Rethinking strategic networks

The political dispute with the field of organization studies (OS) for leadership in research and education in business administration in the US and the proliferation of schools of thought in the 1980s resulted in serious questioning of the relevance of the field of strategy. Neoliberal globalization and its discourses pushed strategists of big corporations and academics to build the relevance of the area through increasing specialization and internationalization, but the dominant literature still ignores power and political issues and downplays government organizations. This helps explain the underdevelopment of research in strategic networks, the translation gap faced by business schools in the Anglo-American world, and the resistance in Brazil and other countries to the dominant literature. Analysis shows that research in strategic networks in emerging economies should make visible power and political issues, particularly from a critical perspective on asymmetries enhanced by the advance of neoliberalism, and produce knowledge that is relevant to strategists from both business firms and government and also society at large. In Brazil, researchers from strategy and OS should value and reinforce the proximity of these fields, and foster interdisciplinary developments with geography, global sociology and international relations and in particular with the literature in networks based on international political economy.