Resolving the Paradox of Interdependency and Strategic Renewal in Activity Systems

We examine an intriguing paradox regarding whether interdependencies in an organization's activity system enable or hinder strategic renewal—the incremental process through which an organization continuously adapts to the environment and explores opportunities to invoke change in its activity choices and outputs. One research stream, the “inertial view,” argues that the pervasiveness of interdependencies among activities increases inertia, which...