EXPRESS: Forced Choices without Resolutions: A Dialectical View of Strategic Change in an Endgame Industry

Endgame industries confront firms with intensifying contradictions. Yet little is known about how such conditions shape strategic change over time. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of Software Corp., a leader in the shrinking output management industry, we develop a dialectical process model of strategic change in endgames. Using multi year field data, interviews, and internal documents, we show how firms face apories - individually plausible yet incompatible commitments - that escalate into conflicts and prompt provisional settlements. These recursive cycles of contradiction, conflict, and temporary resolution can explain how endgame strategies evolve as external positioning pressures combine with internal resource reallocation decisions. We contribute to research on declining industries by conceptualizing endgame strategy making as iterative and conflict-driven rather than fit-based. We also extend dialectical theorizing by advancing an aporetic account of strategic change that highlights the provisional and cyclical nature of action in structurally constrained contexts.