Strategizing Under Uncertainty

Abstract

The business strategy field covers business practice and academic research -- but the two are not strongly related. A history of the topic is presented and two views are contrasted. One is the academic discipline’s view that strategizing is the rigorously driven pursuit of optimal performance. The other, a practitioner’s view, sees strategizing as addressing the "What do we do now?" question, that is ever-present as business strategists inhabit uncertain situations. We follow Knight’s intuition that profit only arises as strategists engage real world uncertainties through their firm’s practice.

Keywords: strategy, strategizing, uncertainty, judgment, practice, constraints, entrepreneur, profit, Carl von Clausewitz, Frank H. Knight, Edith T. Penrose, Herbert A. Simon

JEL Classification: L1