Five types of organizational strategy

•A review reveals three constituents of an organization's strategy content: communications, intentions and realized.•‘The strategy wheel model’ includes five types of organization strategy: shared, hidden, false, learning and realized.•The content of an organization's strategy may be heterogeneous in composition.•Strategy heterogeneity reflects inconsistencies in or between the contents of the model's four outer layer strategy types.•Outer layer strategy types interact in influencing the realized strategy in organizations.

SummaryModels in the strategy field defining the strategy concept emphasize schools of thought or strategy perspectives, but not how to define the idiosyncratic composition of an organization's strategy content. Based on a literature review in which meanings have been attached to the concept, this paper presents a new model including five types of organizational strategy. The model emphasizes that key influencers may make heterogeneous contributions to an organization's strategy and also that significant effects may result from interaction between types of strategy.