Strategy as Communicational Practice in Organizations

Abstract

Strategy as a social practice and communication as social activity within organizations is a subject of great interest to managers and strategy scholars nowadays. This article concerns a study of the Itaipu Technological Park, which was faced with the challenge of enacting an intensive and strategic communicational process. It indicates some ways in which communication can disclose strategy and strategic processes, at various levels of organizational analysis. Using the case method, this empirical research advances communication and strategic practices theory by contributing an empirical case. The case reveals insights into the interactions of strategies and practices as a fundamental process for creation of meanings whose expressiveness comes from communication and language. This strategy as communicational practice can occur at various levels of organizational relationships, and we are dependent on it to construct an organizational reality. The discussion of this idea is therefore the primary contribution of this study. The key issue is that humans communicatively constitute strategy by way of interaction and social practices that involve the entire organization and its environment.