Facing Strategic Taboos: How 'Off-Limits' Strategic Options Make the Strategic Agenda

Abstract

A broad and comprehensive strategic agenda matters for fundamental strategic change. Thus, our study seeks to explore and theorize the influence of normative judgment bias in the caucus of strategic actors in strategic agenda setting. As to conceptualize a normative judgment bias, we suggest strategic taboos as a concept referring to stigmatized strategic options deemed inconsistent with an organization's normative frame of reference by the caucus of strategic actors. Investigating how strategic actors cope when faced with strategic taboos, we develop a conceptual model of strategic taboo coping – based on a revelatory inductive case study in the Lutheran Church in Germany. Strategic taboo coping generically comprises three core components, an initial taboo breaking gesture; evaluating the taboo through contextualizing, instrumentalizing, and normalizing; followed by a decision whether to include the initially stigmatized options in the organization's strategic agenda. The paper discusses implications of strategic taboo coping for theory and research on strategic agenda setting, strategic change, a practice- based perspective on strategy as well as on organizational identity.