Introducing Open Strategy: Dealing with clashes between the traditional and open-strategy discourse

Abstract

Most organizations which decide to introduce ‘open strategy’ have a legacy of strategizing exclusively and secretively. While we know that the traditional and open-strategy approaches to strategy development differ quite dramatically, we lack an understanding of how and whether these approaches clash during the introduction of open strategy. Considering that many scholars understand strategy as a particular discourse, we adopt a discursive perspective that allows us to uncover how strategy actors deal with the introduction of an open-strategy discourse in a context in which the traditional strategy discourse prevails. We draw on an extensive data base from a longitudinal, in-depth case study of an international financial company, which introduced an open-strategy discourse by including 20 lower-level employees along a traditional strategy process. We identify three discursive practices which traditional strategy actors enact in response to the changing interplay between the traditional and open-strategy discourse: (1) Paralleling discourses (2) separating discourses, (3) controlled linking of discourses. During strategy formulation, traditional strategy actors parallel discourses to maintain their traditional, privileged position in strategy writing which triggers clashes between contradicting subject positions and discursive principles. In response to these clashes, traditional strategy actors first engage in separating and later in controlled linking of discourses. During strategy implementation, traditional strategy actors re-engage in paralleling discourses to communicate the strategy together with new strategy actors which no longer creates tensions as discourses now designate compatible subject positions and discursive principles. With these findings we contribute to the open-strategy and discourse literature by providing a better understanding of the interrelation of multiple strategy discourses as well as to how strategy actors respond to it.