Reconceptualizing the strategic management process: performance management and execution consistency as translation and enactment layers

Purpose This study investigated the limitations of the classical Strategic Management Process (SMP) model in explaining the mechanisms through which strategy translates into organizational performance. It proposes an architectural repositioning of the failure mechanisms that have remained implicit within the canonical model. Design/methodology/approach A written survey across multiple operating entities of a large Indonesian state-owned enterprise group in the energy and logistics sector elicited 256 open-ended responses from senior managers and professionals on execution barriers, governance effectiveness, and forward-looking concerns. Inductive thematic content analysis identified recurrent failure patterns in practitioner accounts; the two-layer classification was then applied to those codes as an interpretive rule, making the framework abductive rather than purely inductive. Findings The most frequently reported practitioner-described failures were interpreted as separating into two structurally distinct categories, alongside a larger set of institutional-upstream conditions. Institutional-upstream conditions were the single largest category, at 51.6 per cent of coded barriers, while the failures lying within the process architecture separated into translation (18.8 per cent) and enactment (21.5 per cent). The first comprised translation failures, in which strategic intent was not converted into operational standards, accountability assignments, or coherent measures. The second comprised enactment failures, in which translated strategy was not executed consistently across organizational units or sustained over time. The two highest-frequency barriers, political and shareholder interference and bureaucratic approval delays, operated as institutional upstream conditions loading onto both failure categories rather than as implementation failures in their own right. Research limitations/implications The evidence was drawn from a single corporate group; replication across other institutional contexts is required. The proposed extension is structural rather than causal and awaits quantitative testing. Practical implications Managers can use the translation-enactment distinction to diagnose which failure type they face and apply targeted interventions: Performance Management System redesign for translation failures, and routine and coordination mechanisms for enactment failures. Originality/value The paper’s contribution was architectural rather than conceptual. It relocated Performance Management Systems from a backward-looking evaluation tool to a forward-looking translation layer, and named Execution Consistency as a distinct enactment layer, positioning both between Strategy Formulation and Strategy Outcomes with Corporate Governance as institutional precondition. The value lies in separating two failure modes the classical implementation stage conflates, not in inventing either construct.