The Multidisciplinary Nature of Business Strategy: Suggesting a Rhizome Paradigm

Abstract

Though business strategy has long been the subject of academic interest, neither the question of the unified philosophical paradigm that govern it, nor the scientific disciplines that guide it has not yet been resolved (Mintzberg et al.1998). We argue that by adopting the rhizome paradigm to explain business strategy we can set the ground for understanding the intellectual foundation of business strategy and resolve the diverse, inconsistent or one may say complementary, definitions of business strategy. The article starts by presenting the various concepts of business strategy. It then portrays the many scientific disciplines that impinge on strategy, showing how none of them may be considered as a base for a unified paradigm. Turning to philosophy for a solution, we try first to look into the traditional western arbores cent philosophies but find that they do not give the needed framework for business strategy. The next step is to look at the rhizome philosophy as a possible paradigm. We follow with a brief description of the six principals of the rhizome, demonstrating how it does offer the necessary way to blend the influences of the various scientific disciplines on business strategy. We then explain how the rhizome paradigm serves to establish an intellectual foundation for business strategy that provides us with a rationalization for the coexistence of its many definitions. We conclude by describing the contribution of this article to the emerging discipline of business strategy as well as suggest directions for further research.