Strategy processes and practices: Dialogues and intersections

• Author: Steven W. Floyd,Robert A. Burgelman,Saku Mantere,Richard Whittington,Tomi Laamanen,Eero Vaara
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2741
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Published date: 01 March 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Strategy processes and practices: Dialogues

and intersections

Robert A. Burgelman

1

| Steven W. Floyd

2

| Tomi Laamanen

3

| Saku Mantere

4

| Eero Vaara

5,6

| Richard Whittington

7

1

Graduate School of Business, Stanford

University, Stanford, California

2

Isenberg School of Management, University of

Massachusetts –Amherst, Amherst,

Massachusetts

3

Institute of Management, University of St.Gallen,

St. Gallen, Switzerland

4

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill

University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

5

Aalto University School of Business, Aalto,

Finland

6

EM LYON Business School, Lancaster

University, Lancaster, U.K.

7

Said Business School, University of Oxford,

Oxford, U.K.

Correspondence

Tomi Laamanen, University of St.Gallen, Institute

of Management, Dufourstrasse 40a, CH-9000 St.

Gallen, Switzerland.

Email: tomi.laamanen@unisg.ch

Research Summary: Building on our review of the strategy

process and practice research, we identify three ways to see

the relationships between the tworesearchtraditions:com-

plementary, critical, and combinatory views. We adopt in

this special issue the combinatory view, in which activities

and processes are seen as closely intertwined aspects of the

same phenomena. It is this view that we argue offers both

strategy practice and strategy process scholars some of the

greatest opportunities for joint research going forward. We

develop a combinatory framework for understanding s trategy

processes and practices (SAPP) and based on that call for

more research on (a) temporality, (b) actors and agency,

(c) cognition and emotionality, (d) materiality and tools,

(e) structures and systems, and (f ) language and meaning.

KEYWORDS

SAP, SAPP, strategy practice, strategy process,

strategy-as-practice

1|INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of the two influential strategy process–themed special issues in the Strategic

Management Journal (Chakravarthy & Doz, 1992; Pettigrew, 1992) over 25 years ago, a lot has

changed. The real world of organizations has been transformed, with markets achieving global reach

and unimagined opportunities due to new technologies, especially digital. At the same time, there

have been substantial advances in research: in particular, we see a new appreciation of process

research (Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas, & Van de Ven, 2013), a turn toward practice theory in the

social sciences (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012), and the development of new innovative method-

ologies (Arora, Athreye, & Huang, 2016). This special issue on Strategy Processes and Practices

will address many of these changes. Our argument will be that this is a particularly apt moment for

Received: 13 November 2017 Accepted: 13 November 2017 Published on: 17 January 2018

DOI: 10.1002/smj.2741

Strat Mgmt J. 2018;39:531–558. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 531

exploring intersections of Practices and Processes, and that indeed it is both possible and desirable

to combine them into a joint research stream that we shall call “Strategy as Process and Prac-

tice”(SAPP).

Chakravarthy and Doz (1992) made a distinction between research on strategy content, con-

cerned with strategic positions and competitive advantage, and research on strategy process, con-

cerned with how strategic decisions are shaped and implemented. This content–process distinction

was quite common through the 1990s. Even at that point, however, there were already voices that

challenged the usefulness of separating strategic positions and advantages from how strategies came

about and were realized. One could even argue that Bower (1970), Mintzberg (1978), and Burgel-

man (1983b), who were among the founders of the strategy process research tradition, were always

seeking to understand both process and content, treating strategy content as a dynamic phenomenon

that evolved over time. Similarly, Pettigrew (1992) pointed out that understanding processes over

time could inform many content topics that had previously been analyzed largely in static or com-

parative static terms. In parallel, Porter (1991), from the content side of the field, called for more

longitudinal research in understanding the origins of competitive advantage.

Fast-forward to today; it has become well-established that drawing boundaries between the con-

tent and process subfields is unduly limiting: process is potentially relevant to all strategy topics.

The value of a processual approach has been amply demonstrated for a range of traditional content

topics, for example, in the research on dynamic capabilities (Helfat et al., 2007; Teece, 2007; Teece,

Pisano, & Shuen, 1997), dynamic managerial capabilities (Adner & Helfat, 2003; Helfat & Martin,

2015; Helfat & Peteraf, 2015), organizational ambidexterity, paradoxes, and innovation

(e.g., Burgelman & Grove, 2007; Raisch, Birkinshaw, Probst, & Tushman, 2009; Zimmermann,

Raisch, & Birkinshaw, 2015), and even in such classical content topics as acquisitions and alliances

(Graebner, Heimeriks, Huy, & Vaara, 2017; Hoffmann, 2007; Laamanen & Keil, 2008).

The topical domain of strategy scholarship has been significantly extended during the last

decades. When it comes to levels of analysis, the dominant concern two or three decades ago was

the firm, often seen in terms of its “decision processes and administrative systems”(Chakravarthy &

Doz, 1992). Pettigrew (1992) emphasized the importance of actors and action, but his focus was also

mainly on “managerial elites”at the top of these firms. Since then, research on strategy process has

increasingly opened up a range of different strategic actors within the firm, most notably middle

managers, whose interests and actions cannot be always automatically identified with the organiza-

tion as a whole (Floyd & Lane, 2000). There is also a broadening of the units of analysis, with a

growing appreciation of the interorganizational phenomenon in which strategy processes take place

across organizational boundaries (e.g., Doz, 1996; Jemison & Sitkin, 1986; Whittington, Cailluet, &

Yakis-Douglas, 2011).

In addition, the strategy field has seen increasing diversity in terms of methodology. Strategy

process researchers initially converged on longitudinal case studies, either standalone or compara-

tive. Since then these have been complemented, for example, with simulations and mathematical

modelling (Davis et al., 2009; Zott, 2003). Further opportunities have been opened up by the meth-

odological innovations coming from the Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research, building on different

units of analysis and forms of data.

The emergence of the SAP research community was inspired by the contemporary practice turn

in social theory, led by figures such as Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu (Jarzabkowski, Balo-

gun, & Seidl, 2007; Whittington, 2006). One theme has been to go “inside the process”(Brown &

Duguid, 2000) to examine the activities (“praxis”) involved in strategizing episodes, including, for

example, boardroom meetings or strategy retreats (Hendry & Seidl, 2003). A second theme has been

532 BURGELMAN ET AL.