Strategic Alignment vs. Opportunity Hopping– Disruptive Times Require a Firm Strategy

In a time with many unexpected sudden events—disruptive times—it is more important than ever for executives not to lose sight of their strategy and to implement the corporate strategy according to plan via systematic Strategic Alignment. Oftentimes, managers only survived the Covid-19 pandemic through sheer pragmatism and tactical behavior. Their strategy took a back seat, and strategic considerations were not taken into account due to a lack of time or resources. The business management literature is more concerned with developing new strategies than either the implementation or the day-to-day practice of strategic management. In the latter, corporate strategy usually plays no role and appears to many as a too remote an instrument to guide operational work. Strategic Alignment binds all corporate actions to an overarching strategic plan. Strategic Alignment defines the framework for decisions and is a procedure for making downstream decisions consistently and in a sustainable form. In times of crises and disruptive developments, the well thought-out corporate strategy is seen as a hindrance to making money, where an initial strategic alignment may quickly become a misalignment. Instead, short-term opportunities and promising profit opportunities are sought and exploited, even if they contradict the correctly held strategy. It then becomes ‘opportunity hopping’, where quick profit or sheer survival become the motives for acting and may also result in less attention being paid to the legality of the business. The recent qualitative study presented in this paper explores the status quo in strategy implementation and, in particular, Strategic Alignment. The method of Grounded Theory Methodology was used to analyze the current state of companies until theoretical saturation is reached. The iterative cycles of the research started in Germany but, at a later date, interview partners in Switzerland, France and the USA were integrated into the study.