Subtle Strategic Agency: Organizational Cognition and Actions under Structural Constraints

Abstract

I use an inductive case study of the strategy of the Ford Foundation in China to examine the processes and actions involved in pursuing an ambitious organizational goal within a constrained and adversarial environment. The study shows that the Foundation attempted to accomplish its goal of stimulating democratic values in an authoritarian China by taking strategic actions that were transparently observable, but subtle in their transformative mechanisms, which I term subtle strategic actions. Being transparent and subtle allowed the Foundation to comply with strict requirements of China’s powerful monitoring agencies safeguarding the authoritarian system, and simultaneously promote democratic values. I also find that a distinct cognitive process preceded subtle strategic actions, and this process had a future-oriented and a present-oriented component: goal-directed programming and a complex understanding of the present, respectively. Overall, this article contributes to an expanded understanding of agency as an interrelated process of cognition and actions. More specifically, my study suggests that strategic leaders, when faced with goal-inhibiting constraints in the environment, can expand their discretions by taking subtle strategic actions that attend to both organizational goals and goal-inhibiting constraints in the local context. In this specific case, such both-and solutions had the potential of facilitating radical change through strategically planned small wins.