Emergent Strategy

Emergent strategies are patterns of activity created by an organization's employees as they carry out their daily tasks. Unlike deliberate strategies, which are carefully planned by top administrators, emergent strategies represent unexpected, bottom-up ideas. Once recognized, these fresh ideas may be formally adopted by management and may become part of the organization's official plan. As such, emergent strategies can play an important role in stimulating organizational change.

By definition, emergent strategies are not part of management's intended plans for the organization. Instead, these strategies arise when employees in one department or another experiment with new products or processes, attempt to solve problems, negotiate with suppliers, or listen to customers, patients, or clients, and so on. When employees are given the flexibility to cope with their situations in this way, they often come up with approaches that work better than standard practices. In essence, they learn what works. Another level of learning takes place when management notices the innovation and chooses to adopt it as part of the organization's formal strategy.

Although this process of experimentation and learning may seem like a rather chaotic approach to strategic management, it is actually beneficial in several respects. First, openness to emergent strategy helps organizations to adapt to rapidly changing environments. Instead of rigidly following pre-established plans, managers can talk with front-line personnel to learn what works in a new situation. Second, observing employee actions can allow administrators to find strengths that were previously unrecognized, thereby opening new routes to competitive advantage. In essence, organizations that are open to emergent strategies gain agility, increased response times, and the opportunity for continued development of organizational competencies.

These advantages can be particularly important in an industry such as health care, which has been marked by significant environmental changes. To take advantage of such benefits, health care administrators should seek out emergent strategies across their organizations. This will require active, personal attention to the way things are being done in various hospital units. Whenever possible, administrators should discuss operational data and current initiatives with department heads and staff members on a face-to-face basis. In addition, they should ensure that good ideas are shared across departments so that they can be used more broadly. Openness to learning and responsiveness to new ideas are crucial.

A willingness to adopt emergent strategy can be an effective part of an ongoing strategic management process. But short-term responsiveness is not the whole picture. This responsiveness must be matched with a vision for the future and a framework for moving forward. Those emergent strategies that fit best within this proactive thinking should be easily adopted. Those that indicate a larger change in perspective may require more serious consideration. In the long run, short-term flexibility must be balanced against the larger vision.