Strategic Renewal: Past Research, Theoretical Tensions and Future Challenges

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12117
• Author: Sebastian Raisch,Henk W. Volberda,Achim Schmitt
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 81–98 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12117

Strategic Renewal: Past Research,

Theoretical Tensions and Future

Challenges

Achim Schmitt, Sebastian Raisch1and Henk W. Volberda2

Ecole hˆ

oteli`

ere de Lausanne, HES-SO // University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Route de Cojonnex18,

1000 Lausanne 25, Switzerland, 1University of Geneva, Geneva School of Economics and Management, Blvd. du Pont

d’Arve 40, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland, and 2Erasmus University, Rotterdam School of Management, 3062 PA

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Corresponding author email: Achim.Schmitt@ehl.ch

Strategic renewal has become a prominent theme in a variety of organization and

management research domains in recent years. It refers to the process that allows

organizations to alter their path dependence by transformingtheir strategic intent and

capabilities. With contributions from an increasing range of theoretical perspectives

and research contexts, the strategic renewal literature has become fragmented and

lacks common definitions and conceptual clarity, which prevent cross-fertilization and

harm further development. This study systematically reviews the various literature

streams on strategic renewal to provide a more integrative perspective. The authors

identify three key theoreticaltensions at the heart of strategic renewal research, namely

learning vs. resource, induced vs. autonomous, and co-alignment vs. co-creation. By

exploring these key tensions, the authors define strategic renewal’s conceptual core,

identify gaps in the past literature, and provideguidance for future research.

Introduction

Today’s organizations face increasingly dynamic en-

vironments, characterized by substantial and often

unpredictable technological, political and economic

change. Strategic renewalresearch analyses how these

organizations alter their path dependence by trans-

forming their strategic intent and capabilities (Albert

et al. 2015; Flier et al. 2003; Huff et al. 1992). The

recognition, formulation and execution of these trans-

formation processes are central issues pertinent to this

literature (Basu and Wadhwa 2013; Ben-Menahem

et al. 2013; Kwee et al. 2011). Since most orga-

nizations need to transform themselves at one time

or another, strategic renewal is a key considera-

tion in understanding their long-term survival and

prosperity.

[The copyright line for this article was changed on January

16, 2018 after original online publication.]

Strategic renewal is a prominent theme in vari-

ous organization and management research domains.

Scholars have explored the managerial cognitions,

capabilities and learning processes underlying firms’

strategic renewal efforts (Crossan and Berdrow2003;

Dougherty 1992; Salvato 2009); the importance of

political, technological and competitive changes in

the firm’s environment for strategic renewal (Flier

et al. 2003; Kim and Pennings 2009; Volberda and

Lewin 2003); as well as the organizational, unit-

level and team-level structures and processes that en-

able firms to embrace and manage strategic renewal

(Cho and Hambrick 2006; Eggers and Kaplan 2009;

Tippmann et al. 2014).

The broad attention paid to strategic renewal

signals a vibrant and flourishing research domain.

However, increasing breadth also means a grow-

ing diversity in theoretical perspectives and empir-

ical contexts, which creates a number of challenges

that hinder the field’s advancement. First, theoretical

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82 A. Schmitt et al.

pluralism has not only led to incongruent defini-

tions and assumptions (Agarwal and Helfat 2009),

but has also blurred the field’s conceptual boundaries

(Schmitt et al. 2016). Second, multiple theoretical

tensions arise from different, partly contradictory, as-

sumptions and findings. For instance, certain studies

consider strategic renewal a purposive process with

a clear beginning and an end (Stopford and Baden-

Fuller 1994), while other scholars describe strate-

gic renewal as a relentless search to adjust a firm’s

strategic intent and capabilities (Ravasi and Lojacono

2005). Third,the theoretical tensions cause scholars to

make only partial use of prior findings, which hinders

cumulative knowledge-building. For instance, Vol-

berda and Lewin (2003) conclude that renewal stud-

ies have become difficult to compare, aggregate and

replicate.

We therefore believe that examining the tensions

between different theoretical perspectives on strate-

gic renewal could be a powerful way to synthesize

prior research and develop it further.1A systematic

literature review allows us to evaluate the research

field’s status quo in a ‘replicable, scientific, and trans-

parent process’ (Tranfield et al. 2003, p. 209). Such a

reviewensures that this extensive, yet diverse, body of

work becomes more complementary, synergistic and

cumulative.Moreover, exploring tensions is an impor-

tant way of stimulating the development of more en-

compassing and relevant theories (Lewis and Grimes

1999; Poole and Van de Ven 1989). Overall, our aim

is thus to take stock of past strategic renewal research

to provide future research with a foundation that pro-

vides greater conceptual clarity and theoretical inte-

gration, while acknowledging the field’s diversity and

richness.

We progress in three main steps. After briefly out-

lining our methodology, we first draw on key con-

tributions in the field to clarify strategic renewal’s

definition and establish its boundaries to related con-

cepts. Second, we discuss three key theoretical ten-

sions at the heart of strategic renewalresearch, namely

learning vs. resource, induced vs. autonomous, and

co-alignment vs. co-creation. These tensions help us

structure prior work and identify its communalities

and contradictions. Finally, we conclude by present-

ing avenues for future research to overcome these

tensions and use them as stimuli for more integrative

research.

1Wewould like to thank one of the reviewers for this sugges-

tion.

Methodology

Our literature review followed the systematic pro-

cess described by Denyer and Tranfield (2008) and

Macpherson and Jones (2010). Webuilt a comprehen-

sive database by selecting relevant articles in various

steps. First, we searched the Web of Science database,

which provides bibliographic information on more

than 50 disciplines. Although practitioners had previ-

ously used the term ‘strategic renewal’ (e.g. Haggerty

1969), we focused our search on English-language

articles published after Burgelman’s seminal article

in 1983; which had triggered academic interest. Our

search therefore covers 33 years of strategic renewal

research (1983–2015). We further focused on jour-

nals in the ‘Business and Economics’ category of the

Web of Science database. Within these journals, we

searched for the title and topic fields by means of the

primary Boolean search term ‘renewal AND strat*’,

as well as the additional search terms ‘renewal AND

org*’ and ‘renewal AND self*’. We included the

two additional search terms, because several schol-

ars had used the alternative terms ‘self-renewal’ (e.g.

Chakravarthy1984; Jaw and Liu 2003) and ‘organiza-

tional renewal’ (e.g. Barr et al. 1992; Peltola 2012).

Later studies generally treated these terms as syn-

onyms for strategic renewal (e.g. Basu and Wadhwa

2013). The initial Web of Science database search

yielded 940 articles.

Second,we shortened our initial sample. Given that

we wanted to identify the core studies on strategic re-

newal, we decided to consider onlyar ticles published

in journals with 2015 Journal Citation Report im-

pact factors of 1.0 and above. This led to a shortened

sample of 298 studies. In a next step, two of the au-

thors independently reviewed all the remaining stud-

ies to determine whether they covered topics related

to strategic renewal. If the two authors disagreed, the

third author was consulted. Wealso excluded research

notes and dialogue papers. This identification process

resulted in a set of 91 core publications on strategic

renewal.

Third,to mitigate the potential risk of excluding key

articles, we conducted independent literature searches

of the Business Source Premier, Google Scholar and

JSTOR databases. The results were highly consistent

with our initial findings. Most of the additional arti-

cles found were working papers, non-peer-reviewed

articles and papers published in journals outside our

search scope. However, we found four additional pa-

pers that fulfilled all our initial search criteria, but

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