Abstract
AbstractStrategy‐as‐practice (SAP) has become one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary strategy research in the past two decades. As the field has grown significantly, we have witnessed an emergence of distinct streams of research within the SAP research community. Thus, it is time to take stock of this body of work to better understand the structure of the field and provide a refreshed agenda for future research. Our review is based on bibliometric analysis and a systematic review of 340 articles. As a result, we identify the following six clusters of research: praxis, sensemaking, discourse, sociomateriality, institutional and process. Co‐citation analysis shows significant disconnects between some of these clusters. Building on our review, we identify various ‘crossing strategies’ for connecting across four disconnects: (i) micro and macro; (ii) sociomaterial and discourse; (iii) critical and more mainstream; and (iv) practice and process perspectives. By harnessing diversity, these crossing strategies suggest rich agendas for future SAP research, ranging from digitalization to gender inequality.
Highlights
Strategy-as-practice (SAP) research has nearly trebled in the number of publications since the last major literature review (Vaara & Whittington, 2012)
Over the past two decades, SAP research has become an important stream within the strategy discipline, challenging more mainstream approaches and enriching its theoretical and methodological resources
It is possible to find video methods recommended in its pages (Gylfe et al, 2016), discussions of PowerPoint presentations (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2015) and even diagrams of Steve Jobs in action on the Apple stage (Wenzel & Koch, 2018)
Summary
Strategy-as-practice (SAP) research has nearly trebled in the number of publications since the last major literature review (Vaara & Whittington, 2012). The primary criterion is the additional understanding of the underlying phenomenon In this respect, we propose various ‘crossing’ strategies for connecting distinct research streams, even those following different ontological paradigms (Schultz & Hatch, 1996; Shepherd & Challenger, 2013). We propose various ‘crossing’ strategies for connecting distinct research streams, even those following different ontological paradigms (Schultz & Hatch, 1996; Shepherd & Challenger, 2013) These crossing strategies aim not to suppress diversity but to harness it. Our analysis identifies other disconnects between clusters, we select these four because they reflect challenges that have been raised either in SAP research or in management theory more generally Making these four connections responds directly to existing tensions in the literature. The earlier divide between practice and process approaches can be crossed both by sequential strategies and by a bridging strategy drawing on ‘strong process’ ontology (Burgelman et al, 2018)
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