Articles
DOI DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18442571

Managing Multi-Business Portfolios under Uncertainty: Dynamic Capabilities

Julian Birkinshaw1
  1. 1 Ph.D., Business Administration Ivey Business School, London, Canada

Abstract

Managing a multi-business portfolio under uncertainty is a corporate-level
challenge of allocation, coordination, and renewal. Conventional portfolio tools
(e.g., growth–share logic) support categorization of business units but implicitly
assume stable competitive conditions and predictable cash-flow patterns. This
paper develops an integrated and replicable framework explaining how dynamic
capabilities enable corporate parents to sense shifts across heterogeneous
markets, seize opportunities through disciplined resource reallocation, and
reconfigure portfolios via divestitures, acquisitions, internal ventures, and
capability redeployment. Uncertainty is treated as a spectrum from measurable
risk to Knightian uncertainty, where probabilities are not reliably knowable
and prediction-based planning becomes fragile. The manuscript combines (i) a
structured conceptual model (Figure 1) and (ii) a replicable research design for
portfolio-level analysis using public indicators: segment reporting, performance
dispersion, reallocation intensity, and transaction events. The core claim is
that dynamic capabilities reduce decision latency and improve capital and
talent mobility across strategic business units, improving resilience under deep
uncertainty.

How to Cite

Birkinshaw, J. (2026). Managing Multi-Business Portfolios under Uncertainty: Dynamic Capabilities. Transnational Academic Journal of Economics, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18442571
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