Patterns of employment of Bourdieu's social practice theory in strategy as practice research

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the way in which the concepts of Bourdieu's social practice theory are employed in the strategy as practice literature. We conduct a review of theoretical and empirical publications which involve Bourdieu's theory in order to assess the degree in which the concepts of habitus, field and capital are used in a manner that is consistent to the initial ontological and epistemological assumptions of his theory. Research findings indicate that, although habitus is the dominant concept, its combined use with the other Bourdieu's theoretical constructs, as a system, offers a richer explanatory framework for understanding strategy formation in complex competitive organisational environments. This review extends strategy literature by providing novel insights about the so far unexploited contribution of Bourdieu, and proposes research directions to better incorporate Bourdieu's concepts in the strategy as practice research agenda.