Infusing Artificial Intelligence into Strategy’s Five Classic Debates: Toward a Synthesis

This paper explores how artificial intelligence (AI) transforms the foundations of strategic management theory. While traditional debates have centered on industry structure and resource-based perspectives, AI introduces a theoretical discontinuity that challenges assumptions about cognition, resources, and firm boundaries. We examine five influential streams: Behavioral Strategy, Microfoundations, Ecosystems and Platforms, Stakeholder Resource-Based View, and Strategy-as-Practice, to assess how AI reshapes their core premises. Our analysis reveals that AI creates hybrid cognitive architectures, embeds algorithmic actors into microfoundations, reconfigures ecosystems around foundation models, redistributes resource control to stakeholders, and alters strategizing practices through continuous, AI-augmented processes. The paper concludes with an agenda for empirical research, emphasizing multilevel analysis, algorithmic governance, and ethical considerations in an AI-infused strategic landscape.