Interrogating “scale” in strategic management-at-scale: lessons from collaborative governance

While the field of strategic planning and management has mostly focused on single organizations, a new strand of literature on “strategy management at scale” (SMAS) is exploring the way strategic management can address large-scale, cross-organizational, cross-level, often cross-boundary challenges. The appearance of this new strand has coincided with renewed emphasis on concepts such as public value governance, whole-of-government approaches, and mission-oriented innovation. This essay connects the nascent SMAS literature with longer-standing concepts from collaborative governance to better theorize what is meant by “at scale” in SMAS. We apply Ansell and Torfing’s scale framework, which pinpointed diverse ways in which collaborations could scale, to foundational SMAS literature. SMAS currently emphasizes jurisdictional and functional aspects of scale, with less attention to geographic or temporal considerations. We suggest ways that a more multi-dimensional understanding of scale could inspire new research and enhance strategic management’s role in tackling global challenges.