From hope to hesitation: rethinking Open Strategy in 2025
Open strategy once looked like the future. Now it feels like a contested choice.
For years, the movement toward more open, participatory strategy-making seemed undeniable. It aligned with broader societal shifts towards transparency, inclusivity, and trust. Openness was a core value of Western democracies: open source, open government, open data, open innovation – open this and open that. But recent global developments have cast a long shadow over these ideals. What was written as a reflective afterword in our book about open and closed strategy now reads eerily like a prophecy.
When Openness Was Ascending
Until early 2025, I used to describe open strategy to executives as a Western trend, and they agreed. Organizations across Europe and North America were opening up their strategy processes, inviting employees into decision-making, and experimenting with new forms of transparency. It felt like a sign of progress, of strategic maturity.
The afterwords of our book, written in late 2022, warned, however, that this trend was fragile. That the history of strategy was also a history of power, and power rarely gives itself away without resistance. Even then, openness required effort and cultural change in many organizations. And even then, there were forces pulling organizations back into secrecy and exclusivity.
A World That’s Closing
Now, in 2025, those counterforces feel stronger. President Donald Trump, season 2, has not just reoriented U.S. policy; it has reoriented the values that shape organizational life. Trust, dialogue, and transparency are no longer shared assumptions.
In this new climate, I find myself revising my language: open strategy is no longer a Western trend – it is a European one. Across the Atlantic, the cultural wind has shifted.
But it's not just the U.S.
Political polarization, wars, cybersecurity threats, and climate-related anxieties have all made organizations more cautious, defensive, and closed. In this context, openness feels risky, even naive. The idea that strategy can or should be shared widely is no longer a given.
Strategy Has Always Been About Power
The afterwords of our book underscore this point. Strategy is never neutral; it is a means of justifying power. As the history of strategy shows us, strategy became necessary with rise of professional managers. They no longer owned the companies they managed and needed a way to explain their authority.
And that hasn’t changed. Strategy is still a discourse that elevates some voices and silences others. It is still used to legitimize decisions, limit participation, and protect elite domains of expertise. In this light, open strategy isn’t just a tool; it is a stance that state what we value as managers and as organizations.
What Now?
We must stop assuming that openness will continue on its own. It won’t. In today’s environment, open strategy must be a deliberate, value-driven act. One that organizations design for and defend.
Leaders should ask themselves, are we closing down our processes – even if unintentionally? How much do our strategic conversations depend on trust? What would it mean to remain open when it's least convenient?
The future of strategy has never been only about methods. It is about the principles we choose to uphold. In that sense, the question is no longer "how open can we be?", but rather, "what does our way of doing strategy say about what we believe?"
Further reading:Knights, D., & Morgan, G. (1991). Corporate Strategy, Organizations, and Subjectivity: A Critique. Organization Studies, 12(2), 251–273. Langenmayr, T., Seidl, D., & Splitter, V. (2024). Interdiscursive struggles: Managing the co-existence of the conventional and open strategy discourse. Strategic Management Journal.Leskelä, M., & Luomaranta, J. (2023). Avoin strategia / Suljettu strategia. Alma Talent.Mantere, S., & Vaara, E. (2008). On the problem of participation in strategy: A critical discursive perspective. Organization Science, 19(2), 341–358.
Intrigued and want to learn more? Get in touch!