Dr Riaan Steenberg

Conceptual article

Abstract

Strategic management conventionally places corporate strategy at the apex of an organizational hierarchy, above business, functional and operational strategy. Yet complex organizations increasingly confront questions that corporate strategy does not fully resolve: what enduring role should the organization occupy in a wider system; which interests must be protected across cycles of competition and disruption; how should market, technological, institutional, political and reputational instruments be combined; and what forms of local success would imperil the whole? International-relations scholarship addresses analogous questions through the concept of grand strategy, but the concept remains contested and its transfer beyond the state risks conceptual stretching. In this article, I develop a bounded organizational theory of grand strategy through a critical integrative review of grand-strategy and strategic-management scholarship. I argue that organizational grand strategy is an actor-level theory of durable success that aligns enduring purpose, identity and system role, diagnosis, a causal logic of success, strategic scope and network position, coordinated instruments and resources, explicit trade-offs, and adaptive governance. Grand strategy is therefore not merely a longer corporate plan or a fourth planning layer. It is a meta-strategy that governs the relationship among subordinate strategies and specifies what their success must not destroy. I identify six scope conditions for applying the concept to complex organizations, propose an eight-dimensional framework, and reconcile coherence with adaptation through a "stable core, adaptive periphery" design. Four propositions and an evaluation model provide a research agenda for testing grand strategy in diversified firms, federated institutions, public agencies, universities and mission-led organizations.

Keywords: grand strategy; corporate strategy; meta-strategy; strategic coherence; dynamic capabilities; organizational purpose

Central contribution

I conceptualize grand strategy as a meta-strategy that governs the relationship among corporate, business, functional and operational strategies, and specifies what subordinate success must not destroy.

1. Introduction

Strategic-management theory usually describes a familiar hierarchy. Corporate strategy determines organizational scope and portfolio; business strategy explains how a unit will compete; functional strategy develops supporting capabilities; and operations convert choices into action. This hierarchy is useful but incomplete for organizations whose survival and influence depend on more than selecting industries or securing competitive advantage. A diversified group, multinational enterprise, university system, public agency or federated non-profit may need to determine the role it seeks in a wider institutional order, the purposes and assets it must preserve over decades, the relationships through which it can exercise influence, and the conditions under which successful expansion would undermine legitimacy or resilience. These are not simply questions of where to compete or how to win. They concern the long-term security and identity of the actor as a whole.

Grand strategy appears designed for this problem. In statecraft, it relates large ends to scarce means over extended periods, coordinates different instruments of power and situates individual contests within a broader theory of security or success (Kennedy, 1991; Brands, 2014; Posen, 2014). Contemporary scholarship treats grand strategy variously as a plan, guiding principle, observed pattern of behaviour, political process, network practice and contested narrative (Silove, 2018; Lissner, 2018; Balzacq and Krebs, 2021). Recent work distinguishes strategy as a theory of victory from grand strategy as a theory of security (Rovner, 2025), develops principles for grand-strategy design (Henke, 2025), connects grand strategy to small-state identity (Brommesson, Ekengren and Michalski, 2025), and examines corporations as geopolitical grand-strategic actors (Hensmans, 2026).

This widening creates both an opportunity and a danger. The opportunity is to recover a level of reasoning often absent from management theory: a level above, around and across corporate strategy that explains how multiple strategies should combine to secure the organization's durable position. The danger is conceptual inflation. If every important or long-term decision is labelled grand strategy, the term adds nothing to strategy, purpose or corporate planning. A defensible organizational theory must specify the concept's invariant core and the conditions under which it travels.

I argue that grand strategy should be understood in organizational settings as a meta-strategy rather than merely a higher plan. I treat it as an actor-level theory of durable success: a causal and normative logic linking what the organization exists to protect or create, the role it seeks within its system, the challenges threatening that role, the arenas and relationships it will cultivate, the instruments and resources it will coordinate, and the rules by which it will learn and change. In this account, corporate, business and functional strategies become subordinate expressions of the governing logic. Grand strategy also specifies what their success must not damage. A business unit may grow share while weakening group reputation; acquisitions may build scale while eroding financial resilience; digital efficiency may destroy institutional trust. Such outcomes can be strategically successful at one level and grand-strategically dysfunctional at another.

I make four contributions. First, I synthesize contested definitions into a precise organizational concept. Second, I identify scope conditions that prevent indiscriminate extension beyond the state. Third, I distinguish grand strategy from corporate, business and functional strategy. Fourth, I propose an eight-dimensional adaptive framework and an evaluation model. Together, these contributions provide a theory-building platform for research and a disciplined language for boards and executives governing complex organizations.

2. Review approach and conceptual boundary

I use a critical integrative review to construct a concept across disciplinary boundaries. This approach is appropriate where the purpose is to clarify constructs, expose tensions and generate theoretical synthesis rather than aggregate comparable effects. My review is problem-driven rather than exhaustive. I combine foundational and recent grand-strategy scholarship on meaning, design, practice, networks, identity, change and critique with strategic-management work on levels of strategy, emergence, dynamic capabilities, strategy as practice and purposeful planning. I give particular attention to contributions from 2018 to 2026, a period of major conceptual clarification and widening of actors and mechanisms (Silove, 2018; Balzacq et al., 2019; Balzacq and Krebs, 2021; James, 2024; Henke, 2025; Rovner, 2025; Hensmans, 2026).

I transfer the concept by functional analogy, not literal equivalence. States and organizations differ in sovereignty, coercive authority and obligations to citizens; military metaphors can also misrepresent stakeholder systems as battlefields. I therefore preserve features that solve a general coordination problem: actor-level purpose, long horizons, multiple instruments, system relationships, scarcity, opposition and adaptation, while replacing specifically statist ends with durable success.

I use durable success to mean the continuing ability to pursue constitutive purposes while remaining viable, legitimate and capable of renewal. Profit may be necessary for a firm but is not sufficient; universities also require academic legitimacy, public agencies political authorization, and mission-led organizations fidelity to purpose. I define the relevant unit as the complex organization: an actor with multiple semi-autonomous domains, instruments, constituencies or time horizons that must nevertheless make consequential commitments as a whole. This boundary is narrower than "strategy for any endeavour" but broader than corporate participation in geopolitics. It permits engagement with Hensmans (2026) while asking a different question: how complex organizations govern their own long-term position through a distinct meta-strategic logic.

3. Recovering the conceptual core of grand strategy

Grand strategy names a real problem but remains disputed because scholars disagree about what kind of thing it is. Traditional accounts associate it with coordinating military and non-military means for political purposes extending beyond a single war. Kennedy (1991) emphasizes political, economic and military instruments in war and peace. Posen (2014) describes a state's theory of how to produce security; Brands (2014) a purposeful set of ideas about national ends and means. The Oxford Handbook foregrounds a "theory of victory" (Balzacq and Krebs, 2021), whereas Rovner (2025) reserves victory for strategy and defines grand strategy as a theory of security. The tension is productive for organizations. Durable success requires theories for prevailing in particular arenas and a higher-order theory explaining which victories matter, how contests relate, and how the actor remains capable and legitimate after them. Grand strategy begins where local theories of victory are judged against the continuing security of the whole.

Silove's (2018) three meanings provide essential clarification. A "grand plan" is a deliberate design; a "grand principle" is an organizing idea; and "grand behaviour" is the long-term pattern revealed by action, whether planned or emergent. These should not be collapsed. The strategy an organization publishes, the doctrine leaders invoke and the pattern visible in resource allocation may differ. A group may declare innovation while investing mainly in mature activities, or espouse federation while centralizing every consequential choice. The divergence is itself evidence, not merely an implementation inconvenience.

Lissner (2018) similarly distinguishes grand strategy as variable, process and blueprint: what explains strategic behaviour, how grand strategizing occurs, and what course should be adopted. This warns researchers not to infer process from content or performance from declared intent. James (2024) asks who can possess grand strategy, where it can be observed and how it should be evaluated. Collectively, these works move analysis from the search for a single authoritative document to relationships among ideas, practices, commitments and outcomes.

I identify five properties as the concept's invariant core. First, grand strategy is actor-level: its referent is the whole actor rather than a product, campaign or unit. Second, it is temporally extended across leadership cycles, contests and shocks. Third, it is cross-domain, coordinating instruments whose effects may reinforce or offset one another. Fourth, it is systemic and relational: competitors, partners, regulators, publics and uncontrollable events shape results. Fifth, it requires proportionality between ambitions, capabilities and the costs of sustaining commitments (James, 2024; Henke, 2025).

These properties distinguish grand strategy from neighbouring concepts. Vision describes a desired future but need not diagnose obstacles or commit resources. Purpose explains why an organization exists but not how it will secure that purpose under opposition. A long-range plan may assume a controllable sequence. Corporate strategy selects scope and portfolio positions but does not necessarily articulate the actor's system role or long-term legitimacy. Grand strategy may incorporate all four, but is reducible to none.

On this basis, I define organizational grand strategy as an actor-level theory of durable success that aligns enduring purpose and identity, a desired system role, diagnosis of consequential challenges, a causal logic of action, strategic scope and relationships, coordinated instruments and resources, explicit trade-offs, and mechanisms for adaptation. "Theory" requires an explanation of why commitments should work; "durable" extends judgement beyond unit performance; "actor-level" makes the whole organization the referent; and "alignment" seeks sufficient coherence without assuming complete consensus.

4. When can an organization possess a grand strategy?

Extending grand strategy beyond statecraft risks conceptual stretching. Lissner (2018) observes that strategic principles may apply widely without implying that every purposeful activity has a grand strategy. To avoid that stretching, I specify the scope conditions for a bounded organizational theory.

Recent scholarship supports cautious extension. The field increasingly studies small states, networks and non-state actors rather than only great powers (Balzacq and Krebs, 2021). Small-state research is instructive because scarce resources heighten the need to align means with large ends and use alliances, niche capabilities and recognized roles (Wivel, 2021; Brommesson et al., 2025). Hensmans (2026) explicitly conceptualizes corporations as grand-strategic actors, showing how firms can complement or shape state power. His emphasis is the interface among corporate strategy, non-market strategy and geopolitics; my theory addresses the additional problem of governing the organization's own long-term position.

I propose six conditions that delimit application. First, the organization must possess sufficient actorness for a governing coalition to authorize and sustain collective commitments. Second, it must operate across multiple domains or instruments whose interdependence creates a coordination problem. A strategically simple enterprise may not require a distinct grand strategy. Third, choices must affect long-term viability, legitimacy, identity or mission, not merely periodic performance.

Fourth, the actor must depend upon consequential external relationships. Its desired role requires recognition by partners, regulators, communities or professional bodies, consistent with network and role-theoretic accounts of power and status (Nexon, 2021; Brommesson et al., 2025). Fifth, scarcity and irreversibility must make trade-offs meaningful. Finally, the organization needs governance capacity for cross-domain arbitration, learning and revision; otherwise grand strategy remains rhetoric.

Size is neither necessary nor sufficient. A small university group or humanitarian network may require grand strategy because it coordinates several institutions and forms of legitimacy under constraint; a larger but simple enterprise may not. "Grand" refers to the level and consequence of integration, not magnitude.

Proposition 1. The usefulness of organizational grand strategy increases with the degree to which an actor's durable success depends on coordinating multiple domains, stakeholder systems and time horizons under scarcity and uncertainty.

5. Grand strategy and the levels of organizational strategy

Corporate strategy concerns organizational scope, the activities in which the actor participates and the allocation of resources among them (Chandler, 1962; Ansoff, 1965). Business strategy addresses how a unit creates advantage in a defined arena, classically through choices such as cost, differentiation or focus (Porter, 1980). Functional strategies develop supporting capabilities; operational plans govern shorter-horizon execution.

Grand strategy sits above these levels only in a qualified sense. It is superior because it establishes the purposes, boundaries and system position against which subordinate choices are judged, but it is not another box in a one-way planning cascade. It is meta-strategy: a governing logic for relationships among strategies. Corporate strategy decides whether to acquire, divest, integrate or partner; grand strategy explains what enduring role the portfolio should secure and which shared assets must be protected. Business strategy explains how a unit wins; grand strategy determines whether that victory advances or compromises the actor's durable position. Functional strategy builds capabilities; grand strategy decides which should be common infrastructure, locally distinctive or protected from dependency.

Consider a federated education group. An acquisition pipeline is corporate strategy; each institution's market positioning is business strategy; shared data, regulatory, academic and technology platforms are group capabilities. Grand strategy is the theory explaining the role the group seeks in the education system, how federation and common infrastructure create durable value, which sources of legitimacy cannot be sacrificed, and why this configuration will remain resilient. Rapid acquisition may satisfy a growth thesis while undermining the grand strategy if integration capacity, academic quality or regulatory trust deteriorates.

I call this cross-level failure meta-strategic incoherence: subordinate strategies are individually plausible but collectively weaken the security, legitimacy or adaptive capacity of the whole. It parallels Rovner's (2025) distinction between a theory of victory and a theory of security. Winning share can erode industry economics; maximizing unit earnings can starve a shared platform; standardization can destroy the local distinctiveness on which a portfolio depends.

The relationship is recursive. Realized strategy combines deliberate and emergent patterns (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985), while strategy-as-practice research shows that strategy is produced through routines, narratives and political interaction (Whittington, 1996; Bueger and Gadinger, 2021). Local experience can invalidate grand-strategic assumptions or reveal new opportunities. Authority at the centre therefore implies responsibility for integration, not omniscience.

Level	Primary question	Typical content	Principal failure
Grand strategy	What enduring role and condition of durable success should the whole secure?	Purpose, identity, system position, cross-domain logic, non-negotiables, adaptation	Local victories weaken the whole
Corporate strategy	In which activities and ownership forms should the organization participate?	Portfolio, acquisitions, divestment, capital allocation, synergies	Scope lacks advantage or coherence
Business strategy	How will a unit succeed in a defined arena?	Value proposition, advantage, customers, competitors, business model	No defensible position
Functional strategy	Which capabilities support the chosen positions?	People, finance, technology, operations, marketing, research	Capabilities are fragmented or misaligned
Operations and tactics	What will be done now, by whom and to what standard?	Programmes, processes, targets and interventions	Weak execution or local optimization

Table 1. Distinguishing levels of organizational strategy

Proposition 2. Grand-strategic coherence exists when corporate, business and functional strategies reinforce the actor's theory of durable success; it fails when local optimization depletes shared resources, legitimacy, identity or adaptive capacity.

6. An adaptive meta-strategic framework

My framework integrates design, behaviour and practice. Its eight dimensions are not a linear checklist. Henke's (2025) sequence, from core goals and diagnosis to a logic of action, policies and resource commitments, provides a design spine. Silove's (2018) distinction among plans, principles and behaviour provides an audit of realization. Practice, network and dynamic-capability perspectives explain enactment and revision (Nexon, 2021; Bueger and Gadinger, 2021; Teece et al., 1997).

6.1 Enduring purpose and protected interests

Grand strategy distinguishes enduring purposes from planning-cycle goals. Purpose states what the actor exists to create or protect; protected interests identify the conditions without which that purpose cannot be pursued. These might include financial independence, customer trust, academic integrity, public authorization, critical capabilities or institutional solvency. They should be few enough to discipline choice. When every stakeholder preference is "strategic", no guidance remains when objectives conflict.

Purpose is not necessarily benign. Grand strategy can protect narrow or extractive ends. The analytical requirement is explicitness; the normative requirement is contestability. Boards should ask what is being secured and for whom. George (2025) similarly treats purpose as consequential only when it shapes planning, participation, implementation and evaluation.

6.2 Identity and desired system role

Strategy depends on what an actor understands itself to be and on the role others recognize it as capable of performing. Role theory adds this relational dimension (Brommesson et al., 2025). An organization may seek to become an orchestrator, specialist, trusted intermediary, infrastructure provider, consolidator, challenger or steward. Each role implies different capabilities, relationships and limits. A role not recognized by regulators, customers, partners or professional communities remains aspirational.

Identity also constrains feasible change. Expansion or digital transformation may create capability while destabilizing narratives that sustain commitment and legitimacy. Grand strategy identifies which elements are constitutive and which can evolve.

6.3 System diagnosis

Strategy addresses a challenge, not a wish list. Rumelt (2011, 2022) and Henke (2025) place diagnosis at the centre of good strategy. A grand-strategic diagnosis identifies the few causal obstacles separating the actor from its protected purposes and desired role. It examines structural forces, stakeholder incentives, institutional rules, technological shifts, internal contradictions and path dependence.

This differs from an environmental scan. Lists of trends do not explain which forces are decisive. Diagnosis should identify mechanisms and test alternatives. A problem framed as insufficient growth may actually be weak trust or managerial capacity; a technology gap may be an incentive and governance problem. Key assumptions must be explicit enough to falsify.

6.4 A theory and logic of durable success

The central task is a causal theory connecting choices to durable success. Henke (2025) describes a logic of action as guardrails that direct policy without prescribing every move. The organizational equivalent explains why the selected role, scope, relationships and capabilities should overcome the diagnosis better than alternatives.

A federated group might hypothesize that trusted local brands combined with common regulatory, data, technology and capital capabilities will outperform both centralized chains and isolated institutions. This is testable: it implies where integration creates value, where autonomy is essential and what evidence would disconfirm the model. A slogan is not a theory unless its causal relationships and boundaries are specified.

The logic also distinguishes victory from security. Units may possess theories of market success; grand strategy explains how those victories build capability, legitimacy and optionality for the whole rather than dependence or exhaustion.

6.5 Strategic scope, portfolio and network position

Corporate strategy addresses portfolio scope, but grand strategy locates that portfolio within a system of control, partnership and dependence. Network theory shows that power may arise from brokerage, centrality and relationships, not only owned assets (Nexon, 2021). The strategic portfolio therefore includes business units and markets as well as alliances, platforms, standards, professional communities, data access and channels of influence.

This dimension asks where the organization must own, partner, interoperate or avoid dependence. The answer may be a portfolio of positions: controlled core capabilities, complementary partners, experimental options and exits from activities that consume attention without strengthening the desired role. Hensmans's (2026) corporate archetypes demonstrate one geopolitical form of such system influence; the same analytical question applies where influence rests on trust, standards or connective position.

6.6 Instrument orchestration and resource commitments

Grand strategy becomes credible through coordinated commitments. Organizations combine capital, talent, systems, data, technology, reputation, policy engagement, research, brands and partnerships. The issue is complementarity, sequence and opportunity cost.

Allocation converts preference into sacrifice. A declared priority without capital and leadership attention is at most a principle, while persistent allocation patterns may reveal behaviour different from the plan (Silove, 2018). Analysis should examine which assets are protected, capabilities receive cumulative investment, risks become concentrated and options remain alive. Proportionality is decisive: ambitions must match capital, capability, attention and absorptive capacity (James, 2024).

6.7 Trade-offs, guardrails and non-goals

Strategy is visible in refusal. Grand strategy should specify non-goals, acceptable losses and boundaries that subordinate strategies may not cross. Examples include leverage limits, minimum academic or safety standards, restrictions on single-platform dependency, or rules preserving local legitimacy.

Guardrails enable decentralized judgement without prescribing every action. Strong guardrails state the protected interest, risk logic and authority required for exceptions. Excessively detailed rules become brittle; vague values fail under pressure. Explicit trade-offs also make strategy accountable by revealing which opportunities and interests are deprioritized.

6.8 Governance, learning and strategic change

Grand strategy is produced through governance. Strategy-as-practice research asks who participates, which evidence is admitted and how routines translate logic into decisions (Whittington, 1996; Bueger and Gadinger, 2021). The governing coalition must arbitrate cross-domain conflicts and preserve the theory without suppressing disconfirming evidence.

Adaptation requires sensing, seizing and reconfiguring assets (Teece et al., 1997), while exploration must be protected from the demands of current exploitation (March, 1991). Lissner (2021) distinguishes adjustment within an existing orientation from overhaul of the orientation itself. Governance should define triggers for both: an underperforming instrument may require adjustment; failure of the diagnosis, desired role or causal logic may require overhaul.

Across all dimensions, organizations should compare the declared plan, the principles invoked in decisions and the behaviour revealed by capital, appointments, partnerships and exits. Persistent divergence may indicate implementation failure, political compromise, hypocrisy or legitimate emergence; it should be explained rather than concealed.

Proposition 3. Effective organizational grand strategy combines a stable core of enduring purpose, protected interests and causal guardrails with an adaptive periphery of portfolios, instruments and initiatives that can be reconfigured as evidence and conditions change.

7. Coherence without rigidity

Grand strategy's promise of coherence is also the source of its strongest criticism. Betts (2019, 2021) argues that retrospective accounts impose rationality on improvised and politically fragmented behaviour. Comprehensive designs exaggerate control, expand peripheral interests and turn consistency into a vice when conditions change. Drezner, Krebs and Schweller (2020) contend that dispersed power, technological turbulence and political fragmentation favour smaller experiments over encompassing designs. Dombrowski (2021) accordingly considers emergent, calibrated or multiple strategies as alternatives.

These objections apply directly to organizations. Corporate centres overestimate capability transfer, suppress local knowledge and mistake formal alignment for behavioural coherence. Long-range plans create escalation of commitment because careers, budgets and promises become attached to assumptions. The grand-strategy label may also elevate preferences into supposedly existential imperatives.

Yet abandoning grand strategy does not remove cross-domain trade-offs. It leaves them to bargaining, inertia or units controlling immediate resources. Emergence can produce discovery, but also drift and mutually destructive optimization. Lissner (2018) therefore argues that long-term vision and disciplined priorities can coexist with pragmatic implementation. The challenge is coherence without comprehensive prediction.

I address this tension through the stable-core, adaptive-periphery principle and its layered temporality. Purpose, protected interests and core identity change slowly. The causal logic, desired role and portfolio posture are reviewed when assumptions materially shift. Initiatives, partnerships and allocations remain provisional. Three mechanisms support this design: every major commitment identifies its critical assumptions and disconfirming evidence; governance distinguishes adjustment triggers from overhaul triggers; and resources are reserved for exploration and option creation rather than fully committed to the dominant model.

Coherence thus means consistency of direction and constraint, not uniformity of action. Units may pursue different business models and experiments if they respect shared guardrails and produce relevant learning. Conversely, common branding, systems or targets do not create coherence when they weaken the desired role or concentrate unacceptable risk. Adaptive grand strategy tells decision-makers both what must remain stable and what they are authorized to change.

8. Evaluation and governance

Grand strategy should be evaluated ex ante, in process and ex post. Ex ante evaluation asks whether its composition is credible. Four tests integrate the literature. Coherence asks whether purpose, diagnosis, role, portfolio and instruments form a plausible causal chain. Proportionality asks whether commitments are supportable with available capital, capability, attention and legitimacy (James, 2024). Resilience asks whether the strategy preserves options and learning capacity. Legitimacy asks whether the desired role and distribution of benefits can secure sufficient internal and external authorization.

In-process evaluation tests whether the strategy governs actual decisions. Evidence includes budgets, appointments, acquisitions, divestments, partnership terms, standards and crisis responses. A plan-principle-behaviour dashboard should identify divergence without demanding perfect correspondence. Leaders must explain whether a gap represents implementation failure, intentional adjustment, local experimentation or evidence for overhaul.

Ex post evaluation is difficult because outcomes reflect competitors, shocks and luck. Growth or mission output alone cannot establish quality. Evaluation should combine outcomes with process tracing: did the specified mechanisms operate; were protected interests strengthened; did the system role gain recognition; did dependencies become safer; and did the actor preserve renewal capacity?

Governance rests where cross-domain trade-offs can be authorized. Boards should not write every component, but they should define protected interests, interrogate the causal theory, approve major commitments, adjudicate conflicts among subordinate strategies and ensure that inconvenient evidence reaches the centre. Metrics should extend beyond financial and operational performance to capability renewal, legitimacy, dependency concentration, network position, strategic options and the correspondence between declared priorities and resource allocation.

I propose a practical audit that focuses attention on questions ordinary strategic plans frequently evade. It begins with a concise statement of the actor's proposed grand-strategic theory and then seeks disconfirming evidence across the eight dimensions. The purpose is not to produce another comprehensive planning template. It is to expose gaps in the causal chain, unresolved conflicts among levels and areas in which rhetoric has outrun commitment.

Dimension	Governing question	Indicative evidence
Purpose and protected interests	What must remain true for the actor to fulfil its purpose?	Board decisions, constitutional documents, risk limits
Identity and role	What role is claimed, enacted and recognized by others?	Stakeholder research, partnerships, regulatory treatment
Diagnosis	What few mechanisms obstruct durable success?	Competing diagnoses, assumptions, system and capability evidence
Logic of success	Why should the chosen configuration work better than alternatives?	Causal map, alternatives considered, falsification criteria
Scope and networks	What should be owned, partnered, influenced, avoided or exited?	Portfolio choices, dependency map, alliance architecture
Instruments and resources	Do commitments reinforce one another and match capacity?	Capital, talent and attention allocation; sequencing
Trade-offs and guardrails	What will not be pursued, and what may local success not damage?	Non-goals, thresholds, exception rules
Learning and change	What triggers adjustment or overhaul?	Leading indicators, experiments, option portfolio, review records

Table 2. Grand-strategy audit for complex organizations

The audit also clarifies accountability. Management is responsible for developing and executing the theory; governing bodies are responsible for the quality of its premises, the legitimacy of its ends and the integrity of cross-level trade-offs. Business units should be able to show how their strategies contribute to the grand-strategic logic, but they should also have protected channels for reporting evidence that the logic is failing. This combination avoids both ceremonial board endorsement and intrusive central planning.

Proposition 4. Organizational grand strategy is better assessed through the joint evolution of viability, legitimacy, system position, capability renewal and cross-level coherence than through aggregated subordinate financial or competitive outcomes.

9. Discussion, research agenda and conclusion

My framework contributes to both grand-strategy and strategic-management scholarship. For the former, it offers a bounded route beyond the state. The criterion is not resemblance to a great power, but whether an actor possesses sufficient actorness and confronts a long-horizon coordination problem involving multiple instruments, relationships and protected interests. This complements Hensmans's (2026) geopolitical account of corporations by theorizing internal meta-strategic architecture. For strategic management, I reconnect questions dispersed across purpose, corporate and non-market strategy, ecosystems, governance and dynamic capabilities. The framework's particular contribution is to distinguish winning within an arena from preserving the capability, legitimacy and position from which the organization can continue to act.

I also use the framework to reposition the familiar demand for "alignment". Alignment is not the mechanical cascading of identical objectives through a hierarchy. It is the negotiated compatibility of differentiated strategies with common protected interests and a shared theory of durable success. This interpretation preserves local agency while making cross-level consequences visible. It therefore offers a more discriminating alternative to both centralized uniformity and loosely connected portfolios held together only by financial ownership.

The propositions invite several research programmes. Plans, principles and behaviour can be measured through document analysis, decision narratives and longitudinal resource allocations. Comparative cases can test the scope conditions across diversified corporations, universities, public agencies, humanitarian networks and family-controlled groups. Practice research can examine who gains authority to define protected interests, how boards handle contradictory evidence and how strategic narratives travel across units. Longitudinal studies can compare the stable-core, adaptive-periphery design with comprehensive planning and unconstrained emergence, tracing the costs of excessive persistence and excessive volatility. Research should also examine the ethics of durable success, because grand strategy distributes risk, voice and resources across stakeholders and generations.

The framework I present remains conceptual and requires empirical validation. Functional analogy can obscure institutional differences, while durable success is necessarily actor-specific. A coherent grand strategy may also be unattainable or undesirable where no governing coalition can legitimately define common purposes; negotiated portfolios of partial strategies may then be more realistic.

Complex organizations nevertheless cannot avoid the underlying problem by avoiding the term. Their commitments shape identity, dependencies, legitimacy and room for manoeuvre over decades. They must decide which contests matter, what capabilities and relationships should accumulate, what local success may be allowed to cost, and when a governing theory has failed.

I therefore define organizational grand strategy not as strategy made larger, more ambitious or more detailed, but as the meta-strategic theory that gives subordinate strategies a common purpose and boundary. Its discipline is to maintain a stable core of purpose and protected interests while adapting the portfolio of means. Its ultimate test is not whether every plan is executed or every unit wins, but whether the actor remains capable, legitimate and purposefully positioned to choose and act again.

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