Becoming a strategist: The roles of strategy discourse and ontological security in managerial identity work

Saku Mantere,Richard Whittington

doi:10.1177/1476127020908781

Saku Mantere, Richard Whittington

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127020908781

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Journal: Strategic Organization	Publication Date: Mar 6, 2020
Citations: 27	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Oxford, McGill University

Abstract

What is the managerial identity work involved in becoming a “strategist”? Building on a rich, longitudinal set of interviews, we uncover three tactics through which managers mobilize the strategist identity. The self-measurement tactic uses strategy discourse as a normative measuring stick for evaluating the individual as a manager. The self-construction tactic uses strategy discourse as a blueprint for realizing career aspirations. The final self-actualization tactic uses strategy discourse as an emotional basis for crafting meaning into work. We find that strategy discourse can play both disciplinary and emancipatory roles, influenced by managers’ sense of ontological security. The article highlights the importance of social-psychological processes in strategist identity work and discusses implications for the contemporary opening up of strategy and for other similarly loosely structured occupational groups.

Highlights

The sensemaker is himself or herself an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition, coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which self is appropriate. (Karl Weick, 1995: 20)The discourse of strategy is something that confronts many members of contemporary organizations, increasingly so (Balogun et al, 2014; Wenzel and Koch, 2018)
Ambitious junior managers often take on specialized strategy roles early in their careers, whether working for a period within internal corporate strategy units (Angwin et al, 2009; Paroutis and Heracleous, 2013) or starting out in prestigious strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company. (Mahoney and Sturdy, 2016)
Exercises in “open strategy” have extended strategy’s discursive net still wider, with all organizational members potentially included to some extent within strategic conversations (Hautz et al, 2017; Neeley and Leonardi, 2018)

Summary

Introduction

The sensemaker is himself or herself an ongoing puzzle undergoing continual redefinition, coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which self is appropriate. (Karl Weick, 1995: 20). 313–314) In examining strategists, we shall follow Ybema et al (2009) in recognizing the liability to incoherence in identity work narratives, arising both from personal development over time and from the internal tensions of strategy’s own discourse, at once disciplinary and emancipatory (Dameron and Torset, 2014; Mantere and Vaara, 2008). The identity work lens, as it focuses on the reflexive practice of identity builders in their personal narratives (Alvesson, 2010; Giddens, 1991), has the potential to extend our understanding of how managers become strategists It can show how both disciplinary and emancipatory aspects of strategy discourse play out in active processes of identity building by individuals. This diverse nature of strategyidentity work is likely to be a particular feature of many occupations in the uncertain conditions of late modernity (Giddens, 1991)

Methodology

40 M 49 F

Findings

Concluding reflections