Abstract
While international strategic management and especially strategy crafting has been discussed extensively, the execution of global strategy in general, and modelling of international strategy implementation in particular, are rarely discussed. This research aims to develop a comprehensive hybrid model of strategy implementation in international context by critically examining existing strategy execution models based on their similarities and differences. Meta-analysis technique has been used not only for building the hybrid strategy implementation model but also for assessing the developed model. Inclusion criteria were all published studies in top ten management journals and all existing books in Amazon website that have at least one of the nine keywords about strategy implementation. Through extensive search in hundreds of strategy-related books and thousands of papers in top 10 academic journals, we have identified nine strategy implementation models, which can be categorised into two distinguished generations. In addition, this study has investigated similarities and differences of these models individually when compared against all other models based on three criteria: research design, validity/ reliability, and the models’ components. We find that these models are different from each other in terms of number of their components, different formats (system-based, process-based, casual, or haphazard), and appreciation of environmental factors. While models from the first generation are simple, their components and structures are mainly different from each other. In contrast, although second generation’s models are more sophisticated, their elements and formats are considerably similar to each other. Forty elements that shape these existing models are determined and then organised into ten groups and two individual factors based on their similarities in a systematic manner to create a synthetic model of strategy implementation.