Global strategy: the world is your Oyster (if you can shuck it!)

In this inaugural lecture, Taco briefly describes the disciplinary background, central research questions, and themes of Global Strategy, and he presents what may be the dominant framework of understanding how global strategy works and what determines its success. In a nutshell, the formation and implementation of global strategies involves intricate connections between – and savvy decision-making about – resources, relations and rules; i.e., the R3 of Global Strategy. What comes into play particularly in the international context is the role of rules. One of his aims in this address is therefore to broaden the interest in the roles of rules. To illustrate this, the talk discusses aspects of the international acquisition process to suggest that success in Global Strategy relies for an important part on a curiosity about how rules – both our own and others, both local and foreign – influence who we and others are as individuals and as organizations.