refers to the patterns of movement over time in the interactions between...
  • Organizational economics focuses on the firm itself, rather than the markets and industries....
  • See form for an explanation distinguishing 'form' or 'organizational form' from terms like M-form,...
  • See organizational forms and identity.
  • Organizational inertia is the tendency of a mature organization to continue on its current...
  • Primary source: James F. Courtney, David T. Croasdell, and David B. Paradice,Inquiring...
  • Organizational populations -- (Carroll...
  • Organizational processes - these are the processes of organization itself, which manage the...
  • Term applied to a type of strategic focus -- Jamshid Gharajedaghi's term for what is at the core...
  • 'Organizational strategy' is contrasted with organizational dynamics. Organizational strategies...
  • Organizational structure refers to the elements of the organization that serve to give it its form...
  • Organizational theory is the study of organizations -- seeking to understand their nature and...
  • Organizational types often refers to the primary purpose of the organization, such as -- voluntary...
  • Source: Carroll...
  • The subject is organizations; The verb is organizing. (Scott...
  • To organize is to assemble ongoing interdependent actions into sensible (readily perceived, showing...
  • The subject is organizations; The verb is organizing. (Scott & Davis, 2007) From Karl E. Weick...
  • Source: Weick, 1979, pp 130 - 133 The four elements of organizing are ecological change, enactment...
  • "" The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the...
  • An ongoing process of balancing conflicting priorities. This becomes especially important with...
  • This type of thinking derives from Newtonian physics and the scientific method. It is a a...
  • Passion is one of the most essential elements of a business organization that sustains its...
  • Path dependence is a concept related to complexity theory that recognizes that where you are going...
  • The notion of perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis) suggests the existence of a...
  • -- add in here, what are effective performance measures, how are they formed, what purpose do they...
  • A perspective is a point of view. Multiple points of view are essential to effective systems...
  • See phenomenon.
  • The appearance of reality to people in the form of sensations, as opposed to reality itself, the...
  • phenomenon (singular), phenomena (plural) A fact, occurrence, or circumstance observed or...
  • A chronological list of philosophers and philosophical thought with major eras or periods of time...
  • See teleology.
  • Philosophy concerns itself with -- what is the best way to live (ethics), what sorts of things...
  • See technology.
  • Plans are important to organizations, but not for the reasons people think. Cohen and March (1974...
  • Pluralism defined -- Philosophy - a theory that there is more than one basic substance or...
  • Source and adaptation from: Richard A. Posner, Remaking Domestic Intelligence, Hoover Institute,...
  • Policy, an accordion word, which applies to determining payment for overtime at one extreme to the...
  • Source: Wikipedia contributors, ""Political economy,"" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en...
  • See model hierarchy.
  • Hannan, 1977, 935-936 - ""Just as the organizational analyst must choose a unit of analysis, so...
  • Porter's Five Forces Model of competition (Porter, 1980), defines the competitive space of a...
  • The positional view of strategy, also called the external view, contends that competitive advantage...
  • Normative and prescriptive in relation to strategy refers to the ""rules"" of strategy formation,...
  • Power is constraint; conflicting constraints translate in human terms to power relations. Power...
  • The actual actions performed in business organizations to make and implement strategy, as opposed...
  • See knowledge.
  • Precision refers to the exactness of expression or level of detail.
  • Prescriptive refers to giving directions or guidance. A prescription regarding something is based...
  • The view of the present as the dividing line between the past and the future, where the past stays...
  • A firm is a price taker when it responds to changes in industry supply and demand by adjusting...
  • Prices are not just ways of transferring money. Their primary role is to provide incentives to...
  • WSJ Article on Private Equity Growing the 'Private' Club By ORIT GADIESH and HUGH MACARTHUR May 25...
  • See decision making, localized problem solving, rationality, etc.
  • Systemic view of processes -- Processes are often equated with systems, or parts of systems, as a...
  • Process architecture encompasses all the business model elements associated with the process aspect...
  • Process is one of the four primary aspects of the business organization - purpose, function,...
  • Process excellence is when a process's output is what is intended by the process, i.e. the process...
  • The process inquiry focuses on the business organization's processes that produce the function. It...
  • A process orientation focuses the efforts to understand and design systems on the activities of the...
  • Profit, simplistically, is what is earned above and beyond the costs of the business. Role of...
  • Source: B. Joseph Pine II, James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy, Harvard Business School...
  • What is organizing itself in the ongoing gesture-response of complex responsive processes is the...
  • Psychodynamics is an open systems oriented systemic theory of strategy. Here the focus is on...
  • Each approach to strategy has as part of its basis a view of individuals and groups, thus an...
  • What is ""out there"" for humans to experience is a mass of rapidly changing data. In order to...
  • Purpose is the reason for being of an entity - an organization, a person, or other purposeful...
  • Purpose architecture encompasses all the business model elements associated with the purpose aspect...
  • Purpose is one of the four primary aspects of the business organization - purpose, function,...
  • The purpose inquiry focuses on the purpose of the business organization within its environment. It...
  • Quality is ultimately about process control, to achieve process excellence - efficiently and...
  • See skepticism.
  • raison d'être -- ""reason or justification for being or existence"" -- raison d'être. Dictionary....
  • See March, 1994, pp 2-3. A rational procedure is one that pursues a logic of consequences. It...
  • Descartes approach to reasoning, a commitment to reasoning from first principles, came to be called...
  • Rationalist refers to a type of thinking about organization, and autonomous humans choice, based on...
  • See causality.
  • Rational technologies (March, 2007) -- There are the well-established rational technologies in...
  • Relating to organizations and decision making, rationality doe not necessarily mean that...
  • Realism, idealism, and skepticism deal with whether reality can be known, how knowledge is formed,...
  • See realism. Also, see idealist for a contrast between the idealist and realist.
  • See organizing and the discussion of consensual validation.
  • In Kantianism, reason is the means by which we bring order to our perceptions of the world, and,...
  • An organization's reason for being, or raison d'être, is the reason that justifies the organization...
  • Reasoning is how we draw conclusions about a subject, i.e. a set of premises. There is inductive...
  • See dichotomy.
  • Reductionism is a philosophical approach to understanding complexity that asserts that the nature...
  • ""...the theory that every complex phenomenon, esp. in biology or psychology, can be explained by...
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