Darl and I have spent sometime talking about the game of Mornington Crescent1. In particular, I've been thinking about it in relation to David Boje's Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamara-Land'. From recollection, Boje's thesis (in the article) is that organisations can been seen as a collection of concurrent, and competing stories. Perhaps, for some people in some organisations, rather than playing out stories, they are actually playing out games of Mornington Crescent - games where the rules are wholly unclear (and possibly misunderstood).
Perhaps if we view organisations attempts at strategy as games of Mornington Crescent, that might explain why there is such contradictory evidence for the efficacy of strategy2.
BTW, did you know that David Boje's current university is one of the greatest centres of research on chili plants?
1 For details of the real basis of Mornington Crescent have a look at Wikipedia
2 There probably should be a reference here.
