*1.2. Extant Work*

Research on strategic management has tested different models over the past few decades. However, there are still many unknowns to our current understanding with regard to influential cause–effect relationships, especially in the IGO context. This lack of strategic management research has been observed by professionals to be a significant cause of the challenges that IGOs are facing today in their strategic planning process and its implementation (Elbanna et al. 2016).

The field of strategic management is based on the interest of researchers and practitioners to understand how some companies/firms sustain good performance while others do not (Bryson and George 2020). Traditional economic models of the firm were not able to explain this difference in performance behavior, and empirical evidence in strategic management was contrary to economic theory predictions (Zott 2003). The interest in sustainable performance gave rise to the industrial organization (IO) neo-classical models based on the structure–conduct–performance (SCP) approach, as elaborated by Saadatmand et al. (2018). The IO-centered models and frameworks are true to strategic management research tradition, which is based on competitive advantages where private organizations are focused on making profits for their shareholders. Therefore, strategic management in the IO context is more accurately specified as competitive strategy.

Saadatmand et al. (2018) elaborate on the evolution of IO-based strategic management theory and research. One of their key important findings is that, according to the resourcebased-view (RBV) theory of the firm, the organizational performance depends on the resources and capabilities that they may have under their control (Barney 1986). However, these models and frameworks lack the following: (1) they are not suitable in environments where conditions change at a fast pace, (2) they are static, thereby limiting the organization's abilities to adapt in time, (3) they largely ignore the external environment, (4) they assume that resources remain stable over time and (5) they are linear, making efforts to avoid uncertainty towards their strategic goals.

Institutional theory has been widely used to study strategic responses, such as retrenchment, persevering, innovating, and exit (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Oliver 1991; Scott 1995). Modern institutional theory explains that when organizations are facing pressures from the external environment, they will employ equivalent practices to gain legitimacy in the field (Begkos et al. 2020). This results in an increasing "isomorphic" environment among organizations (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Oliver (1991) identified different strategic responses resulting from institutional pressures, and where organizational behavior varies from passive conformity to active resistance in response to institutional pressures.

Moreover, Greenwood et al. (2011) has expanded his work concerning the rapidly increasing institutional pressures research to examine how organizations respond to institutional situations in which organizations are subjected to a variety of types of demands appearing from different institutional tactics. While the existing work has focused on how shifts in the presence of numerous (typically two) types of tactics influence organizations across fields, there have been far fewer systematic considerations dedicated to how particular organizations experience and respond to the complexities of those tactics.

As soon as information technology solidified its ubiquitous position globally in the mid-1990s, and with its exponential increase in its innovations and applications from thereon, researchers and practitioners shifted their attention to more dynamic approaches to strategic management (Iansiti and Clark 1994)—ones that will allow organizations to adapt more efficiently and effectively with the increasing pace of environmental conditions. Out of the limitation of the IO, and as an extension to the RBV, the new dynamics capabilities paradigm was born, with the intent to resolve the four aforementioned limitations of the IO models and frameworks (Ghemawat and Cassiman 2007). Primarily, dynamic capabilities refer to the organization's capacity to adapt to new environmental conditions efficiently and effectively via integration and reconfiguration (Teece et al. 1997).

The subject of strategic management and change management in IGOs has received little attention in the public administration, strategy and change management literature (Giblin and Nowacki 2018; Peretz 2021). In the past decade, Strategic Management (SM) has become central to the agenda of public institutions and governmental agencies. Organizational reform has taken center stage as a standard practice to apply SM (Safi and Mahmood 2022). Strategic planning, which was initially used in the private sector since the 1950s, gained the attention of the public sector in the 1980s, where research in public management emerged, emphasizing its need via public institutions (David et al. 2007). However, little is known about the application of SM in public institutions (Andrews et al. 2006; Olivier and Schwella 2018; Höglund et al. 2018; Rosenberg Hansen and Ferlie 2016; Peretz 2021).

It is important to differentiate between strategic planning and strategic management (Bryson et al. 2018). Strategic planning is viewed as an approach to the development of a strategy which is typically long term (Bryson 2018; Bryson et al. 2017; Golsorkhi et al. 2010). Strategic management, however, entails planning as a small part of its scope. While strategic planning deals primarily with formulation of the strategy, strategic management includes formulation, implementation and evaluation (David and Forest 2017). In the public and IGO sector, strategic planning and strategic management are seen to be used interchangeably. Safi and Mahmood (2022) provide comparative details and definitions of strategic planning and strategic management as perceived by different researchers. In the present study, we define strategic management along the same lines as Rowe et al. (1982) as follows: SM in the IGO sector is the implementation of strategic thinking for the efficient adaptation to change induced by external institutional pressures, strategic planning and formulation, and change management.

Modern approaches to dynamic models and frameworks applied to strategic management include evolutional economics (Winter and Nelson 1982; Saviotti and Metcalfe 2018), the delta framework (Hax and Wilde 2002), game theory (Ghemawat 1997), Blue Ocean (Madsen and Slåtten 2019; Unsal and Altindag 2021), Chaos Theory (Galacgac and Singh 2016; Unsal and Altindag 2021) and Models of Impact with social dimension integrated (Manos et al. 2022; Cuganesan et al. 2012; Drucker 1970). However, these models are not

suitable for our subject of study because they were developed to better represent the needs of today's fast-paced private organizations with highly uncertain environments, compared to IGOs, which develop their strategies based on a three- or five-year cycle, are static and linear in the way they do business and have relatively stable budgets. Therefore, a review of these modern approaches to strategic management is outside the scope of this study; however, we will briefly introduce them in order to provide a comparative appreciation to the complete subject matter.

*Evolutionary approaches* to strategic management are not new and include a wide range of views, bringing analogies from biological systems; namely, the concepts of variation, inheritance and selection (Winter and Nelson 1982; Saviotti and Metcalfe 2018). *The Delta Framework*, proposed by Hax and Wilde (2002) integrates Porter's industry analysis with the RBV to position the firm as complementary (compared to competing) and the inclusion of the customer at the center of strategy formulation. *Game theory* revolves around understanding decision makers' actions and competitors' reactions (Ghemawat 1997). *The blue ocean* strategy management framework entails the creation of a new marketplace with the aim of making a radical difference (Madsen and Slåtten 2019). *Chaos theory* is an interdisciplinary approach to strategic management, shifting emphasis to diverse strategic-related events, collecting data on a continuous basis and running an analytical framework to detect changes in the environment (Galacgac and Singh 2016). The '*models of impact*' is a novel strategy model that was recently developed to address the global expectation of the private organization to be socially responsible, with attempts to balance revenues and impact on society (Manos et al. 2022).
