The Application Of Design Research Method In Strategic Management

The modern society is an information society,and the rapid development of the economic environment,the endless emerging new technologies as well as the new means have made the management environment increasingly intricate.As a result,the most important issue and problem encountered by the current business is how to develop the strategies in with its development and how to conduct the effective strategic management.Even though the academia has made great contribution to strategic management,unfortunately,the current academic research is mainly on explanatory research methods regarding the empirical research method and the case study research method as its representatives,which leads to the existing results with more explanatory and descriptive knowledge.And those results cannot be used directly by the management practitioners in the actual operation,which also leads to the gap between the management knowledge and the management practices.Therefore,this paper advocates a way to introduce the design of research method into the business strategic management research in order to build a bridge between strategic management theory and strategic management practices and to develop the practical strategic management knowledge.Hopefully,this paper could provide the entrepreneurial strong academic research results.Based on Professor Van Aken and Simon's understanding of management and design and the definition of design science,and synthesizing the related studies conducted by scholars home and abroad,this paper intends to answer the following questions:firstly,why do we need to introduce the design research method into the strategic management research?Secondly,whether could we introduce the design research method into the business strategic management research?Thirdly,how could we introduce the design research method into the business strategic management?And fourthly,what are the general methods of using the research method into the business strategic management.The four questions are linked up with each other with progressive layers.This paper firstly analyses the characteristics of strategic management and the current situation of strategic management research,drawing the reasons for the lack of practice of the research results in academia.And then this paper demonstrates the necessity of the introduction of design research method.Secondly,this paper analyses the similarities between design research and strategic management research exploring the feasibility of introduction of the design research method into the strategic management research.And then,this paper explores the general framework of the introduction of the design research method into the strategic management research,which leads to the framework of design research for the strategic management.Finally,combining with the 'closed-loop' model,this paper proposes the feasibility on the key aspects of business strategic management from the perspective of design research.Through the analysis of these issues,this paper draws the following conclusions:1.The design research method is able to build a bridge between the strategic management theory and the strategic management practices and to provide strategic management strong practical strategic management knowledge.2.The design research has lots of similarities with business strategic management research in various levels,mainly in four levels including the research environment,research subject,research objectives and research process.Thus,the use of design research method in business strategic management research is realistic and feasible.3.The general framework of design research includes stages of problem definition,goal determination,design generation,evaluation,iteration,and ongoing update.With the combination between this and strategic management characteristics,we can get the design research framework for strategic management research.4.The 'closed-loop'model of business strategic management is a typical case of design method.By applying design research method in the key aspects in business strategic management,it can provide guidance for strategic management practice.