infonet-economy

Exploring how the dispersion of power affects the interpretation of complex strategic issues, this study elaborates on the dependencies created by complex strategic issues and suggests the cross-functional dispersion of power on strategic activities as central mechanism enabling a firm to develop a comprehensive and unified interpretation of the strategic issue. Using a large-scale survey, the study develops and will test hypotheses on the positive effect of dispersion of power on issue interpretation outcomes. Further, we expect a stronger effect of slowly evolving and contextual strategic issues. The study contributes to the sensemaking literature by challenging the implicit assumption that "meanings survive as a result of voting" and to the strategic issue literature by studying the dependencies created by specific issue characteristics.