v Foreword Over the years strategic initiatives have received increasing importance as core vehicles for strategy-making. These coordinated undertakings enable firms to reinforce the current strategy or alter it in order to realign the organization in accordance with changed environmental conditions. Despite the growing importance of strategic initiatives the overall understanding of their professional management is still limited. While previous research has acknowledged the importance of the organizational context for the successful development of strategic initiatives, so far only little research has focused on this important link. Especially the social side of the organizational context has remained under-investigated. Karolin Marx addresses this shortcoming and analyzes the role of the social context, represented by the embeddedness of the initiative team in the intrafirm network, for strategy­ making. As initiatives are pursued by teams, it is reasonable to assume that the type and quality of the team's social relations to other organizational units impacts the thinking and behavior within the team and thus the performance of the initiative.

Table of Contents:
1 Introduction.- 1.1 Research objective and research question.- 1.2 Theoretical relevance and contribution.- 1.3 Practical relevance and contribution.- 1.4 Outline of the dissertation.- 2 Theoretical Background.- 2.1 Strategy process research: Developing a basic understanding of the field.- 2.2 Evolutionary theory: The social context as internal selection mechanism.- 2.3 Exploring strategic initiatives: The core vehicles for strategy-making.- 2.4 The social context of strategic initiatives: An embeddedness perspective.- 2.5 Summary and discussion.- 3 Theoretical Model.- 3.1 The core model: The impact of embeddedness on the performance of strategic initiatives.- 3.2 The extended model: Degree of exploration as a key contingency.- 3.3 Summary and discussion.- 4 Methodology.- 4.1 Methodological approach.- 4.2 Research sites.- 4.3 Data collection and sample.- 4.4 Measures.- 4.5 Analytical strategy.- 4.6 Summary and discussion.- 5 Results.- 5.1 Results on the assumptions of multiple regression analysis.- 5.2 Results of the core model.- 5.3 Results of the extended model.- 5.4 Summary and discussion.- 6 Discussion and Implications.- 6.1 Discussion of the results.- 6.2 Implications relating to theory.- 6.3 Implications relating to management practice.- 7 Conclusions.- 7.1 Limitations of the dissertation.- 7.2 Directions for further research.- 7.3 Final conclusion.- Appendices.- References.