Half Empty or Half Full: Balancing with Openness Strategies

The general trends towards transparency and openness in organizations and society have been shaping the strategies towards openness in networks. This study focuses on practices that manifest the open strategy in organizations and presents how partial openness strategy manifests as practices in a focal company and its supply network. Second, the drivers enabling and limits involved in implementing the open strategy as practices are investigated. The findings show a spectrum of seven practices, which viewed via the dimensions of transparency and inclusion of open strategy, manifest a partial openness strategy. The results complement previous research that is often focused on the context of software companies and industry by bringing a different perspective on the subject in the context of traditional industries.