SWG 05: Strategizing: Activity and Practice

Practice-based research within other disciplines, such as accounting and technology, has provided evidence that what people do and how they do it is frequently counter to rational principles and has clear implications for both the conduct and the outcomes of work. Increasingly this approach is reflected in a move to study the activity and practice of strategizing, on the basis that large-scale quantitative studies of firm assets, technologies and performance variables provide disembodied and asocial accounts that offer little theoretical or practical insight into the dilemmas of practitioners engaged in doing strategy.

?

This SWG addresses a number of key questions that will illuminate the activity and practice of strategizing, such as who strategists are, what strategists do, how they do it, what influences the work of strategizing, and what are the consequences of strategizing activity? For example, who may be regarded as a strategist remains ill-defined and dominated by upper echelon perspectives, despite increasing evidence that strategic activity may be initiated and championed at numerous levels of the firm, as well as influenced by external actors such as consultants, regulators and shareholders. Detailed empirical investigation may therefore provide richer conceptual explanations of the circumstances under which different actors may be termed strategists.

?

An expanded definition of strategists and their activities serves to move beyond the ongoing dichotomous tensions between strategy formulation and implementation. Strategists may indeed be people who analyze variables, establish positions, and formulate plans but they might also enact environments, communicate with stakeholders, lobby powerful actors, politicize, embellish, reflect and emote as part of the interplay between formulation and implementation that constitutes the everyday activity of strategizing.

?

Furthermore, they will do so with recourse to a range of material and social resources, ranging from their spatial and temporal locations within diversified firms, to their social position, the material tools and technologies available to conduct the work of strategizing, and the conceptual and linguistic resources with which to think and talk about strategy.

All of these resources enable the doing of strategy but also influence its conduct through their own situated properties and contextual meanings. In particular, locally situated strategic activities are embedded within and contribute to broader societal contexts, such as those constituted by influential institutions. Hence, more complete theoretical and empirical explanations are needed, both of how strategizing is done and also of those features of macro and micro context that influence its doing.

?

Finally, it is important to understand the consequences of strategizing activity. Strategic management research has been preoccupied with performance outcomes, which are typically at the level of the firm. As the focus of strategizing research moves more towards the study of micro activities, so too, it is necessary to define the appropriate performance outcomes for strategizing activity. For example, what constitutes the outcome of a strategizing episode, such as a meeting or an awayday or a strategic conversation, and how should its success be gauged? Furthermore, the micro outcomes of strategizing have consequences for the broader context of strategic activity, for example, by altering the course of firm-level activity, or even, potentially by influencing social institutions. Hence, we seek to understand the relationships and associations between the micro outcomes of strategizing activity and broader outcomes at the level of the firm and industry.

?

This SWG calls for papers that can address these issues through a focus upon the everyday practices and activities involved in doing strategy. In particular, it seeks to build upon and extend earlier work in this field, examples of which may be found on the website:

www.strategy-as-practice.org.

?

Whilst participants should focus upon the micro level phenomena of strategizing, we also seek papers that make robust links to the macro level phenomena and competitive forces that both shape and are shaped by the activities of strategizing. Theoretical, empirical and methodological papers are invited that can clearly demarcate the appropriate units of analysis, outcomes and theoretical contributions applicable to and arising from strategizing research.