ANDREW PETTIGREW ON EXECUTIVES AND STRATEGY human energy. There is a crying need for managerial talent in emerging economies; it should not be under- estimated as part of the overall development process. Nor should it be overlooked as a priority for researchers who are intent on making a difference. PII: S0263-2373(01)00109-8 Executives and Strategy: Commentary by Constantinos Markides Reading Andrew Pettigrew’s interview was like a breath of fresh air for me: he tackles all the major issues and debates of strategy that have dominated the field in the last twenty years (issues such as the (artificial) distinction between strategy formu- lation and implementation, the (over)reliance of strategy research on cross-sectional studies and the difficulty of simultaneously achieving scholarly quality and relevance in our research); and he tackles all these issues in a clarifyingly simple and straightforward manner. Andrew’s intellectual journey from his study of the Sebei people in Uganda to his latest research project on new forms of organising and company performance in Eur- ope, Japan and the USA exemplifies the European research tradition at its best. Young researchers embarking on an academic career should make this interview required reading for themselves and their Phd students. I have to admit right up front that not only do I share Andrew’s concerns about the strategy field but I also I agree with all of his proposed solutions and per- sonal positions on the various strategy debates he tackles. I’d like to comment on a couple of the themes he raises. The first is Andrew’s argument that ‘…useful research [needs] to involve the simultaneous analysis of the contexts, content and the process of change…’ In my mind, the strategy field’s failure to do exactly what Andrew recommends is our field’s biggest problem. In our attempts to produce ‘scholarly’ research that could be published in the ‘academically respectable’ journals, we have all been guilty of jumping too quickly and too readily on the band- wagon of cross-sectional research (either because this type of research is ‘easier’ to undertake or because it doesn’t require as much time investment on our part). In the process, we have totally neglected to do the data-rich, context-specific studies that Andrew argues for. It is my strong belief that the biggest problem with European Management Journal Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 20–34, February 2002 27 I have greatly enjoyed this Crosstalk dialogue with Andrew Pettigrew, and I am grateful to the editors of the European Management Journal and the Academy of Management Executive for providing this forum for cross-Atlantic discourse. strategy today is that it is ahistorical – that is, it does not place a company in its historical context. Needless to say, what a company needs to do and what strategy it needs to follow is often contingent on where in its evolution that company is. For example, whether a company should ‘stick to its knitting’ or diversify out of its core depends to a large extent on whether a technological innovation is about to destroy the company’s core. Similarly, whether a company should try to be ‘better’ than its competitors or try instead to be ‘different’ by breaking the rules of the game depends primarily on where in its evolution that company’s industry is located. Failure to think of companies in such a dynamic way has resulted in two major problems. The first and more apparent problem is the conflicting and contra- dictory advice given to companies by academics or consultants. Examples abound: ❖ following the success of the book In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman (1982), com- panies were advised to ‘stick to their knitting’. Yet, another consultant (Richard Foster) from the same firm (McKinsey) in his study of technologi- cal innovations (Foster, 1986) suggested that the last thing a company wants to do is stick to its knitting. ❖ Similarly, Ted Levitt (1960) argued in his influen- tial HBR article Marketing Myopia that companies should define their business according to the underlying functionality of their products. Yet, Hermann Simon (1996), in his study of German success stories (The Hidden Champions) found that these German companies succeeded by defining their business narrowly, according to the product they were selling. These examples are meant to show that no advice — however sound and practical — will apply to all the firms all the time. What a firm should do depends on its own particular circumstances which are in turn determined by where in its evolution that company