Types of Strategy within Community-Based Organizations

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2021-08-31
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en
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Abstract
This research examines twelve community-based organizations in the Netherlands that address place-based issues related to sustainable development. These organizations tend to have long-term goals which makes it assumable that they have a strategy to reach these goals. The research in this thesis looks at these strategies from a strategic management point of view. This is done via assessing the strategy formation process and the types of strategy occurring in these organizations. This research aims to contribute to knowledge on community-based strategizing by providing exploratory insights on strategy process in emerging community-based organizations. This research aims to make recommendations with regards to the strategy process of community-based organizations and how this is influenced by types of strategy. Qualitative research is executed to make these recommendations. A theoretical framework based on existing strategy literature gives insight into how the strategy process in community-based organizations looks like and what types of strategy are known from this literature. Written sources such as meeting documents, statutes, web pages, social media and future plans of the community-based organizations are analysed. Additionally, verbatim transcripts of focus group interviews are coded and analysed. This analysis clarifies which types of strategy occur in community-based organizations and how they are equal to or differ from the types of strategy known from existing strategy literature. The main result of this research is the classification of community-based strategy process as a mix of more deliberate and more emergent types of strategy that occur within community-based organizations. The results also give a strong indication that the type of strategy, but especially the strategic mode of association found in an organization influences its strategy process and vice versa. The results demonstrate that it is imperative that actors in community-based organizations actors align their individual assumptions into a collaborative organizational vision and mission in order to develop prosperous strategies.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen
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