EXPLORING THE NUANCES IN THE RELATIONSHIP “CULTURE-STRATEGY” IN THE BUSINESS WORLD
Keywords: Strategic management, strategy, organization culture, entrepreneurship.
JEL: L1, M14, L26.
INTRODUCTION
A group of three prominent scholars from the University of National and World Economy (UNWE) constitute the main source of supplying knowledge for the potential realizations of the relationship “culture-strategy”, arising in (or associated to some extent with) the world of business. As a whole the results of their research work constitute a thorough review of key nuances in the mentioned relationship, already identified by prominent international explorers and/or consultants in respective publications the majority of which date back from the 1970s to the late 1990s of the previous century. It is observed a sporadic use of foreign literature from the first two decades of the 21st century in their literature reviews. This body of scientific literature represents the whole repository in this field, serving as an intersection between cultural studies and strategic management and may be used as a starting point of doing a relevant research in this sphere. The issues, devoted to potential realizations of the relationship “culture-strategy”, have been considered as very important for the survival and successful development of business organizations since the times of the energy crisis from the 1970s. But the array of proposed specific solutions and applications within it has been transforming its nature due to changing business environment conditions (globalization, turbulence, terrorism, and climatic change), emerging unique intra-organizational challenges, and accumulation of knowledge and skills in the sphere. That is why the newest achievements in concern of
VANGUARD SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS IN MANAGEMENT, vol. 12, no. 1, 2016, ISSN 1314-0582
“culture-strategy” relationship apprehensions come of great importance to the scientific community and the managers from the business world. Furthermore, most of the time this relationship occupies a peripheral part of the syllabuses, associated with Business culture and/or Business strategy lecturing at the University. Most of the time it leaves the impression on the unbiased learner or reader of a “magic mantra” for business success in the organization. But these desired results are difficult to be achieved, become evident after a certain (long) period of time, and require taking in great efforts by managers, employees and outside consultants. This represents additional reason of initializing a deliberate study of the recent developments in this field as the appropriate mental programming of the future business and society leaders comes of great importance, concerning the shortage of knowledgeable, skillful and capable professionals in key vocational areas. The planned review of the recent elaborations, concerning the relationship “culture-strategy”, is performed through searching of relevant (key) and modern free-access publications (with period of issue: 2011- 06.2016) within the first three electronic pages in accessible electronic scientific databases as Directory of open access journals, Ideas Repec, Proquest, ScienceDirect, Ebsco and Google Scholar. It is detected that many of the selected scientific publications are indexed in more than one specialized database. The association of an article with a database is made by its first encounter within the performed consecutive search in these electronic repositories of appropriate information for the purpose of the current research.
1. The constitution of the local point of view to the existence of the relationship “culture-strategy”
The intensive search in the UNWE’s library for scientific publications1 at least partially oriented to the exploration of the relationship “culture-strategy” revealed that just a group of three local colleagues have demonstrated any scientific and/or lecturer’s interest in this field since 1990 and up to the moment (07.2016) – the period that marked the transition of Bulgaria to democratic political system, market economy, and country’s accession to the European Union. These colleagues are prof. Kiril Todorov, prof. Marin Paunov and prof. Stephen Hristov. Important nuances of their interests in this sphere are outlined through table 1…
