Methodological Redirections for an Evolutionary Approach of the External Business Environment

Abstract

The usual strategic analysis perceives the external business environment fragmentarily and without a coherent and unifying way. The three levels that a typical analysis of the external business environment involves are a) the macroenvironment and PEST analysis, b) mesoenvironment and “Porter’s diamond”, and c) industrial environment and “Porter’s five forces”. Contrary to the fragmentary analysis of the three levels, this article aims to counter-propose a restructured method of a unified and evolutionary analysis of the external business environment. After presenting the usual analytical handling of the external business environment in the three levels, we suggest that these are rather co-evolving than separate and autonomous spheres of analysis. Therefore, after introducing some elements of the evolutionary socioeconomic theory, we propose a systemic web that perceives the external environment of the socioeconomic organisations in dynamically unified and evolutionary terms. The systemic web conceptualises the approach of the external socioeconomic environment as an open and interactive system comprising three co-evolving spheres in the context of global dynamics: the institutional character of each spatially structured socioeconomic formation; the firm’s functions within the system; and the public-state intervention that contributes to the establishment and reproduction of the system. This conceptual redirection of the methodology of the external business environment can be useful for building an integrated strategic analysis that studies all “micro-meso-macro” components of the entire socioeconomic system.

Macro, Meso, and Micro Policies for Strengthening Entrepreneurship: Towards an Integrated Competitiveness Policy

“…In order to synthesize the innovative Stra.Tech.Man potential, the firm receives directly or indirectly elements and flows that transcend the economic sphere, such as knowledge, information, and any other relative social arrangement. These economic and social dimensions stem from the co-evolution of the internal and external environment at all possible micro-meso-macro levels (Gandellini et al, 2012;Vlados & Chatzinikolaou, 2019b). This -Stra.Tech.Man physiology‖ constitutes the -DNA‖ of the socio-economic organization as it enables it to survive and reproduce its innovative capacity (Vlados & Chatzinikolaou, 2019a).…”

Growth Poles and Clusters: Are There Useful Analytical Complementarities?

“…This stimulation of business innovation in the local triple helix system results from the way the firms, as socioeconomic organizations, combine their spheres of strategy, technology, and management (Stra.Tech.Man approach), within a totalizing systemic multi-level competitiveness framework: a "competitiveness web" (Figure 2). The overall socioeconomic system takes the form of a systemic "competitiveness web" (Vlados and Chatzinikolaou, 2019c), which at the center hosts the dynamics of firms in strategy-technology-management terms ("Stra.Tech.Man" approach). According to Vlados (2004), the Stra.Tech.Man approach suggests that every socioeconomic organization innovates when it synthesizes the spheres of strategy, technology, and management.…”

Evolutionary Economics and the Stra.Tech.Man Approach of the Firm into Globalization Dynamics

“…The Stra.Tech.Man synthesis, quite normally, also can extend conceptually onto a micro-meso-macro level (Vlados and Katimertzopoulos, 2018), while the dynamics of globalization nowadays act as a unifying link of the different levels of the socioeconomic system . More specifically, with a co-evolutionary perspective of the firm's environments in Stra.Tech.Man terms (Vlados and Chatzinikolaou, 2019c), the firm is studied as the co-creator of its internal and external environment, and not just a mere passive receiver of external forces. The firm contributes actively to its business ecosystem.…”