Power, Action and Constraint in Strategic Management: Explaining Enterprise Restructuring in the Czech Republic

Abstract

One significant strand of organization and management theory has been the development of approaches that focus on the active role of management in formulating strategic responses, such as organizational restructuring, to the external business environment. Despite subscribing to the idea that ‘management matters’, however, influential theories have often ignored or minimized the role of human agency. This article examines the strategic management process by placing the interaction between management power and action at the heart of the empirical and theoretical enterprise. The theory construction process evolves inductively from case study research on the restructuring processes and outcomes in four large Czech enterprises. The empirical findings and theoretical arguments strongly support the importance of introducing a political dimension into a sensemaking framework as a fruitful way of progressing the theory of strategic management action.