Strategic symphony: influencing pattern of strategic Integration on performance in the context of organizational culture and structure

Most organizations, rather than having a comprehensive strategy, use a set of related strategies, each of which is designed at different levels of the company. Each strategy, in addition to responding to environmental conditions, is integrated with other levels of strategy, as well as with the strengths and competencies of the relevant business unit and with the level of the company as a single entity. this coordination can be carried out at various strategic levels with each other and with organizational elements (structure and culture). on the other hand, each level must have complementary strategies in order to reinforce each other, which is called horizontal integrity. each level of strategy has close coordination with other levels of strategy, and if the whole company wants to succeed, these levels should be integrated. garterl and Schenk stated that identifying factors is an important tool to understand how to achieve a successful alignment between company strategies and partial strategies such as IT strategy, human resource strategy, production strategy, financial strategy, marketing strategy, and so on. Therefore, in order to succeed on the path of achieving the organizational goals and high performance, vertical and horizontal integrity in business is crucial, and it is one of the most important discussions and concerns of organizational managers.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

By reviewing the theoretical literature in the context of ​​strategy fitness, significant points have been extracted. one of these issues is the importance of fitting and integrating partial strategies with organizational strategies. This integrity will result in coordination between the organizational macro policies and its partial policies, so the entire company grows in a balanced way. on the other hand, coordination, alignment and integrity between partial strategies (horizontal integrity) will lead to more attention to the synergy of resources in order to achieve competitive goals. in this regard, organizational structure and culture of the company should be in line with the strategies. adaptation to the outside environment explains the law of organizational thermodynamics. based on organizational thermodynamics, organizations will remain in a competitive environment if they match their internal conditions with outside requirements. one of the remarkable theoretical gaps in past literature is that past research has often studied only one kind of integration. according to the aforementioned, the main purpose of this research is presenting a model that verifies the vertical and horizontal integrity between the strategies of the company and investigating the effectiveness of this integrity on performance.

This research has been carried out with a mixed approach and implemented in two phases. in the first phase, using semi-structured interviews, 18 experts (5 faculty members of the strategic and marketing management, 4 executive consultants in the field of strategy and management of companies and 9 organizational managers and assistant) and by means of technique of thematic analysis, a conceptual model has been extracted. In this model, the strategy of the company has been shown to be integrated with the partial strategies, and also the organizational structure and culture affect this integration. finally, all of the variables of this model affect the organizational performance.

Based on data analysis in PLS software, all hypotheses have been confirmed. The results of confirmatory factor analysis also indicate the validity of the tool of this research. the diagram below shows the test of the hypotheses of this research.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS

Based on the results, a conceptual model of research demonstrates the impact of strategic integrity on organizational performance through organizational structure and culture. the results of the hypotheses indicate that partial strategies (human resources, production, finance, IT, etc.) have a vertically integration with corporate strategy. That is, partial strategies are in line with the company's strategy, and human resource, financial, marketing, sales, production, IT, etc. strategies are emerging from the company's main strategy. there is the highest vertical integration between the IT strategy and the company's strategy and production strategy has the lowest integration in this respect. the importance of the relationship between partial strategies with corporate strategy in the form of vertical integration comes from the fact that if this alignment does not exist between strategies, some kind of strategic dispersion is created and the focus on achieving the main and major goals of the company is neglected, so each department, regardless of the main goals of the company seek to achieve its specific goals. based on the results of the hypotheses, all partial strategies such as human resource, financial, information technology and production strategy are interconnected and mutually influential. this means that these strategies are designed in an integrated and coordinated system and there is a strategic horizontal alignment between them. it can be argued that there is a horizontal integration between segmental strategies. to achieve horizontal integration, it is recommended that regular meetings between the unit managers and the monthly meeting with strategic council with the presence of the company's CEO are held in order to accurately track the achievement of organizational goals and plans.