these decisions may have had on the performance of the companies that promoted them. Drahozal himself presents as future lines of research "a study of the efects of international arbitration on economic growth". In this context, it is important to assess, although partially, the importance of the use of arbitration for companies, particularly in terms of their performance and competitiveness. And it is necessary to do so, here, abandoning the strictly legal positioning of the arbitration issue, incorporating the dispute and its resolution in the business variables, seeking answers that help managers in the decision-making process on whether or not to resort to arbitration. 3.1 Refections on organisational strategy The word “strategy” may carry several meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. The most common and frequent meanings have to do with policies, objectives, tactics, goals or programs, then requiring an efort of conceptualization to fnd the correct defnition within the scope that concerns us. In Mintzberg's words, "human nature insists on a defnition for all concepts. The domain of strategic management cannot aford to rely on only one defnition of strategy, since the word has, over time, been implicitly used in many senses, despite being traditionally defned only in one" . 12 Strategic thinking is often presented as from the radical changes to which the environment is subjected, imposing on organizations the need to seek new practical forms of survival. These changes translate into a philosophy that presents as main assumptions an ambitious long-term vision and the development of the organization based on its own resources and competences so as to promote, whenever possible, changes in the competitive environment that may beneft the one that promotes them. Thus, the key objective of strategy is not the adaptation to the conditions defned by the competition, but its transformation and renewal, based on the idea that the competition game is not an absolute and irremovable fact, but rather a situation over which organizations can exert infuence and change facts. Within this context, it is increasingly assumed that every competitive advantage is temporary, strategy is diversifed, emerging and complex, one must reinvent, i.e., live the present supported on past resources and projecting the future, impose the pace of change, develop the strategy as of the terrain that constitutes the domain of activity and coherently recombine the various felds of activity. Several authors have diverged as to the number of schools of strategic 13 thought, but there is reasonable convergence that strategy, although there are earlier references to it, arose after the Second World War and that, as of the sixties and seventies of the last century, with the interest academia showed in the theme, it really developed. More often than not, it will be through the happy combination of these factors that a prosperous, sustainable and efcient company will emerge. It is therefore important to trace a path through the most important things that have been said in this domain so as to fnally focus on the concepts and resources that enable us to fully explain the object of our study. Mintzberg, 1988, pag. 1-67. 12 Ansof, 1991; Mintzberg, 1991. 13 12
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