Winning hearts and minds: Field theory and the three dimensions of strategy

Strategy involves more than seeking to accomplish goals, innovate, and improve financial performance. We offer a field-theoretic perspective that distills three key dimensions of strategy: the need to accrue and mobilize resources, maintain an organization's status, and achieve greater levels of power and influence. Strategy evolves as actors seek cooperative partners or come into conflict with other actors who hold competing worldviews. Attaining strategic advantages depends greatly on actors' abilities to shape the perceptions of others. Actors must be able to win the public's hearts and minds if they are to gain positions of prominence and to influence the rules of the game that shape who wins or loses. Much strategic action evolves from these contests over shaping key audiences' perceptions. Field theory, in our view, provides a more holistic view of strategy.