Exploring the concept of open strategy: Metasynthesis approach

Today, the concept of openness has spread in organizations and organizations have shown a special interest in open approaches, among which open strategy is also part of the broad social trend and tendency towards greater openness. Open strategy is a multifaceted phenomenon that is evolving rapidly and requires more knowledge. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the concept of open strategy in a more detailed way with the help of meta-combined qualitative research method. Finally, 38 articles in the period 1990 to 2020 with the focus on open strategy were selected and analyzed qualitatively by reviewing the Scopus database. In this research, the most important definitions presented in this field are identified and then according to the multiplicity of definitions, characteristics and approaches used with a more general look at the typology of introducing open strategy. The results show that the methods of identifying and defining open strategy can be divided into 5 categories: philosophical, dimensional, scope of application, process and level of analysis. From the point of view of philosophical foundations, the open strategy approach is mainly subjective and in the postmodern paradigm. From a dimensional point of view, it has two main dimensions of transparency and comprehensiveness, each of which has sub-dimensions. The range of different applications of this phenomenon is known in the form of eight approaches. From a process point of view, it has three important typologies and from the level of analysis, it is known in two ways: number or type. The details and characteristics of these 5 categories are mentioned in detail in the article. It is worth noting that the dynamic and effective nature of open strategy and different ways of looking at this area, suggests that researchers should make more efforts to better understand this new phenomenon.