The Influence of Open Strategizing on Organizational Members' Commitment to Strategy

Wider organizational actors' integration in strategy making should plausibly result in increased identification and Commitment to Strategy. Yet, there is a dearth of studies exploring employees' involvement in strategizing let alone their commitment to strategy. Open Strategy (OS) is a recent trend in strategy research that facilitates such broader participative inclusion in strategizing. This conceptual paper contributes to strategy research by advancing understanding of Open Strategy, specifically shedding light on how OS promotes organizational actors' cultivation of a higher commitment to strategy. It also explicates the mediating roles of the Individual Empowerment and Sensemaking constructs between the relationship of actors' participation in OS and their commitment to strategy. Overall, the study extends the notion of participation to include broader organizational actors, contending that their engagement in organization-wide strategy making highly influences their commitment to strategy.