Can AI Do Strategy? Special Issue Introduction
The special issue introduces a dual-ladder framework — a causal ladder mapping AI's cognitive hierarchy of strategic tasks and a delegation ladder specifying when firms should grant AI autonomy — establishing the most rigorous academic taxonomy of AI's strategic role to date. [Abstract only — paywalled]
Summary
Strategy Science's special issue on 'Can AI Do Strategy?' opens with an introductory framework that organizes the scholarly debate around two analytical structures: a causal ladder mapping the cognitive hierarchy of strategic tasks (from data processing through reasoning to judgment and wisdom), and a delegation ladder specifying when organizations will grant autonomous decision-making authority to AI systems. The issue collects empirical and conceptual papers examining what AI can do today in strategy, what it could do as capabilities develop, and what it should do given accountability imperatives and the irreducible role of human judgment. This is the definitive academic framing of the AI-strategy boundary question for 2026.
Editor's opinion
Csaszar et al.'s dual-ladder framework — separating the causal hierarchy of strategic reasoning from the delegation hierarchy of when organizations will actually trust AI with autonomy — is the most precise framing of "can AI do strategy?" I've seen, anchored by the insight that AI enters strategy where performance is measurable, not where reasoning is deepest. The piece earns its weight by organizing genuinely competing perspectives (Felin's skepticism, Lakhani's call for clinical trials, Hullman on problem framing) without flattening the disagreements into false consensus.
Key concepts
Causal ladder of strategic cognition · delegation ladder · AI autonomy in strategy · AI for strategy formulation · cognitive hierarchy of strategic tasks