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 boundary.
  • An externality exists when a person's actions affect others' welfare and the first party does not...
  • Feedback loops describe the cause and effect relationships between the parts of a system. Feedback...
  • Feedback-based adaptation technologies (March, 2007) -- These technologies less structured and not...
  • See feedback loop.
  • Feelings and communicative actions in the medium of feelings are always part of any human...
  • The term fifth discipline comes from Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline, (1990), where he...
  • 'Figure-ground' refers to the ability to separate elements of a scene or picture based on contrast...
  • The end or purpose for which a thing is done or produced. This is the ultimate cause -- the source...
  • A firm is ""the system of specialized relationships which comes into existence when the direction...
  • Coase's theory of the firm (Coase, 1937) -- Coase examined the question of why business...
  • See enterprise value.
  • See single loop learning.
  • In philosophy, first principles are a set of basic, foundational propositions or assumptions that...
  • Michael Porter's description for what is at the core of a successful strategy, where strategy is...
  • See organizational forms for the organizational demographics perspective on form. ""Forms"" and ""...
  • Source: Wikipedia contributors, ""Formal Cause,"" Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en....
  • See causality.
  • In order to achieve 'dynamic capabilities' an organization must go beyond routines. The notion of...
  • 'Frame-breaking routine' is an oxymoron. See routine and frame-breaking approach.
  • Mental constructs, conceptual frameworks, etc. are a necessary tool....scaffolding for us to build...
  • This is just a collection of frameworks: A list of ALL ENTERPRISE FRAMEWORKS (and Modeling Tools...
  • See choice.
  • ""Freedom is what you have when you do the right things."" -- Alex Korn
  • Function from an organization science perspective -- various solutions to a particular complex of...
  • Function architecture encompasses all the business model elements associated with the function...
  • Function is one of the four primary aspects of the business organization - purpose, function,...
  • The function inquiry focuses on the business organization's function in fulfilling its purpose in...
  • In the context of organization science, functional analysis consists of establishing a...
  • Game theory is the study of how people choose actions in an attempt to maximize their payoffs in...
  • See March, 1994, pp 198 - 296. The ""garbage cans"" in the garbage can model are choice...
  • A theoretical frequency distribution of variable data, usually represented by a bell-shaped curve...
  • Management itself may be defined as leadership in the informed, efficient, planned, and purposeful...
  • General systems theory (GST) was outlined by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968). Its premise is that...
  • See strategic management activities for explainations of the four stages of strategic management...
  • See double loop learning. See learning levels of for a framework of types of learning.
  • Recognizing the superiority of free markets' ability to create leads to the understanding, which is...
  • Gesture-response is a model of communication defined by Mead (1934). It is a social behaviorist...
  • Jim Collins defined what it takes to be a great company, vs. a merely good company. His overall...
  • Goods are a type of economic offering. They are made from commodities, embody services, tangible,...
  • Growth is to increase in size or number. This is in contrast to development, which is an objective...
  • Jim Collin's term for a strategic focus that winning organizations develop to guide their decision...
  • See cadence.
  • Mission - Why we exist Values - What we believe in and how we behave Vision - What we want to...
  • See learning levels of.
  • In line with the systems behavioral principle of multidimentionality -- solutions are formed which...
  • A brief history of causality and philosophy - philosophical views of causality -- This historical...
  • Holism is the philosophical approach to understanding complexity that recognizes that ""The whole...
  • See holistic thinking.
  • Holistic thinking is the inquiry of a complex whole. In the case of business organizations,...
  • The concept of humanism has changed over the centuries. Aristotelian philosophy dominated...
  • A hypothesis is a proposed explanation made on the basis of evidence from a phenomenon examined....
  • An idea is a concept developed by the mind. If it is a concept of what ought to be, it is called...
  • Management processes which serve to encourge, create, develop, and nurture ideas for the...
  • Kantianism -- any of the three undemonstrable entities (a personal soul, a cosmos, and a supreme...
  • An ideal is a conception something that is perfect; a standard of perfection or excellence. It is...
  • Kantianism -- God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
  • There are two definitionsnew of idealism relevant to strategic management. The first is the...
  • The idealist is a restless fellow who sees evil in complacency; he regards the realist as a...
  • Idealists describes a category of philosophers including Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Idealists...
  • Idealized design answers the question, ""Ideally, what do we want the business organization to be...
  • Epistemology - the object of knowledge as known by the mind, in contrast to datum. Source: ideatum...
  • Identity is the fundamental characteristics of the organization and its members -- those...
  • Identity-difference thinking is complex responsive processes thinking, complexity thinking, from a...
  • Jim Collins' view of ideology -- The organization's ideology and envisioned future make up the...
  • Implicit choices are buried in many features of organizational forms, procedures, rules, norms, and...
  • Implicit knowledge is where the elements making up the knowledge are implied or not directly...
  • The philosophical doctrine that unpredictability is possible. Events can occur, especially human...
  • The notion of individual, or the individual, vs. the social, is a Kantian systems and cognitive...
  • See identity.
  • Without doubt. Descartes philosophy of Man centers around the notion of 'indubitability' - I am...
  • The induced strategy process carries out the strategic intent of the firm, seeks to reduce...
  • Induction, or inductive reasoning, is the primary way people process information. It is a...
  • The industrial organization branch of economics focuses on markets, industries, and the position,...
  • Organization classifications -- organizations can be classified many ways. Industry is the...
  • See form.
  • Inference is the act or process of deriving a conclusion based solely on what one already knows....
  • Information consists of processed data, the processing directed at increasing its usefulness. Like...
  • Asymmetry of information is when one party has greater knowledge, or ability to gain or shield...
  • Information technology has been a key factor in the increasing complexity of social systems. See...
  • See complexity.
  • Realists believe that perception reflects reality, without explaining how this is known. Descartes...
  • Definition -- "" 'Innovation', then is an economic or social rather than a technical term. It can...
  • From Schreyögg, 2007, 923: Innovation routines are higher-order search routines to bring about...
  • An organization's innovation trajectory is the direction the recent and current innovation is...
  • From Pontin, 2006, Attributes of successful innovators -- Successful innovators are famously...
  • See organizational learning.
  • Inquiry, or enquiry, is an act of asking for information. For inquiry to be successful, it must be...
  • Insight is the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of a subject. It is this deep...
  • From an ecological perspective of organizations, institutions are a cultural factor in organization...
  • From Robert Morris's review of The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative...
  • ""Intellectual rigour is an important part, though not the whole, of intellectual honesty - which...
  • An attempted short definition of intellectual rigour might be that no suspicion of double standard...
  • Criteria for intelligence -- a development history, landmarks for learning and mastery a relevant...
  • See police culture for a contrast between intelligence and police culture.
  • Intelligence can be categorized in levels that are useful to understanding its formation and...
  • See boundary.
  • Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately without reasoning, an immediate...
  • A new combination of components, ideas, or processes. Something produced or created as a product...
  • In meta-ethics, the is-ought problem was raised by David Hume (Scottish philosopher and historian,...
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