The Globalization of Strategy Research [1 ed.] 9781849508995, 9781849508988

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THE GLOBALIZATION OF STRATEGY RESEARCH

ADVANCES IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Series Editor: Joel A. C. Baum Recent Volumes: Volume 20: Volume 21:

Volume 22: Volume 23:

Volume 24: Volume 25: Volume 26:

Geography and Strategy Editors, Joel A. C. Baum and Olav Sorenson Business Strategy over the Industry Lifecycle Editors, Joel A. C. Baum and Anita M. Mcgahan Strategy Process Editors, Gabriel Szulanski, Joe Porac and Yves Doz Ecology and Strategy Editors, Joel A. C. Baum, Stanislav D. Dobrey and Arien van Witteloostuijn Real Options Theory Editors, Jeffrey J. Reuer and Tony W. Tong Network Strategy Editors, Joel A. C. Baum and Tim J. Rowley Economic Institutions of Strategy Editors, Jackson A. Nickerson and Brian S. Silverman

ADVANCES IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

VOLUME 27

THE GLOBALIZATION OF STRATEGY RESEARCH EDITED BY

JOEL A. C. BAUM University of Toronto, Canada

JOSEPH LAMPEL City University, London, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2010 Copyright r 2010 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-84950-898-8 ISSN: 0742-3322 (Series)

Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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THE GLOBALIZATION OF STRATEGY RESEARCH: PERMANENT PLURALISM OR PRELUDE TO A NEW SYNTHESIS? Joseph Lampel and Joel A. C. Baum

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PART I: PERSPECTIVES: STRATEGY AS ... STRATEGY AS INNOVATIVE DESIGN: AN EMERGING PERSPECTIVE Armand Hatchuel, Ken Starkey, Sue Tempest and Pascal Le Masson

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TAKING THE LINGUISTIC TURN SERIOUSLY: STRATEGY AS A MULTIFACETED AND INTERDISCURSIVE PHENOMENON Eero Vaara

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TAKING ‘‘STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE’’ ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Paula Jarzabkowski and Sarah Kaplan

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PART II: PERSPECTIVES: STRATEGY AND y STRATEGY AND STRATEGIZING: A POSTSTRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVE Mahmoud Ezzamel and Hugh Willmott THE STRATEGY AND IDENTITY RELATIONSHIP: TOWARDS A PROCESSUAL UNDERSTANDING John A. A. Sillince and Barbara Simpson v

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PART III: PERSPECTIVES: SYMBOLIC RESOURCES RHETORICAL HISTORY AS A SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Roy Suddaby, William M. Foster and Chris Quinn Trank WHERE STRATEGY MEETS CULTURE: THE NEGLECTED ROLE OF CULTURAL AND SYMBOLIC RESOURCES IN STRATEGY RESEARCH Elena Dalpiaz, Violina P. Rindova and Davide Ravasi

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PART IV: APPLICATIONS CONSUMING STRATEGY: THE ART AND PRACTICE OF MANAGERS’ EVERYDAY STRATEGY USAGE Kimmo Suominen and Saku Mantere

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BEYOND THE HYPE: TAKING BUSINESS STRATEGY TO THE ‘‘BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID’’ Kamal Munir, Shahzad Ansari and Tricia Gregg

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PART V: GENEALOGIES STRONG IN THE MORNING, DEAD IN THE EVENING: A GENEALOGICAL AND CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZATIONAL SELECTION Marie-Laure Djelic and Rodolphe Durand EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN ORIGINS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Thomas C. Powell, Noushi Rahman and William H. Starbuck STRATEGY RESEARCH IN THE GERMAN CONTEXT: THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC, SOCIOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS Gu¨nther Ortmann and David Seidl

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PART VI: METHODOLOGIES COLLABORATING TO DISCOVER THE PRACTICE OF STRATEGY AND ITS IMPACT Elena P. Antonacopoulou and Julia Balogun

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WHERE IS THE ‘I’? ONE SILENCE IN STRATEGY RESEARCH Dalvir Samra-Fredericks

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Shahzad Ansari

Judge Business School, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Elena P. Antonacopoulou

Management School, University of Liverpool, Chatham Building, Liverpool, UK

Julia Balogun

Centre for Strategic Management, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Elena Dalpiaz

Universita` Bocconi, Department of Management, Milan, Italy

Marie-Laure Djelic

ESSEC Business School, Cergy Pontoise, France

Rodolphe Durand

HEC Paris, Jouy en Josas, France

Mahmoud Ezzamel

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK

William M. Foster

University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, Management Department, Camrose, Alberta, Canada

Tricia Gregg

Judge Business School, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

Armand Hatchuel

MINES Paris Tech, CGS-Center for Management Science, Paris, France

Paula Jarzabkowski

Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK ix

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Sarah Kaplan

University of Toronto, Rotman School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Pascal Le Masson

MINES Paris Tech, CGS-Center for Management Science, Paris, France

Saku Mantere

Hanken School of Economics, Department of Management and Organization, Finland

Kamal Munir

Judge Business School, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK; Lahore University of Management Sciences, D.H.A, Lahore, Pakistan

Gu¨nther Ortmann

Helmut-Schmidt-Universita¨t, Hamburg, Germany

Thomas C. Powell

Said Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Noushi Rahman

Lubin School of Business, Pace University, New York, NY, USA

Davide Ravasi

Universita` Bocconi, Department of Management, Milan, Italy

Violina P. Rindova

McCombs School of Business, University of Texas-Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Dalvir Samra-Fredericks Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK David Seidl

University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

John A. A. Sillince

University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Management, Glasgow, UK

Barbara Simpson

University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Management, Glasgow, UK

William H. Starbuck

Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, USA

Ken Starkey

Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

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Roy Suddaby

Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Kimmo Suominen

Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Finland

Sue Tempest

Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Chris Quinn Trank

Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA

Eero Vaara

EMLYON, Strategy and Organization, France; Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Hugh Willmott

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK

THE GLOBALIZATION OF STRATEGY RESEARCH: PERMANENT PLURALISM OR PRELUDE TO A NEW SYNTHESIS? The field of strategic management emerged and developed in North America before migrating to other parts of the world. Historically, the relationship between North American strategy research and research elsewhere was asymmetric: North America led, other research communities followed. More recently, however, the pattern of interaction has shifted as strategy research communities outside North America have attained critical mass and begun to challenge North American dominance. The challenge takes several forms. To begin with, whereas a decade or more ago top management journals rarely featured strategy research conducted outside North America, today the volume of work by non-North American strategy researchers that appears in these journals is substantial, and arguably approaching parity. Moreover, strategy research communities outside North America are no longer inclined to defer to the North American community as sole arbiter of research quality, nor do they routinely accept North American views of what constitutes ‘‘cutting edge’’ research. This newly gained confidence in their own abilities and judgment has emboldened non-North American researchers to explore intellectual traditions distinct from those that ground North American strategy research. As North American strategy researchers are increasingly exposed to these new ideas and approaches, optimistically, this should give rise to cooperation, consolidation, and common ground. But, for the present, strategy research seems to be moving in the opposite direction, toward increased rivalry and fragmentation as new rhetorical, discursive, and practice perspectives emerge and gain traction. Evidence of this fragmentation can be seen in Figs. 1 and 2. Fig. 1 presents the results of a hierarchical cluster analysis of cross-citation patterns among six prominent management journals – four based in North America, two outside North America – that publish strategic management research (see Fig. 1 note for details). Evidence of fragmentation based on the xiii

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1990-1999

AMJ

ASQ

2000-2004

SMJ

OSC

JMS

ASQ

SMJ

JMS

OST

AMJ

ASQ

OSC

SMJ

JMS

OST

2005-2009

AMJ

OSC

OST

Fig. 1. Management Journal Cross-Citation Patterns. Notes: Based on hierarchical agglomerative average linkage cluster analysis, with cluster distances measured as euclidean distances in mean-differenced cross-citation rates (e.g., 0.5 ¼ cross-citation at one-half the journal’s mean cross-citation rate; 2.0 ¼ cross-citation at twice the journal’s mean rate). Dendograms are read from bottom to top. Journals connected near the bottom have more similar cross-citation patterns; Those linked at the top more dissimilar cross-citation patterns. AMJ, Academy of Management Journal; ASQ, Administrative Science Quarterly; JMS, Journal of Management Studies; SMJ, Strategic Management Journal; OSC, Organization Science; OST, Organization Studies.

home regions of these journals is clear. As panels in the figure show, crosscitation patterns tend to be similar among North American journals, and distinct from the non-North American journals. Moreover, cross-citation patterns for the non-North American journals have become more alike over time, resulting in a more pronounced difference from North American journals. The differences stem largely from the North American journal citing one another at a higher rate than non-North American journals, and

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W A L E S

S C O T L A N D

2000-2004

ENANB NEUOE GW S R L L Z TWG AERA I NA A YU D L L M A I NA D

C A N A D A

S I N G A P O R E

I U T S SS A P RA I A A W I E AN L N

S O U T H K O R E A

P E O P L E S R C H I N A

N E T H E R L A N D S

FG SD I EWE NR EN LMDM AA EA NN NR DY K

I F TR AA LN YC E

J S AW P I A T N Z E R L A N D

WS E S A N N F A C NWU E O R L O G E SWR A ET L D T ZWN SL AEREA C ANNAAY E ND L L D I A AN D

J A P A N

I FDB TC T I E E AA ANN L I N L L MGWA YAA I AD NRUNA DKM

SP I E NO GP A L PE OS RR E C H I N A

I U SS RA A E L

NGS SS E E P WO TRA I U HM I T T EAN ZH RN EK L Y RO A L R N A E D NA S D

2005-2009

SW E N A CA NEU O L GW S TE L Z T LS AER A NA A N D L L D A I NA D

FD SB I E WE NN E L L MDG AA E I NRNU DK M

CNFNGS I AORE EWT NRAT R I A AWN H M T L DACEA Z Y A YERNE L YR A L N A D N S D

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SJ PA AP I A NN

S PT S U I EAOS NO I U A G PW T A LA H P EN K OS O RR R E E C A H I N A

Fig. 2. Management Journal Cross-Citation Patterns by Country. Notes: Based on hierarchical agglomerative average linkage cluster analysis, with cluster distances measured as euclidean distances in countries’ mean-differenced citation rates of the six journals listed in Fig. 1 (e.g., 0.5 ¼ citation at half the journal’s mean citation rate; 2.0 ¼ citation at twice the journal’s mean rate). Citations are assigned to countries based on the institutional affiliation of the citing article’s lead author. Dendograms are read from bottom to top. Countries connected near the bottom have more similar journal citation patterns; Those linked at the top more dissimilar citation patterns.

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vice versa. Surprisingly, however, North American journals tend to cite their non-North American counterparts at a substantially higher rate than they are cited in return. Fig. 2 presents the results of a hierarchical cluster analysis of cross-country citation patterns to the six management journals whose cross-citation rates were analyzed above (see Fig. 2 note for details). Again evidence of fragmentation is clear, but in this case fragmentation is a function of variation in the journal citation patterns of authors employed at institutions in different countries. The figure reveals distinctive citation patterns in England, Scotland, and Wales over the past 20 years. Another notable observation is the pairing of Australia and New Zealand along with (increasingly) several Scandinavian countries. Also apparent is the growing gap within North America – specifically, the increasing distance between journal citation patterns in the United States and Canada – and the increasing alignment of the United States and Asian countries. The England–Scotland–Wales pattern is distinctive in its high rate of citation to Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies (and low rate to North American journals). The Australia–New Zealand clique is distinct for the same reason, but is less extreme in form. The alignment of the US and Asian countries in the last five years is, in contrast, distinct in its tendency to cite North American journals at a higher rate (and non-North American journals at lower rate).1 The countries comprising the remaining cluster – Belgium, Canada, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Israel – are unique in that authors in these locations tend to cite each journal close to its mean rate, and thus not influenced one way or another by a journals’ region of origin. For some, this fragmentation reflects the effects of globalization on the larger cycle of variation, selection, and consolidation in the evolution of strategy research. For others, however, it is the result of a confrontation between diverse intellectual traditions and socioeconomic conditions that not only make fragmentation and hostility likely to persist, but also give rise to distinctive and potentially irreconcilable schools of thought (O’Shannassy, 2001). Whether strategy research is destined for permanent pluralism or merely in transition to greater coherence is difficult to say precisely because we do not understand adequately how fields evolve in general, and how globalization will affect the intellectual evolution of our field in particular (Baum, 2007). At one level it can be argued that the end state does not matter. What matters at this point is letting a ‘‘thousand flowers’’ bloom by encouraging new ideas and giving new voices an opportunity to be heard.

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This is the policy we adopted for this volume of Advances in Strategic Management. We cast our net wide deliberately, inviting contributions that tackle and capture the globalization of strategy research, with particular emphasis on contributions that ‘‘challenge the historically dominant North American tradition in strategy research – from both outside as well as inside North America.’’ We believe we have succeeded in bringing together as diverse a collection of contributions as space allows, but in the course of reading and editing them it became clear to us that not only do many of these contributions challenge the dominance of the North American influence in strategy research, but they also challenge each other. For us, as editors, this posed a dilemma: Espousing diversity may satisfy our belief in the importance of keeping an open mind, but stopping there would ignore how the increasing conceptual diversity of strategy research is changing the field. A useful starting point for understanding the impact of this diversity on the field of strategy is the wider historical context. As with the broader impact of globalization, the emergence of a challenge to North American dominance of strategy research is due in part to technological change, specifically convenient access of researchers via the Internet to articles published in what are often colloquially referred to as ‘‘second tier’’ management journals. Easier access to these journals has increased their influence, and reduced the power of so-called ‘‘top tier’’ journals, which are almost invariably North American, to enforce a particular approach to strategy research. It has also allowed non-North American researchers, and North American researchers who dissent from the dominant perspective, to link up and form new research perspectives. The increased diversity, however, has intensified competition for what Collins (1998) terms the ‘‘intellectual attention space.’’ This, in turn, has triggered greater attention to fundamental questions of legitimacy, or more specifically, why it is increasingly difficult for strategy researchers to agree on how knowledge claims should be judged. This is the main issue that we examine in this opening chapter. We begin by framing the issue of intellectual or scientific legitimacy in general. This is a large issue so, by necessity, we focus on several key points that are useful to our analysis. We continue by examining how the history of the field of strategy or, more precisely, the ‘‘emergence narrative’’ of how the field began has been used to legitimize the dominance of North American strategy research. We show that contrary to the emergence narrative that now prevails, there were alternative visions of how the field should evolve, but that these alternatives were marginalized when certain epistemologies, specifically logical empiricism, were promoted as the best way of legitimizing research.

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Research that challenges the dominant North American approach to research could only make headways if it sought different sources of legitimacy. In the final part of the paper we therefore examine the various ways in which emerging perspectives in strategy have sought to consecrate their research, and consider to the extent to which different consecration tactics exacerbated the fragmentation of the field of strategy as a global enterprise.

LEGITIMACY CLAIMS AND CONSECRATION OF KNOWLEDGE All knowledge claims are also to some extent legitimacy claims. No theory can receive serious attention, let alone gain credence, unless it is also seen as legitimate. Philosophers of science have spent decades trying to frame criteria that determine the legitimacy of theories, only to agree to disagree on the matter. Sociologists of science, on the other hand, take a broader view, arguing that rather than seeking ex ante criteria of knowledge it is best to examine how researchers legitimate knowledge in practice. Broadly speaking we can say that researchers legitimate knowledge in two ways. The first kind, which we shall call a priori legitimation, is one that the researcher uses from the outset to justify his or her subsequent theoretical statements. This may take the form of arguments based on theories from fields with greater prestige (e.g., economics), application of concepts derived from the ideas of an eminent thinker (e.g., Foucault), or assertion that a preferred epistemology (e.g., ethnography) has been tried and proven elsewhere. We refer to the second approach researchers use to justify their knowledge claims as consequential legitimation. Here the researcher establishes the legitimacy of his or her theory with reference to the implications that flow from the theory. These may consist of novel predictions, constructs, or methods, a synthesis of extant theories, or other demonstrations of what the theory can do. The fundamental problem facing strategy research is the disparity between the first and second types of legitimation. Few can deny that strategy research has produced many novel predictions, constructs, and methods, as well as syntheses of prior work. Arguably, this is a positive contribution of the field’s increasing theoretical diversity. The challenge, however, is the increasingly diverse use of a priori legitimation, often in ways that is difficult to assess for researchers who are not familiar with the theories’, ‘‘star’’ thinkers, or the epistemologies used to establish the legitimacy of the evidence being put forward.

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French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (1984), argues that the use of a priori legitimation to gain acceptance is an attempt at ‘‘consecration.’’ For Bourdieu, the dynamics of a scientific field is shaped by practices and institutions that consecrate certain kinds of contributions, while at the same time de-consecrating, or excluding others. This dynamic unfolds through practices such as journal editorial review processes that serve to foster narratives consecrating certain types of research contributions and de-consecrating others. Conferences, granting agencies, research prizes, and a variety of other institutions can play similar roles. Consecration plays a crucial role in emergence and subsequent development of fields. Consecration processes demarcate and distinguish nascent fields from more established fields, particularly those that target the same problems and issues. Consecration also shapes competition within fields, according certain theories higher status than others. But most crucially, argues Bourdieu, consecration influences the allocation of resources across and within fields. Research fields that can successfully consecrate their domain are more likely to obtain resources in the form of university positions, grants, and external visibility than fields that struggle with the process. And by the same token, researchers that successfully consecrate their theories within a given field are more likely to see them published in top journals, and attract more scholars to their theories. New theories therefore confront a Catch 22: They must attain legitimacy to gain resources, but they need resources to sustain their struggle for legitimacy. As Collins (1998, p. 75) describes this predicament: ‘‘The structure of the intellectual world allows only a limited number of positions to receive much attention at any one time. There are only a small number of slots to be filled, and once they are filled up, there are overwhelming pressures against anyone else pressing through to the top ranks.’’ The emergence of strategic management as a distinct field was a direct response to the pressures facing a group of researchers trying to create a new space in the management field (Bower, 1980). As Hambrick and Chen (2005) explain, the American Association of Colleges and Schools of Business (AACSB) requirement for an integrative course created a strong demand for policy professors in the 1970s. Most came from other fields, and a large number held Harvard DBAs. The promotion and tenure prospects for these individuals, according to Hambrick and Chen (2005), were often grim; as late as 1979 no policy professor had received tenure at any elite university outside Harvard. Moreover, top-tier management and organization journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Administrative Science Quarterly published few policy-oriented articles.

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Faced with this predicament, the consecration strategy adopted by North American researchers was to create a conceptual space around the ‘‘strategy’’ construct (Bracker, 1980). The key effort, Hambrick and Chen (2005) point out, was differentiation rather than innovation. The a priori legitimation of the field was not based on discovery as in the case of genetics, nor was it obtained with a breakthrough theory as in the case of relativistic electrodynamics, but was primarily due to a reconfiguring of existing ideas and relationships. Hence, the field not only took on a new name, ‘‘strategic management,’’ in line with seminal texts by Chandler and Ansoff, but also combined business policy, which was primarily a teaching area, with planning, which at this point was a corporate practice that was the staple of management consulting firms. The consecration, therefore, derived not only from appropriation of research from other areas, but also from novel relationships that the new field established among research, teaching, and corporate/consulting practice.

North American Dominance and Emergence Narratives Consecration, according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (p. 495), is the ‘‘setting apart as sacred’’ persons, objects, or locations. The power of consecration resides, in part, in the temporal demarcation that distinguishes the beginning of being ‘‘set apart.’’ Most successful fields of study, argue Frickel and Gross (2005), begin as social–intellectual movements that are eventually institutionalized; that is, they acquire a defined knowledge core, peer hierarchies, specialized journals, research funding sources, and designated academic positions. Successful fields tend to develop emergence narratives that describe how the field came into being, how it demarcates itself from other fields, and why it is concerned with certain issues and not others. Emergence narratives play an important role in knowledge consecration because they strongly reinforce the taken-for-granted assumptions that researchers bring to their work. They set limits on how researchers define key constructs, which problems are worth pursuing, and which epistemological frameworks are seen as logical and natural. The dominance of North American research in strategy owes much to an emergence narrative that is unquestioned even by its critics. It goes something like this: Although the field of strategy has its roots in the 1911 Harvard ‘‘Business Policy’’ course that eventually became a capstone course in most business schools, it was not until a series of seminal texts by Chandler (1962), Andrews (1971), and Ansoff (1965) focused attention on a set of closely

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related issues that strategy began to coalesce as a distinct field. The event seen almost universally as having transformed strategy from an intellectual movement into a field is the May 1977 conference at the University of Pittsburgh, organized by Dan Schendel and Charles Hofer. A collection of papers from this conference was published in 1979 as a book which was appropriately titled Strategic Management: A New View of Business Policy and Planning by its editors, Schendel and Hofer. The conference and book were followed in 1980 by the first issue of Strategic Management Journal, which became the flagship journal of the field, and the appearance of an allied publication, the Journal of Business Strategy. A year later, the Strategic Management Society held its inaugural meeting in London, completing the transformation of strategy into a full-fledged field of study. This consecration narrative of how strategy emerged and grew into a major field of management research informs the legitimacy claims of North American strategy researchers. Looking back at the evolution of strategic management, for example, Hambrick and Chen (2005, p. E2) proclaim the year 1980 as a ‘‘tipping point’’ during which the field of strategy transitioned from social movement to institutionalized field. Their analysis uses the emergence narrative to reinforce several widely held assumptions about how the field developed. Credit for pioneering the field is assigned exclusively to North American researchers, and the field’s subsequent evolution is described as both the logical and inevitable unfolding of these pioneers’ efforts (see Kiechel, 2010). Moreover, the success of the field is attributed to the crucial decision to institutionalize ‘‘theory-based quantitative research’’ as the dominant research approach. Although constant retelling has enshrined these claims, scrutiny of this narrative raises a number of questions. But is this narrative accurate? Let us examine briefly the claim that North American researchers pioneered the field, which confers greater legitimacy on the research program outlined by those who launched the field. During the 1970s research on what strategy-related topics was widely Pursued in Europe as well as North America. In May 1976 Henry Mintzberg organized a conference entitled ‘‘Strategy Formulation: Different Perspectives’’ at l’Ancien Couvent Royal in St. Maximin, France, under the auspices of the Institut d’Administration des Entreprises of Aix-en-Provence and of the French Fondation Nationale pour l’Enseignement de la Gestion des Entreprises [National Foundation for Management Education]. Each presenter – Igor Ansoff, Joseph Bower, John Child, Yves Doz, Claude Faucheux, Bo Hedberg, and Andrew Pettigrew among them – was asked to speak on ‘‘Strategy formulation as an X process’’ – the ‘‘X’’ standing for

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stylistic, historical, analytical, learning, political, discontinuous, structured, and cultural. The papers were published as a special issue of International Studies of Organization and Management in 1977, with an introduction written by Mintzberg. The Aix-en-Provence conference was noncommittal regarding how the field of strategy would evolve. Indeed, it was structured to encourage plurality rather than closure. As Mintzberg (1977, p. 11) cautioned in his opening remarks: A word of caution is in order. Synthesis is what we are after; but there will be no specific formula to attain it, and no plans for an integrator to rise on the last day of the conference and put it all together. We shall certainly share ideas and seek to reconcile the contradictions among the perspectives, but it is doubtful that one synthesis can be articulated.

The Aix-en-Provence conference offered an alternative direction for the field of strategy, and suggests that North American dominance of strategy research was far from inevitable. Wide acceptance of the field’s emergence narrative reinforced a sense of historical inevitability, effectively consecrating the starting point, as well as the evolutionary path the field has taken since. This consecration encourages researchers to conclude that the field could not have emerged any other way and, therefore, that the terms, problems, and methods central to the field are the only possible ones. It also ranks research contributions according to whether they make ‘‘progress’’ relative to this established path – since progress cannot be said to take place otherwise. In contrast to the hands off approach of the Aix-en-Provence conference, Schendel and Hofer argued explicitly for the rejection of pluralism and adoption of a single ‘‘guiding’’ paradigm that ‘‘rests squarely on the concept of strategy.’’ To ensure unity of focus, Schendel and Hofer went one step further and defined the new field in terms of ‘‘six major tasks that comprise the strategic management process: (1) goal formulation; (2) environmental analysis; (3) strategy formulation; (4) strategy evaluation; (5) strategy implementation; (6) strategy control’’ (1979, Exhibit 2, p. 15). Not surprisingly, research submissions that focused on these topics received a more sympathetic reception at the Strategic Management Journal and within the Strategic Management Society. Although this focus indeed helped the field to create a stable identity, it also mapped a narrow conceptual grid that influenced, if not forced, researchers to place their research in ‘‘appropriate’’ categories to improve their publication prospects. The research agenda as embodied in reviewing and editorial decisions thus

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tended to consecrate research submissions that could be easily classified within the agenda, while de-consecrating those that departed from it.

Logical Empiricism and the Dominance of North American Strategy Research Arguably the strongest influence of the conference, the book, and the editorial policy adopted by the Strategic Management Journal consisted in a strong endorsement of logical empiricism as the field’s dominant epistemology. The real problem facing strategic management as a research field, argued Schendel and Hofer, is not lack of understanding of the strategy process, but lack of empirical testing. As they put it (1979, p. 383): the field now has sufficient variety of concepts and hypotheses of both a descriptive and a normative character to form the basis of a scholarly discipline. At the same time, most of these concepts and hypotheses have never been subjected to adequate empirical testing to determine their domain of applicability or, in some cases, whether they are even valid.

Although Schendel and Hofer later sought to clarify their position by calling for an ‘‘empiricism that goes beyond mere subjective description and interpretation’’ (1979, p. 530), they were not entirely clear regarding what they meant by ‘‘adequate empirical testing.’’ It can be argued that Schendel and Hofer were lending their support to ‘‘positivism,’’ and broadly speaking this is correct, though not very informative. Few strategy researchers in the 1970s, or even today, are explicitly committed to such an epistemological position. Generally speaking, ‘‘positivism’’ in the current context is usually defined by critics of North American strategy research who construct the term in (incorrectly) opposition to their own preferred epistemology. To get a better sense of what Schendel and Hofer had in mind, we have to look at research exemplars they cite approvingly. From these it is apparent that it is ‘‘logical empiricism’’ that they nominate as the most promising epistemology for the emerging field of strategic management. Without entering into an extended discussion into the place of logical empiricism in the philosophy of science, we can say that logical empiricism emerged from the failure of logical positivism. Specifically, sustained criticism of the central claim by logical positivists that theory statements are only meaningful if they are verifiable led them to shift emphasis from ‘‘the demarcation of scientific from nonscientific statements to the evaluation of competing theories’’ (Caldwell, 1982, p. 23). Put differently, whereas logical positivists thought that they had developed an epistemology that defines

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science, and by extension nonscience, logical empiricists, in the words of Caldwell (1982, p. 68), ‘‘concerned themselves with the elaboration of universal models and procedural rules which they believe aptly characterized legitimate scientific practice.’’ Logical empiricism is far less radical than logical positivism in that it eschews a clear division between science and nonscience, but it is nevertheless insistent that it is possible to judge theories according to whether they follow models and conform to procedural rules that this epistemology stipulates. Research contributions are therefore not deemed as scientific versus nonscientific per se, but are judged to be ‘‘better’’ or ‘‘worse’’ science depending on the extent to which they conform to the tenets of logical empiricism. Thus, when Schendel and Hofer opted for logical empiricism as the epistemology that was going to ensure the scientific legitimacy of strategy, they were arguing for criteria and guidelines that would give reviewers and editors a single framework within which they could evaluate the relative merits of research contributions. In other words, they were using logical empiricism to consecrate research contributions, and in so doing created a core–periphery consecration system. Within this system, the relationship between consecration and competition for resources marginalized (if not entirely excluding) research that did not fully conform to the tenets of logical empiricism. Research that strayed too far from the tenets of logical empiricism was, therefore, less likely to be published in top-tier, highimpact (i.e., high citations per article) journals. By extension, authors of such research were also less likely to become editors, serve on editorial boards, or act as reviewers for leading journals. An entrenched hierarchy of influence therefore emerged between researchers that occupy the core of the field, both intellectually and politically, and those on the periphery with far less influence in both respects.

The Impact of Online Distribution on the Globalization of Strategy Research The globalization of strategy research must be viewed in the context of this entrenched hierarchy. Before the Internet revolutionized journal access, most researchers and their institutions subscribed to a handful of top-tier, high-impact publications. Not surprisingly, this strengthened the position of top-tier journals, while creating a formidable entry barrier to the top tier for lower-impact journals. It also reinforced the dominance of established

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research approaches, and reduced the visibility and corresponding legitimacy of alternatives. The advent of the Internet changed these dynamics, allowing most researchers easy access to lower-tier journals. So far, this has had little influence on the close links between the journal hierarchy and allocation of academic rewards in North America. But it has opened new opportunities for researchers outside North America (and many within) who have always argued that these links are stifling the development of truly innovative research. Outside North America researchers have always been less constrained by a resource allocation system dominated by high-impact journals. By choice and necessity non-North American researchers were always more likely to publish in lower-tier journals, and now that these journals were more readily available they found that their previously marginalized ideas were now far more likely to get noticed. More importantly, with lower-impact journals more widely available it was far easier for new school of thoughts to coalesce as viable research streams. Researchers united around journals willing to commit to advancing and defending their particular views, and their editors and reviewers members of the intellectual subcommunities who published in them. Although the prestige of high-impact journals has not been greatly diminished, their presence no longer constituted a barrier to the emergence of greater conceptual and research pluralism in strategy.

Pluralism and Consecration Tactics The papers in this volume testify to the extraordinary diversity of work done in strategy today, but as McKinley (2010, p. 57) points out in his analysis of the current state of organization theory, the proliferation of theories and perspectives can produce ‘‘self-contained theoretical ‘islands’’’ that are ‘‘engaging, even sometimes exciting’’ but are more concerned with ‘‘legitimizing the theory than toward facilitating additional empirical testing’’ (see Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009). Legitimacy concerns are common to fields in which the foundations of knowledge are open to radically different, often incompatible, interpretations. In such fields competition for the ‘‘intellectual attention space’’ relies as much on establishing a theory’s legitimacy as its explanatory power (Collins, 1998). Schendel and Hofer’s contention that knowledge claims conforming to the tenets of logical empiricism should be accorded greater legitimacy than knowledge claims that relied on ‘‘subjective description and interpretation’’ may have forestalled such theory proliferation. But the price – conformity to

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a single system of empirical justification – has been high not only for nonNorth American researchers, but also North American researchers who, by force of career imperatives, have followed the prescribed approach. The challenge to the research enterprise consecrated by strategy’s emergence narrative is now well under way. The challenge consists both of direct epistemological criticism and development of new theoretical perspectives. The first has certainly been liberating in as much as it has allowed researchers to question narrow interpretations of strategy, but the second has produced a consecration struggle as each emerging perspective maneuvers to establish its legitimacy, often in opposition to others. Appreciation of the practical functioning of a priori legitimation is critical to understanding these consecration struggles. Each theoretical account is historically situated in previous work. Researchers may not build on the contributions of their predecessors explicitly, but in one way or another they situate themselves relative to what has gone before in their field, or, for that matter, in other fields. Situating is important not only conceptually, but also for achieving a priori legitimacy for the theoretical exposition that will follow. To consecrate their arguments, researchers must first consecrate the origin of their argument. If the legitimacy of the starting point is accepted, the reader is relieved of the need to undertake the laborious task of tracing the argument to its source. In high consensus fields this practice is relatively uncontroversial and often consists of little more than passing reference to ‘‘text book’’ knowledge, widely acknowledged problems, or accepted empirical findings. In strategy, however starting points are generally more problematic, especially if the researcher wishes to deviate from some of the key assumptions of the dominant North American approach. For this reason, the further research departs from the dominant approach, the greater the effort that must be invested in consecrating the starting point to the argument. Taking the articles in this volume as a sample of contributions that deliberately deviate from some of the key assumptions of the North American approach, we can describe four consecration strategies that we suspect are quite common in the field as a whole. a. Star Consecration Research in strategy that presents a novel perspective, or aims to chart a new direction often consecrates its exposition by referring to widely referenced philosophers or social theorists. For example, Hatchuel, Starkey, Tempest, and Le Lasson, explicitly identify Foucault as the starting point of their theoretical narrative. Foucault is also employed by Ezzamel and

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Willmott to advance their poststructuralist perspective on strategy. In each instance, Foucault, or more accurately Foucauldian analysis, is also used to de-consecrate other views (Carter, 2008). In the case of Hatchuel et al. the target is the dominant view of strategy analysis and implementation, while for Ezzamel and Willmot it is the strategy-as-practice view that is deconsecrated. We similarly see Sillince and Simpson calling on Aristotle and Heidegger to legitimate a novel view of the relationship between strategy and organizational identity, Suominen and Mantere on Michel de Certeau’s work on consumption to change how strategy is constructed in organizations, and Ortmann and Seidl on Ju¨rgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, Anthony Giddens, and Jacques Derrida to legitimize various streams of strategy research. Of course, we too employ of this strategy, relying on Bourdieu’s discussion of consecration to consecrate our own arguments. b. Genealogical Consecration A second often used consecration strategy attempts to persuade by making a strong legitimacy claim about the starting point of an argument. In some cases, researchers recapitulate the intellectual evolution of a concept or a point of view in order to demonstrate that their own use of the concept is more legitimate than the way it has been used by others. Once this is established, the way is cleared to build an argument that is, from the outset, legitimized by a particular interpretation of a concept or point of view. Two articles in this volume are illustrative of this approach. Powell, Rahman, and Starbuck, retrace the origins of the current view of competitive advantage in strategy, showing not only that it considerably simplifies a complex process, but also that it ignores earlier work by economists that may provide more promising foundations for strategy. The de-consecration of the contemporary conception of competitive advantage and re-consecration of earlier ideas provides a starting point for future research efforts. Djelic and Durand retrace the idea of selection in strategy and organization theory in a similar manner. They show that there are different conceptions of selection, each providing a different lens through which ‘‘individual and collective actors perceive and read the world.’’ In an interesting parallel with Powell et al., they contrast the evolution of the selection concept in the United States and France, de-consecrating the first and re-consecrating (for Americans at least) the second. c. Methodological Consecration Reliance on methodology to legitimize arguments has a long history. Since the 19th-century researchers have sought legitimacy for their ideas by

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arguing that they are based on a ‘‘scientific method,’’ notwithstanding the fact that definitions of what this means in practice tend to vary greatly. As we noted earlier, Schendel and Hofer’s appeal to logical empiricism was used from the outset to argue for a particular framing of strategy. More generally, appealing to rigor, normally a euphemism for what in earlier times was called ‘‘scientific method,’’ has been used very effectively to legitimate some research and de-legitimate other research. Not surprisingly, researchers who challenge the North American perspective have sought to legitimate methodologies that can in turn be used to consecrate their theoretical arguments. Advocacy of ethnography as a legitimate methodology is probably the most visible manifestation of this effort. In their contribution to this volume, Antonacopoulou and Balogun use such an approach to advance a new method for strategy research, one that legitimizes strategy-as-practice their preferred theoretical lens. Similarly, Vaara’s development of a discursive view of strategy goes hand in hand with advocacy for the methods such as critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is used not only to legitimate the discursive view of strategy, but also to promote the unity of research around this method. d. Appropriative Consecration When researchers stake their legitimacy on a claim to novelty they must typically reject or refute previous work in the same area to support their claim. In effect, they employ de-consecration to consecrate their efforts. Alternatively, they can accept the previous contributions, while at the same time rejecting them as incomplete. The new approach is presented as inclusive of previous ones, while at the same time being distinct from them. The key move here is to appropriate the legitimacy of previous approaches, while avoiding being labeled an elaboration or extension by arguing for a new starting point. Jarzabkowski and Kaplan’s contribution to the volume illustrates this approach. They describe the struggles of strategy-as-practice to become accepted as a distinct approach to strategy. Part of the challenge facing this approach is the substantial body of research on strategy processes that goes back to the nascent period of strategy as a field. As Jarzabkowski and Kaplan note, for many scholars in the process tradition, ‘‘practice research has appeared to cover ground well-trodden by process studies.’’ This reading of strategy-as-practice presents a conundrum for researchers that espouse this view: they can argue that process research is fundamentally flawed, or they can argue that strategy-as-practice subsumes and transcends process research. Quoting Whittington (2007, p. 1581), the Jarzabkowski and Kaplan opt for the second, arguing that that

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strategy-as-practice ‘‘opens up an agenda far wider than implied simply by extension or enrichment of the Strategy Process.’’ Thus, strategy-as-practice appropriates the legitimacy of strategy process research, while at the same time seeking legitimacy for its own unique research approach. e. Journal Consecration Purists may insist that ideas should speak for themselves regardless of where they are published, but realists know that where research is published can elevate or depress the legitimacy that readers accord to it. Why this differential consecration occurs is controversial. Many argue that journal consecration directly reflects the quality of editing and reviewing. Others counter that it is more a function of the reproduction of research elites in the American system: Authors who publish in top journals are more likely to serve as editors and, once in place, more likely to favor submissions that are intellectually consistent with their own theoretical and methodological preferences. Up-and-coming authors who subscribe to these preferences are more likely to see their work in print and also more likely to become reviewers, and ultimately editors. This elite reproduction does not preclude innovation, but it does make it harder – as shown by Jarzabkowski and Kaplan, who lament that no more than a handful of strategy-as-practice articles have appeared in North American journals. Reliance on top-tier publications to consecrate arguments and ideas (and their authors) has a long history, and arguably serves a purpose in as far as it signals ‘‘main stream’’ thinking on different issues. What is changed more recently is the proliferation and increasing influence of journal rankings (e.g., the ISI Journal Citation Report, the Financial Times Journal List) and performance measurement (e.g., the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in the UK). These rankings and measures have further skewed the natural tendency to legitimize research as a function of where it is published. As a result, researchers face mounting pressure to demonstrate their ability to publish in top-tier journals, and so to avoid placing their careers at risk, do not venture too far from the kinds of contributions prototypical of those likely to be acceptable to editors and reviewers of top-tier journals.2 These dynamics help to explain the cross-citation patterns illustrated in Fig. 1 – as well as the dearth of strategy-as-practice papers in North American journals. Emerging global perspectives rely on bases of consecration that are distinct from (and often at odds with) North American perspectives, making them unlikely to find favor with North American journal editors and reviewers. Fragmentation results as the new research is published (and referenced) in a distinctive set of journals that

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become committed to championing (and defending) the distinctive intellectual communities that emerge and consolidate around them (just as North American journals). These allegiances help foster scholarly exploration, but they also impede the field’s progress by rendering what ‘‘counts’’ as strategy research varied from journal to journal, and fostering rivalry among journals, each acting to consecrate certain types of research contributions and de-consecrate others.

CONCLUSION The global community of strategic management scholars is increasingly comprised of a patchwork of semi-isolated subgroups, each characterized by their own distinctive ideas, beliefs, and customs. Although the field has increasingly differentiated itself into a distinct semidiscipline, globalization has created a challenge for the field by lowering the level of agreement on the foundation of explanation. North America, in general, and the United States, in particular, no doubt played an important role in the historical development of the strategy research community. Its centrality has waned, however, in the face of globalization, and with the emergence and consolidation of novel perspectives developed in other parts of the world. The exposure of North American strategy researchers to these new ideas and approaches holds the promise of forging new cooperation, consolidation, and common ground. But, at present, strategy research seems to be moving instead toward increased rivalry and fragmentation – even, as we have observed, among the new perspectives. In its extreme form, we witness anti-North American, antimodernist, and contra-science views and rhetoric of domination, control, and subjugation, pitted against anti-constructivist, anti-qualitative, and antipostmodernist views and the characterization of research conducted outside North America as lacking objectivity and a means of self-correction. Is the field destined to permanent pluralism (or worse)? In the short run parochialism seems likely as, despite editorial aspirations to publish a diversity of perspectives, journals are co-opted to advance and defend the intellectual views and preferred perspectives of research communities that coalesce around them. But in the absence of strong geographic constraints to the diffusion of ideas and cooperation among researchers, these groups of like-minded researchers need not be clustered around particular locations. We hope this volume of Advances in Strategic Management contributes in some small way to the further diffusion of ideas that challenge the

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historically predominant traditions in strategy research and in doing so, the globalization of the field.

NOTES 1. In this regard, it is notable that the rapidly proliferating Asia-centric management journals have modeled themselves on North American journals, and co-opted key North American scholars to edit them. 2. What constitutes a top-tier journal also increasingly depends on these rankings, of course.

REFERENCES Andrews, K. R. (1971). The concept of corporate strategy. Homewood, IL: Irwin. Ansoff, H. I. (1965). Corporate strategy. New York: McGraw-Hill. Baum, J. A. C. (2007). Cultural group selection in organization studies. Organization Studies, 28, 37–47. Bourdieu, P. (1984). The market for symbolic goods. In: The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Bower, J. L. (1980). Business policy in the 1980s. Academy of Management Review, 7, 630–638. Bracker, J. (1980). The historical development of the strategic management concept. Academy of Management Review, 5, 219–224. Caldwell, B. (1982). Beyond positivism: Economic methodology in the twentieth century. London: George Allen and Unwin. Carter, C. (2008). A curiously British story: Foucault goes to business school. International Studies of Management and Organization, 38, 13–29. Chandler, A. D. (1962). Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of the industrial enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Frickel, S., & Gross, N. (2005). A general theory of scientific/intellectual movements. American Sociological Review, 70, 204–232. Hambrick, D., & Chen, M-J. (2005). New academic fields as social movements: The case of strategic management. Academy of Management Best Conference Papers Proceedings, pp. E1–E6. Kiechel, W. (2010). Lords of strategy: The secret intellectual history of the new corporate world. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. McKinley, W. (2010). Organizational theory development: Displacement of ends? Organization Studies, 31, 47–68. Mintzberg, H. (1977). Introduction to the conference. International Studies of Management and Organization, 7, 7–12.

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Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, J. (2009). The strategy safari: A guided tour through the jungles of strategic management (2nd ed.). Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: FT Press. O’Shannassy, T. (2001). Lessons from the evolution of the strategy paradigm. Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, 7(1), 25–37. Schendel, D. E., & Hofer, C. W. (1979). Strategic management. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. Whittington, R. (2007). Strategy practice and strategy process: Family differences and the sociological eye. Organization Studies, 28(10), 1575–1586.

Joseph Lampel Joel A. C. Baum Editors

PART I PERSPECTIVES: STRATEGY AS ...

STRATEGY AS INNOVATIVE DESIGN: AN EMERGING PERSPECTIVE Armand Hatchuel, Ken Starkey, Sue Tempest and Pascal Le Masson ABSTRACT We develop a discourse of strategic management as design, using a conceptual base drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, as an alternative to the prevailing strategy discourse (strategy as ‘‘economizing’’). We then use contemporary design theory to theorize strategic management as a design activity in which the focus is on innovation, with the emphasis on future strategies based on the creation of desirable unknowns.

INTRODUCTION What we propose in this chapter is that the most influential model of strategy, based on a narrow notion of design as analysis, planning, and positioning, rooted in economics, needs rethinking. We propose an alternative model of strategic management as innovative design, rooted in the creative disciplines, the arts and humanities, as well as in scientific discovery. This alternative approach is now much easier to formulate and The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 3–28 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027004

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validate for empirical and theoretical reasons. Empirically, it is now clear that, in the long run, the real builders of our welfare and modernity are companies that have been able to recast the dominant values and design rules of their markets and environments – Apple, Bombardier, L’Air liquide, and Intel are only some among the best known of these companies. To some extent these companies are surprising because they behave both like artists to create new worlds and like scientists to make these worlds exist and be economically sustainable. Such a combination of different logics has seemed almost impossible to reconcile. Yet, recent advances in design theory (Hatchuel, 2001; Hatchuel & Weil, 2003, 2009) offer new models of rationality where the mobilizing force of creative concepts and the power of systematic learning reinforce each other, if ‘‘deviance’’ is protected, supported, and legitimized. What Michel Foucault would call a new ‘‘episteme’’ of strategy can now be made visible and a subject of discourse, order, and desire. Our argument complements that of Vaara (2010) in seeking to contribute to new avenues of future strategy research, although we position ourselves in terms of an ontological shift toward the essence of strategy as innovative design, rather than epistemology. Our chapter also fits well with the paper by Sillince and Simpson (2010) and their view of strategy work as reimagining future options. We structure our contribution as follows. We first frame our analysis, drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, and key dimensions of his analysis – discourse, knowledge, power, and self. We then consider contemporary advances in design theory (Hatchuel, Le Masson, & Weil, 2006; Hatchuel & Weil, 2009; Starkey & Tempest, 2009; Martin, 2009) to argue for an alternative design discourse that balances analysis and learning with imaginative foresight and ‘‘organized deviance.’’ The design challenge is to create new ways of managing strategy, in response to ‘‘a society that is in the process of reconstructing itself in unprecedented ways and at record speeds’’ (Krippendorff, 2006, p. iii). For us, the essence of strategic management lies in developing new means of mobilizing, as yet undecidable, creative concepts and, through this process, creating new knowledge and new communities.

STRATEGY AS DISCOURSE Our rationale for thinking about strategy draws upon Michel Foucault’s work on discourse, power/knowledge, aesthetics, and self. For Foucault, the creation of knowledge is inextricably linked to the exercise of power. Knowledge is grounded in dominant ways of seeing, thinking, and acting.

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Systems of thought are rooted in ‘‘notions, institutions, judicial and police measures, scientific concepts’’ (Foucault, 2006a, p. xxxiii) which condition modes of perception, in our case, the mode in which strategy is perceived and lived. Discourse, for Foucault (2006b, p. xxxviii) is ‘‘at the same time battle and weapon, strategy and blow.’’ Discourse embodies the will to truth which operates both inclusively (deciding what is valid knowledge) and exclusively (excluding that which is considered either irrelevant or disruptive). To the extent that it is a powerful force in determining ways of seeing and enacting the world, discourse depends upon ‘‘institutional support’’: it is both reinforced and renewed by whole strata of practices, such as pedagogy, of course; and the system of books, publishing libraries; learned societies y and laboratories y it is also renewed y by the way in which knowledge is put to work, valorised, distributed, and in a sense attributed, in a society. (Foucault, 1981, p. 55)

Disciplines shape discourse to ground their legitimacy. A discipline fixes limits for discourse and, in the process, defines the identity of a discipline and its rules. Foucault (1981, p. 55) gives economics as an example: ‘‘economic practices, codified as precepts or recipes and ultimately as morality, have sought since the sixteenth century to ground themselves, rationalise themselves, and justify themselves in a theory of wealth and production.’’ Strategy, a more recent disciplinary invention than economics, although drawing upon it as one of its major sources, is no different. The evolution of strategy as a discipline was dependent for its institutional support on its location in leading universities and business schools, and has spawned its set of practices, pedagogy (particularly the MBA), learned societies and research methods. The discourse of strategy was valorized by its relation to Harvard Business School, particularly in its early years, and by the affiliation of key champions of the discipline, particularly Michael Porter. Discourse is enacted in major narratives, ‘‘formulae, texts, and ritualised sets of discourses which are recited in well-defined circumstances: things once said and preserved because it is suspected that behind them there is a secret or a treasure’’ (Foucault, 1981, p. 56). Again, the discourse of strategy is no different. The treasure it offers is ‘‘competitive advantage’’ and the wealth that this brings top management. The traditional design approach to strategy was formalized in the influential textbook, Business Policy: Text and Cases (Christensen, Andrews, & Porter, 1982), authored by members of Harvard Business School’s General Management Group, and formed a core of the Harvard MBA program and executive education which was seen by top management as a route to career success.

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Strategy, like other disciplines, is shaped by the ‘‘discursive moves’’ of its proponents and their claims to substantive, methodological and conceptual primacy (Moldoveanu, 2009). Much of strategic thinking in the dominant strategy tradition emphasizes economics – strategic management as economic analysis – to the exclusion of other ways of framing management. This is eloquently expressed in Williamson’s (1991, pp. 76, 90) defense of ‘‘economizing’’ as far more important than ‘‘strategizing’’: ‘‘economy is the best strategy. That is the central and unchanging message of the transaction cost economics perspective y strategizing is pertinent for only a small subset of transactions.’’ For Williamson (1991, p. 76) the resource-based and dynamic capabilities approaches are ‘‘the leading efficiency approaches to business strategy.’’ As Ferraro, Pfeffer, and Sutton (2005, p. 8) argue, social science theories can become self-fulfilling by shaping institutional designs and management practices, as well as social norms and expectations about behavior, thereby creating the behavior they predict: actors come to see the world ‘‘through the lenses of social theories.’’ Economics is more prone to this than other disciplines and has played a key role in shaping strategy discourse. According to Ferraro et al. (2005, p. 10), the role of economics has become increasingly powerful and pervasive, until there is ‘‘little doubt that economics has won the battle for theoretical hegemony in academia and society as a whole and that such dominance becomes stronger every year.’’ Its self-fulfilling predictions and norms have created a normative order. As Foucault argues: ‘‘One ‘fictions’ history on the basis of a political reality that makes it true’’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 193). One of Foucault’s lifelong preoccupations was to investigate how discourse interacts with subjectivity and the identity of self that arises from a particular habit of perception/sensibility. The Foucaultian method is to examine the forms of knowledge and discourse that define a tradition, the forms of power that hold a particular configuration in place, and the modes of relationship, to self and others, that support the exercise of particular power/knowledge/ subjectivity configurations. Foucault is interested in the interactions of knowledge, norms and normativity, and the implications for the self in relation to disciplinary practices. He argues that three domains of experience – knowledge, power, and self – need to be understood in relation to each other: First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. (Foucault, 1997, p. 262)

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Foucault held the prestigious Chair of the History of Systems of Thought at the Colle`ge de France. A recurring concern of his work is with epochal moments when one system of thought gives way to another, how ‘‘within the space of a few years a culture sometimes ceases to think as it had been thinking up till then and begins to think other things in a new way’’ (Foucault, 1966, p. 56). The task at these tipping points is to deconstruct the present by surfacing the possible ‘‘fracture’’ lines, to ‘‘describe that which is, while making it appear as something that might not be, or that might not be as it is’’ (Foucault, 2000, p. 450). We suggest that we should think about strategy in precisely this spirit, as a process through which something new and innovative is created. Philosophy, for Foucault, is quintessentially ‘‘the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known’’ (Foucault, 1985, p. 8). It provides a means ‘‘of excavating our own culture in order to free space for innovation and creativity’’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 163) and, in the process, giving ‘‘one’s self the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination’’ (Foucault, 1994, p. 18). The dominant narratives of a discipline function ‘‘by proposing an ideal truth as the law of discourse and an immanent rationality as the principle of their unfolding, and they y introduce an ethic of knowledge, which promises to give the truth only to the desire for truth itself and only to the power of thinking it’’ (Foucault, 1981, p. 65). What, we ask, if we are in world where strategy needs ‘‘a new object y new conceptual instruments and new theoretical foundations’’ (Foucault, 1981, p. 61)? A dominant discourse sets limits. It defines the parameters for discussing a subject, a discipline. For managers, particular discourses create managerial identities that shape the boundaries of thought and practice. The dominant narrative of strategy has been an analytical and optimization-oriented design narrative. ‘‘[This] design school represents, without question, the most influential view of the strategy-formation process’’ (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 2009, p. 24). It pictures design as a rigorous structured process of analysis (internal and external) of existing contexts, followed by evaluation and choice. The approach is knowledge-based, rational, logical, analytical, encompasses distinct phases, and leads from a clear vision to clear outcomes. It encompasses both positioning and planning (starting at Harvard with Michael Porter and colleagues), then leading through the resource-based view to the dynamic capabilities approach. As Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997, p. 511) argue: ‘‘Needless to say, these approaches are in many ways complementary and

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a full understanding of firm-level, competitive advantage requires an appreciation of all [the] approaches.’’ These various perspectives are fundamentally cumulative in the sense that they have established a dominant strategy discourse through cumulative contributions. The trajectory of development of the discipline of strategy has been much debated, so we will not cover this ground again. We would emphasize, though, points of leverage in recent work on strategy that resonate, to a degree, with the perspective we are seeking to contribute. According to the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), the resource-based view, by focusing on current capability as the source of competitive advantage, underestimates the importance of skill acquisition, organizational learning and the accumulation of intangible assets. In the perspective we develop later in the paper, learning and skills are key features. The DCV also emphasizes the importance of innovation, something we highlight. Drawing on evidence from hightechnology industries, Teece et al (1997, p. 515) argue that ‘‘[w]inners in the global marketplace have been firms that can demonstrate timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation, coupled with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences. Not surprisingly, industry observers have remarked that companies can accumulate a large stock of valuable technology assets and still not have useful capabilities.’’ To succeed in such environments, they argue that firms need to be ‘‘dynamic’’, a term they use to capture the concept of ‘‘the capacity to renew competences so as to achieve congruence with the changing business environment.’’ Firms also need particular ‘‘capabilities,’’ a term/concept they use to emphasize ‘‘the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting, integrating, and reconfiguring internal and external organizational skills, resources, and functional competences to match the requirements of a changing environment.’’ But while welcoming some of the emphases in the dynamic capabilities work, we tend to agree with Arend and Bromiley’s (2009, p. 86) criticism that the DCV ‘‘has yet to advance a coherent theoretical framework,’’ particularly in explaining strategic change. We also think that the DCV tends to emphasize reactivity and problem solving as a key design principle, stimulated by environmental change, so that strategy is driven by congruence with what is external to the firm. In temporal terms, the environment changes, problems arise and then the firm changes. The most serious threat to the firm is change in the environment, rather than internal factors such as the loss of key individuals (Teece et al., 1997). Also, like the resource-based view, the perspective emphasizes path dependencies as the key factor in determining the enactment of dynamic capability, that is ‘‘the firm’s ability to integrate,

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build, and reconfigure internal competences to address rapidly changing environments’’ (Teece et al., 1997, p. 516). It also has an over-designed, but under-theorized, management aspect: ‘‘Our view of the firm is that the organization takes place in a y multilateral fashion, with patterns of behaviour and learning being orchestrated in a much more decentralized fashion, but with a visible headquarters operation’’ (Teece et al., 1997, p. 517) – without making it clear how this orchestration is to be achieved and by whom. Orchestration seems more akin to coordination/integration, the static aspect of the model, rather than creation, its dynamic aspect. This strategy discourse, like much of the discourse it draws on, lacks an important temporal dimension. The three key roles of organizational processes to support the development of dynamic capability are coordination/integration, learning and reconfiguration. We recognize the importance of these but, in the dynamic capability approach, they are presented as co-existent. The approach lacks a clear rationale for how they interact, for example, how learning leads to new models of and experiments in coordination/integration, which can then lead to major reconfiguration. This might well be because the approach is pessimistic about change. ‘‘The capabilities approach sees value augmenting strategic change as being difficult and costly. Moreover, it can generally only occur incrementally. Capabilities cannot easily be bought: they must be built. From the capabilities perspective, strategy involves choosing among and committing to long-term paths or trajectories of competence development’’ (Teece et al., 1997, p. 529). In our view, such commitments only enhance path dependency and reduce the ability to change, thus undermining long-term strategic effectiveness. The focus on economizing places emphasis upon manufacturing and merchandizing, efficiency analysis, the elimination of waste and governance costs. For Mintzberg (2004, pp. 92–93), there is too much emphasis in strategic management upon this systematic analysis of inputs and outputs. Mintzberg links this to management education, particularly the MBA, with its formal theories and its emphasis upon highly ‘‘calculative’’ analysis and technique, with little place for reflecting on practice. Foucault warns us that the Achilles heel of a science that lacks reflexivity is that it becomes recursive, fixated upon itself, and, thus, impotent to understand current events that transcend its categories: ‘‘Headed toward death, language turns back upon itself; it encounters something like a mirror; and to stop this death which would stop it, it possesses but a single power – that of giving birth to its own image in a play of mirrors that has no limit’’ (Foucault, 2000, p. 90). We have witnessed a major socio-economic shift in the last 30 years to a ‘‘finance-centred economy’’ that led to the financial crisis that broke in 2008

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(Davis, 2009). In the process, strategy tended to be consumed by investment finance and a dream of wealth creation without limits. Delves Broughton’s (2008, p. 204) observations on his Harvard Business School (HBS) MBA experience captures the aspirations of too many high-flying managers: Trading felt like the furthest possible remove from the workshop and assembly plant, and it was attracting the very brightest minds at HBS because the rewards for doing it well were so outlandish. Yet one had to truly trust in capitalism to believe that trading like this served the goal of efficiently allocating resources in society. y The rise of the hedge fund investor often felt to me more like a failure of the market rather than a fair allocation of rewards.

Butler (2005, p. 11) argues that we are ‘‘self-narrating beings,’’ driven by an unconscious ‘‘fantasy of impossible mastery.’’ The counterpoint to this fantasy is to develop a self-critical awareness. I must be careful to understand the limits of what I can do, the limits that condition any and all such doing. In this sense, I must become critical. y Indeed, to take responsibility for oneself is to avow the limits of any self-understanding, and to establish these limits not only as a condition for the subject but as the predicament of the human community. y reason’s limit is the sign of our humanity y if self-assertion becomes the assertion of the self at the expense of any consideration of the world, of consequences, and, indeed, of others, then it feeds [what Adorno calls] ‘‘moral narcissism (Butler, 2005, pp. 82–83, 105).

We do not think it too extreme to suggest that we are currently experiencing an economic crisis, fueled by a particular discourse of management, emphasizing financial economizing without limits, based upon a fantasy of the impossible mastery of risk. A realignment of strategy requires a critical deconstruction of existing modes of desire, which are closely linked to modern constructions of subjectivity. In this, a ‘‘key campaign will be a new mode of fashioning an ethical way of being a self ’’ (Bernauer & Mahon, 1994, pp. 147–148). In Foucault’s words, the task is to ‘‘fight against the impoverishment of the relational fabric y We must think that what exists if far from filling all possible space’’ (1997, pp. 138, 140). This suggests important challenges for management to the extent that they feel that existing ways of managing are being called into question, not least the question of managerial responsibility and its ethical stance. According to Foucault, ethics is concerned with care of the self and for others, ‘‘the ways in which individuals relate to and regulate themselves – the ways in which we practice self-government and at the same time constitute ourselves as the moral subjects of our own desires and actions’’ (Nehamas, 1998, p. 179). In his later work, Foucault turned to

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the ancient Greeks and their philosophical ethos, and, in particular, Socrates whose purpose was to attend to his fellow citizens like a father or an older brother in order to show them that what is important is not money or reputation but the care of themselves y not a concern for the world but for wisdom, truth, and for their own soul y Socrates’ purpose is to make people care for themselves. And Foucault defines such care as the use of reason to find out who one is and how one can best be. (Nehamas, 1998, p. 166)

The challenge is to develop a new discourse of strategy and of the managerial self.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AS INNOVATIVE DESIGN If the challenge of strategic management is to become a more integrative process which aims to be inclusive, human-centred, and empathic in seeking co-created solutions to problems, then design thinking may facilitate this practice as it builds on the principles of integrative thinking. Integrative thinking is based on an abductive logic that lies between ‘‘the past-datadriven world of analytical thinking and the knowing-without-reasoning world of intuitive thinking’’ (Martin, 2009, p. 26). Martin (2009) contends that by adopting design thinking, organizations have the possibility of combining exploration of new knowledge for innovation with exploitation of current knowledge for efficiency and he offers cases of successful use of design thinking in a range of organizations to include Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, and Research In Motion – the developers of the BlackBerry smart phone. Tim Brown (2008, p. 86) of IDEO defines design thinking as ‘‘a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.’’ Martin (2009) contends that A. G. Lafley has used design thinking to change P&G from a traditional reliability-driven organization facing cost and innovation challenges into a more innovative and efficient organization by maintaining a balance between analytic thinking and abductive reasoning to double its market value in three years. P&G called upon a network of external design experts to help them in this task by establishing an external design board made up of world-class designers. Managers were offered development and training in the skills and knowledge of design thinking.

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Lafley also changed the process of strategy review from one based on reliability and justification via lengthy presentations to one based on genuine dialogue about what ‘‘could be’’ (Martin, 2009, p. 92). He rejected the idea that all innovation should be homegrown and developed an approach to R&D called ‘‘ConnectþDevelop’’ whereby they could connect with external innovators for internal development in P&G. Individual firms need to find their own solutions about how to marry operational discipline and innovation. In the UK, the Design Council’s added value research 2007 found that organizations that used design to add value to their products or services generated a higher return on profitability, turnover, and market share than their competitors (Thomas, 2009). Design is being recognized by policy makers as a crucial ingredient to competitiveness. For example, China is seeking to move from a manufacturing economy captured by ‘‘Made in China’’ to one symbolized by ‘‘Designed in China’’ (Thomas, 2009). In Europe design is being promoted to drive innovation and competitiveness in both firms and public sector organizations with evidence that design is being integrated into public and regional policy (Raulik-Murphy & Whicher, 2010). But as the previous examples illustrate, design principles are not just relevant to end products and services but are also directly relevant to the development of more creative strategic management processes and more innovative strategy options. We now trace the outlines of a view of strategy as design that depends upon new modes of relating to the self and to others. How this differs from the dominant discourse that we have previously critiqued is set out in Table 1. Table 1.

Two Discourses of Strategy as Design.

Strategy as Analysis and Implementation Knowledge

Power/ knowledge

Self Performance evaluation

Analysis of the environment Economic rational choice Problem solving Implementation MBA elitism Mimetism Market tyranny Selfish ethos Business self-colonization Short-term market value of the firm

Strategy as Innovative Design

Generating desired unknowns and undecidable concepts Learning through these concepts Experimenting and exploring Art, science, and humanities as sources Organized deviance: protection, support, and legitimation Aesthetics of existence Business as a condition, not an end Building sustainable and desirable worlds and organizations

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Historically, theories of design, be it in engineering or in strategy, describe problem solving processes, analytical choices, and stage gate planning. However, we are moving into an era of radical uncertainty where the unknown and the unknowable will play a major role. Our argument is that design and strategy can be redefined as intentional collective processes aimed at creating artifacts (including forms of organization and social interactions) that are both partly unknown and partly specifiable in terms of existing knowledge. This leads to a concept of the strategy process as one of ‘‘expansion’’ in which the known shapes the unknown, without completely determining it, and the unknown shapes the formation of the known.

Knowledge: Undecidability, Creation, and Emergence Innovative design is framed in the spirit of the approach to strategic management that Mintzberg (2004) calls for, an art of creative synthesis in the form of insights and visions, and the practice of a craft learned through experience. As Foucault describes it, ‘‘a work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself’’ (Foucault, 1967, p. 230). For us, it provides a bridge between economics and aesthetics, ‘‘economism’’ and ‘‘aesthetics’’ (Agnew, 1986). One of Mintzberg’s most provocative analyses of strategic leadership (Westley & Mintzberg, 1989, p. 21) takes as its point of departure the work of the legendary theater director, Peter Brook, and his approach to drama as a prototype for developing an alternative model of strategy, ‘‘one of dynamic interaction rather than unidirectional flow, a process of craft and repetition rather than simple cognition, brought to bear in the communication of affect as well as effect.’’ We look to another area where art and business collide, the work of the leading architect Frank Gehry, as the starting point for developing our alternative concept of strategic management as innovative design. For Gehry (2004, p. 20), the optimum state for design is ‘‘liquid.’’ The pre-‘‘crystallization’’ phase needs to last for a sufficient amount of time to allow the exploration of different architectural models, during which the client and the architect have to cope with a large degree of nervousness, and even fear. Gehry finds working with corporate America unfulfilling because they cannot tolerate this degree of uncertainty as the building strategy coalesces around a final model. They want to be presented with clearly

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defined options from which they can choose, not to be involved with a difficult process of gestation. There is continuous movement between fixed and fluid states – holding things constant and letting them loose, and choosing to push things and letting them go. It is a personal and intense focus on creating new forms in the environment.’’ (Yoo, Boland, & Lyytinen, 2006, p. 227)

Gehry wants to explore as a way of producing the best possible building and, through exploration, to expand the limits of the possible. ‘‘I don’t know where I am going when I start. If I knew where I was going, I wouldn’t go there, that’s for sure. It’s not interesting to me to go do something that is preordained. And the randomness is part of an opportunistic process of working with the clients and with the constraints and the way they stimuate you in developing the building’’ (Gehry, 2004, p. 22). This recalls Peter Brook’s definition of the kind of drama he was desperate to avoid, what he calls ‘‘Deadly Theatre’’ – ‘‘the deadly director uses old formulae, old methods y A deadly director is a director who brings no challenge to the conditioned reflexes that every department must contain’’ (Brook, 1968, p. 23). For Gehry, the design process is, in part, about inventing/agreeing a vocabulary that captures what they are trying to achieve in the building. This might use ideas taken from a historical repertoire of buildings. In a project conducted for MIT, there was discussion of a traditional Japanese house, a colonial house, an orangutan model, and a hedgehog model! For Gehry (2004, p. 19), the customer is a client and a partner: ‘‘The client is very important to me because you need a partner. It can’t be the sound of one hand clapping. The best building, the best work, is done in concert with the client.’’ His Bilbao Guggenheim project ‘‘was done with a lot of heart and soul, working with the community, and trying to make a building that would fit in, and that worked for art’’ (Gehry, 2004, p. 25). The firm Gehry Partners has constructed its own unique network of collaborators and works with intellectual partners that other architectural firms would not normally consider, for example, with aircraft engineers to help them in the design and construction of curves, and structural engineers in the use of innovative new computer-aided design tools developed in the aero-industry. He has in the team people to exercise a challenge function for when he ‘‘falls in love’’ with a design prematurely: At some point, I freeze like everybody does, and I am caught in my own inability to move. I am not infinitely able to free-associate. I do fall in love with the thing and that’s dangerous for me and I recognize it. I do lead in that kind of way. I do rely on Ey or somebody to change the game, change the rules, because the dangerous thing for us is to

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crystallize before we have all the information, before we know what the issues are, and if we’ve addressed them all. (Gehry, 2004, pp. 29–30)

Finally, Gehry’s concern is intensely functional but defined in his own inimitable fashion, and inextricably linked to values and core beliefs: Traditionally, architects use the word functional and clients use the word functional when they look at a building and say, ‘‘This guy produced a very functional building.’’ And it means to them that they can use it, that it works. But that doesn’t say anything about how it brings emotionality to the table and doesn’t consider if it is human. Is it humanistic? y Functional for me has a broader meaning y It means achieving a building that does all of the things we want as humans from our buildings. (Gehry, 2004, p. 34)

Yoo et al. (2006) see organizations such as Gehry Partners as representative of a new shift in strategy whereby competitive advantage depends upon the ability to manage intangible knowledge capacities where customers/clients demand innovative and unique products and/or services. ‘‘Design professionals, such as architects, face the recurrent problem of proposing unique products and experiences for their clients, and provide an ideal context to study the organizational designing practices that will increasingly be demanded of all organizations’’ (Yoo et al., 2006, p. 215). This operates as a continuous process of organizing and reorganizing, as a ‘‘design gestalt’’ rather than an organization structure with a predesigned template to ensure fit with a specified environment: a design gestalt enables a process that is open, teleological, and phenomenological. It is a projecting of self into a dialectic with an environment, and by doing so, becoming a discovered self in a changed environment. The search for organizational form is closed down if we expect a choice among known alternatives. In contrast, a design gestalt has a generative, form-giving capacity that opens more options. y The design gestalt is understood here as a ‘‘virtual’’ capability that combines ideas, values, resources, tools and people into ensembles that create and project remarkable artifacts. (Yoo et al., 2006, p. 227)

What this approach also exemplifies is the principle of ‘‘undecidability’’ which, for us, is an essential quality of the process of innovative design. We define ‘‘undecidability,’’ following Badiou (2008, p. 74), as the condition ‘‘of someone who stands before a sudden decision for which there is no norm.’’ The design process takes organizations beyond existing norms. Art, an important component of the design process, attracts our attention as ‘‘capture of the undecidable’’ – ‘‘an undecidable is a statement that cannot be inscribed in any of the classes into which the norm of evaluation is supposed to be able to distribute all possible statements’’ (Badiou, 2008, pp. 86, 114). The idea of the moment of capture itself captures the tipping

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point, the key event at which design moves us to a new level of creative possibility and previous norms governing ‘‘reality’’ are revealed as convenient fictions. A new ‘‘truth’’ emerges: A truth arises in its novelty y because a hazardous supplement interrupts repetition. As indistinct, a truth begins by surging forth. y this surging forth directly sustains the undecidable. For the norm of valuation that governs the situation, or structure, cannot be applied to the statement. Were such a statement decidable, the event would clearly comply in advance with the norms of repetition, and would not be evental. (Badiou, 2008, p. 123)

Power/Knowledge: Organizing Deviance through Concept and Knowledge Expansions Management’s role is to find the appropriate form to generate an innovative design project and to create the shared sense of distributed responsibility necessary for its realization. We construe this task as one of developing an intentional strategic logic, guided by unknown and undecidable concepts, which leads to new uses of existing knowledge and new forms of knowledge. This supports an argument for ‘‘organized deviance’’ as a key aspect of the strategy process. As Starbuck and Nystrom (1981, p. 8) argue, ‘‘truly innovative designs have to originate in deviant cases or in fantasies rather than statistical norms.’’ Yet, design discourse runs the risk of being perceived as a discourse about irrational behavior and completely dependent of creative individuals. Recent advances in design theory, called C-K theory (Hatchuel & Weil, 2003, 2009),1 have confirmed existing assumptions about design, but they have made a step forward in investigating and grounding the logic and epistemological assumptions of innovative design. They demonstrate that innovative design corresponds to an unusual yet consistent form of logic, built on a dual expansion of concepts (the unknown) and knowledge (what is established as ‘‘known’’). The approach uses: - unknown and undecidable propositions called ‘‘concepts’’ (imagery, fantasy, or desire) to trigger the expansion of what is known (discovery, experimentation, knowledge acquisition); - new knowledge to expand concepts, which means expanding the unknown by increasing the known. C-K theory was developed initially to overcome the limitations of the problem solving approaches of design (Hatchuel, 2001), which ignored the role of undecidable concepts. It aimed also at encompassing the classic

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separation between artistic creation, which would be built on pure fantasy, and scientific discovery built on systematic knowledge expansion. This separation was obviously wrong for modern art has always been sensitive to knowledge coming from natural or social sciences; it also neglected the role of concepts built completely outside common sense in the development of modern science and mathematics, like the development of imaginary numbers, non-euclidean geometries, or antimatter. Thus, C-K theory helped to avoid two symmetric pitfalls of design thinking when it is used to describe strategic thinking: - the ‘‘vision-oriented design’’ that assumes that design was in fact done from the beginning of the process, and the rest of it being only development and implementation. This perspective has been widely influential in the type of strategy discourse which insists on the idea that managers should have a vision, but fails to recognize that what they call vision leads to innovation and creation only if it is undecidable and partly describes unknown worlds. And thus it cannot be implemented and even developed as such. - The classic creativity perspective which assumes that new ideas only come from personal divergent and free thinking and thus neglects the role of learning, working with others, and exploration and discovery in the formation of creative ideas. C-K theory clarifies the necessary and powerful intertwining expansions between the logic of knowledge building and acquisition and the logic of creation of new objects through undecidable concepts. Moreover C-K theory highlights that organized deviance requires a dual logic: one that builds upon knowledge (K), that is, propositions that are perceived as established, and one that works with concepts (C), undecidable yet mobilizing propositions that act as vehicles for moving knowledge in engagement with the unknown. Concepts include architectural sketches or models, industrial design briefs, and emerging propositions about new forms of organization necessary to achieve a new design. Models play a critical role in the Gehry design process as it moves through a variety of their incarnations. At any particular point in time, they represent where the design process stands. Concepts are central to capturing a desirable unknown, challenging an existing state of knowledge to move to a new state, where new ideas can be explored and tested, and propositions about what might be made to exist can be articulated. More important, the venture into the unknown, which is an elaboration of existing concepts, improves the process of exploration and knowledge production.

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Generating concepts from existing knowledge, or using concepts to explore new knowledge can be noted as C- K and K- C transitions. These describe deviant social processes, ventures into and shaping of the unknown. They require the following principles of organization: 1. A collective tolerance for the unknown and the new defining of self that this engenders. 2. Protection mechanisms, limiting the risks of moving toward the unknown. 3. Resources to support such ventures. In the process of engagement with the unknown, we trigger new competences and new forms of organization (new divisions of work) that, increasingly, transcend the existing boundaries of organization (networks, nonlegal partnerships). To be sure, management will set budgets, targets (e.g., market share), and profitability criteria, but these should be treated not as goals, rather as elements of knowledge, knowledge as it currently exists, that will shape the expansion of a strategic concept and the knowledge that will be explored. The real goal is to build a design expansion of the strategy that will allow the validation or the revision of existing knowledge constraints.

Strategizing R&D as Innovative Design To exemplify this approach, and illustrate concept to knowledge and knowledge to concepts operations, take the example of Saint-Gobain Sekurit, the European leader in automobile glazing. Until the mid-1990s, its research department developed advanced knowledge while a development department ensured that each new product met its market specifications. Innovation capability was basically retrospective in two ways: any new skill had to be consistent with the complex knowledge base specific to the glass then used in the car industry; and any new glass specification had to be consistent with existing car constraints. In 1995, the R&D department changed drastically with substantial results. Detailed research demonstrated that an essentially mimetic acquisition of knowledge was no longer adequate. What was now required was a change of strategy. The continuous renewal of product concepts in the light of customer requirements was not radical enough, but the knowledge was lacking on how to develop an effective discontinuous process where new design strategies reshaped teams and competencies to generate radically new options. What was necessary was a new design model, the stimulus for which was a new windscreen concept. A triggering event occurred when the research

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laboratory was suddenly asked to change from its usual study of scientific phenomena and to take charge of an emergency innovative product, the creation of athermic windshields. This product, which arose from the demands of a car maker, was not considered feasible by the then development department. That it became possible was due to a redefinition of the concept of function and the development of new specifications for car glazing. This set in process a new approach to design which needed the generation of new skills and artifacts (know-how, instruments, controls) that was possible only with new knowledge creation, using new processes of external acquisition. Surprisingly perhaps, this new style of work was well accepted by the researchers and not perceived as a threat to their position. They perceived that such innovative projects were linked to a new type of competition, which required the ongoing re-creation of new skills and actually legitimized more strongly the role of their activity. As new projects evolved using this new approach, this was soon interpreted as deep, fundamental changes in the identity and functions of windscreens in future cars. A new concept of the department was formed by its management (in which the trajectory of its strategy followed a (K-C) movement), and which was described as a ‘‘new research department that could breed new species of products and new competencies.’’ Car glazing became a multifunctional product with an open potential for the generation of innovative functions. Each of these new functions gave birth to new ‘‘product lineages,’’ that is, series of consecutive innovations growing from a core function. Gradually, the laboratory was divided into new innovation groups (organized deviance) developing projects related to a new functional lineage, that is, a lineage requiring the same design logic and common skills. ‘‘Lineage leaders’’ were appointed to take charge of these groups. The first prototype (a movement for learning C-K) of a functional lineage was the athermic lineage: it involved several interdependent product projects and associated research studies in other laboratories. This led to the design of a new innovation center. This was a response to the realization that a successful strategy for future growth was now dependent of the expansion of new functions. Designers began to enlarge (K-C) their view of car glazing, and they formed the concept of an ‘‘isolating-communicating membrane’’ (ICM). The new ICM concept had to be explored and expanded. But what were the new possibilities? New teams (smaller than lineage groups) were launched to explore (C-K) the possible partitions of this new agenda. This was done with low-cost efficient prototypes and ‘‘exploratory partnerships’’ with suppliers and car makers. For example, energy transmission through the windshield using nanometric

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transparent metal layers was pioneered. Thus, the old R&D structure was expanded to become an ‘‘innovation laboratory’’ that included dynamic groups that followed the formation of new concepts and lineages of windscreens. The mission of this innovation laboratory was, explicitly, to continuously generate new concepts, product lineages, and competencies. It is interesting to observe how product concepts and organizational change fertilized each other in this case. Compared to other R&D models (Roussel, Saad, & Erickson, 1991; Myers & Rosenbloom, 1996), this innovation laboratory had a completely different agenda, activity, and work division, as this new capability could not be obtained within standard organization design models. It was not a combination of existing models, as would be predicted by contingency theory. It was not the result of a large reengineering project, nor was it is a simple change process driven only by the alignment of strategy and structure. Of course, one can find in this story partial features of all these standard accounts, but this is a new organization design regime that differs from standard models both in its organizational model and its design logic. The organizational model is continuously shaped by new innovation logics. It is not the content of the product that matters but the dynamically changing nature of this content. This dynamic impacted directly the generation of new competencies and the work division in the department.

Shaping Emergent Forms as Strategic Organizing The new organization is both emergent and shaped by the concepts of car glazing functions and competencies. It is also both unknown and shaped by the organized deviance allowed to different groups exploring an expanding problem space. Yet, the process is a managed one, in the sense that we can think of management as a design process where the unknown is shaped to generate new knowledge and new unknowns. We can also think of management as a design process where emergent activities are shaped by organized deviance to support their power of expansion. Crucially, this requires more than just the combination of existing forms. Strategic management as design, in our perspective, becomes, quintessentially, a discourse about the management of discovery – an expansion of previous organizational knowledge that is not a simple deduction. The impact of such discovery means a revision of some traditional assumptions about strategic management and organization. It requires a new logic of the management of the unknown and the emergent (Hatchuel &

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Le Masson, 2007). We conceive desired and unknown things without being able to define them; then we actively look for knowledge that helps to define these unknown things until we can give them some social and artifactual existence. Therefore, emergent and intentional features shaping these things are interdependent and cogenerated through C-K expansions. If this is accepted, the word ‘‘organization’’ enters the realm of such things like ‘‘numbers’’ and ‘‘chairs,’’ which are expandable by innovative design. We know a lot about chairs or numbers, yet we will always be able to design new unexpected numbers or chairs. Taking into account the contemporary effort to create new knowledge, as well as our attempts to enforce new social or human responsibilities and values, it is a clear prediction of C-K theory that we will witness a large variety of surprising new organizations.

Self: Human Agents as Natural Designers that Need an ‘‘Aesthetics of Existence’’ We agree with Simon (Simon & Kulkarni, 1989) that human agents are limited decision makers but good natural designers (Hatchuel, 2001). Human beings have an apparently limitless capacity, in the right circumstances, to create stories, concepts, accounts, fictions, and discourse. Our design ability can be improved by three main processes: 1. Improving concept expandability: experimentation and learning to manipulate concepts as a means of generating new perceptions. 2. Designing new learning devices: new prototyping, virtual mock-ups, computer-aided and video softwares. 3. Looking for new forms of social interaction in design: for example, involving users and/or other stakeholders in the design process. The concepts, ‘‘decision maker’’ and ‘‘decision-making’’ have been too uncritically accepted as the central components of strategy. From the decision-making, ‘‘economizing’’ (Williamson, 1991) perspective, imperfect competition and agency issues are major strategy problems. From our design and ‘‘expansion’’ perspective, they are not merely frictions but useful fictions, inevitable and acceptable parts of a ‘‘messy’’ process that, if skilfully managed, add to rather than inhibit value creation. We need to focus more on the rationality of conception in which the key aspect is the genesis of a ‘‘thing’’ which does not belong to existing forms of knowledge or ways of knowing in them minds either of those leading the conception of new ideas or those whose needs/desires the ideas are intended to serve.

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The rationality of innovative design also regenerates the view of the self. The tyranny of short-term results and compulsive optimization can be tempered. Staff and personnel can experiment, and they also take into account their own aesthetics of existence (Foucault, 1997). Business is no longer a colonizing force that takes over the whole life-world. It now reappears as a condition of survival. Creation and self-realization through the shaping of new desirable worlds are the prime movers for selfengagement in and through work. Through this kind of design theory, we also understand how new human values contribute to innovative organization design. If we consider that ‘‘a socially responsible corporation’’ is a new concept, as defined in C-K terms, this proposition is a challenge for those who desire CSR. What needs to be done by those who try to create CSR? They have to activate new knowledge and to attempt to expand the initial concept. The more we desire ambitious humanistic values, the more we have to enter a design-oriented innovation strategy. This is well confirmed by recent empirical research about how contemporary companies have developed CSR strategies (Aggeri, Pezet, Abrassart, & Acquier, 2006) that, we would tentatively suggest, constitute one of the leading (as opposed to lagging) indicators of the struggle to conceptualize a new management ethos.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In Foucaultian terms, we live at a particular moment, with a particular historical ontology, which sets limits to the constitution of management and to the management of self. In Butler’s appropriation of Foucaultian terms (2005, p. 14), the historical moment is defined in terms of ‘‘discursive regimes’’ and ‘‘modes of attending to the self.’’ The lesson of Foucault is that there co-exist, with the accepted constitution of particular moments, alternative possible configurations, opportunities for creating new ‘‘truths,’’ and new ways of being. An alternative view of strategic management is well expressed by Yoo et al. (2006), writing about Frank Gehry and Gehry Partners as a paradigm case for competition in a new economy, when they argue that the future of our economy is dependent on creating products and services that never existed before. Our sense is that the conversation of strategic management is evolving and that the current economic crisis might provide an important opportunity for its reframing. We foresee an opportunity for disrupting, in a positive and creative way, the institutionalized discourse of strategic management that Suominen and Mantere (2010) discuss. Like them, we are interested in the art

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and practice of managers in designing strategy and in contributing to a new interpretive discourse that enables us to manage our history better (Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010). In the wake of heightened ambiguity and global uncertainty the strategic management field is in search of new approaches for managing for sustainable success, innovation, and knowledge. In the face of criticisms about the limits of reactive approaches to environmental change (e.g., positioning and dynamic capabilities approaches to strategic management) firms have been urged to proactively approach uncertainty by developing ‘‘shaping strategies’’ designed to transform industries and markets by redefining the basis of competition (Hamel & Prahalad, 1991; Kim & Mauborgne, 1997; Hagel, Seely Brown, & Davison, 2008). ‘‘Construction’’ approaches to strategic management (Wiltbank, Dew, Reed, & Sarasvathy, 2006) advocate more proactive processes of strategic management and change. Construction strategies are deliberate attempts to make the environment endogenous (Wiltbank et al., 2006) and build on assumptions about the power of resources married to strategic innovation to enable firms to shape their destinies in more uncertain contexts (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990; Kim & Mauborgne, 1997). Strategic thinking, like design, is abductive, being future focused and inventive (Liedtka, 2000). Such nonpredictive strategy aims to leverage stakeholder imagination to come up with new market opportunities (Wiltbank et al., 2006). The emphasis on imagination in strategic management is captured in concepts such as ‘‘corporate imagination’’ (Hamel & Prahalad, 1991) and ‘‘blue ocean strategy’’ (Kim & Mauborgne, 1997). In strategic management imagination and creativity are vital in terms of conceptualizing possible futures supported by techniques such as scenario planning (Van der Heijden, 2005). The theoretical challenge is to meld these different approaches into a new strategy discourse of the kind that we have developed in this paper. We have argued that great designers know that concepts are not created in a vacuum and, again, there are emerging parallels with strategic management thinking. Design thinking and strategic thinking are both ‘‘dialectical’’ in that in working toward new solutions, strategies and futures designers and managers have to mediate the tension between real constraints in the environment, the contingencies of unknowable outcomes and possibilities of what could be (Liedtka, 2000). Such an approach to navigating toward the future requires both imagination and contextual knowledge and understanding. Contemporary design theory offers a new perspective by emphasizing the role on desirable yet undecidable concepts in the production of knowledge, as well as the importance of collaborative empowerment, and self- development in such navigating processes. It is an

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empirical question, the extent to which the discourse of innovative design is generalizable to new competitive environments. We have suggested that it may be particularly appropriate to the post-crisis economic environment, but we need further studies to see how appropriate it is beyond creative industries and innovation-intensive R&D labs. Strategic management has always sought wider contextual understanding, being interdisciplinary and eclectic in its origins with roots in economics, psychology, and sociology (Thomas, 2007). In recent years the limitations of the economic model of strategy have become more apparent. We have witnessed a rise in interest in behavioral approaches to strategic management as captured in, for example, the cognitive school with its emphasis on the role of psychology in strategizing; the knowledge perspective with its emphasis on power, politics, and institutional issues; the network perspective with its emphasis on competitive relations and the power of cooperation (Thomas, 2007; Jenkins, Ambrosini, & Collier, 2007). These debates suggest an attempt to put people and their perceptions, motivations, values and complexity back into strategic management. The challenge is to elaborate strategic management as an integrative practice that aims to be inclusive, human-centred, and empathic in seeking co-created solutions to problems. The discourse of innovative design extends these views by introducing practices from the fields of art, humanities, and scientific discovery. These share the common requirement that integrative practices allow for organized deviance, breakthrough concepts, and respect of aesthetics of existence that are so essential to self-development. There is pioneering work that shows how radically new concepts are used to generate strategic fields of innovation in a variety of industries, such as pharmaceuticals (Elmquist & Segrestin, 2007). Here ‘‘deviant,’’ but protected, teams make real commercial breakthroughs, but their role is also to stimulate all the standard projects of the company. Or, put another way, ‘‘good designs succeed by persuading, and great designs by inspiring’’ (Liedtka, 2000, p. 28). Our aim is to broaden debates about strategy. However, without a solid theoretical basis, how can we expect to generate a new discourse of strategy that is closer to its essence? We offer an alternative discourse of strategic management built on two theoretical grounds: on the one hand, Foucault’s framework on knowledge, power, and self, which captures the logics of collective normativity and meaning; on the other hand, contemporary design theory, which has deep roots in nonstandard views of logic (Kazakci & Hatchuel, 2009), and captures how we can think and maintain the conversation when we are collectively facing desirable unknowns. We hope to provoke further research and debate about how design thinking may

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contribute to the enrichment of strategic management theory practice in an age of genuine physical resource constraints, requiring both innovative business models and product/service solutions as never before.

NOTE 1. C-K theory has received growing interest in the design community and in the field of innovation management. From a philosophical and analytical point of view, recent findings confirm that the logic of C-K theory is grounded in what is called ‘‘generic reasoning’’ in modern set theory as well as linking with creative issues in intuitionistic mathematics (Kazakci & Hatchuel, 2009). As a strategic framework, it has been used in different innovative design contexts: in the pharmaceutical industry (Elmquist & Segrestin, 2007), in the field of architecture and engineering (Zeiler & Savanovic, 2009), and in the study of scientific discovery. The paper (Reich, Shai, Hatchuel, & Subrahamanian, 2009) exploring these issues received the outstanding paper award at the 2009 international conference of the Design Society.

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TAKING THE LINGUISTIC TURN SERIOUSLY: STRATEGY AS A MULTIFACETED AND INTERDISCURSIVE PHENOMENON Eero Vaara ABSTRACT Although we have seen a proliferation of studies examining the discursive aspects of strategy, the full potential of the linguistic turn has not yet been realized. This paper argues for a multifaceted interdiscursive approach that can help to go beyond simplistic views on strategy as unified discourse and pave the way for new research efforts. At the metalevel, it is important to focus attention on struggles over competing conceptions of strategy in this body of knowledge. At the mesolevel it is interesting to examine alternative strategy narratives to better understand the polyphony and dialogicality in organizational strategizing. At the microlevel, it is useful to reflect on the rhetorical tactics and skills that are used in strategy conversations to promote or resist specific views. This paper calls for new focused analyses at these different levels of analysis, but also for studies of the processes linking these levels.

The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 29–50 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027005

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INTRODUCTION We have seen an increasing academic interest in the discursive aspects of strategy and strategizing (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Barry & Elmes, 1997; Oakes, Townley, & Cooper, 1998; Heracleous & Barrett, 2001; Mantere & Vaara, 2008; Phillips, Sewell, & Jaynes, 2008). This interest should be understood as a part of a more general linguistic turn in social sciences that has led to the emergence of various discursive theories and analyses of social and societal phenomena (van Dijk, 1997). Many if not most of the discursiveoriented studies on strategy have been conducted to better understand the microlevel activities and practices linked with strategizing (Barry & Elmes, 1997; Hardy, Palmer, & Phillips, 2000; Samra-Fredericks, 2003). Accordingly, such discursive studies have concentrated on the central role of linguistic practices among other social practices in strategy (Jarzabkowski, 2005). However, discursive analyses have also been undertaken to examine strategy from a critical angle, especially to point out that strategy brings with it and creates new understandings, regimes of truth, and power positions (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Levy, Alvesson, & Willmott, 2003). This leads to the question of whether or not this linguistic turn in strategy research represents an epistemological shift in the sense of creating new avenues for future research and novel research questions. My purpose in this paper is to argue that the full potential of the linguistic turn has not yet been realized. I will claim that if we take the potential of discursive analysis in its various forms seriously, we will be able to broaden and deepen our understanding of strategy as an important social and societal phenomena as well as the organizational activities and practices that are associated with it. There seems to be a great deal of confusion around what a discursive perspective on strategy may mean. This confusion is partly explained by the fact that discursive studies are still rare in this field and in many ways seem to challenge our traditional ways of thinking about strategy and strategy research. However, this confusion is also related to the variety of approaches and methods that are available when conducting discourse analysis. In fact, discourse analysis can probably best be described as an interdisciplinary research approach that nowadays encompasses several kinds of methodologies developed by philosophers, sociologists, communication students, linguists, and others, ranging from macrolevel ideological analyses to the study of linguistic microprocesses and functions (van Dijk, 1997). Potter and Wetherell (1987) have famously stated that there can be two textbooks on discourse analysis with practically no overlap.

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In the following, I will follow a critical organizational discourse perspective that draws from critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA is a discourse analytic methodology that examines the linguistic aspects (language use in speech and writing) of the social construction of reality from a critical perspective (Fairclough, 1989, 2003; Wodak, 2004). This perspective sees discourses as part of social practice. Hence, this approach, unlike some relativistic perspectives, provides means to examine discursive practices without lapsing into an assumption that everything is discourse. Furthermore, this approach provides a framework within which various methods of discourse analysis can be integrated. Thus, it allows us to consider different facets and aspects of strategy discourse as well as accommodate different methods. While many discursive analyses tend to concentrate on static structures, especially some recent critical discourse analyses provide openings where the focus is on the processes at play (Fairclough, 2005). This is important to better understand how discourses may change and be used by actors in different contexts. Critical and other discursive scholars often concentrate on specific discourses, and their characteristics and implications. This involves the risk that complexity, ambiguity, and polyphony in strategy discourses are overlooked. Hence, my intention is to adopt an interdiscursive perspective to underscore that strategy discourses in their various forms are often linked with other ones. I will also emphasize that there frequently are alternative and competing strategy discourses the interplay of which is one of the most important issues to advance analysis of strategy discourse. The result may be shown in dialogicality (Bakhtin, 1981) where different discourses, narratives, and forms of argument may coexist, but can also lead to more salient struggles between competing discourses (Fairclough, 1989) and ideologies (van Dijk, 1998). In this chapter, I will outline a multifaceted view on strategy discourse that allows us to examine interdiscursivity at three levels of analysis. At the metalevel, one of the fundamental issues is the complexity of strategy as a body of knowledge. In particular, I argue that it is important to focus attention on struggles over different conceptions of strategy. At the mesolevel, it is useful to extend our understanding of the narratives of organizational strategy. In particular, by focusing on various alternative narratives, one can better understand the polyphony and dialogicality in organizational strategizing. At the microlevel, I will reflect on the rhetorical skills and tactics that are used in strategy conversations to promote or resist specific views. I will also claim that not only do actors influence the conversations by their rhetorical moves, but also discursive practices have power over them. Finally, I will conclude by presenting directions for future research.

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STRATEGY AS MULTIFACETED DISCOURSE To view organizations and management as discursively constructed has become increasingly popular. While there is no clear consensus on what such discursive construction means and while incommensurabilities between different methodologies have been critically discussed (Alvesson & Ka¨rreman, 2000; Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004; Boje, 2008), a discursive approach usually implies a social constructionist ontology and epistemology that defies naı¨ ve realist views on organizations somehow existing ‘‘out there.’’ This approach thus allows one to examine the processes in and through which organizational and managerial phenomena are reproduced and transformed, how specific organizations and management practices are discursively constructed, and how microlevel linguistic processes such as conversations or rhetoric are the core of organizational and managerial activity. It is thus no wonder that strategy scholars have applied discursive perspectives to better understand strategy processes and strategic practices. Strategy has been examined from poststructuralist and postmodern perspectives to emphasize the ideological and hegemonic implications of this discourse and practice (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Levy et al., 2003; Grandy & Mills, 2004; Seidl, 2007). Strategy has also been seen as a narrative (Barry & Elmes, 1997; Dunford & Jones, 2000) or genre (Boje, 2008), the characteristics of which may vary depending on the narrator and context. Others have focused on the legitimation of strategic ideas to explain why some ideas ‘‘take on’’ (Hardy et al., 2000) or the way in which specific strategic forms and moves are discursively justified (Vaara, Kleymann, & Seristo¨, 2004). Conversations about strategy have been analyzed (Westley, 1990; Samra-Fredericks, 2003) as well as the rhetorical processes of persuasion and convincing (Samra-Fredericks, 2004). Some analyses have focused on the metaphoric construction of strategy (Statler, Jacobs, & Roos, 2008). Furthermore, strategy texts have themselves become objects of analysis (Hodge & Coronado, 2006; Phillips et al., 2008; Pa¨lli, Vaara, & Sorsa, 2009). In addition, sensemaking studies have made the point that language plays a major role in the cognitive and social construction of strategy (Rouleau, 2005; Balogun & Johnson, 2004). Studies of practices of strategizing such as strategic planning meetings (Jarzabkowski & Seidl, 2008) and the tools and methods of strategy (Whittington, 2004) have concluded that language plays a key role in contemporary strategy. Furthermore, scholars have also used a discursive lens to examine power effects (Samra-Fredericks, 2005), promotion of specific ideas and projects (Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008),

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ideological change (Oakes et al., 1998), and inclusion and exclusion (Mantere & Vaara, 2008). This proliferation of research has demonstrated the richness and potential of discursive approaches to strategy. At the same time, it shows a need to systematize and integrate various approaches to create an overview of what strategy discourse can entail. In the following, I will make the case for a multifaceted view on strategy discourse that enables us to deepen our understanding of strategy as well as to create new research questions at specific levels of analysis. This will be a crude model as I will only focus on three particularly important and salient levels of analysis that have relevance for research on strategy: strategy as body of knowledge, strategy as organizational narrative, and strategy as rhetoric in conversation. Fig. 1 provides a summary of this view. First, it is useful and important to consider strategy as a body of knowledge (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Levy et al., 2003). This metalevel strategy discourse serves as the basis for any discussions around strategy – whether

Macro-level: Strategy as body of knowledge: Historically constituted discursive elements

Embedded in /

Reproduces/

draws from

transforms

Meso-level: Strategy as narrative: Narrative constructions in specific organizations

Embedded in /

Reproduces/

draws from

transforms

Micro-level: Strategy as conversation: Rhetorical speech acts

Fig. 1.

Strategy as Multifaceted Discourse.

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we are aware of this linkage or not. It is this broad body of knowledge that contains the key ideas, concepts, practices, methods, etc. around strategy in contemporary society. This discourse is spread in forms such as the academic, professional, and more popular literature, or in the media (Whittington, 2006). This often implies the reproduction of commonly held views, but may at times also involve discursive moves that give birth to alternative views (Moldoveanu, 2009). Second, at the meso or organizational level, there are particular discourse formations such as strategy narratives (Barry & Elmes, 1997; Boje, 2008). These discourse formations can be multiple, and their nature obviously depends greatly on the socio-cultural and organizational context. These organizational narratives reflect more general contemporary discourses around strategy, but have their specific characteristics. Some of these organization-specific narratives may also acquire a status as ‘‘official’’ strategies, for example, in the organization’s strategy documents or project plans. It is important to note that there may also be other narratives, and that the some of the alternative stories may be loosely coupled with or even question the ‘‘official’’ strategies. Third, at the microlevel, one is then dealing with everyday social interaction about strategy (Samra-Fredericks, 2003, 2005). It is through the actual conversations between people that, for example, the organizational strategy narratives are talked into being. These discussions include all kinds of interactions in both formal and informal arenas. Naturally, these discussions do not always have to correspond to the most classical face-toface meetings, but can include, for example, chats, emails, or other specific interaction modes. Importantly, in these discussions, broader ideas and organization-specific narratives can also be contested. It is important to emphasize that these three facets are interlinked in various ways. From a top-down perspective, we are dealing with a metadiscourse, the essential ideas and ideological assumptions of which tend to form the basis for organizational discourses about strategy. These organizational level discourses such as narratives, in turn, tend to greatly influence any discussion about strategy in a specific organizational context. For example, in the body of knowledge, conventional institutionalized views on strategy often involve militaristic conceptions where the role of top managers is to lead and others are to follow the leaders without questioning their authority (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Mantere & Vaara, 2008; see also Suominen & Mantere, 2010). In organizational discourses, such conceptions may be used to construct heroic future-oriented narratives about conquests led by specific top managers. In microlevel conversations,

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these views may then be actualized in terms that portray strategy as ‘‘warfare’’ or ‘‘battle’’ where the top managers act as ‘‘commanders’’ and the ‘‘troops’’ or ‘‘men in the field’’ implement the strategies (Mantere & Vaara, 2008; Suominen & Mantere, 2010). From a bottom-up perspective, it is the microlevel conversations that give life to the organizational-level discourses such as narratives of strategy. These organizational-level discourses, in turn, when taken across various organizations, feed back to and often reify the metalevel ideas and the ideological elements in this body of knowledge. To continue with the previous example, if the microlevel conversations use terms such as ‘‘commanders’’ or ‘‘men in the field,’’ this usage reproduces specific narratives in the organization in question and more generally managerial heroism and masculine values in strategy (Knights & Morgan, 1991). However, if the discussions turn to use other kinds of terms to conceptualize strategy, for example, emphasizing ‘‘collaboration,’’ ‘‘networking,’’ ‘‘co-creation,’’ or ‘‘search for meaning,’’ they provide alternatives to the militaristic narratives and broader conceptions of strategy. Having established the multifaceted nature of strategy discourse, it is important to focus attention on the complexity and dynamics of this discourse and how they are manifested at the three levels of analysis. Rather than providing an overarching framework or a review of the various approaches that can be useful, I will in the following focus on three central questions: struggles over different conceptions of strategy in the body of knowledge around strategy, alternative and competing narratives of organizational strategy, and rhetorical tactics and skills at the microlevel.

STRATEGY AS BODY OF KNOWLEDGE: DISCURSIVE STRUGGLES OVER CONCEPTIONS OF STRATEGY The evolution of strategy discourse as a body of knowledge has become an important topic for strategy scholars. For example, Whittington (2006) has called for more attention on the institutionalization of strategy as discipline, including its academic, professional, and popular versions. More critical scholars have in turn focused on the ideological underpinnings and implications of strategy as a body of knowledge (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Lilley, 2001; Levy et al., 2003; Grandy & Mills, 2004; Hatchuel, Starkey, Tempest, & Le Masson, 2010). In their landmark analysis, Knights and Morgan (1991) took a Foucauldian genealogical approach to strategy

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discourse. They traced the birth of this discourse to the development of multinational corporations after the Second World War. They argued that the evolution of this discourse has not been a ‘‘necessity’’ but a result of a series of historical developments. They maintained that this discourse has effects on the organizational actors involved in strategy. In particular, they claimed that strategy discourse constitutes subjectivities for organizational members who secure their sense of reality by participation in this discourse. Levy et al. (2003) adopted a Gramscian perspective on strategy discourse. According to this view, strategy is an inherently ideological discourse that reproduces power structures. By participating in strategy discourse, organizational actors reconstruct hierarchies without necessarily being aware of such construction. Grandy and Mills (2004) in turn viewed strategy as a simulation and simulacra. They maintained that strategy discourse has attained a level of presentation that is hyperreal. According to this view, strategy discourse and its various models and practices have started to live a life of their own that is disconnected from other organizational reality. Interestingly for our purposes, by drawing on Wittgenstein, Lyotard, and Luhmann, Seidl (2007) suggested that strategy should not be conceptualized as a unified body but rather as fragmented into a multitude of (relatively) autonomous discourses. These and other analyses have elucidated the importance of analyzing how and why strategy discourse evolves and spreads. However, there is more to be studied in this area. A key issue is to develop our understanding of interdiscursive nature of this body of knowledge. The roots of military strategy can be traced as far back as the Chinese Sun Tzu or the ancient Greek that introduced key terms such as ‘‘strategy’’ and ‘‘tactic.’’ Thereafter, we have seen these and other concepts being used increasingly in organizational strategy, but also how winning and losing, the heroism of leaders, and dramatic maneuvers have become institutionalized values for strategic planning and management in general. This militaristic root may also be one of the key reasons for the perceived masculinity of strategy discourse (Knights & Morgan, 1991). Related to the ideals of scientific management, strategy discourse is also characterized by ‘‘scienticity’’ and usually preoccupation with ‘‘measurement’’ and ‘‘performance.’’ Since the actual emergence of strategy as a distinctive discipline with the development of the modern corporation, strategy discourse has also been intimately linked with neo-liberal capitalist ideology. Free competition in different markets and the attempt to maximize return from investment have become institutionalized objectives not only for business, but also other organizations that have adopted strategy as discourse and praxis.

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Moreover, contemporary strategy is also characterized by spirituality, shown for example in the frequent use of concepts such as ‘‘vision’’ or ‘‘mission.’’ These and other discourses are interwoven into what we most often treat as a unified strategy discourse without focusing attention on the ways in which such elements reproduce and naturalize specific ideas and ideological assumptions (see also Hatchuel et al., 2010; Suominen & Mantere, 2010). These different conceptions of strategy may coexist in a dialogical relationship where they at best complement each other. However, it is also possible to distinguish struggles between competing views on strategy, which may have major implications on the way strategy is practiced. For example, with reference to the previous examples, it makes a huge difference whether the strategy process is conceptualized as a militaristic exercise or a collective search for new meaning. In a rare analysis of such competing conceptions, Mantere and Vaara (2008) distinguished three central discourses that seemed to systematically impede participation in strategy work: ‘‘mystification’’ (the obfuscation of organizational decisions through various discursive means), ‘‘disciplining’’ (use of disciplininary techniques to constrain action), and ‘‘technologization’’ (imposing a technological system to govern the activities of individuals as ‘‘resources’’). At the same time, they also identified three discourses that explicitly promoted participation: ‘‘selfactualization’’ (discourse that focuses attention on the ability of people as individuals to outline and define objectives for themselves in strategy processes), ‘‘dialogization’’ (discourse integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches to strategizing), and ‘‘concretization’’ (discourse that seeks to establish clear processes and practices in and through strategizing). Such analysis helps to understand how nonparticipatory approaches are legitimated and naturalized in organizational contexts, but also how alternative discourses may be mobilized to promote participation. Attention should be focused on these discursive struggles and how they are played out in various arenas. In the academic arena, it is interesting to examine the ways in which specific ideas are legitimated and how certain theories win or lose ground. For example, Moldoveanu (2009) has elaborated on discursive moves through which such struggles are fought. He also emphasized that many academic discussions may be characterized by discursive ‘‘cohabitation’’ where alternative views may coexist without wide awareness of the contradictions that they involve. Along these lines, it is important to understand that contemporary theories of strategy involve complexities, ambiguities, and conflicts. This may at best be a sign of fruitful dialogue and at worst an obstacle for future theory building.

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Crucially, different theories bring with them different assumptions about the nature of strategy and strategizing. It is no trivial matter whether the prevailing conceptions of strategy echo rationalistic models or include wider cultural and political understandings of actorhood, whether they conceptualize strategy as top management-led activity or organizational process, or whether theories and models of strategy focus on financial performance alone or involve stakeholder thinking or ethical considerations. The popular discussions about management in general and strategy in particular may have an even more powerful impact on the practice and praxis of strategizing (Whittington, 2006). That is, the prevailing models of strategy that are diffused through various channels provide the basis for common wisdom about strategy. In today’s society, it is vital to emphasize the role of the media in such diffusion. In short, media both reflects and reproduces commonly held conceptions, and thus exercises significant power in contemporary society (Fairclough, 1995). This reproduction may often pass unnoticed, unless one focuses attention on the words and terminology that is being used. Such is the case also with discussions about management and strategy that easily involve terms and concepts, all connotations or ideological implications of which are rarely reflected upon. Thus, the struggles over alternative conceptions of strategy require careful discursive analysis. Such analysis is crucial to be able to better understand whether how and why models of strategy process promote top-down control or dialogue, inclusion or exclusion, masculine values or equality, cultural imperialism or diversity.

STRATEGY AS NARRATIVE: ALTERNATIVE AND COMPETING NARRATIVES IN ORGANIZATIONS Narrative analysis provides another intriguing avenue for strategy research (Gabriel, 2000; Czarniawska, 2004; Boje, 2001). Although it is widely recognized that strategizing is to a great extent storytelling, explicit analyses of strategy narratives or strategic storytelling are few. An early analysis is provided by Broms and Gahmberg (1983), who showed how organizational strategizing can be seen as autocommunication based on storytelling; that is, strategy is to a large extent ritualized repetition of specific narratives of organizational identity. In their landmark analysis, Barry and Elmes (1997) emphasized the fictive nature of the narratives (ibid., p. 6): ‘‘As authors of fiction, strategists are subject to the same basic challenge facing other

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fictionalist writers: how to develop an emerging compelling account, one that readers can willingly buy into and implement. Any story that the strategist tells is but one of many competing alternatives woven from a vast array of possible characterizations, plot lines, and themes.’’ By drawing on Shlovsky, they pointed out that any compelling narrative has to achieve two fundamental objectives: credibility (or believability) and defamiliarization (or novelty). Materiality, voice, perspective, ordering, setting, and readership targeting are among the key devices used to enhance credibility. As to novelty, various strategic frameworks succeed one another because ‘‘readers have shifting preferences and attention spans’’ (ibid., p. 11). The narrative types that are used include epic (dramatic, heroic tales), technofuturist (complex and detailed ‘‘quasi-scientific’’ texts), and purist (defamiliarizing, almost atemporal stories) narratives. Recently, Boje (2008) proposed that strategy literature provides specific bases for the construction of strategy narratives. He distinguished Greek romantic, everyday, analytic biographic, chivalric, reversal of historical realism, clown-rogue-fool, Rabelaisian purge, basis for Rabelaisian, idyllic, and castle room as alternative forms of strategy narratives. Drawing from Bakhtin (1981, 1984), he speaks of ‘‘chronotopes’’ as specific articulations of narrative in time and space. To date, we have, however, seen few empirical analyses that take a narrative perspective on strategy. In a rare example, Dunford and Jones (2000) analyzed the way organizational changes were given sense to in three organizations. The stories differed, but they all included specific anchors through which meanings were given to the past, present, and future. Boje’s analysis highlights the polyphonic view on strategy stories, that is, strategy is and should be told in multiple voices and through multiple stories. Boje also provides another interesting concept ‘‘antenarrative’’ (Boje, 2001, 2008) that can be understood as a fragment of discourse that may or may not reproduce or create meanings in a given context. This view differs from classical literary narrative analysis in the sense that antenarratives are articulations that exist before established narratives that can be analyzed retrospectively (Boje, 2001). Antenarratives are also ‘‘bets’’ in the sense that when articulated it is not known whether they would have any impact on organizations (Boje, 2008). It is interesting to consider organizational strategizing as involving multiple alternative antenarratives that provide alternative and competing bases for the organization’s strategy. Some of these antenarratives then ‘‘take on,’’ that is, make sense to others (Hardy et al., 2000). These antenarratives thus become ‘‘living stories’’ (Boje, 2008) that are spread in organizational storytelling. They turn to institutionalized ways of making

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sense of and giving sense to strategy. Over time, they may also become important ‘‘sediments’’ of organizational identity (Czarniawska, 2004). Although only some strategy narratives – particular constructions of objectives in time and space – gain such privileged status, there are usually alternatives to the ‘‘official strategy narratives.’’ However, these competing versions are often expressed in the form of other, often unconventional genres. That is, the official epic or romantic strategies are being complemented and often challenged by tragic, comic, ironic, cynical, or even carnivalistic tales. In Bakhtin’s terms, this means ‘‘dialogicality’’ – the fact that specific types of narratives tend to coexist in particular ways (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986; Hazen, 1993; Boje, 2008). This coexistence is, however, not arbitrary, but different strategy narratives give voices to different social actors and serve different social functions. Thus, various strategy narratives may complement each other in organizational strategizing as well as compete in terms of providing alternatives for the ‘‘official’’ strategy. This interaction may have positive or negative implications for the organization in question. In the best cases, a multiplicity of narratives increases discussion about strategic choices and gives voice to people that may easily be marginalized in organizational decision-making. In the worst cases, such polyphony adds to chaos, increases internal politics, augments conflicts, and leads to an inability to reach consensus on future direction. Thus, the point is not that polyphony would always be desirable, but that researchers and practitioners should acknowledge the fact that there usually are various and distinctively different strategy narratives around organizations. The challenge for future research then is to examine more closely such strategic storytelling and to map out various alternative stories, their construction, and how they may gain an institutionalized status over time. Furthermore, such analysis can and should focus on narrative tactics and skills of the managers and other organizational members – an issue which is intimately linked with the topic of the next section.

STRATEGY AS CONVERSATION: RHETORICAL TACTICS AND SKILLS TO PROMOTE OR RESIST SPECIFIC IDEAS Rhetorical analysis provides yet another fruitful perspective on strategy and strategizing. Prior studies on strategy discourse have highlighted the importance of rhetoric in strategy. In particular, Samra-Fredericks (2003, 2004) has

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taken a conversation analysis perspective on strategy talk. Her work has been distinctively ethnographic in orientation and used methods such as conversation analysis. Central in this approach that she calls ‘‘lived experience’’ are the microlevel processes, practices, and functions that constitute conceptions of strategy and organizational relationships in social interaction. In her analysis, she has focused on rhetorical skills that strategists use to persuade and convince others – and to construct identity as strategists. These include the ability to speak forms of knowledge, mitigate and observe the protocols of human interaction, question and query, display appropriate emotion, deploy metaphors, and put history to ‘‘work.’’ The essential point in such analysis is that it is through mundane speech acts and various microlevel practices that particular ideas are promoted and others downplayed, and specific voices heard or marginalized. She (Samra-Fredericks, 2005) has later shown that Habermas’ theory of communicative action and ethnomethodological theories can pave the way for fine-grained analysis of the everyday interactional constitution of organizational power relations in strategizing. The New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969) focuses on various forms of persuasion and convincing. This theory can be linked with critical discourse analysis in the sense that it not only deals with classical rhetorical tactics but also focuses attention on discourse and its impact on rhetoric. Management scholars have applied The New Rhetoric in various topic areas (Cheney, Christensen, Conrad, & Lair, 2004; Sillince, 2005; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). For example, Suddaby and Greenwood (2005) developed a rhetorical perspective on legitimation. They identified the following kinds of tactics in their analysis of institutional change: ontological (rhetoric based on premises on what can or cannot exist or coexist), historical (appeals to history and tradition), teleological (divine purpose or final cause), cosmological (emphasis on inevitability), and valuebased theorizations (appeals to wider belief systems). Rhetorical activity is at the center of organizational strategizing both in the case of more formal settings such as strategic planning meetings (Jarzabkowski & Seidl, 2008) and more informal encounters such as everyday discussions (Samra-Fredericks, 2003). However, in several ways our understanding of the microlevel rhetorical tactics still is limited. Future studies could focus on the construction of authority positions in specific settings, the rhetorical tactics used, as well as how particular available discourse enable and constrain strategizing. First, participants are empowered to speak and act when they have an authority position. In conversations, participants adopt and/or are assigned specific positions depending on the context and topic discussed. How this occurs depends, for

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example, on one’s own experiences, participants’ experiences, and shared cultural knowledge. In strategic planning meetings, it is particularly important to focus on the prerequisites of access that enable or restrict participation in conversation. Second, strategic planning meetings involve the use of argumentation to persuade and convince others. These rhetorical tactics deal with values, assumptions, motivations, interests, and esthetics and aim at influencing and maintaining mutual understanding. Third, all this strategizing is also greatly influenced by the available discourses that on the one hand provide resources for the actors involved and on the other constrain their conversations by defining what is appropriate and what not. The analysis of rhetoric should not merely focus on the legitimation of specific strategic ideas or initiatives, but also involve analysis of its resistance in strategy conversations. Although this topic has not been studied in great detail in strategy research, studies dealing with other issues help us to better understand the dynamics involved (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1993; Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2008; Fleming & Spicer, 2003; Thomas & Davies, 2005). In a rare analysis of legitimation and resistance in strategic development, Laine and Vaara (2007) illustrated how corporate management’s strategy discourse may be resisted. In their study, middle managers in a business unit initiated an alternative strategy discourse to maintain their degrees of freedom, and project engineers distanced themselves from strategy to protect their identity. However, to my knowledge, we lack studies examining the tactics of resistance at the conversational microlevel, which can thus be seen as a major challenge for future research. Such analysis can be complemented with reflection on the rhetorical and discursive skills that characterize successful strategists. Drawing from Bourdieu (1982), it is possible to think that knowledge of strategic vocabulary and skills to use this knowledge in conversations are important dispositions of Homo Strategicus, that is, the successful strategist. Such knowledge and skills provide both cultural and symbolic capital that distinguishes experts from others that lack such capital. By mobilizing the most fashionable strategy rhetoric, decision makers can win the support of different stakeholders and legitimate their own power position. In turn, an inability to master the contemporary strategy rhetoric may be seen as a sign of lack of knowledge or sheer incompetence. This is closely related to the technologization (Fairclough, 1997) of strategy discourse, which leads to increasing complexity and even mystification. This implies that not all people are able to follow and understand strategy discourse, to say nothing of successfully participating in it. From a critical perspective, a key part of the value of management education is

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probably learning to master strategy discourse and its most fashionable versions. MBA programs are probably the best (or the worst) examples of how specific concepts, case examples, and legitimate argumentation strategies are woven into management education. Those who cannot understand or participate in strategy discourse are in a completely different position. For them, strategy discourse may have no meaning whatsoever. These are cases of real alienation. However, even worse are probably situations where the powerful strategy discourse is seen as destructive or derisory. For example, the discourses used when justifying layoffs are often likely to produce such unfortunate effects. To what extent specific organizational conversations around strategy include such features is a question requiring context-specific discourse analysis. Apart from uncovering hidden assumptions and reflecting upon problematic consequences, researchers can search for novel and more positive features. For example, discursive practices advocating organization-wide participation and open dialogue are very important vehicles for encouraging participation and in construction of more democratic organizations.

CONCLUSION The starting point of this chapter has been to take the linguistic turn in strategy research seriously. This means that we must focus attention on the ways in which a discursive approach can expand our understanding of strategy and strategizing. In several ways, discursive analyses of strategy have already increased our comprehension of the role of language in strategy process and practice research, and they have also provided new insights and opened up new perspectives on strategy. I have in this chapter argued that one of the most central challenges is to develop a more nuanced understanding of strategy as a multifaceted interdiscursive phenomenon. It is useful to distinguish three interlinked facets of strategy discourse: metalevel body of knowledge, mesolevel organizational strategy narratives, and microlevel conversations with their rhetorical dynamics. To proceed further, it is important to identify and analyze various kinds of dialogical relationships as well as struggles at each level. In particular, through an analysis of the discursive struggles over different conceptions of strategy, we can better understand how organizational decision-making and action are both facilitated and constrained by such conceptions – often in ways that we are not aware of. By analyzing how alternative antenarratives become living stories and finally institutionalized strategies, we can see how

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strategizing is based on dialogicality and polyphony – that often passes unnoticed in more traditional analysis. And by examining the rhetorical work in strategy conversations, we can better comprehend the conditions and techniques that are used to legitimate or resist specific strategic ideas – or impede people from voicing their views. The linkages between the different levels of analysis deserve special attention. This is because it is extremely important to understand the processes through which specific discourses are being formed in relation to higher- or lower-level discursive elements. Consequently, we need analyses that would transcend various levels of analysis when examining specific questions related to, for example, identity, legitimation, resistance, power, or agency (see also Sillince & Simpson, 2010). While some studies have already taken steps into this direction, more work is needed to map out a fuller picture of the various ways in which macrolevel discourses are made used of in organizations and microlevel discourse about strategy. Similarly, there is a need to develop a more elaborate picture of how microlevel social interaction then contributes to the reproduction of specific organizational narratives and broader macrolevel discourses and ideologies. The following are, in my view, central topics for future research precisely because they help us to better understand the interconnectedness of different levels of analysis: production of strategy discourse, strategy texts as genre, recontextualization of strategy discourse, linguistic microelements, and the social functions of strategy discourse. Production of strategy discourse deserves explicit attention, especially because it is closely linked with the more general issues of power. On the one hand, as exemplified above, discourses tend to have a great deal of power over actors as enabling or constraining formations with specific conditions of possibility. On the other hand, as shown above, people are skillful in strategic storytelling and can use all kinds of rhetorical tactics and skills to pursue specific goals. However, there is a great deal that we do not yet know about the actual production of strategy discourse. It is thus paramount to examine in more detail how exactly strategy texts are created; for example, to what extent the prevailing ideas and concepts structure authoring, who gets to participate in the authoring of strategies, and how exactly different and possibly conflicting views are woven into strategy texts. There is also a need to go further in the analysis of strategy texts. Little is known about the nature of strategy texts as a specific genre, which is unfortunate given the crucial role of strategic plans and other documents in organizational strategizing (see, however, Hodge & Coronado, 2006; Pa¨lli et al., 2009). Furthermore, it would be important to examine the textual

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agency (Cooren, 2004) – that is, the power of specific texts – in organizational strategizing. As is well known, strategic plans can become extremely powerful documents in specific settings as they coin specific objectives and priorities – and are then used for various kinds of purposes. They may actually become ‘‘obligatory passage points’’ (Callon, 1986) in organizations; for example, to legitimate or resist specific ideas or actions. From a discursive perspective, it is also important to emphasize that it is the texts that reproduce widely held conceptions and ideological assumptions – or then create new ones. It is also useful to examine the recontextualization of strategy discourse (Bernstein, 1990; Fairclough, 2003; Thomas, 2003). In recontextualization, specific discourses are translated by giving them concrete meanings and creating new ones. Thus, recontextualization is a crucial process to comprehend how exactly the institutionalized conceptions of strategy in the body of knowledge are made use of in organizations and conversations about strategy. Studies on recontextualization can especially help to understand the diffusion of strategy discourse to cultural contexts where it did not originate from. In particular, the spread of American-origined strategic vocabulary and methods to other places has certainly had a big impact on how corporations are managed in these contexts. Such studies can resemble analyses of the diffusion of management practices (Djelic, 1998; Kenney & Florida, 1993) or analyses of management fashions (Abrahamson, 1996), but should zoom in on the specific ways in which strategy acquires new meanings and the ways in which it is used in new contexts. Focus on recontextualization also helps to better understand what happens when strategy discourse travels from corporations to other organizational settings. In recent decades, strategy discourse has moved on to other kinds of organizations such as government organizations, universities, hospitals, schools, kindergartens, or NGOs. A central question is to what extent strategy discourse acquires new forms and meaning when it confronts other decision-making and management traditions in these contexts. Another important issue is whether this recontextualization results in dialogicality or more overt discursive and ideological struggles. Furthermore, it would be interesting to examine the hybridization of strategy discourse, that is, to what extent various discourses come together to form new hybrids and thereby new meaning. Discursive analysis should take the linguistic microelements seriously. I have argued for the importance of examining rhetorical tactics in strategy conversations, but also other microelements deserve attention. For example, the use of pronouns (e.g., expressions of consensus and conflict with ‘‘we’’ or

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‘‘them’’), verbs (e.g., active or passive forms to construct authority and/or assume responsibility), modalities (e.g., to what extent strategy is constructed as a ‘‘must’’ or ‘‘obligation’’), or the use of specific idioms (e.g., words that express images of militarism, masculinity, or managerial hegemony – or new alternative vocabulary) would deepen our understanding of the essence of strategy discourse. It must be emphasized that without a close analysis of such microelements we cannot fully understand how exactly strategy discourse is reproduced or used in novel ways in organizational settings. It is also important to focus more attention on the social functions and usages of strategy discourse. I have already pointed out that strategizing involves legitimation and resistance, and that strategy texts may be used to promote or oppose specific organizational actions. However, it is important to broaden our understanding of the various ways in which strategy discourse may be used in organizations or society. Such analysis can draw from theories such consumption (de Certeau, 1988; Suominen & Mantere, 2010) to better understand the various usages of strategy in organizations. In addition, future analysis can reflect upon issues such as how strategy may be used to legitimate the power positions of managers or consultants, how strategy may be used in management education to promote particular worldviews, or how the media may use strategy for not only informational, but also entertainment purposes. To develop our understanding of strategy processes and practices, it is paramount that we acknowledge the discursive dimensions. This is not to say that everything around strategy is discursive or that discursive perspectives should privileged over other kinds of social analysis with partly overlapping objectives. However, it is important to emphasize that adopting a discursive perspective can highlight new features of strategy and strategizing. Yet, without specifying what kind of discursive approach we are employing or at what level of analysis we are working on, we easily only produce vague and ambiguous research results. What I have outlined can be seen as research agenda that can hopefully inspire more fine-grained theoretical and empirical research. However, there are many other levels of analysis and questions that warrant attention in future research. Future research can take several directions ranging from sociological analysis of strategy discourse to detailed linguistic analysis of linguistic microprocesses and microfunctions. Future studies can analyze various types of textual and discursive material; for instance, strategic plans and other reports, media texts, books about strategy, email exchanges, webbased discussion, conversations in formal strategic planning meetings or

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in more informal settings, other written or spoken texts, as well as other modes of semiosis (e.g., pictures or film clips). While a discursive approach can accommodate various theoretical perspectives and empirical methods, I wish to conclude by emphasizing the need to appreciate the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions in strategy discourse – the specific features we have only just begun to map out.

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Westley, F. R. (1990). Middle managers and strategy – Microdynamics of inclusion. Strategic Management Journal, 11(5), 337–351. Whittington, R. (2004). Strategy after modernism: Recovering practice. European Management Review, 1(1), 62–68. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634. Wodak, R. (2004). Critical discourse analysis. In: C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium & D. Silverman (Eds), Qualitative research practice (pp. 197–213). London: Sage.

TAKING ‘‘STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE’’ ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Paula Jarzabkowski and Sarah Kaplan ABSTRACT An increasingly large group of scholars in Europe have begun to take a practice lens to understanding problems of strategy making in organizations. Strategy-as-practice research is premised on the notion that all social life is constituted within practices, and that practices and practitioners are essential subjects of study. Applying this lens to strategy foregrounds the mundane, everyday work involved in doing strategy. In doing so, it expands our definition of the salient outcomes to be studied in strategic management and provides new perspectives on the mechanisms for producing such outcomes. As strategy-as-practice scholars, we have been puzzled about how much more slowly the ideas in this burgeoning field have traveled from their home in Europe to the United States than have other ideas in strategic management traveled from the United States to Europe. In this chapter, we contribute some thoughts about the development of the strategy-as-practice field and its travels in academia.

The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 51–71 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027006

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INTRODUCTION1 In the late 18th century, Ben Franklin – inventor, diplomat, and publisher – wrote a treatise on the ‘‘conjecture as to the cause why ships in crossing the Atlantic have longer passages in sailing Westward than in sailing Eastward’’ (1838). As strategy-as-practice scholars, we have been puzzled about how much more slowly the ideas in this burgeoning field have traveled from their home in Europe to the United States than have other ideas in strategic management traveled from the United States to Europe. In this chapter, we contribute some thoughts about strategy-as-practice and its travels. An increasingly large group of scholars in Europe have begun to take a practice lens to understanding problems of strategy in organizations. This research is premised on the notion that all social life is brought into being through practices (Bourdieu, 1977; Feldman, 2003; Giddens, 1984; Orlikowski, 2000; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & von Savigny, 2000). Looking at strategy through the practice lens follows moves by organizational scholars to examine such domains as technology, knowledge management, and accounting as organizational practices. This research has shown us, for example, how technologies-in-use (rather than technologies as fixed artifacts) produce organizational outcomes (Orlikowski, 2000), how the competence to do new product development is the product of distributed cognition embedded in everyday practices (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995; Dougherty, 1992, 2004; Orlikowski, 2002), and how accounting is an assemblage of calculative practices developed in one context and then applied in many others (Hopwood & Miller, 1994).The practice lens has been valuable in challenging the structure of causality assumed in many traditional models of organizing and in showing that structures associated with technologies, knowledge, accounting, etc. are not fixed but rather constituted by particular actors in particular circumstances. Through this approach, scholars have unpacked the nature of human agency, bringing to light the potential for transformation as well as for routinization in action. A group of researchers in Europe (primarily the UK, France, Switzerland, and Scandinavia) has recognized that many of these features comprise a means to deepen our understanding of strategic management, providing new ways to examine how strategies are constituted and to explain the heterogeneity of outcomes. The work of these scholars has appeared quite regularly in European2 journals including in a set of special issues3 and is represented in chapters by Antonacopoulou and Balogun (2010) and by Suominen and Mantere (2010). There have also been efforts to create a

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community through a standing working group at the European Group on Organization Studies conferences and a web-based community of which 50 percent are European, mainly from the UK, Scandinavia, and Germany, but also including a fair number of scholars from Canadian institutions. While the United States is well represented in total numbers, coming only second to the UK, its presence is small relative to the scholarly population of the United States. Thus, despite this substantial activity in Europe, strategy-aspractice work has had less rapid uptake in the United States, either in the major conferences or in the U.S.-based journals. In this chapter, we explore the strategy-as-practice lens on strategy making, its development as a scholarly field, and the challenges in getting traction in the U.S. context, including our own experiences with conferences and journals. We conclude with some thoughts about the potential for this approach within the field of strategic management.

STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE DEFINED Practice theory has emerged as one of the primary theoretical bases for conceptualizing the role of action. A practice lens performs an ontological reversal from an understanding of strategy and structure as largely stable entities – comprising specified roles and relationships between actors and activities that are changed from time to time – to an understanding that strategy and structure emerge in the interactive exchanges between actors (Jarzabkowski, Matthiesen, & Feldman, 2009). While some practice scholars focus on bringing action into the theoretical picture, in part to redress the dominance of structural accounts in strategic management theory, practice theory privileges neither action nor structure but the interaction between the two (see, e.g., Orlikowski, 2000). The strategy-as-practice research agenda recommends that novel insights will be gained from studying strategy making as it is socially accomplished through myriad micro-actions, interactions, and negotiations between actors (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Johnson, Melin, & Whittington, 2003; Whittington, 2003, 2006). While such actions and interactions may sometimes seem inconsequential in isolation, taken together they are strategically consequential for the organization. Practices as a Phenomenon Schatzki’s (2000, p. 2) articulation of practices as ‘‘embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared

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practical understandings’’ demonstrates the appeal of a practice turn in strategy: paying attention to the strategists, to their activities, including the materials which they use and the organizational contexts which shape and are shaped by these activities. Consistent with the attention to practitioners, many strategy-as-practice studies have focused on practice phenomena through the activities of the individual strategist. As an example, Sillince and Simpson (2010) drew upon concepts of identity as a means of understanding how practice constructs the actor as a strategist or not. Similarly, Mantere (2005, 2008) studied those strategy practices that enable or disable individuals to surpass their operational responsibilities in influencing strategic issues. Rouleau’s (2005) ethnographic study shows how two middle managers in a clothing company successfully launched a new product by drawing upon different routines and conversations in order to translate the new strategic direction to customers. By contrast, Maitlis and Lawrence (2003) illustrated an orchestra’s failure to develop a strategy, based on the actions of the chief executive and other directors, who interpreted the orchestra’s future artistic direction differently, and engaged in political behavior that impeded the assignment of responsibility and prevented agreement over a strategy. These studies carefully construct the links between individual actors, their actions and interactions, and strategic outcomes. Others have focused more on particular types of strategy-making activities, such as meetings and workshops. For example, some studies examine the typical management practices engaged during strategy workshops (Hodgkinson, Whittington, Johnson, & Schwarz, 2006), while others focus on those formal and informal interactions in strategy committees that influence strategic change (Hoon, 2007). Jarzabkowski and Seidl (2008) looked at how the practices involved in the initiation, conduct, and termination of strategy meetings shape the outcomes of the meeting and its effects on strategic stability or change. Some of these scholars have begun to place material practices at center stage in their research. There are a few papers on the role of material artifacts and technologies, such as PowerPoint (Kaplan, Forthcoming), number systems (Denis et al., 2006), strategic plans (Spee, 2010), and strategy tools (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2008; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2009), and the way they are used in strategizing activities. Still others have examined the typical practices engaged in doing strategy and analyzed how those practices shape strategy. For example, Regne´r (2003) compared the exploratory practices of peripheral actors with the stability-seeking practices of corporate actors in order to explain how innovations arise and are incorporated into mainstream corporate strategy.

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Jarzabkowski (2008) examines the interactive, procedural, and integrative strategizing practices of top managers and their implications for mobilizing strategic change or enabling strategic stability. Kaplan looks at the unfolding of strategy projects over time, examining how the resolution of framing contests within the organization produces strategic outcomes (Kaplan, 2008) and how engagement in temporal practices such as projecting into the future shape the degree of continuity or change embodied by the strategies that are developed (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2009).

Practice as a Lens Strategy-as-practice is distinguished not only by the phenomenon of interest (practices) but also by the epistemological stance which considers that all social life is seen as constituted by practices and that the enactment of practices over time instantiates structures and norms. Within this basic rubric, strategy-as-practice scholars have drawn on varied theoretical lenses to shape their arguments: Giddens’ (1984) structuration approach, Vygotsky’s (1978) focus on activities, Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) focus on habitus, and more recently, particularly in German strategy scholarship (Seidl, 2007; Ortmann & Seidl, 2010; Luhmann, 1995). But no matter which approach is taken, a central claim of the practice perspective is that practices shape reality and therefore that taking a practice lens can bring important analytical insight to understanding strategic outcomes by understanding the actions that produce them (Orlikowski, Forthcoming, p. 9). One implication of this stance in practice theory is that we should not privilege the research questions put forth in the existing literature but rather consider the new kinds of questions that a practice lens allows us to ask. Strategy-as-practice is an interpretive approach in which the world cannot be understood independently of the social actors and processes that produce it. As Burrell and Morgan (1979, p. 179) in their analysis of different research paradigms note, ‘‘The aim of all interpretive research is to understand how managers of a social group, through their participation in social processes, enact their particular realities and endow them with meaning, and to show how these meanings, beliefs and intentions of the members help to constitute social action.’’ As a result, we can look at such questions as how practices shape strategic outcomes, how combinations or sequences of practices can lead to different results, and how actors work across multiple boundaries and levels in an organization to produce strategies. We should therefore take into account that practice approaches do not produce the same kind of causal

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theories that more quantitative strategy scholarship favors. Practice theories can yield generalizable outcomes, but these will be contextualized and situated; such research will generate patterns, not predictions, and principles, not prescriptions (Orlikowski, Forthcoming). The application of the practice lens therefore has important methodological implications both for the type and use of research methods and for the kinds of empirical contexts suitable for study. A commitment to the practice lens and to the phenomenon of practices entails a commitment to field methods – observations of activities, interviews with participants, reviews of documents and tools, etc. The qualitative data that will emerge from such deep engagement in the field will be rich and complex to analyze, but will have the seeds of insights about the multifaceted, day-to-day realities of how strategy is actually practiced.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE FIELD: A SHORT HISTORY The strategy-as-practice field emerged in the mid-1990s and early 2000s in a scattering of papers, primarily theoretical, setting out the ways in which treating strategy as practice might produce interesting and useful results (Hendry, 2000; Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2002; Whittington, 1996) However, strategy-as-practice research gained its first firm ground with an initial 2003 special issue in Journal of Management Studies on microstrategizing (Johnson et al., 2003), which addressed those micro-actions through which human actors shape strategy. The editors sought out contributions that would be based explicitly on how people do strategy, and the resulting articles addressed such issues as how strategists’ everyday efforts lead to strategy creation (Samra-Fredericks, 2003), the location of strategy making (not just at the center but also at the periphery of an organization) (Regner, 2003), and the timing of strategy making (in episodes) (Hendry & Seidl, 2003; Maitlis & Lawrence, 2003). Since then, the strategy-as-practice field has seen rapid growth. For example, there are now regular strategy-as-practice conference tracks, workshops, and symposia at leading European conferences, including the previously-mentioned standing working group at the European Group for Organization Studies, five special issues, additional papers in many credible refereed journals, and a Web site, www.strategy-as-practice.org, with over 3,500 members. There are conference tracks at British Academy of

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Management, European Group for Organization Studies, Strategic Management Society (SMS), and a strategy-as-practice theme in the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management. Special issues include European Management Review (McKiernan & Carter, 2004); Human Relations (Balogun, Jarzabkowski, & Seidl, 2007); Long Range Planning (Whittington & Cailluet, 2008); Journal of Management Studies (Johnson et al., 2003); and the Revue Francaise de Gestion (Rouleau, Allard-Poesi, & Warnier, 2007). In addition, four foundational books have begun to establish common terminology, research agendas, and methods, as well as a body of empirical work to advance the field (Golsorkhi, 2006; Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl, & Vaara, 2010; Jarzabkowski, 2005; Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whittington, 2007). This activity is mainly European but is gaining ground in international associations (though primarily through the effort of European scholars). The SMS has supported an Interest Group on the Practice of Strategy since 2004. Similarly, the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management has included a theoretical theme of strategy-as-practice since 2006, which has culminated in 2010 in the approval of a Special Interest Group for strategy-as-practice within the Academy of Management framework. At the same time, the schools where strategy-as-practice research is taking place have begun to develop their own international research network, SAP-IN (Strategy-as-Practice International Network), which is being launched in 2010. Thus, strategy-as-practice is getting more attention, but it is far from becoming an established, well-understood tradition in the broader field of strategic management. Given this increase in activity and publications, it is an appropriate time to examine the travel of strategy-as-practice across the Atlantic and to outline future directions to strengthen associations between scholars on ‘‘both sides of the pond.’’

STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE CHALLENGES The development of the strategy-as-practice field has faced a number of challenges, due in part to confusion about terminology and territory and to difficulties in getting into U.S.-based journals. Practice 6¼ Practitioner For those not embedded in the practice tradition, it is tempting to think of the word ‘‘practice’’ as referring to ‘‘practical’’ rather than theoretical or

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academic endeavors. In one way, this is obviously right. The agenda of practice scholars, as described above, is explicitly to pay attention to the actual day-to-day activities of those making strategy. But, in another way, this view misrepresents the field in a potentially undermining way. If the focus of strategy-as-practice scholars is misunderstood as being practitionerbased, then the research agenda could be deflected to research done by managers rather than academic scholars or clinical research done in collaboration with managers. While these are laudable and valuable research approaches, they do not conform to the scholarly strategy-aspractice agenda as we see it. In some ways, the confusion has benefited the development of the field. For example, the SMS has had a long tradition of appealing to three populations, which they call the ABCs (academics, business people, and consultants). When this organization was looking in the early 2000s to expand its agenda to topics for the future, the desire to create interest groups that appealed to these multiple audiences led to the creation of a ‘‘Practice of Strategy’’ interest group. Despite the involvement of a few of the early strategy-as-practice scholars, the interest group did not take on this name but rather emphasized the practitioner perspective by being called the ‘‘Practice of Strategy.’’ The creation of this group opened up a space for strategy-as-practice researchers to submit their work to the annual SMS conference, but, at the same time, it also seems to have contributed to confusion among those who are less familiar with the strategy-as-practice agenda. Richard Whittington, one of the founders of the group, admitting to this, noted that for the SMS conference: There are a lot of papers which get submitted to other tracksywhich are by consultants or have very clear practitioner rather than academic value. And, a lot of them get sent to the Practice of Strategy interest group, even if they’re about very different thingsy So it’s a bit of a struggle to be understood, butythat’s the liability perhaps of the ‘‘practice’’ word. (Interview with the authors, August 2009)

Indeed, early in the development of the field in the U.K., there was some debate about the strategy-as-practice label because of concerns that a U.S. audience of scholars would not understand its meaning.

Practice 6¼ Process Strategy-as-practice research is not the first to attempt to look inside the black box of strategy. Strategy-as-practice is indebted to a long tradition of

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scholarship on strategy processes (c.f. Bower, 1970; Burgelman, 1994; Mintzberg & McHugh, 1985; Pettigrew, 1985; Szulanski, Porac, & Doz, 2005). There are many shared features, including the interest in strategy activities and the tendency to use qualitative research methods (Whittington, 2007). To those mainstream strategy scholars embedded in a long tradition of quantitative and economics-based work on the content of strategy, these factors alone are enough to make any differences between practice and process both minute and immaterial. In the long-standing dichotomy between ‘‘content’’ and ‘‘process’’ studies (Bourgeois, 1980), practice studies were therefore seen as falling entirely within the ‘‘process’’ camp. Even to many scholars in the process tradition, practice research has appeared to cover ground well-trodden by process studies. In fairness to both of these perspectives, strategy-as-practice researchers in the early days of the development of the field may have muddied the waters by suggesting that strategy-as-practice was simply an extension (Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2002; Molloy & Whittington, 2005) or enrichment (Hodgkinson & Wright, 2006) of process research. This has been compounded by others whose research naturally spans both process and practice (Langley, 2007). Yet, as Whittington (2007) argues, lumping these two perspectives together obscures important distinctions, both in terms of the unit and level of analysis taken as well as in the epistemology. Strategy process research has concerned itself with the processes associated with strategic change, where the unit of analysis is the process and the level of analysis is the firm (Van de Ven, 1992). Individual actors are represented for the most part in terms of the groups to which they belong (e.g., middle management, top management, etc.) (Burgelman, 1983, 1994). For the strategy-as-practice scholar, the unit of analysis is the practice or practices and the level of analysis can be within the firm (the actor, the decision, the project, or the strategy) or extend well beyond the firm (to evaluation of institutionalized practices in society or the establishment of certain types of strategy-making professionals such as consulting firms) rather than the firm itself. The implication is that the ‘‘context’’ of strategy is not simply a separate factor in the process as suggested in the Bower–Burgelman tradition (Noda & Bower, 1996), but is deeply implicated in the situated daily activity of individual actors. Thus, strategy-as-practice distinguishes itself from its process theory antecedents in emphasizing the agency of individual actors, the situated nature of action, and a practice rather than firm’s level of analysis. As Whittington (2007, p. 1581) notes, ‘‘In decentring the organization, Strategy-as-Practice opens up an agenda far wider than implied simply by extension or enrichment of Strategy Process.’’

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Recently, in recognition of the issues created by eliding strategy practice and process, the SMS hosted in March 2010 a special conference on the intersections between these two fields. The co-chairs included scholars from both traditions and the goal was to ‘‘take stock and look back to see what the intersections between these areas are.’’4 Yet, even here, the focus was also on the link to the agenda of practitioners and to the potential for clinical research in which managers and researchers work together. While tremendously exciting, this approach risks deflecting the conversation away from the value of taking a practice lens in strategy scholarship.

Burgeoning Research 6¼ Getting Published Scholars in the strategy-as-practice tradition have made major inroads in some journals, mainly based in Europe, from the early special issue in the Journal of Management Studies (a journal widely regarded for its open and creative publishing strategy), to other special issues in Long Range Planning and Human Relations, as well as numerous publications in these and other journals’ (such as Organization Studies) regular issues. Yet, when it comes to the top U.S.-based journals that might publish strategy-as-practice work (such as Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Science), the successes have been few. We can count on the one hand, papers that have come out of the strategy-as-practice tradition that have appeared in these journals (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Jarzabkowski, 2008; Kaplan, 2008; Mantere & Vaara, 2008). While this state is surely partially associated with the relative nascence of the strategy-as-practice field, we must question why there are such troubles in publishing in U.S. journals. From our standpoint, the reasons may be multiple. First, strategy-as-practice research, being qualitative, has faced the same challenges that all qualitative research faces in these journals, especially inductive, interpretivist field work. Most reviewers have been trained in quantitative traditions, and this is especially true for strategy researchers. It is therefore hard for them to know how to evaluate such qualitative work. Reviewers (of our own work and of the work of our strategy-as-practice colleagues) push for ‘‘dependent variables,’’ for precise ‘‘measurements,’’ and for ‘‘causal models.’’ While all of these are meaningful requirements for causal theories that more quantitative strategy scholarship favors, they are not appropriate when it comes to qualitative

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work, particularly practice studies that examine the recursive way that practices construct and reconstruct social order. We will not review all of the challenges and responses possible in defense of qualitative, inductive work which has been well-summarized by scholars such as Charmaz (2006). We will only highlight that, to the extent reviewers of a strategy-as-practice paper come from the mainstream strategy field, they are less likely to be familiar with the different epistemological approaches than organizational scholars more broadly. As a result, there is an extra burden on strategy-as-practice scholars to justify choice of method and epistemological stance in a way that quantitative, deductive researchers do not have to. The difficulty (shared with qualitative, inductive research in general) lies in knowing how to present the analysis such that the reviewers understand the connections to theory while not provoking them to demand a theory testing paper. Second, as alluded to above, some reviewers and editors tend to resist the theoretical moves that strategy-as-practice researchers have attempted. For example, people from the process tradition (from the editors’ standpoints, these are logical reviewers of strategy-as-practice work) have suggested that the practice lens brings no new insights to ideas established in the long tradition of strategy process research, or have been skeptical about the incorporation of practice terminology. For example, consistent with Weick’s (1979) call for organization theory to shift attention from ‘‘organisation’’ to ‘‘organising’’ through the use of more verbs and gerunds in organization theory, strategy-as-practice scholars in the European tradition have commonly used the term strategizing. The term strategizing more accurately reflects the complexity of events and activities involved in strategy-making than the typically static categories used in variance theories of strategymaking (Langley, 1999; Mohr, 1982). This way of thinking has not been contentious in a European context; indeed, the first special issue on strategyas-practice in JMS was on the topic of ‘‘Micro strategy and strategizing.’’ However, such terminology is not widely accepted in North American journals. Indeed, a search of top journals revealed only the following uses of the word strategizing. Williamson (1991) used the term as a counter-position to economizing, presenting strategizing as the exercise of market power by large players. However, he did not penetrate what this behavior meant, leaving it as a largely abstracted concept at the level of the firm, while Floyd and Lane (2000) discuss strategizing across managerial levels within the firm without actually defining the term. Starbuck (1992) also uses the term in an undefined way, which he equates with the formal forecasting activities of strategic planning, in order to point out the fallacies of planning. His use of

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the term, may, however, foreshadow its uses in the practice turn, as he attempts to explain how top managers can strategize more realistically by adapting to the contingencies in which they find themselves. This relative scarcity of research within the North American tradition that uses, let alone defines, the terms strategizing, indicating the difficulties of doing and publishing strategy-as-practice research across the Atlantic. For example, in a recent referee report on a paper being reviewed for the Academy of Management Journal, it was difficult to convince the reviewers that ‘‘strategizing’’ was a legitimate term, as illustrated in this reviewer’s comment: ‘‘Even though Mintzberg used ‘strategy formation’, the phrase still seems problematicyI suggest that you stick with ‘strategy formulation and implementation.’ Even though it is a bit cumbersome, it keeps it crystal clear for readers that you are interested in both parts.’’ Given that an established strategy process scholar such as Mintzberg had addressed the formulation/implementation divide in U.S. journals in the 1980s, it was quite surprising to realize that even ‘‘formation’’ was a suspect term. As strategizing was a term that had not been widely used or defined in North American journals (e.g., Floyd & Lane, 2000), it took several iterations with reviewers to arrive at an agreed practice-based concept of strategizing. The revised text of the manuscript included this justification of the term, which eventually gained traction with both the reviewers and handling editor: Floyd and Wooldridge (2000, p. 87) identify strategizing as managerial behaviours that shape strategy evolution, noting that, ‘‘strategies evolve over time, not from discrete decisions but from indeterminate managerial behaviours embedded in a complex social setting.’’ This paper addresses the strategizing research agenda by eliciting patterns of top manager’s strategizing behavior and analyzing how such patterns are implicated in shaping strategy within complex social settings over time. The term, ‘‘shaping strategy’’ (Pettigrew, 1990), reflects the structurational nature of strategizing, in which top managers indirectly influence, ‘‘shape,’’ the evolving path of a strategy through their interactions with organizational members and the organizational practices in which they engage, even as their actions are shaped by these settings (Child, 1997; Giddens, 1984; Whittington, 1992). (Jarzabkowski, 2008, p. 621)

It is not simply that some terms have little precedent in U.S. journals, but also that there is active skepticism or confusion over some terminology and accompanying social theory that is seen as ‘‘European’’ and therefore somehow suspect. For example, a paper submitted to Organization Science examining how new strategizing routines emerge from the disruption of existing routines, leading to an absence of routines for doing tasks, received the following comment from an otherwise sympathetic referee: ‘‘So the new

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routine is an ‘absence,’ not a presence. That presence/absence stuff sounds like crazy European po-mo talk (is that a Latour thing?).’’ Confused, the authors, one of whom was an American, in fact, had to query, ‘‘What is po-mo? What does the reviewer mean?’’ The authors learned that po-mo is shorthand for postmodern, and, by association, ‘‘crazy’’ and ‘‘European.’’ The reference is apparently to what this likely U.S.-based reviewer regards as a noncanonical group of social theorists, such as Latour. While skeptical of the terminology, this reviewer was at least receptive to the empirical grounding of the concepts contained in the paper, suggesting, ‘‘Fortunately, in this manuscript, you have provided enough data and examples so that it [the term ‘absence’] seems very concrete and common sense. So that’s really good. You might want to claim victory on this.’’ Nonetheless, the juxtaposing of ‘‘crazy’’ and ‘‘European’’ in describing practice methodology and the conceptual insights derived from practice studies indicates that there is much work to do to encourage the globalization of strategy-as-practice research. In a global strategy research agenda, concepts should live or die by the quality of their theoretical and empirical grounding, such that they can be European without being crazy, just as they can be robust without being North American.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR MOVING FORWARD Many reviews and editorial treatises on strategy-as-practice have been written in European-based journals (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009; Johnson et al., 2003; Rouleau et al., 2007; Whittington & Cailluet, 2008). Each of these has proposed a useful agenda for future research, in particular emphasizing the links between micro- and macro-strategy phenomena and developing appropriate outcomes for strategy-as-practice research. Links between micro and macro are emphasized because the strategy-as-practice research agenda has been concerned largely with studying practitioners and practices as microphenomena. These scholars have argued that an exclusive focus on the micro can obscure the embedded nature of strategy-making and the way that localized interactions both shape and are shaped by the wider strategy context (Carter, Clegg, & Kornberger, 2008; Jarzabkowski, 2004; Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007; Whittington, 2006). There has also been an increasing emphasis on substantiating outcomes from strategy-as-practice research. Traditional strategic management research is concerned with performance outcomes. While firm performance is not a likely, or even appropriate, outcome variable for strategy-as-practice

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research, in order to speak to more traditional strategic management research and, potentially, to ease passage across the Atlantic, it is important to identify and legitimize appropriate outcomes for strategy-as-practice research. For example, Jarzabkowski (2008) identified successful and unsuccessful strategizing patterns, Mantere and Vaara (2008) showed how different strategy discourses affect managerial participation in the strategy process, Mantere (2005) described how championing behaviors emerge, Kaplan (2008) highlighted the achievement of a decision rather than a nondecision in the strategy-making process, and Kaplan and Orlikowski (2009) look at the degree of departure from the status quo embodied by particular strategies. While following these suggestions is likely to enhance the uptake of strategy-as-practice research in a range of journals, we now make more specific suggestions aimed at taking strategy-as-practice across the Atlantic. First, we think there is a real imperative not only for European-based strategy-as-practice work to be published in U.S.-based journals, but also for such research to be conducted in U.S. organizations. Because European businesses operate in different institutional contexts than those in the United States, insights into strategy practices would benefit from research conducted in these multiple contexts (not just the U.K., continental Europe, and the United States but also other areas of the world). Similarly, crossfertilization would be enhanced by research conducted in U.S. contexts being published in European journals. While the tenure-track requirements of U.S. schools preclude a focus on alternative publication outlets,5 the best of European scholarship will remain opaque to the United States and vice versa if the flow of ideas across the Atlantic does not take place in both directions. These moves will require European scholars to shift their focus to a certain extent, U.S.-based scholars to choose to engage with strategy-aspractice ideas and, crucially, for journal editors and referees to apply appropriate standards in evaluating manuscripts from the strategy-aspractice tradition. Second, strategy-as-practice scholars have introduced strategy-as-practice as a counterpoint to traditional strategy research, which can be characterized as operating at the firm’s level of analysis and focusing on explaining heterogeneity of performance. While the work these scholars have done to date usefully lays out a practice theory of strategy and presents some typologies of strategy making, most papers do not directly engage with the existing theories from the broader strategic management field. We are left wondering how a practice lens on strategy can explain inconsistencies in current theorizing or could suggest counter-intuitive insights. Current

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scholars have not fully mobilized the findings from this work to address existing theories on this topic. For specificity, we offer two different examples from the mainstream research. In one case, there is conflicting evidence on whether mergers create value. Indeed, there is weak evidence that they destroy value (Villalonga & McGahan, 2005). So, why do they occur? Is it just that the merger is the best available alternative? Or, is there something about the nature of the M&A process that leads to these suboptimal outcomes? Once merger discussions are initiated, is it simply hard to stop them even if the merger no longer makes sense? An examination of the practices underlying M&A activities inside an organization could help understand these dynamics. In another case, an area of strategy research has suggested that only those firms that have dynamic capabilities (Helfat, 1997; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997) or absorptive capacity (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) are able to adapt to change. However, it has been difficult to assess these capabilities empirically and therefore to distinguish between the absence or presence of opportunity and the absence or presence of such capabilities in shaping organizational outcomes. Approaches to measurement of these capabilities have treated them as resources (e.g., R&D spending) rather than sets of practices. Recent work has suggested that these might be conceptualized as dynamic managerial capabilities and that response to change must be seen as in the hands of actors within the organization (Adner & Helfat, 2003; Eggers & Kaplan, 2009). An application of the practice lens to this problem could demonstrate what such capabilities look like in the daily practice of managers. Strategy-as-practice work has missed opportunities to cite and link theoretically to what the field already knows about the specific subjects of study, be they mergers, capabilities, corporate strategy of multinationals, or other (something that we have observed in our own work as reviewers of these papers). Most studies to date do not yet link the practice dynamics studied to the realized strategies over time (the subject of much of the mainstream strategy research). For the practice lens on strategy to take hold in the strategic management field, it will ultimately have to produce results and theories that are more explicitly in dialogue with extant theory, choosing to amplify, contextualize, or contradict it. We must find a way of engaging more with the ‘‘mainstream’’ strategy literature while at the same time recognizing that the strategy-as-practice agenda contributes to the literature by extending the kinds of outcomes to be explained. This is a lesson that would apply not just to the strategy-as-practice field but also to any other emerging field in strategic management. It is useless to complain that a new field is not being taken up by scholars in the

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mainstream without finding ways to engage with those scholars by showing how the approach would shed light on contradictions in the existing literature or would identify multiple factors that could be contributing to what had previously been understood as well-defined outcomes. Of course, in the ideal world, mainstream scholars would be eager to reach out to new approaches in order to generate new insights or understand the boundary conditions on their own work, but this attitude is rare in the well established. As a result, it is imperative for entrepreneurial start-ups in strategic management and beyond to make the extra effort to create a productive dialogue with scholars pursuing more established research approaches. Finally, further progress in strategy-as-practice poses methodological challenges (Kaplan, 2007). Given that studies of strategy-as-practice require high-quality access to a range of managerial levels, locating useful field sites is tricky. This may also be an explanation for the slow uptake of the practice lens in strategy: such an approach requires the researcher to get close to top managers, and this is no easy task. To get this level of access, scholars in various fields (e.g., Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Jarzabkowski, 2005) have tended to choose nonprofit institutions such as universities as research sites in the past. Future strategy-as-practice scholarship (at least that based in business schools) must take on this challenge by gaining access to the upper echelons of for-profit corporations (both established firms and entrepreneurial start-ups) as well as other organizational contexts (such as universities or other nonprofit institutions) in order to further develop the strategy-as-practice view. The observational nature of data collection poses another methodological difficulty. The unit of analysis for strategy-as-practice research is the practices themselves that are composed of recurrent activities. This definition is broad and puts the researcher in the position of choosing which activities to accentuate and which to de-emphasize. Not every daily activity can be analyzed and theorized. Some aspects of organizational life will necessarily be bracketed. These choices are necessary for the scholar’s own daily practices in the field, but also must be justified to the scholarly audience. Those hoping to publish strategy-as-practice research in U.S.based journals will need to address these kinds of methodological choices in more detail. In conclusion, we are both encouraged and troubled by the progress to date in the development of the strategy-as-practice field. Great strides have been made in Europe. International associations increasingly recognize it as a legitimate field. Less traction has been achieved in the United States, neither in gaining a critical mass of scholars undertaking this type of

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research nor in getting strategy-as-practice papers published in top journals. While some strategy-as-practice scholars have published in leading US journals (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Jarzabkowski, 2008; Kaplan, 2008; Mantere & Vaara, 2008) and are also on the editorial board of such journals, the approach is hardly mainstream. In this chapter, we have highlighted the challenges and opportunities for further progress, and hope that this maps a path for these ideas to cross the Atlantic in both directions.

NOTES 1. This paper draws on several previously published works by the authors, specifically Jarzabkowski (2005, 2008) and Kaplan (2007). 2. One exception is the North American-based Strategic Organization (SO!) which has published several strategy-as-practice articles (Denis, Langley, & Rouleau, 2006; Mantere, 2005; Melin & Nordqvist, 2007; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2009; Whittington, 2003). We speculate that SO!’s status as a relatively new journal has made the editorial board more open to alternative forms of research and theorizing. 3. These include Journal of Management Studies (2003), European Management Review (2004), Revue Francaise de Gestion (2007), Human Relations (2007), and Long Range Planning (2008). 4. As described in the call for papers for this conference. 5. Though the inclusion of top European journals such as Journal of Management Studies and Organization Studies and alternative North American journals such as Strategic Organization on the Financial Times list of publications used to calculate research intensity of different business schools would certainly help this process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Joel Baum, Joseph Lampel, Anita McGahan, and Richard Whittington for their comments.

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PART II PERSPECTIVES: STRATEGY AND y

STRATEGY AND STRATEGIZING: A POSTSTRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVE Mahmoud Ezzamel and Hugh Willmott ABSTRACT This chapter explicates the theoretical basis and contribution of poststructuralism to the study of strategy and strategic management. More specifically, it focuses upon Foucauldian analysis which is contrasted to rationalist and interpretivist studies. Foucauldian analysis is not regarded as a corrective but as an addition to these established approaches to studying strategy. Notably, Foucault’s work draws attention to how discourse constitutes, disciplines and legitimizes particular forms of executive identity (‘strategists’) and management practice (‘strategizing’). We highlight how Foucault’s poststructuralist thinking points to unexplored performative effects of rationalist and interpretivist studies of strategy. Foucault is insistent upon the indivisibility of knowledge and power, where relations of power within organizations, and in academia, are understood to rely upon, but also operate to maintain and transform, particular ‘discourses of truth’ such as the discourses of ‘shareholder value’ and ‘objectivity’. Discourse, in Foucauldian analysis, is not a more or less imperfect, or ineffective, means of representing objects such as strategy. Rather, it is performative in, for example, producing the widely

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taken-or-granted truth that ‘organization’ is separate from ‘environment’. In turn, the production of this distinction is seen to enable and sanction particular and, arguably, predatory forms of knowledge, in which the formulation and application of strategy is represented as neutral, mirrorlike and/or functional. there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse. There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth which operates through and on the basis of this association. (Foucault, 1986, p. 229)

INTRODUCTION Over the last two decades, poststructuralist thinking, and especially the ideas of Michel Foucault, has had an immense impact upon the social sciences where his work is the most heavily cited1. This impact has extended to management and organization studies (e.g. Burrell, 1986; Daudi, 1986; Jacques, 1992; Deetz, 1992; Townley, 1994; Kilduff & Mehra, 1997; McKinlay & Starkey, 1998; Calas & Smircich, 1999), and includes the study of strategy (Knights & Morgan, 1995; Knights, 1992; Rose & Miller, 1992; Miller & O’Leary, 1993, 1994; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2004, 2008; Ezzamel, Willmott & Worthington, 2008; McCabe, 2010). Indeed the Foucauldian strand of strategy scholarship has been described by Whipp (1999, p. 13) as ‘one of the most instructive attempts to link the fields of organization studies and strategy’. Making specific reference to performativity and power, Whipp also notes that the Foucauldian approach explores how ‘the very language, symbols and exchanges around the subject of strategy have important outcomes. Strategy is a mechanism of power’ (ibid). The field of strategy is increasingly populated by scholars employing a diverse range of theoretical perspectives (see Jenkins, Ambrosini & Collier, 2007). At the risk of oversimplification, strategy scholarship has been dominated by approaches that represent strategy as a set of rational, abstracted techniques for attaining competitive advantage by achieving an optimum fit between the opportunities presented by the economic environment and the positioning or ‘micro assets’ at the disposal of the organization (Porter, 1980; Barney, 1986). In such rationalist analysis, the emphasis is upon calculations abstracted from the particular cultures in which they are

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embedded and shaped. Its adequacy has been challenged by varieties of interpretivism which, in addressing the particular contexts in which strategy is formulated and enacted, attend to strategy as a process of organizational construction and negotiation. Inter alia, interpretivist analysis considers the role of strategists’ (non-rational) cognitive schema (e.g. Child, 1972) and recipes (e.g. Spender, 1989) in devising and shaping strategy as an emergent and contested process. In recent years, this focus upon the practical enactment of strategy has received a boost from an emergent ‘strategy-aspractice’ (S-A-P) approach (Jarzabkowski, 2005; Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2010). What these different (and admittedly idealized) approaches share, nonetheless, is a preoccupation with pinning down what strategy or strategizing ‘is’ – strategy is either something approximating to the outcome, or is subject to the correction, of rational calculations, or it is a work-inprogress constructed through ongoing negotiations and adjustments. What, then, of poststructuralist analysis? From a poststructuralist perspective, diverse rationalist and interpretivist accounts of strategy make distinctive contributions but they by no means exhaust what can be known about strategy. Likewise, it is difficult, and probably impossible, to provide an exhaustive or definitive account of poststructuralist analysis. Here we focus primarily upon one distinctive feature of such analysis – namely, its attentiveness to the performative effects of knowledge. With regard to the study of strategy, this contribution is made by demonstrating how mainstream (rationalist and interpretivist) accounts minimize (reflexive) awareness of the consequences of their knowledge in affirming and strengthening a restrictive, dominant common sense understanding, and associated mystique, of strategy. From a poststructuralist perspective, ‘rationalist’ and ‘interpretivist’ forms of analysis reproduce and legitimize the received wisdom that strategy is a discrete organizational attribute, or that it is a process and/or practice accomplished through ongoing negotiation. From a poststructuralist perspective, a (largely) unintended consequence of such efforts to disclose what strategy and strategic management essentially are or should be is to displace and distract (reflexive) attention from what their sense-making of strategy does – for example, in operating to constitute, discipline and legitimize particular forms of executive identity (‘strategists’), management practice (‘strategizing’) and organizational design (see also Samra-Fredericks, 2010). In this respect, poststructuralist analysis resonates with ‘critical’ analyses of strategy which inter alia address how strategic management is implicated in reproducing structural inequalities in organizations and society (Levy, Alvesson & Willmott, 2003). Poststructuralist thinking points to the unacknowledged and unexplored performative effects of rationalist and interpretivist

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knowledge of strategy advanced in corporations as well as in academic publications. In passing, Whittington (2007, p. 1580), an architect of S-A-P, conveys a flavour of such effects but without acknowledging their intellectual inspiration, or making them a focus of analysis, when he observes that: like finance theory, the field helps shape that which it studies (MacKenzie, 2006). Prominent institutions within the strategy field have made legitimate, and therefore feasible, strategies such as de-conglomeratization, ‘creative destruction’ and ‘new economy’ thinking, sometimes with calamitous practical effectsy

A distinctive contribution of poststructuralist analysis resides in its attentiveness to how the very idea and knowledge of strategy exerts powerful effects as it acts to cement or transform social relations. In this light, all social objects of investigation – including ‘organization’, ‘strategy’, ‘strategizing’, etc. – are seen to be embedded in ongoing, political processes of formation and potential transformation. All social scientific analyses – rationalist, interpretivist and poststructuralist – are developed within particular complexes of power/knowledge. If this is accepted, then there is no basis for rejecting rationalist and interpretivist scholarship, as imperfectly scientific, misleading or ideologically biased. Foucauldian analysis does not aspire to replace existing efforts to provide definitive analyses of what strategy is, or should be. It does not pretend to develop or prescribe more useful or faithful accounts of what strategy or strategizing ‘is’. It does not aim to make strategy or strategizing more effective in attaining corporate goals. Nor finally does it seek to displace or eliminate the pursuit or study of such goals. Instead, it initiates a different form of analysis by attending inter alia to what notions of strategy ‘do’ – in relation, for example, to the effects of these understandings upon management theory and practice. In turn, this opens up the possibility of reflecting upon where responsibility may lie for such effects (the domain of the ethical) and whether to support or resist their reproduction (the domain of the political). But no claim is made that other forms of analysis (e.g. rationalist or interpretivist) are ‘mistaken’ or that some forms of discourse analysis of organization or strategy ‘misses the true significance of discourse’ (Chia, 2000, p. 514, emphases added). Such ‘mistakes’ are regarded as a necessary condition of social intercourse. The issue is not whether ‘mistakes’ can be avoided or remedied but whether they are treated, to follow the formulation of ethnomethodologists, as a taken-for-granted resource of analysis or as a topic for investigation. The next section of the chapter elaborates our understanding of rationalist and interpretivist approaches to the study of strategy as a basis for appreciating the distinctiveness of a poststructuralist approach. We then connect rationalist and interpretivist analyses of strategy to the dominance of

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objectivism and the challenge posed by constructionism, a strong version of which we associate with poststructuralism. These sections provide a relevant backcloth to a more systematic presentation of Foucauldian discourse analysis and its mobilization in studies of strategy and strategizing. In a discussion section, we comment upon a paradox inherent in the reflexivity claimed for poststructuralist analysis. Finally, a summary and conclusion section distils the key arguments of the chapter.

MAINSTREAM APPROACHES TO ANALYZING STRATEGY Rationalist Analysis This section elucidates our understanding of established or ‘mainstream’ approaches by disaggregating them into rationalist and interpretivist contributions to the knowledge of strategy before evaluating their contribution in the light of our advocacy of pluralism in strategy scholarship. In rationalist analysis, we include behaviourist and economic approaches in which the object of study is represented as something examinable independently of the social processes and practices through which ‘strategy’ and its ‘management’ are accomplished by organizational actors. A condition of the possibility of rationalist analysis is its exclusion of consideration of actors’ involvement, as imperfectly knowable subjects, in the practical (re)production of its objects of analysis. Only by denying, or at least bracketing, the significance of interpretation in the (re)production of social realities or by reducing the complexity and dynamism of interpretation to a variable (e.g. Child, 1972), is it possible to constitute a world of dependent and independent variables that are then amenable to measurement and strategic control. This logic is broadly embraced by the design, planning, positioning, environmental and configuration schools of strategy (see Mintzberg et al., 1998). In an early critique of rationalist analysis (e.g. Porter, 1980, 1985), Smircich and Stubbart (1985) note how it incorporates the assumption that ‘organization’ and ‘environment’ are ‘real, material, and separate’ (ibid, p. 725), and that its purpose is to develop a ‘rational model of the key variables, including the values and schema of decision makers (e.g. Child, 1972)’, with the intent of ‘‘‘meet(ing) the real demands and real constraints’’ that are pre-supposed to exist ‘‘out there’’’ (ibid, p. 726). Smircich and Stubbart’s characterization of the rationalist research tradition resonates with our understanding of it, but we do not share their rather negative assessment of its contribution. Instead of challenging the adequacy of the

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assumptions upon which it is founded, we prefer to focus on their particularity. To refer to ‘adequacy’ implies the retention of some God’s eye view of reality which provides the benchmark for discerning ‘inadequacy’. In our view, the assumptions of rationalist analysis (see above) provide the necessary basis for producing a particular kind of (empirical–analytic and prescriptive) knowledge that its proponents strive to develop (see Willmott, 2003, 2008). In contrast to Smircich and Stubbart, the focus of our attention is not upon the correctness, or otherwise, of the ontology or epistemology assumed by, or attributed to, rationalist analysis. Instead, it is upon the (performative) effects of rationalist analysis: the ethico-political implications of accepting its particular knowledge claims to be true and, by implication, the attribution of falsity, or at least inferiority, to alternative (e.g. interpretivist and poststructuralist) claims. Contra Smircich and Stubbart and the many (interpretivist) critics of rationalist analysis, we have no objection in principle to analyses that, for example, conceive of strategy as involving rational calculations, in which organizational capabilities and structural forms are aligned to environmental conditions for the purposes of achieving competitive advantage. As we have stressed, we do not seek to correct rationalist analysis or to replace it with an interpretivist or poststructuralist alternative. We are, instead, interested in providing some explication of the respective particularities and limits of such analysis, while being mindful that any such explication is itself particularistic in formulation, a point to which we return when considering the paradox inherent in the reflexivity claimed for poststructuralist analysis. What concerns us most about rationalist analysis is not its objectivist assumptions and related methodology but, rather, its hegemonic tendency to ignore or devalue the contribution of other forms of analysis. This tendency is by no means unique to rationalist analysis but its sense of self-evident authority, underpinned by its claim to scientism, is more advanced and sedimented in comparison to the aspirations of other (e.g. interpretivist and poststructuralist) analysis. At best, advocates of rationalist analysis are inclined to ascribe a value to other approaches which is restricted to their capacity to provide possible insights that are amenable to selective translation into its objectivist framing of strategy (e.g. Child, 1972).

Interpretivist Analysis A diverse and rather loosely connected group of strategy scholars has departed from the rationalist tradition by analyzing interpretive processes,

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through which strategy is practically formulated and enacted. This group, which includes Pettigrew (1977) and Mintzberg (1978), has drawn inspiration from the notion of ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1947) in which it is acknowledged how, in practice, limited resources and time necessarily result in (strategic) decision making based upon imperfect information and informed guesswork. This insight into the practicalities of decision making has been elaborated and deepened by sociological studies, among which Silverman and Jones (1976) is perhaps the outstanding example. In an early application of an interpretivist approach to studying strategy, Child (1972) argues that strategic decision making involves choice conceived as ‘an essentially political process’, in which constraints and opportunities are not given objectively but, rather, are ‘functions of the power exercised by decision makers in the light of ideological values’ (ibid, p. 104). This consideration of the actors’ frame of reference (Silverman, 1970) was directed primarily at (rationalist) contingency theories of organization for which Child proposed an additional key variable in the form of decision-makers’ values.2 Nonetheless, the proposition that the values of decision makers frame or colour ostensibly rational decision-making processes has encouraged the development of (interpretivist) analyses that pay closer attention to strategy/ strategizing as a human process (e.g. Johnson, 1987). Interpretivism invites us to peer into what, in rationalist analysis, is the black box of the work of accomplishing strategy, or what is increasingly characterized as ‘strategizing’. By studying the day-to-day processes of (re)producing strategy, interpretivist analysis examines how, for example, decision-makers’ cognitive frameworks yield their sense of the context; and how these frameworks inform decision making in ways that may act to impede and/or legitimize ostensibly ‘rational’ calculations about strategy. We regard most varieties of interpretivism as more closely related to the objectivism of rationalist analysis than to a poststructuralist sensibility (see Hutzschenreuter & Kleindienst, 2006 for an extended overview of ‘strategy-process research’). To elaborate briefly, Mintzberg et al. (1995, p. xi, emphasis added) exemplify an objectivist formulation of interpretivism when they commend its ‘sophisticated understanding of exactly what the context is and how it functions’. This kind of interpretivism, shared by Child (1972) and Pettigrew (1985), subscribes to an (empirically) realist ontology which assumes the possibility of generating accurate accounts of the contexts of strategyformulating and strategy-implementing processes. Of course, the targets of analysis differ from rationalist analysis: instead of ‘objective’ variables to be measured, they are ‘subjective’ meanings to be captured. But whenever interpretivist research retains the ambition to mirror and capture ‘the

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processes and mechanisms through which strategic changes are legitimated and delegitimated’ (Pettigrew, 1992, p. 9), commitment to a realist ontology is affirmed. A distinctive feature of this commitment, and indeed a condition of its possibility, is the absence of reflexivity regarding how ‘accuracy’ is socially defined and warranted, or ‘validated’, within particular scholarly frames of reference. Such reflexivity requires a shift from a realist to a constructionist ontology.3 It is only when the plausibility of a realist ontology is doubted, as it is by Smircich and Stubbart (1985) for example, that an alternative (constructionist) form of interpretivist analysis can be contemplated. We expand upon the key differences between objectivism and constructionism in a later section. For the moment, we consider the nature and significance of a comparatively recent development – S-A-P.

Strategy-as-Practice The S-A-P approach shares with other forms of interpretivism an attentiveness to the situated nature of strategizing activities. In a number of respects, S-A-P is indistinguishable from the earlier ‘processual’ forms of interpretive analysis of strategy championed by Pettigrew (1973) and Mintzberg and Waters (1985). In general, advocates of S-A-P emphasize its concern with ‘what people do in relation to strategy’ (Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whittington, 2007, p. 7). In this respect, S-A-P departs from the rationalist credo that ‘I am interested in strategies, not what people do’ (ibid) as it shares with other forms of interpretivist analysis an interest in ‘seeing strategies and strategy as human action, as doing’ (ibid); As Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger (2008, p. 90) note, in the work of many S-A-P advocates, ‘the concepts of process and practice are used interchangeably’ (see Rasche & Chia, 2009 for a discussion of differences within S-A-P). The three focal areas ascribed to practice theory – ‘the practices of both organizations and their wider social fields; y actual activityy; [and] strategy practitioners as integrated parts of a whole’ (Whittington, 2006, p. 615) – could be distilled from the opening chapters of Pettigrew’s The Awakening Giant (1985), even though these areas of interest are then weakly articulated in the body of Pettigrew’s study (cf Whittington, 2007, p. 1582). A possible difference between process analysis and S-A-P is signalled by Jarzabkowski (2003, p. 49). She acknowledges that S-A-P is attentive to ‘the subjective and emergent processes of strategic activity’ but then identifies ‘practices’ as key to analyzing how processes are ‘structure(d)’. Advocates of S-A-P take a closer interest in the ‘tools and artefacts’ (cf actor-network

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theory) deployed by strategists, such as the accounting measures ‘that people use in doing strategy work’ (Jarzabkowski, 2005, p. 8) or ‘the PowerPoint strategy presentation that is not an innocent thing’ (Whittington, 2007, p. 1583 cited in Rasche & Chia, 2009, p. 722; see also Gabriel, 2008). In a sophisticated and spirited defence of S-A-P, Whittington (2007) contends that it approaches strategy with ‘a sociological eye’ that takes a much broader, less managerialist approach to its study than most ‘process’ analysis. Less directly interested in issues of performance, S-A-P attends to strategy as ‘an institutionalized practice, like marriage, within society as a wholeywhere practitioners are first of all people struggling to realize their own purposes in and beyond the organizations that happen to pay them’ (ibid, pp. 1578, 1599). Whether this characterization is more compellingly interpreted as a credible description of most S-A-P analysis or as prescribing a distinctive identity for it, we leave others to judge. We simply note that his formulation allows Whittington to colonize Foucauldian analyses for S-A-P as he claims that the latter’s spread ‘transform(s) strategists from passive administrators to self-disciplining business winners (Knights & Morgan, 1991)’ (Whittington, 2007, p. 1580). There is, in principle, no problem with Whittington’s appropriation of Foucault for S-A-P: texts are necessarily open to the interpretations constructed by their readers. However, by defining S-A-P in terms of ‘the phenomenon at stake [rather] than any particular theoretical position’, S-A-P invites eclecticism and/or atheoreticism so that everything, including Foucauldian analysis, becomes another filing to those wielding the S-A-P magnet. Like other broad approaches to the study of strategy – including what we have bundled as ‘rationalist’ and ‘interpretivist’ approaches – S-A-P accommodates a heterogeneous mix of contributions. In Carter et al.’s (2008, pp. 87–88) assessment, many of these are narrowly guided by, and preoccupied with, a managerialist agenda (e.g. Johnson, Melin, & Whittington, 2003) whereas in others, there is some distancing from managerialism (e.g. Whittington, 2007). References to power creep into some process analysis (e.g. Pettigrew, 1985) but are either absent in much S-A-P literature (see Ezzamel & Willmott, 2004) or power tends to be treated as a possession of management (see McCabe, 2010, for a critique). Much S-A-P analysis tacitly subscribes to a realist ontology where, for example, it assumes and commends the possibility of ‘capturing activities’ (Johnson et al., 2007, p. 10) that are unexamined in more established forms of analysis4. Finally, despite an extended celebration of S-A-P’s indebtedness to variants of practice theory (e.g. situated learning theory and actor-network theory – see ibid, pp. 38–40, 45–47), manifestos for S-A-P

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(e.g. Jarzabkowski, 2005; Johnson et al., 2007) incorporate little or no appreciation of the reflexive elements of practice theory – that is, the problematizing of subject–object dualism that undermines the (idealized) positioning of the researcher as a putatively objective observer, or capturer, of the intricacies of practice. Notably, the section on actor-network theory in Johnson et al. (2007) makes no reference to the recent methodological writings of one of its most prominent exponents (Law, 2004).5 With regard to the linguistic turn taken by poststructuralist analysis, some versions of S-A-P signal an interest in the ‘language that strategists use’ (Jarzabkowski, 2005, p. 9). However, the significance of the turn to language in social theory is assigned marginal importance, even as those who are claimed to be ‘seminal theorists’ of ‘practice’ – notably, Foucault (Whittington, 2006, p. 614) – are leading contributors to this turn. Remarking upon this disconnect, Chia and Holt (2006: 638 et seq) share our assessment of S-A-P research when they note that S-A-P has been disinclined to pay serious attention to ‘practice the way it is understood in the social theory literature’. The latter’s postdualist, relational ontology is largely absent from S-A-P analysis in which scant consideration is given to how, for example, engaging in practices is constitutive of practitioners as subjects (see Whittington, 2006, p. 620). Discussion How, then, do these reflections relate to an established view of strategic management as ‘a process that deals with the entrepreneurial work of the organization, with organizational renewal and growth, and more particularly, with developing and utilizing the strategy which is to guide the organization’s operations’? (Schendel & Hofer, 1979, p. 11, emphasis added). The idea of strategy as an objective entity is reflected in the (rationalist) view that it guides operations. But Schendel and Hofer also refer to strategic management as a ‘process’ that involves ‘developing and utilizing’ the strategy. In embryonic form, this points to an (interpretivist) appreciation of how ‘the strategy’ exists in the process of its enactment, an orientation that, most recently, has been advanced by proponents of S-A-P. However, in Schendel and Hofer’s (1979) view of strategic management, the question of the compatibility of an interpretivist approach with a rationalist perspective in which strategy ‘guides’ operations, seemingly independently of its interpretation, is unacknowledged and therefore unexamined. In a manner that is by no means unique to them, Schendel and Hofer slide over the issue by appearing to cover both bases. The difference between a representation of

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strategy as (i) something abstracted from practice as a univocal ‘guide’ and (ii) a polyvocal ‘process’ that sets the guide in motion is simply unregistered. One possible way forward, which departs from both rationalist and interpretivist forms of analysis, is to appreciate each representation of ‘strategy’, whether by executives, other employees, gurus, consultants, or academics like ourselves, not as an attempt to capture what strategy ‘is’, but as what strategy-as-discourse does. Such an approach, which is inspired by poststructuralist thinking, interrogates how practitioner and scholarly mobilizations of the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘strategizing’ serve to reproduce and transform what they purport to represent. Translated into Foucauldian terms, this approach analyzes strategy as an articulation of specific ‘discursive practices’ that exert constitutive effects. More specifically, it includes an attentiveness to ‘serious speech acts: what experts say when they are speaking as experts’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. xx; original emphasis). Discursive practices are understood to open up spaces in which statements, subjects like ‘strategists’, and objects like ‘strategy’ are rendered meaningful to those involved in the discourse. In order to clarify the standpoint from which such concerns become relevant and primary, we elaborate, in the following section, the distinctiveness of objectivist and constructionist traditions of analysis. This provides a backdrop to our subsequent presentation of key elements of Foucault’s (poststructuralist) thinking before focusing more directly upon his formulation of the relationship between discourse, power and resistance. Thereafter, we relate differences in the study of strategy to broader differences of approach to knowledge production.

THE DOMINANCE OF OBJECTIVISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF CONSTRUCTIONISM To locate and clarify the distinctive contribution of Foucault’s ideas to studying strategy, we contrast two broad approaches to the production of knowledge: objectivism and constructionism (Table 1).6 Objectivist epistemology, anchored in an empirical realist ontology and mobilized by rationalist and much interpretivist analysis of strategy, is warranted by the assumption that scientific inquiry is ‘a matter of learning about an objective, wholly independent reality hidden from us by ignorance, ineffective methodologies and intellectual bias’ (Prado, 1992, p. 97). Its application is intended to produce cumulative ‘knowledge that better approximates reality’ (Van de Ven, 1999, p. 119), and ‘valid empirical evidence is the ultimate external arbitrator for sifting and winnowing between

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Table 1.

Contrasting Objectivism and Constructivism.

Objectivism

Constructivism

The belief that objects of knowledge are not The belief that the objects of human knowledge conditioned by psychological or historical are, at least as presented to us, conditioned factors or other elements having to do with by elements belonging to their apprehension their apprehension or mode of apprehension. or mode of apprehension. Source: Adapted from Prado (1992).

paradigms’ (ibid: 123). Articulated in diverse methodologies, the hallmark of objectivist enquiry is its faith in having the capacity to capture its objects of study, whether these are variables (rationalism) or meanings (interpretivism), and, relatedly, its disregard of the role of language, as a resource, in the ‘manufacture’ and representation of its topics (see Bittner, 1965). The authority of objectivist knowledge, rooted in the tradition of Plato and Descartes, has been challenged by constructionist-inspired studies (e.g. Silverman & Jones, 1976; Chia, 1996) – a challenge that has been strengthened by the linguistic turn in philosophy, in which the constructive role of language is emphasized, and then subsequently adopted in the social and organizational sciences (Rorty, 1992; Deetz, 1992, esp. Ch5; Deetz, 2003; see also Vaara, 2010). The authority of objectivism is problematized, as Phillips and Hardy (2002, p. 84) comment, by engaging an ‘epistemology sympathetic to the postmodern ideas that underlie the linguistic turn’. Under the influence of Nietzsche and Hegel, constructionism, in which we include Foucault’s later work, conceives of scientific enquiry as an activity that ‘manufactures a reality we take to be objective, independent and the autonomous subject of our various investigations’ (Prado, 1992, p. 97, emphasis added). Does this imply that constructionism doubts the existence of reality? Except in its most extreme, solipsistic formulations, there is no suggestion in constructionism that reality ‘does not exist’ or that reality is somehow conjured into (and out of) existence by using language. Constructionism is concerned to appreciate how social realities are ongoing processes of institutionalization, and that the use of language – the development and application of theory, for example – has material effects in sustaining, problematizing or transforming social realities. To constructionists, ‘there is no direct access to reality unmediated by language and pre-conceptions’ (Astley, 1985, p. 498), and the words that comprise theory, for example, ‘do not just describe things; they do things’ (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 6). Included in what they do is the

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identification of objects of investigation, such as ‘strategy’ and ‘strategizing’. From a constructionist standpoint, the concepts comprising language do not mirror reality as reality eludes all attempts by language to capture it. But language is nonetheless constitutive in identifying ‘objects’, such as strategy, and extolling the truth of its representations. Constructionism: ‘Weak’ and ‘Strong’ Occupying a position of dominance in a Cartesian world, objectivism is productive of the (subordinate) identity of ‘subjectivism’. The term ‘subjectivism’ is routinely invoked to characterize modes of knowledge, including ‘constructionism’, that are ‘othered’ by the self-assured supremacy of objectivism. The dominance of objectivism is such that even those who seem eager to develop alternative ways of thinking about organizing and strategizing remain captivated by it. Cummings and Wilson (2003, p. 34), for example, refer to their assembly of diverse images of strategy as ‘the subjective perspectives of several enthusiasts who want you to take part in their ideas’. So, different views of strategy are accounted for in terms of ‘subjective’ proclivities and backgrounds, such as practitioners’ or academics’ allegiance to particular sectoral recipes, guru prescriptions or academic disciplines. This position exemplifies what has been termed constructivism,7 or what we will call ‘weak constructionism’. In the symbolic universe of constructivism, objects of analysis (e.g. ‘strategy’) exist independently of their identification through the taken-for-granted use of language and are conceived to be represented from a range of lay standpoints which the (interpretivist) researcher aspires to capture and communicate (e.g. Hendry, 2000). Note how this ambition to capture the distinctive contents of different (meaningful) standpoints directly parallels the aspiration of rationalist analysis to specify and measure variables. The difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of establishing any unity of meaning for ‘strategy’ may be acknowledged. But this does not extend to a consideration of how analyses of ‘strategy’ appeal to, and reinforce, its standing as a discourse that is constitutive of the objects of analysis. ‘Weak constructionism’ pays scant attention to how, as Knights and Morgan (1995, p. 196) put it, the discourse of strategy has unintended ‘effects as a technology of power’. In Foucauldian analysis, the study of these effects is central because rather than assuming that each decision-making participant psychologically construes an existing situation, yvarious ‘‘situations’’ [are seen] as reconstituted by the prevailing discursive practicesyThis approach alters the familiar assumption in cognitive process

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MAHMOUD EZZAMEL AND HUGH WILLMOTT perspectives which radically distinguishes the persons making the decisions from the ‘‘decisions situations’’. Within our discursive orientation, there is no ‘‘situation’’ apart from the various construals and representations of it. (Shapiro, Bonham, & Heradstveit, 1988, p. 400)

From a ‘strong constructionist’ standpoint, the world is not ‘out there’ waiting to test or check the adequacy of descriptions and explanations that are offered up to it. Rather, the understanding of ‘out-thereness’, as well as the sense of adequacy attributed to competing representations, is apprehended as a product of language through which the world is rendered accountable. This position, to repeat, is not to be conflated with, or mistaken for, solipsism or idealism where no distinction is made between thought and its objects. As we have already noted, strong constructionists do not deny the existence of a world external to language. To the contrary, it is stressed how ‘objects’ invariably resist and escape their capture by language precisely because the former is irreducible to the latter. With regard to Foucault’s thinking, Said (1975, p. 285) notes, ‘Foucault is obsessed with the inescapable fact of ontological discontinuity. In language, for example, ‘‘the thing being represented falls outside of the representational itself.’’’ Constructionists believe that ‘a match between the ontology of a theory and its ‘‘real’’ counterpart in nature [is] illusive in principle’ (Kuhn, 1970, p. 206). The existence of a world external to thought is not denied; but the identification of the objects that populate the world is understood to be accomplished through discursive acts. Foucault takes us into texts but then out again by connecting discourse to institutions such as prisons, clinics and army barracks. For Foucault, discourse develops within, and derives its meaning and value from, the institutions which it serves to constitute and out of which it emerges. The distinctiveness of this approach is distilled by Said (1991, p. 212, original emphasis) when he remarks: It is not enough to say, as I implied, that Foucault moves the text out from a consideration of internal textuality to its way of inhabiting and remaining in extratextual reality. It would be more useful to say that Foucault’s interest in textuality is to present the text stripped of its esoteric or hermetic elements, and to do this by making the text assume its affiliation with institutions, offices, agencies, classes, academies, corporations, groups, guilds, ideologically defined parties and professions.

Indeed, Foucault (1972) repeatedly refers to the ‘awesome materiality of discourse’ to signal its connection to, and embeddedness in institutions and persons.

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CONSTRUCTIONISM AND FOUCAULDIAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS it is as the founder of a new field of research (or of a new way of conceiving and doing research) that he [Foucault] will continue to be known and regarded. The virtual representation and reperception of documentary and historical evidence by Foucault has been done in so unusual and imaginative a way as to have created for his evidence a new mental domain – not history, nor philosophy, but ‘‘archaeology’’ and ‘‘discourse’’ – and a new habit of thought, as a set of rules for knowledge to dominate truth, to make truth as an issue secondary to the successful ordering of and wielding of huge masses of actual present knowledge. (Said, 1975, p. 291, original emphasis)

In this section, we are concerned to explore the relevance of Foucault’s thinking to ‘strategy discourse’ (see also Hatchuel, Starkey, Tempest, & Le Masson, 2010). By ‘strategy discourse’, we mean pronouncements and inscriptions made by organizational actors concerning strategic visions and the practices that seek to render such pronouncements practical, as well as writings on strategy and strategizing by academics, consultants, gurus, the financial press and the public at large. It is perhaps unsurprising and even to be expected that ‘authors of traditional strategy frameworks virtually ignore the role of language in strategic decision making’ (Barry & Elmes, 1997, p. 432; see also Vaara, Tienari, Piekkari, & Santti, 2005), and that conceptions of strategy articulated in rationalist and interpretivist frameworks, including S-A-P, exclude recognition and exploration of how discourse ‘works to create some sense of stability, order and predictability and thereby produce a sustainable, functioning and liveable world’ (Chia, 2000, p. 514, emphases added). In contrast, Foucauldian analysis addresses how, for example, elements of strategy discourse are mobilized to construct practices and actors as strategic (see Knights & Morgan, 1991). Foucauldian analysis is also concerned with appreciating how strategy, as a discursive practice, operates to perform the (instrumentalized) reality of work organization that other forms of analysis aspire to reflect. It does not seek to emulate the aspiration of S-A-P to capture and catalogue ‘the detailed aspects of strategizing; how strategists think, talk, reflect, act, interact, emote, embellish, politicisey’ (Jarzabkowski, 2005, p. 3) but, rather, contributes to heightening awareness of the performative effects of such strategizing activities. Some Key Elements of Foucault’s Ideas Foucault’s thinking is notoriously hazardous to distil as it straddles numerous disciplines and was in a continuous process of reappraisal in his writing and in

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Table 2.

Key Features of Foucauldian Discursive Analysis.

The subjects and objects of social practices are constituted through discourses. Knowledge and power are intertwined in discursive practices. When normalized as regimes of truth, discourses operate to discipline thought and conduct. The mechanisms brought into play in power relations are ‘strategic’ but are not the property or achievement of autonomous agents. Power always operates on recalcitrant material which makes resistance endemic.

interviews. Having no interest in developing a systemic overview, or ‘grand narrative’, of his thought, Foucault preferred to interrogate and deconstruct his assumptions, leaving to others the task of distilling some ostensibly defining features or foundational principles. So, by presenting some key elements of Foucauldian analysis (see Table 2), we are mindful that any claim to establish a definitive account of Foucault’s thinking directly contradicts his allegiance to constructionism. Foucault highlights the performative power of language in producing ‘objects’ and ‘strategies’, rather than simply representing them. Foucault does not ‘simply’ remind us that ‘the objectivity of the institutional world, however massive it may appear to the individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity’ (Berger & Luckman, 1967, p. 78). Nor does Foucauldian analysis reproduce a subject–object dualism by representing itself as a ‘subjective enterprise’ (Astley, 1985, p. 497; cf. Cummings & Wilson, 2003), in which differences of interpretation are attributed to the ‘biased, selected observations’ (Astley, 1985, p. 498) of different researchers and research communities, as if they operate as autonomous groups disconnected from a wider powerinvested horizon of assumptions and expectations. Instead, for Foucault (1990, pp. 27–28): there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relationsy it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power/knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge.

(Strong) constructionist analysis problematizes the objectivist assumption of a dualistic separation of subject and object: it addresses ‘the constituting activityyfrom which subjects and objects are abstracted and treated as natural’ (Deetz, 2000, p. 733). The analysis of discourse is, accordingly, not reduced or restricted to the study of talk and text (Putnam & Fairhurst, 2001), as if these can be captured by a combination of attentiveness to them,

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and a methodological stance that fully appreciates and represents them. Rather, the objects of social science such as ‘organization’, ‘strategy’ and ‘strategizing’ are conceived to be social constructs embedded in ongoing, political processes of formation and potential transformation. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, for example, Foucault (1972, p. 47) urges that we ‘dispense with ‘‘things’’ as objects of study and, instead address the rules that enable such objects to be formed and stabilized – or ‘‘fixed’’ – within discourse.’ Discourse, for Foucault, does not comprise a collection of signs that disclose signifieds but, rather, consists of ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (ibid, p. 47, emphasis added). ‘Objects’ such as ‘strategy’ (Knights & Morgan, 1991, 1995) and ‘subjects’ such as experts or strategists are constituted through discursive practices within particular discursive formations such as mainstream management discourse, where the self-evidence of ‘strategy’ objects is routinely affirmed (e.g. in textbooks and corporate presentations) and/or in academic discourse where, at the margins at least, this self-evidence is debated. ‘Practices’, as studied by Foucault (1986, 1988, 1990), are neither purely social phenomena nor properties of subjects, but rather function both socially and within the self (Ezzamel & Hoskin, 2002). ‘Discursive practices’, as Foucault (1997, p. 199) writes, ‘delimit fields of objects, define a ‘‘legitimate perspective’’ for agents of knowledge, and establish norms for ‘‘the elaboration of concepts and theories’’’. It is through such ordinary, everyday activities and routines that power is understood to operate in a capillary manner. Power/knowledge is articulated by agents, but is not plausibly attributed to the sovereign will of subjects. Consider the dominant, conventional discourse of strategy. Inter alia, this discourse operates to specify what objects exist within, and by implication which are external to, its domain; it also acts to specify how such objects are legitimately represented and by whom; and, finally, it guides and restricts the direction in which concepts and theories (e.g. about ‘organization’ or ‘strategy’) are developed and applied8. Such discursive practices become institutionalized and sedimented through (hegemonic) relations of power/knowledge. To illustrate this process, the very people to whom power is commonsensically attributed, such as senior executives and strategists, are not infrequently entranced by, or fixated upon, the ‘positive’ knowledge of strategy and the practices that constitute its objectivity – practices that, inter alia, are productive of executives’ own sense, and protestations, of powerlessness in the face of ‘market forces’ and ‘strategic imperatives’ identified by orthodox thinking (see Knights, 1992).

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Discourse, Power and Resistance The formation and bounding of particular fields of objects is examined by studying the operation of power in relation to the delimitation and dislocation of knowledge. For Foucault, power operates to form and stabilize knowledge claims – for example, about objects such as ‘organization’, ‘strategy’ and ‘knowledge’ – that arise from a plurality of relationships in which there is no single locus of productive power (Foucault, 1989). Power is not exclusively negative or zero-sum; power is not something that is monopolized by elites and resisted by oppressed groups. It is productive, and not just restrictive or repressive, and it is diffuse and exercised in a network of relations. We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’’, it ‘‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production. (Foucault, 1984, pp. 204–205)

It is through power relations that the very notion of an ‘individual’, or of power as purely restrictive or repressive, makes sense and becomes sedimented as knowledge (Cooper, Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008; Willmott, 2010). In poststructuralist analysis, the ‘individual’ is not seen as having a prior existence as ‘a sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple and inert material on which power comes to fasten or against which it happens to strike’ (Foucault, 1986, p. 232). Instead, the very identification of persons as ‘individuals’ is regarded as an effect of power, in the guise of discourse that produces and stabilizes a particular, historically and culturally conditioned, way of accounting for, and constituting the distinctiveness of, persons. ‘Individuals’ are regarded as simultaneously undergoing and mobilizing power as the meaning of being an ‘individual’ defines, albeit incompletely, the quality of their being. In this sense, ‘individuals’ are ‘the vehicles of power, not its points of application’ (ibid), but it is a power that bestows upon persons a sense of autonomy as independent, self-indicating subjects, and accompanying this sense is a burden of responsibility as the person becomes ‘tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 212). As an aside, Foucault’s thinking precedes and parallels Meyer and Jepperson’s (2000, p. 100) commentary on ‘the modern actor as an authorized agent’. Meyer and Jepperson conceive of the ‘individual’ as a modern, Western institution but, in contrast to Foucault, they abstract its

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formation from the relations of power that the notion of the ‘individual’ routinely operates to reinforce. From a Foucauldian perspective, it is through the productivity of power that perspectives are defined, and norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories are formulated. As Smart (1985, p. 79, emphasis added) notes, ‘The implication’ of Foucault’s conception of power, ‘is clearyattention has to be given to the mechanisms, techniques and procedures of power, literally to how power functions, only then will it be possible to see howyparticular mechanisms of power become economically advantageous and politically useful’. Amongst such, ‘procedures’ may be counted those that surround, and lend significance to, the ‘individual’ and ‘strategy’. Becoming ‘tied to identity by conscience or self-knowledge’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 212) as an ‘individual’ can be highly productive, as well as repressive, as Marx (1976) notes when contrasting the position of the ‘free’ seller of wage labour to that of the indentured slave whose existence is guaranteed by the master. What makes the former a ‘better worker’, Marx contends, is ‘the consciousness (or better: the idea) of free self-determination, of libertyyas does the related feeling (sense) of responsibility’ (ibid, p. 1031). Accompanying the erosion of the ascribed status positions of a feudal era is the freedom to exchange labour power for a wage. Responsibility for reproducing this power passes from the feudal lord to the seller of commodified labour. Other institutions in which power is articulated and institutionalized include the knowledge and techniques of modern management, such as the notion of ‘strategic business units’ and the technologies of accounting (Hoskin & Macve, 1986; Carmona, Ezzamel, & Gutierrez, 1997, 2002). In Foucault’s thinking, knowledge and power are inextricably intertwined and mutually constitutive: ‘there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose or constitute at the same time power relations’ (Foucault, 1979, p. 27). Power relations constitute but also depend upon discourses, such as the discourses of strategy and organization, that attribute truths and exert effects. An example is the truth that ‘organization’ is separate from ‘environment’ – a dichotomy which, as Smircich and Stubbart (1985, p. 724) note, ‘profoundly shapes thinking about strategic management’. Foucault’s conception of discourse also incorporates an appreciation of its ambivalent formation and use: discourse ‘can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy’ (Foucault, 1990, pp. 100–101). Each engagement of a particular discursive practice involves a struggle to displace or accommodate some rival vector of power/knowledge relations.

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As a form of self-knowledge, power operates upon populations not as something that ‘powerful’ or elite human beings can ever successfully ‘stand above’ or immunize themselves against9. Rather, power operates upon, or through, recalcitrant material (humans) – as, for example, when those subject to disciplinary technologies retaliate by ‘gaming the system’, or respond favourably to a new strategic discourse. As there is no exercise of power without resistance, all efforts to mobilize ‘conscience or self-knowledge’ to discipline subjectivity are doomed to degrees of failure as they arbitrarily partition the world in a way that produces the conditions of possibility of their breach. Each exercise of power is therefore inherently vulnerable to overt and covert forms of resistance that question, and may ultimately displace, its ‘truth’ (Ezzamel, 1994). More specifically, critical self-reflection can open up a transpersonal and holistic mode of awareness that precedes, and unpredictably intrudes upon, the dominant politico-cultural sense of subject–object separation, as exemplified by objectivist enquiry.

Limiting Resistance The connections between power, discursive practice and resistance merit some further elucidation. According to Foucault, there are two attributes of discourse that have been interpreted to inhibit, or at the very least reduce, the potential for resistance. First, discourse may become invisible and hide the rules of its formation by pretending to appear simply as writing: ‘Foucault’s most interesting and problematic historical and philosophical thesis is that discourse, as well as the text, became invisible, that discourse began to dissemble and appear merely to be writing or texts, that discourse hid the systematic rules of its formation and its concrete affiliation with power’ (Said, 1991, p. 217). This invisibility of discourse, its (reified) appearance as mere writing, its masking of its association with power and its hiding of its rules of formation collude to impede the development of resistance. Think, for example, of a discourse that articulates corporate strategy in terms of being a win-win price leader (Porter, 1985) that will deliver benefits to many constituents: owners, customers, employees, suppliers and society. Typically, such a discourse assumes the inevitability and unequivocal benefits of having a particular strategy, securing or enhancing market share and profitability, delivering good service to customers, keeping suppliers gainfully employed and saving or even creating more jobs. That such a discourse is inextricably linked to power relations in which the interests of major corporations, financial markets, and especially shareholders rein supreme may not be

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self-evident or indeed intelligible to many employees, except perhaps when jobs are cut to defend profitability and/or to shore up the share price; and, even then, such moves are likely to be represented in terms of ‘survival’ and ‘maintaining competitiveness’. To the extent that the rules of the formation of discursive statements about strategy are not acknowledged, understood or even visible, discourse becomes taken-as-truth, with the consequence that it is more readily consumed as rational and expertly thought out. It is removed from, and seemingly cleansed of, serving owners of capital as prioritized stakeholders. Such discourse on strategy, like any discourse as Said (1991, p. 216) notes, discovers ‘a way to clothe, disguise, rarefy and wrap itself systematically in the language of truth, rationality, utilitarian value, and knowledge.’ Foucault’s project is precisely to attend to unexplicated rules of formation, highlight connections between discourses (e.g. on strategy and power) and thereby demonstrate the awesome materiality of such a discourse. A second characteristic of discourse, which also relates to its invisibility, is that it frequently appears in the form of detailed, unexceptional, mundane measures, such as bookkeeping practices, or everyday strategic procedures. As a consequence of their frequent repetition and/or seemingly uninteresting appearance, such discourses become taken-for-granted and escape attention, and therein lies the insidiousness of their power. Alerting affected subjects to the powerful consequences of such discursive practices is more difficult than if the discourse is comparatively novel and/or when its rules of formation are more clearly appreciated. Foucauldian analysis resonates with more overtly critical, emancipatory analysis insofar as it also re-activates what has become sedimented – by insisting that the practices comprising ‘strategy’ and ‘strategizing’, for example, are contingent and power-dependent, and that resistance is endemic to their formation and functioning.

FOUCAULDIAN STUDIES OF STRATEGY To recap, we have noted how mainstream analysis of strategy and strategic management are guided by a commitment to empirical realism. Its objects of investigation, such as ‘competitive advantage’, are assumed to ‘reside somewhere in time and space, findable in the same way that we find a misplaced fountain pen’ (Powell, 2001, p. 885). This is irrespective of whether ‘competitive advantage’ is associated with the effective control of some key variable(s), with meanings, or with the strategizing practices of organizational members. A discourse-attentive study of ‘competitive advantage’, in contrast, attends to participation in an evolving ‘language game through

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which strategy researchers and managers presently solve their problems’ (ibid, p. 886); or, to take a further Foucauldian step, it is conceived as a game in which such ‘problems’ are conceived to be constituted as ‘problems’ through the discursive practices of strategizing (Knights & Morgan, 1991). In this respect, it is relevant to keep in mind the Foucauldian aphorism to which we referred earlier: discourse consists of ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 47, emphasis added). From this standpoint, responses to the question of how to represent, or account for, ‘strategies’ and ‘strategic management’ are understood to depend, as with all organizing practices, upon the discourse that informs, guides and rationalizes their definition, scope and significance. Finally, it is relevant to note that conceiving of discourse(s) as what brings social objects into being places Foucauldian analyses at some distance from much work that is undertaken under the label of ‘discourse analysis’ (e.g. Hendry, 2000; Ng & De Cock, 2002), in which discourses are conceived to address some preexistent social object, such as ‘strategy’, or ‘control’. Foucauldian scholarship appreciates the performative quality of discourse as doing things rather than ‘simply’ describing, or prescribing for, what is understood to be already there.

Reflections on Foucauldian Studies of Strategy In Foucauldian analysis, ‘agency’ as well as ‘structure’ and ‘environment’ are articulations of discursive practices. Foucauldian discourse analysis problematizes the taken-for-granted idea of sovereign agents who choose between frameworks and/or elements within them. Thereby, it does not seek to provide a more adequate or ‘correct’ conception of ‘agency’ (or ‘structure’) as a replacement for existing formulations. Rather, as we have emphasized, Foucauldian discourse analysis addresses the operation and effects of the discursive practices through, and within, which the authority of such formulations becomes taken for granted. The attribution of creativity to actors, for example, is regarded as a particular articulation of power/knowledge, as indeed is the representation of their activities by reference to whatever characteristics (e.g. ‘M-form’; ‘turbulent’) are assigned to ‘organizations’ and ‘environments’. From a Foucauldian perspective, it is through the play of discursive practices that ‘regimes of truth’ – such as the body of knowledge founded upon an assumption of apparently ‘out there’ social objects called ‘strategy’ and ‘strategizing’ – are established and exert their productive and disciplining power.

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A small but informative number of studies of strategy and strategizing inspired by the thinking of Foucault have appeared during the past two decades or so (Knights & Morgan, 1991, 1995; Rose & Miller, 1992; Miller & O’Leary, 1993, 1994; Knights, 1992; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2004, 2008; Ezzamel et al., 2008). Knights and Morgan (1991, 1995)’s pathbreaking studies articulate many of the insights to be gained from adopting a Foucauldian-based analysis of strategy. They view ‘corporate strategy as a set of discourses and practices that transform managers and employees alike into subjects who secure their sense of purpose and reality by formulating, evaluating and conducting strategy’ (Knights and Morgan, 1991, p. 252). Their specific focus is upon how ‘strategy’ comes to play a constitutive role in the practices comprising the self-understandings and identifications of those who participate in discerning and enacting its sense. In the case of executives, these actors are not conceived as possessors of a monopoly of power who impose their will upon other, ‘powerless’ employees. Rather, and without denying asymmetries of material and symbolic resources, executives and other employees are understood to be entangled in a discursive net of power relations. More broadly, Knights and Morgan (1991, p. 255) highlight how strategic discourse constitutes not only strategists but also ‘the problems for which [this discourse] claims to be a solution’. In this way, strategy discourse is seen to perform, and thereby contribute routinely to, an instrumental, technocratic orientation in corporate life. In making these connections, Foucauldian analysis parallels that of more explicitly critical studies of strategic management in which notions of efficiency and competitiveness are seen to be prioritized in ways that advance or consolidate the position of those best placed to take advantage of their fuller realization, and often at the expense of environmental and/or social values (Levy et al., 2003). Rose and Miller (1992) also emphasize the importance of discourse as they connect rationalities (‘the changing discursive fields within which the exercise of power is conceptualized’, ibid, p.175) and technologies (‘mundane programmes, calculations, techniques, apparatuses, documents and procedures’, ibid, p. 175) through which ambitions are embodied and given effect. Their analysis explores interconnections between managerial strategic discourse, as a form of rationality, and management and calculative technologies, such as accounting, which are mobilized to embody and give effect to strategic discourse. Miller and O’Leary (1993, 1994) demonstrate the value of taking a genealogical approach to the study of strategic discourse in terms of providing an informed understanding of its genesis and constitutive effects. They analyze strategy discourse in a US company related to the politics of the product (competing and negotiated

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concepts of the product) within the broader context of the discourses on new economic citizenship and the re-organization of modern manufacturing facilities, and they explore the impact of calculative regimes on management–labour relations. Ezzamel and Willmott (2004, 2008) and Ezzamel et al. (2008) build upon the views of Knights and Morgan (1991, 1995) and Miller and O’Leary (1993, 1994) to explore the interconnections between managerial strategic discourse, as a form of rationality, and accounting as a calculative technology in the operations of a global retailer. Ezzamel and Willmott (2008) examine how a discourse of strategy, summarized as ‘Simplify, Focus, Act’ (SFA), was selectively mobilized and problematized in the strategizing practices of a broad constituency of employees. In doing so, they explicate and illustrate key elements of Foucault’s work relevant for analyzing (strategic) discourse. Ezzamel and Willmott (2008) follow Miller and O’Leary (1993, 1994) in offering a genealogical approach to the study of strategic discourse but then remedy the latter’s inclination to focus upon the pronouncements of senior managers, to the neglect of other employees and, in particular, middle managers, shop floor supervisors and operators. In another Foucauldian study of strategy, Ezzamel et al. (2008) show how claimed visionary strategizing practices in a major US conglomerate were frequently brought to a halt and replaced with short-termist cost-cutting measures as executives subscribed to, or at least complied with, the disciplinary stock market discourse on share price and firm value. These studies share a number of important commonalities. First, they all underscore the constitutive and performative power of discourse not only in relation to constructing objects such as ‘strategy’, ‘organization’, ‘calculative regimes’ and ‘market discipline’ but also concerning the transformation of organizational members into ‘strategists’, or ‘managers’ whose sense of purpose is accomplished through participation in discursive practices that are productive of objects of management, such as strategy. Second, in all the studies, the role of subjects in articulating and promoting specific discursive practices testifies to the significance of human agency in discourse analysis, albeit the conception of agency differs from that of the taken-for-granted ‘individual’ found in rationalist and interpretivist studies. Third, Foucauldian studies of strategy understand discourse to be indexical, that is, they locate particular discourses (such as ‘strategy’) within the discursive field that renders discourse meaningful. Fourth, and this requires more research, these studies suggest that analysis of any particular discourse has to be moderated and refined by exploring other discourses that intersect with the discourse of interest: those that support it, parallel it or contradict it.

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In general, Foucauldian contributions to the study of strategy offer an alternative to accounts of strategy in which power is ignored or is conceived as a possession of (more powerful) individuals or groups (e.g. ‘strategists’) that can be won or lost. The sovereign power attributed to the actions of strategists is regarded as an artefact of discourse to which truth is ascribed rather than as a reflection of reality (which is to encourage a stance of scepticism rather than disbelief with regard to accounts where change is attributed to the strategic conduct of powerful individuals or groups). It is worth stressing that this understanding does not deny inequalities in society and organizations, in the form of the asymmetrical distributions of material and symbolic goods or ‘objective abilities’ as Foucault (1980, p. 219) characterizes them. In this respect, we have noted a degree of compatibility with critical studies of strategy (e.g. Shrivastava, 1986; Levy et al., 2003). Foucauldian discourse analysis makes a reflexive turn as the focus shifts from a conception of power formulated as a quantum possessed by individuals (and groups) to whom interests are ascribed towards one that raises and addresses the question, or problematic, of how subjects are constituted as sovereign agents motivated by interests.

DISCUSSION: A PARADOX OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The analytical challenge posed by the poststructuralist tenor of Foucauldian discourse analysis is to develop an understanding of how power–knowledge relations are productive of particular ways of accomplishing and accounting for complex processes, including those characterized as ‘strategy’, ‘strategic management’ and ‘strategizing’. It is not simply that discursive practices, such as ‘price differentiation’, are selectively or contextually interpreted by managers who embrace such practices tacitly or knowingly as well as by academics and consultants who coin and disseminate the jargon of strategy. Rather, discursive practices are indexical in the sense that they are rendered meaningful by connecting their claims to their discursively constituted contexts. The status, purpose and effects of ‘price differentiation’, to continue with this example, are rendered intelligible by invoking a sense of context (e.g. market relations) that imbues it with particular meaning and significance. Foucauldian discourse analysis fosters an awareness of how the identification and privileging of particular contextual conditions is necessarily a product of contingent, discursively produced

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ways of depicting organizational practices, such as the strategizing activities that are pursued in the name of ‘price differentiation’. At the same time, its strong constructionism places in question the S-A-P claim that ethnographic research can ever succeed in ‘capturing the micro-behaviours of strategists’ (Rasche & Chia, 2009, p. 726). In this respect, Foucauldian analysis marks a radical and innovative departure from established ways of studying strategy and strategic management. However, it comes with no guarantees of maintaining this stance in the face of pressures to assimilate it within mainstream thinking or to exclude it from the ‘normal science’ of strategy research. Foucauldian analysis, as Knights and Morgan (1995, p. 197) note, is in principle distinguished by the proposition that any attempt to identify the conditions that account for the existence of new discourses and associated practices is itself provisional and can never be exhaustive. Knights and Morgan (ibid) affirm this understanding and yet, in their discussion of the development of strategy discourses and practices in the financial services sector, they present a seemingly authoritative identification of the key features of what they term ‘the industry context’ and the specific ‘organizational settings’, in which strategy discourse (in financial services companies) was taken up and developed. We identify some slippage here into more established forms of analysis when, for example, it is claimed that ‘the regulatory conditions of financial services’ have ‘placed a strategic imperative on the demand for flexible and highly responsive information systems’ (ibid, p. 206). It is not just that, as Knights and Morgan (1995, p. 260) acknowledge, the ‘truth effects’ associated with mainstream thinking about strategy are powerful, and, as they put it, make it ‘exceedingly difficult for us to disentangle ourselves from such a view’. In such passages, the identification of ‘conditions’ and the associated ‘imperative’ are not presented as an outcome of mobilizing a particular discourse, nor is there an acknowledgement of the power/knowledge relations that are productive of particular ways of accounting for the formation of strategic processes. To be fair, this shortcoming in Knights and Morgan’s analysis serves to highlight a problem endemic to strong constructionist forms of analysis. The specific difficulty, or paradox, for Foucauldian analysis is that in order to study a social object, such as ‘strategy’, as a discursive practice, it is necessary to proceed as if our knowledge of this object exists independently of the discourses that enable us to identify and examine it. This problem is unrecognized in, or is ‘invisible’ to, objectivist forms of analysis in which a separation of ‘object’ and ‘discourse’ is assumed. It is precisely this separation that, in principle, is problematized in Foucauldian analysis.

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When reflecting upon Foucauldian contributions to the study of strategy, we readily acknowledge the limited extent to which authors can influence the sensibilities of readers who are, in Foucault’s words, tied to a particular sense of identity by the self-knowledge that they have acquired. We also acknowledge authors’ difficulties in providing a reflexive account of their narratives in a way that can render analysis more consistent and thereby enhance its potency. Many readers have developed an expectation that authors will say something specific – descriptive or prescriptive – that assumes and refines, and does not deconstruct, their common sense knowledge of strategy. So, authors struggle, as Knights and Morgan note, to move both themselves and their readers beyond the confines of conventional wisdom. They (we!) wrestle with established boundaries of relevance and value as they (and we) puzzle over how poststructuralist analysis speaks to the preoccupations and agendas of rationalist and interpretivist analysis. Such puzzlement may be accompanied by calls for a fuller explication of how poststructuralist analysis is itself constructed. Such calls may articulate a positivist demand for adherence to established methodological protocols. A limitation of this demand, as we have sought to show, is that it impedes an appreciation of how Foucauldian analysis offers a fresh and instructive understanding of strategy as a discourse. In doing so, Foucauldian analysis serves to highlight some limitations of ‘rationalist’ and ‘interpretivist’ forms of analysis without aspiring to replace them.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS This chapter has considered the distinctive basis and contribution of poststructuralist analysis of strategy as exemplified by Foucauldian thinking and its emergent applications in this field. We distinguished rationalist, interpretivist and poststructuralist forms of analysis to illustrate how what is counted as ‘strategy’, and what ‘strategic management’ means, depends upon the inter-subjective sense, or ‘translation’, of these terms within specific frames of reference (see Seidl, 2007). Foucauldian analysis of strategy, we have suggested, does not offer a corrective to, or refinement of, other more established forms of analysis. Instead, as a form of ‘strong constructionism’, Foucauldian analysis ascribes a distinctive status to social objects (e.g. strategy) and the possibilities of their knowledge(s) (see also Mir & Watson, 2000, 2001 and the exchange between Powell 2002, 2003 and Arend, 2003). From a Foucauldian perspective, ‘strategy’ is conceived as a field of knowledge comprising plural ‘discourses of local truths’, rather than

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a single, universal truth to which diverse frames of reference make distinctive, cumulative contributions. Whereas mainstream literatures are guided by a tacit assumption that metatheoretical issues are either already settled in favour of objectivism or can be safely ignored for all practical purposes, Foucauldian analysis is insistent upon the indivisibility of knowledge and power, where relations of power depend upon, and operate to maintain and transform, particular ‘discourses of truth’. Foucauldian analysis attends to how forms of strategy discourse constitute, discipline and legitimize particular forms of organizational knowledge (‘strategy’), executive identity (the ‘strategist’) and management practice (‘strategizing’). It thereby points to the performative effects of rationalist and interpretivist knowledge of strategy, such as the widely taken-for-granted truth that ‘organization’ is separate from ‘environment’. It also shows how, in mainstream analysis, debate tends to be confined to the question of which approach and associated methodology best captures key features of strategic management just as it excludes sustained consideration of the constitutive effects of the use of strategy as a discourse, even though, arguably, it is through discourse(s) that conceptions and accounts of ‘strategy’, ‘strategizing’ and ‘strategic management’ are articulated. The significance of discursive practices is that they give social existence to the ‘objects’ (e.g. ‘organization’ and ‘markets’) that researchers are urged to study, that students are expected to know about, and which managers are urged to act upon. Understood in this light, neglect of strategy as a discourse has, prior to the emergence of Foucauldian analysis, been a glaring omission in the study of strategy and strategizing. Advocates of rationalist and interpretivist approaches commend them as means of accessing the truth of strategy, unclouded by powerful discolouring forces. Accordingly, these approaches tend to be positioned as rivals in the production of credible, factual knowledge of strategy. Mutual hostility indicates the presumption of a benchmark that the others’ claims fail to fulfill. In contrast, in Foucauldian thought, these analyses are regarded as producing credible and legitimate forms of knowledge within particular power/knowledge relations and associated regimes of truth. Each approach is seen to offer a distinctive way of making sense of strategy that has relevance and appeal for particular constituencies; in this respect, each enriches the study and practice of strategy. Alternatively, when ‘rationalist’ and ‘interpretivist’ forms of analysis are not regarded as rivals, they may be viewed as perspectives that capture different – ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ – dimensions of strategy which can be combined to produce a more complete, universal truth. From a Foucauldian perspective, in contrast, these forms of

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analyses are conceived as different in orientation, but not necessarily as rivalrous or complementary. Foucauldian analysis is not intended to revise or replace more established forms of analysis. Rather, its contribution lies in extending and enriching our knowledge in ways that draw attention to the contingencies and limits of what is known as well as to its unacknowledged consequences, for example, by connecting knowledge of strategy to the relations of power that render such knowledge relevant and even compelling in its (performative) effects. From a Foucauldian perspective, knowledge of strategy, whether articulated by practitioners or academics, is seen to be performative, rather than providing a more or less adequate or ‘realist(ic)’ representation of reality. Divergent forms of analysis are understood to be propelled and directed by distinctive ethico-political concerns that warrant the production of different kinds of knowledge. Foucauldian analysis illuminates how knowledge of ‘objects’, such as strategy and strategizing, articulates the ethico-political orientations of practitioners and researchers who perform the social reality that they routinely claim to capture or aspire to control. In recognizing and valuing plural forms of analysis,10 no objection is raised to the production of rationalist and interpretivist knowledge and no doubts are cast upon its usefulness. But Foucauldian analysis does invite greater humility and awareness of the relationship of knowledge and power and, relatedly, of the constitutive effects of knowledge production. A benefit of such humility is its allowance of space for the emergence and development of other (e.g. poststructuralist) analyses of strategy.

NOTES 1. See Times Higher Education, 26 March 2009. Available at http://www. timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode ¼ 26&storycode ¼ 405956 2. Child’s (1972) proposal illustrates our earlier observation on the way advocates of rationalist analysis, such as proponents of neo-contingency theory, are inclined to limit the value of approaches to their generation of insights amenable to selective appropriation and incorporation. 3. In principle, critical realism, as distinct from empirical realism, also incorporates this reflexivity (see AlAmoudi & Willmott, 2009). 4. Here we disagree with the claim that S-A-P takes ‘a different ontological position from mainstream strategy research’ (Johnson et al., 2007, p. 7). S-A-P does place human interaction at the centre but when examining this interaction, it rarely departs from the empirically realist ontology assumed by both rationalist studies of strategy and some influential examples of interpretivist analysis (e.g. Pettigrew, 1973; Mintzberg & Waters, 1985), as noted earlier.

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5. As Law (2004, p. 5) makes the reflexive point: ‘ymethods, their rules, and even more methods’ practices, not only describe but also help to produce the reality that they understand’ (original emphasis). 6. Constructionist epistemology is typically counter-posed against its objectivist ‘other’. An exception is Bernstein (1983) who contrasts objectivism with relativism but also notes that its more standard use is congruent with the claim of ‘metaphysical realism’ (or what we have called an empirical realist ontology) that ‘there is a world of objective reality which exists independently of us, and which has a determinate nature or essence that we can know’ (ibid, p. 9). ‘In modern times’, Bernstein continues, ‘objectivism has been closely linked with an acceptance of a basic metaphysical or epistemological distinction between the subject and the object’ (ibid). 7. Both ‘constructionism’ and ‘constructivism’ are terms used to characterize a similar position. Here we follows Phillips, Lawrence and Hardy (2006, p. 480, n. 1) who suggest that the term constructivism has ‘its roots in developmental psychology y and describes an epistemological perspective that emphasizes the notion of people as active constructors, rather than passive receptors, of knowledge: ‘‘reality’’ from a constructivist perspective is constructed in people’s minds’. Social constructionism, they contend, ‘builds on these ideas but emphasizes the social nature of reality – it is not constructed in people’s minds but in their social interaction, and especially in their linguistic interaction because of the enduring traces that this form of interaction is particularly capable of producing’ (ibid). 8. For a recent plea and prescription for guiding and restricting knowledge of strategic management to reverse its ‘disintegration’, see Hambrick (2004). 9. For such defences are themselves conceived by Foucault as materializations or effects of power. Power is constitutive of the so-called ‘powerful’ as well as the comparatively ‘powerless’ (Foucault, 1980a). 10. Advocacy of ‘informed pluralism’ does not presume or support paradigm incommensurability (see Willmott, 2003, 2008). ‘Rationalism’, ‘interpretivism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ are idealized distinctions, not well-defined and watertight silos. There is already ‘impurity’ in any analysis, as Derrida’s deconstructions repeatedly demonstrate; and there is every reason to believe that efforts to combine or aggregate approaches will be considered viable by certain constituencies even if they are viewed with suspicion, or derision, by others.

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THE STRATEGY AND IDENTITY RELATIONSHIP: TOWARDS A PROCESSUAL UNDERSTANDING John A. A. Sillince and Barbara Simpson ABSTRACT The paradigmatic separation of the strategy and identity literatures constitutes an ongoing problem for the extension of either into more global contexts. The theorization proposed in this chapter presents rhetoric as the means by which the ‘strategy work’ of reimagining future options and the ‘identity work’ of reformulating the meaning of past actions may be integrated in the present moment. By locating both strategy work and identity work within the continuity of experience, we suggest that scholars will be better able to develop theoretically integrated, empirically grounded and globally relevant studies of strategy.

INTRODUCTION We argue that identity theory is needed in the theorizing of strategy (and vice versa), but currently these two literatures remain largely independent of each other, with the result that it is difficult to engage theoretically with

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either the meaningfulness of strategy or the consequences of identity. This is partly a matter of different methodological and theoretical paradigms: the organizational identity literature tends to psychologize the organization and generally assumes a social constructionist view, whereas the more realist strategy literature is largely quantitative and economic in its methodology and theorizing. To date, there has been very little scholarly work that has successfully related organizational identity and strategy. We propose two possible reasons for this. First, there is a difficulty conceiving identities and strategies as fluid and changing when they are defined in contexts of ‘organizations’ and ‘environments’ that have clear and fixed properties and boundaries. These entitative constraints pose a challenge to accommodating both flexibility and stability in the same theoretical frame. Second, there is a difficulty related to the extent to which different theoretical perspectives admit agency as an influence that shapes who we are (identity) and what we should do (strategy). In an attempt to overcome these difficulties, our approach will frame both identity and strategy as dynamic social processes that engage both actors and their situations in meaningful and productive work. By defining identity work as the retrospective reformulation of meanings ascribed to past events and strategy work as the prospective reimagination of alternative futures, we see actors continuously engaged in the simultaneous production of identities and strategies. We will argue that the intertwining of these two processes is integrated in the living present by means of rhetorical constructions that weave identity work and strategy work together. The specific contribution that we seek to make then is a temporal retheorization that integrates the reformulating practices of identity work, the reimagining practices of identity work and the rhetorical practices of the present. We begin the next section by elaborating the two major obstacles that we see to achieving a theoretical integration of the identity and strategy literatures, namely the problem of change and the problem of agency. We then proceed to develop an alternative theorization that considers identity and strategy as forms of work that are both meaningful and productive. In building this argument, we draw on the tradition of pragmatist philosophy as well as recently emergent literatures that adopt a processual perspective to examine the dynamics of organizational practices. The classical rhetoric theory of Aristotle then informs our view of the function of rhetoric as a means of present-time integration of identity work and strategy work.

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TWO THEORETICAL PROBLEMS Problem One: The Problem of Change The problem of change is concerned with how to reconcile both flexibility and stability in the same theoretical explanation. Links between strategy (actions by the organization as an actor in its environment) and organizational identity (‘who we are as an organization’) have been postulated in terms of Albert and Whetten’s (1985) three defining characteristics of organizational identity – uniqueness, centrality and enduringness. Uniqueness of organizational identity is a resource for strategy which is difficult to imitate and therefore provides the firm with competitive advantage (Stimpert, Gustafsson, & Sarason, 1998; Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010). Central or defining aspects of identity have strategic significance because they influence the firm’s ability to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technology (Pralahad & Hamel, 1990; Whetten & Godfrey, 1998, p. 119). On the other hand, enduringness of organizational identity can be a source of competitive advantage in a stable environment because of its easy comprehensibility and freedom from conflict (Whetten & Godfrey, 1998, p. 121). With regard to the problem of change, it is this third aspect – the enduringness of organizational identity – that is most obviously relevant. Although Albert and Whetten (1985), in their seminal article, emphasized its enduring quality, many scholars now suggest that organizational identity is constituted by what is central and distinctive about the organization and that this is a ‘potentially precarious and unstable notion, frequently up for redefinition and revision by organizational members’ (Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000, p. 64). Such a view of unstable, yet continuous identity has been reinforced by contingency approaches, which suggest various factors that make identity more easily changeable (Barney et al., 1998, p. 121), and by discursive approaches, which argue that organizational identity is constructed, maintained and negotiated through ongoing and possibly adaptive discursive interaction (e.g. Fiol, 2002; Chreim, 2005; Hardy, Lawrence, & Grant, 2005). When the stability of organizational identity is regarded as paramount, this has a constraining effect on flexibility to change, and thus some degree of path dependency of strategy (Arthur, 1995; Stinchcombe, 1965; Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). This stability of organizational identity and strategy enables managers to direct the accumulation of necessary competencies

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(Hamel & Prahalad, 1989), giving the organization ‘something to ‘‘aim’’ for’ (Lovas & Ghoshal, 2000, p. 885). Indeed, it has been argued that the primary strategy of an organization is to maintain its identity ‘what they repeatedly commit to be, through time and across circumstances’ (Whetten, 2006, p. 224). Such inflexibility may provide the necessary stability for resource accumulation (Dierickx & Cool, 1989) and the consistency and predictability of strategic direction that establishes legitimacy and thus access to external resources (Suchman, 1995). This can occur through a selfreinforcing virtuous circle in which financial success determines the ongoing stability of identity (Gagliardi, 1986). When identity does not allow for alternatives that are adapted to new problems, then strategy and identity become a vicious circle that impedes change (Gagliardi, 1986). When flexibility is most important, then organizational identity is viewed as controllable, something to fashion as a changeable and useful image of the organization’s and its environment’s changing criteria of what constitutes success. Such a marketing-oriented strategy attempts to impose and control what is viewed as a flexible organizational identity that is tuned to the needs of the consumer and to the changing needs of the market (Christensen, 1995). Again, identity, largely because of its implicit nature, can be seen as an ‘enabler of quick, decisive decision making’ (Barney et al., 1998, p. 117) or as a resource to do something inimitable, superior or fad-resistant (Barney et al., 1998, p. 119). Various scholars have developed frameworks that promise to resolve the paradoxical anti-thesis between flexibility and stability of organizational identity. One approach in the strategy literature has been to suggest that stability is aligned with planned strategies (Porter, 1996), whereas the need for flexibility is viewed as arising in the context of emergent strategies (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). The planning emergence polarity therefore suggests a co-evolution between the structure provided by planned strategies and the agency manifested in emergent strategies. Another approach has been to suggest that the strategy-identity constellation has an inner, continuous core and a changeable outer periphery. Organizational identities as inner core would be expected to alter less than the outer periphery of organizational procedures or business models, and this is to some extent the case (Hodgkinson, 1994). The strategy-making process circles around an inner, unchangeable core which individuals within the organization can use to provide an anchor point for personal and organizational identity. This suggests that strategy is the changeable output from interaction between individuals trying to secure a stable sense of identity and control (Sturdy, 1997) and that although

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strategists may experience a common identification, they may still disagree about an organization’s strategy (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). Organizational identity can prevent change in strategy, so it is argued that some organizations develop ‘platforms’ or contexts that enable specific structures (e.g. markets, networks, matrix structures etc) to be improvised. Identity in such contexts involves after the fact rationalizing of surprises, tinkering and bricolage. Under these circumstances, there needs to be some intermediate, friction-tolerant structure such as supposedly exists between inner identity and outer strategy in a ‘platform’ organization (Ciborra, 1996). The inner identity–outer strategy model has been reinterpreted to say that inner identity is about labels, which stay the same, whereas outer strategy is about meanings, which are flexible and changeable and whose fluidity enables the organization to adapt (Gioia et al., 2000; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). Again, Lilley (2001, p. 77) has suggested that peripheral strategy texts, because of their ambivalence between being humbly ready to be jettisoned in the name of flexibility and being resolutely faithful to a chosen direction, undermine any stable sense of core organizational identity. However, this inner identity–outer strategy model has been contradicted by a view that says that the inner identity is dynamic and actually drives change in strategy. Examples of this view include the suggestion that the role of strategy is to realign inner-facing to fit outer-facing identity (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991) or to realign actual to fit ideal identity (Balmer, Stuart, & Greyser, 2003; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1994; Gioia & Thomas, 1996; Gioia et al., 2000). Another version of this argument says that the outer periphery is strategic action, and this is interpreted in language that reassures anxious members by persuading them that things have essentially stayed the same: in this case, it is the inner core that is socially constructed as a post facto rationalization of the outer periphery of strategy (Chreim, 2005; Sharma, 2000): for example, Intel’s strategy changed away from computer memory to microprocessors before top managers adjusted their view of Intel’s identity (Burgelman, 1983). In summary then, although scholars have begun to engage with the problem of flexibility versus stability by means of models that relate strategy and identity together, they disagree about what they mean by these concepts and this leads to disagreements as to which one is dynamic and which is stable.

Problem Two: The Problem of Agency The problem of agency is that there are inconsistent views taken by theorists about how much agency and control organizations possess with regard to

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who they are (identity) and what they should do (strategy). The identity question relates to how much identity is seen as inspectable and modifiable by organizational leaders and members themselves, or how much such matters are seen as existing below the level of awareness and conscious control. With regard to strategy, the question relates to how much control and power the organization has to influence the market conditions and networks of support within which it exists. The concept of agency has often been framed in terms of an oppositional dilemma between determinism and voluntarism (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Reed, 1988; Whittington, 1988). This dichotomy has characterized differences between voluntaristic economics-oriented rational actor theories and more deterministic sociological theories of behaviour that emphasize constraints imposed by cultural norms and stable social identities and structure. One approach to this dilemma that assumes individuals are conscious of their identity has been to focus on the particular circumstances of managerial choice in upper echelons (Hambrick, 2007), strategic responses (Oliver, 1991), strategic choice (Child, 1972), attention (Hoffman & Ocasio, 2001), enactment (Daft & Weick, 1984) and strategic sensemaking, in which people seek to ‘make sense of events and situations [that] are always open to multiple interpretations’ (Smircich & Stubbart, 1985, p. 727). One extreme view of agency is ‘interpretive voluntarism’ (Whittington, 1988, p. 527) in which the actor has un-constrained capacity for independently motivated action as suggested in early work by Weick (1969). However, because this views sensemaking as enacted self-belief, sensemaking becomes ‘self-referential and self-confirming’ (Caldwell, 2006, p. 159). The view that the environment ‘is constituted by interdependent human action’ (Weick, 1969, p. 23) so that ‘when something is not attended to it does not exist’ (Weick, 1969, p. 28) denies the importance of objective environmental constraints. In dissolving away constraints, however, the problem is created that preconditions ‘which endow the actor with internal complexity and external resources’ have also been done away with, as argued by Whittington (1988, p. 528). Although Weick (1995) has suggested that decision makers oscillate between controlled, conscious action and action that is unconscious and only retrospectively understood, his theory contains a self-contradiction because it generally implies a high level of agency and a low level of contemporaneous selfawareness. Sensemaking positions strategy as the action setting for the exercise of agency and identity as the focus of self-awareness, in a contradictory way. Sensemaking therefore, despite its interest in going beyond economics-inspired rational actor models of behaviour, retains the extreme voluntarism of these models. At the other extreme, there is determinism or the directing of the

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individual’s actions by outside forces or at the macro-level the notion of historicism that claims that events are determined by conditions and inherent processes beyond the control of people. An example of a historicist theory of the identity–strategy relationship arises when identity is viewed as beyond the awareness or conscious control of members and thus generative of pathdependent strategy. Whether organizations can be said to exert agency on their own behalf as social actors is a problematic issue. Such organizational-level agency implies that the members of the organization have some self-awareness of and some degree of independence and control over its environment, an assumption that is fundamental to regarding strategy as effective and even possible. It has been argued that conceiving of organizations as individual-like identities paints them as social actors (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006) with human characters (Czarniawska, 1997) that can be narrated in moral terms (Barney, 1998; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991). Identity exists at multiple levels such as organizational and individual levels that have effects on strategy. For example, conceiving of oneself as a vigilant monitor of operating expenditures and as a friend of the company works both at the individual level for board members who must decide strategy but also forms their shared perception of what the company means as a collective entity (Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997). Yet the concept of organizational identity is derived from its initial application as an individual construct. Organizational identity is therefore an anthropomorphism – the organization is being un-realistically represented as an individual. It has been argued that this reifies organizations and ignores ‘how collectives such as organizations are produced and reproduced’ (Cornelissen, 2002, p. 264). Organizations are not simply scaled-up versions of individuals. For example, the link between strategy and identity varies depending upon where the individual is located within the organizational hierarchy. Although it could be said that top managers’ individual work identity is strongly bound up with their organization’s strategy, this is less the case for lower level personnel (Corley, 2004). This charge is particularly acute from the point of view of the researcher seeking sophisticated explanation. Equally it has been argued that it is less of a problem when one considers how organizations are viewed by the average customer or member of the public who seeks a synecdoche in the form of a ‘unifying’ organizational identity (Barney, 1998, p. 109) or by the average decision maker who needs to know ‘who you are before you can take action’ (Barney et al., 1998, p. 113). As one of the directors of a start-up company commented: ‘Fancy market plans and the like have no purpose unless you find out who you are’ (Carlsen, 2006, p. 139).

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The concept of agency assumes deliberate choice and intentionality. But strategy may not be the result of deliberate agentic choice and instead may be due to unconscious identity (Beech & Johnson, 2005) or emergence (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). Those who argue that organizational identity is largely unknowable, unconscious and difficult to define suggest that it only takes specific shape in unusual circumstances such as a threatening crisis (Albert & Whetten, 1985). As theorists have sought to operationalize organizational identity, however, and thus make it empirically graspable, they have also developed an instrumental orientation in assuming that managers could reflexively use such knowledge to manipulate organizational identity. For example Reger, Gustafson, Demarie, and Mullane (1994) have suggested that strategy should be framed as middle-range change in order to be large enough to overcome identity-oriented inertia but not so large that resistance is caused. According to structural contingency theory, the design of organizations is determined by their environmental and internal contingencies (Donaldson, 2001), yet this view has been challenged by the argument that managers can in practice choose organizational forms that fit with their preferences and thus that they do demonstrate free agency (Child, 1997). It has been argued that ‘managers matter’ (Hambrick & Finkelstein, 1987, p. 370) and this implies that an individual’s perceived sense of control is the same as the individual’s perception of his/her ability to make a difference (Giddens, 1984). At the macro-level of analysis, agency is a sense of ability to control and predict on behalf of the organization – that is, individuals’ perception of their ability to make a difference for their organization’s chances of success and survival, within the organization’s environmental constraints. This is because controlling and predicting occurs through managers’ interpretation of environmental feedback (Daft & Weick, 1984; Gist & Mitchell, 1992, p. 186) that tells them how much influence and understanding they indeed do or do not possess. Acting influentially and knowledgeably on behalf of one’s organization may be subject to differing views depending on the circumstances. It is important because members’ views of the best strategic action to take for their organization are influenced by their perceptions of their organization’s freedom of action. These considerations have largely been about external agency that reflects power and control over one’s external environment, as might most easily be observed by agents who are distinct from the focal organization, for example, by competitors or market analysts. Internal agency, on the other hand, is the subjective experience of power and control by the focal individual or organization. Mintzberg argued that the senior manager may

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view herself as a ‘puppet’ but also that she ‘can exert control’ by successfully positioning the identities of others as having obligations to her (1971, p. B102). This subtle blending of internal and external empowerment has inspired later scholars seeking to show that strategy discourse does not position identities so as to totally strip them of agency (e.g. Laine & Vaara, 2007). Nevertheless, this debate continues to be dominated by assumptions that locate agency as the actions of isolated individuals while strategy remains largely at an organizational level of analysis. This disconnect constitutes a significant obstacle to any integration of identity and strategy theories. A potential way forward is, however, suggested by the formulation of agency as social action (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Simpson, 2009), which recognizes that actors are socially constituted selves.

TOWARDS RESOLUTION OF THESE PROBLEMS Underpinning each of these problems there is an ontological dualism that separates stability from change, or individual level analyses from collective or organizational level analyses. While such dualisms promote in-depth analyses of distinct theoretical constructs, they deny the possibilities that arise from seeing these polar opposites as elements of the same process. For this reason, we propose an alternative theoretical approach that privileges neither one nor other pole of these dualisms. Rather than focusing our analytical focus upon the entitative qualities of strategy and identity, we consider them holistically as dynamic social processes that engage both actors and their situations in meaningful and productive work. Specifically, we frame identity work as the retrospective reformulation of meanings ascribed to past events, and strategy work as the prospective reimagination of alternative futures. These two forms of work each produce phenomena (i.e. identities and strategies) that are continuously re-evaluated and expressed through the lived experience of the moment-by-moment passage of the present. These two complementary dynamics of work draw on pragmatist ideas of interaction as a social process where both self and other are constituted in gestural conversations, the importance and meaning of which are shared by all interactants as ‘significant symbols’ that enable empathic understanding (Mead, 1934). Precedents for this approach already exist in the emergent literatures on strategy-as-practice (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2010) and identity work (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008). Strategy-as-practice is concerned primarily with what it is that strategic managers actually do (Johnson, Melin, & Whittington, 2003), and why.

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It focuses attention on the social practices that constitute strategizing, where these practices are consistent with the notion of work adopted here. The future orientation of strategy work is particularly evident in scenario planning (van der Heijden, 1996) in which projected futures are evaluated in the present in order to guide strategic actions. On the other hand, identity work is retrospective. The retrospective orientation of identity work has been shown, for instance, where identity work is prompted or intensified by practical difficulties (Beech, 2008; Lutgen-Sandvig, 2008; Watson, 2008), by radical transitions such as socialization of new members (Ibarra, 1999), by specific events, encounters, transitions and stressful situations (Alvesson et al., 2008) or by encounters that challenge self-concepts (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). It has been suggested that several processes of reconstruing take place when people do identity work. For example, arising from the insight that considering identity invokes anxiety and insecurity (Collinson, 2003), identity work evokes and expresses self-doubt and self-questioning (Alvesson et al., 2008) as well as emotions such as fear, excitement, embarrassment and the desire to avoid conflict (Beech, 2008, p. 69). Furthermore, the process of identity work involves continuous and conscious re-evaluation and reconstruing of past events (Simpson & Carroll, 2008; Carroll & Levy, 2008), while Maguire and Hardy (2005, p. 16) have viewed identity work as ‘a loosely connected set of narratives that are constructed, maintained and challenged on an ongoing basis in a particular context’. Although these two streams of literature certainly develop a dynamic view that challenges the conventional separation of individual and organizational levels of analysis, there has still been little effort to bring the two together.

INTEGRATING STRATEGY WORK AND IDENTITY WORK Here we provide an integrated rhetoric-based account of identity work and strategy work as continuously inter-weaving dynamics. These dynamics interrelate, one or other occupying the foreground at different stages of the change process. Identity work involves present moment rhetorical reconstruction of past experience: ‘selective reactivation by actors of past patterns of thought and action’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). Those past patterns are based on social conventions and pre-existing habits, and the person’s reflexive self-awareness of them constitutes an objective self (since introspectively

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knowable) or ‘me’ (Mead, 1934). We define identity work to be the continuous process of reconstruction of patterns of rhetoric and other actions in terms of past problematic experiences that render such actions non-habitual. Although identity has been previously viewed largely as an individual process, our concern here is to view identity work as a conversational accomplishment (e.g. within a strategy team) that achieves collective action by means of rhetoric. Table 1 shows how rhetoric is used to express some examples of thematic preoccupations about the past as enabler or barrier to the collectivity realizing its potential, and ways of addressing these preoccupations through persuasion and shared identification. Identity work involves rhetorical processes to reconstrue and reformulate meanings of past events and actions. It is important to ask what is the purpose of identity work, bearing in mind that it is often involved in bringing problems to the surface and that this is unlikely to be easy or pleasant. People do identity work when they use questioning and adviceseeking rhetoric to attempt to understand in what way their behaviour is constrained by their past experience. That activity brings to the surface problematic aspects of their self-concept. Because people get ontological security from experiencing continuity, they use rhetoric to reformulate past experience in a way that maintains a continuous self-concept or they may use rhetoric to repair problematic aspects of self-concept in a way that makes the path from past to present appear more continuous. Both these purposes draw on past experience and historical events. However, maintaining continuity with the past is not a comprehensive explanation of how people use rhetoric. Although identity helps us understand the taken-for-granted beliefs that lie behind rhetoric, it has little value for understanding really novel or spontaneous rhetoric. This suggests that identity work does not offer a complete solution to the question of what kinds of rhetoric people use. Thus, it is worth asking how identity work relates to creative rhetoric. An important point is that creative rhetoric is based on imagining future action, and so the meanings of that rhetoric are generated by anticipation of the consequences of future action. This is at variance with currently dominant views that the meaning of action is based on retrospective sensemaking (Weick, 1995). We argue that creative rhetoric is based on imagining the future. The process of doing this and of imagining the problems generated by one’s actions in the future is what we call strategy work. A central argument in our view of strategy work is that strategy involves relating anticipations of the future to current activity (Sztompka, 1991) and that change occurs where there is invalidation of these anticipations by experience

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Table 1.

Identity Work as Rhetoric.

Identity as the Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Past

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Reconstructs or Revalorizes Past Experience

People need a sense of security provided by a great and stable past. The past provides security and can be a source of pride.

The past can be presented as sacred in order to reify it so it can form a protected zone or reference point (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 14–15). This is achieved by the rhetoric of symbols of a golden past, epic histories and by the path-dependence argument that identity is a historical cause. Path dependence can be continuously enacted through repetitive rituals. Portraying the past as a time when we were more successful makes it real and exemplary (Carlsen, 2006, p. 143). Ontological security is provided by markers of membership and of boundaries of stable and meaningful collectivity (Pratt, 1998). Conviction politicians rely on followers’ need for ontological security by portraying themselves as predictable (Charteris-Black, 2005, pp. 141–168). Synecdoche stands for cultural values and thus provides meaningful signals; e.g. nurses use uniforms to distinguish between routine and emergency (Pratt & Rafaeli, 1997). Rhetorical responses include (a) revalorizing past experience, e.g. commemoration ceremony, (b) normalizing the past as in ‘normal accidents’ and (c) forgetting past in order to ‘move on’, e.g. ironically referring to ‘the bad old days’ so that the past appears forgettable, invisible, unmentionable or unreal. Argument from precedent justifies present action based on what happened in the past (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 354).

People need ontological security involving controllability, continuity, predictability and holistic meaning derived from the past (Erikson, 1968). People need to reinterpret past social conventions (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). People need to come to terms with the (painful) past.

People rely mostly on unself-aware practical consciousness based on habit and social convention (Giddens, 1984). Reflexivity requires work on the self (Giddens, 1991). Reflexivity requires censor of the self (Foucault, 1979). Trustful interactions require continuity.

People need explanations that make sense of past experiences. Explanation (Garfinkel, 1967) and sensemaking (Weick, 1979) are retrospectively enacted.

Self-aware rhetorical construction of self is viewed as resource for renewal and reinvention (Hardy et al., 2000). Disciplining practices e.g. interviews, rhetoric of selfmastery and self-suspicion (Foucault, 1979). Continuity is achieved by enactment of empathy which involves honouring interpersonal expectations (Goffman, 1959) and developing a reciprocity of perspectives between interaction partners (Schultz, 1964). Retrospective probability in historical reasoning – explain what has been by what could have been (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 265).

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Table 1. (Continued ) Identity as the Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Past

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Reconstructs or Revalorizes Past Experience

Organizations need to manage a tarnished external image and identity (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991).

Excuses, apologies and ‘image restoration strategies’ limit damage from past (Benoit, 1995). Coming to terms with atrocious past also involves identity work as a ‘purgative-redemptive’ rhetoric of atonement (Burke, 1965). Individuals rewrite history to switch between advantages of extra responsibility and vulnerability to blame for failure (Sillince & Mueller, 2007).

Organizations need people to take control but blaming destroys risk- and initiative- taking.

(Mead, 1934). Strategy work involves the continuous process of anticipating future problematic consequences of action. Rhetoric creates vivid images of the future and brings them into the present in front of others. Strategy work is the rhetoric people use to understand the problematic implications of future action in terms of issues such as the problem of privileging alternatives or prioritizing actions, whether or not actions will lead to goals and whether future actions will have enough resources. Strategy work invokes that dimension of agency which involves rhetoric that achieves present moment reimagining of the future: ‘imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). It involves a subjective ‘I’ that is the spark of creative inquiry and individualistic divergence from social conventions and preexisting habits and thus constitutes spontaneous action (Mead, 1934; Suominen & Mantere, 2010). Those conventions and habits are represented by the ‘me’ or objective self. We define strategy work to be the continuous use of rhetoric for anticipating future problematic consequences of action. Again we regard it as a social, interactive process that involves rhetoric. Table 2 shows some examples of how rhetoric is used to express thematic preoccupations about the future viewed as potentially problematic. Both identity work about the past and strategy work about the future are manifest in the experiencing of the present moment. Dunford and Jones (2000) showed how integration was performed by rhetoric that represented experience as a ‘1000-day journey’ that was framed around the images of a round-the-world yacht race and the kiwi emblem that represented an ability to change quickly. Such images were able to link together past, present and

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future (Dunford & Jones, 2000; Laine & Vaara, 2007, p. 33). Both identity work and strategy work are evaluated and ‘recontextualized’ (Vaara, 2010) when acting in the present moment. Thus, all three comprise one simultaneous mode of engagement, which we define as rhetoric. Rhetoric invokes that dimension of agency that is focused upon the evocation of an awareness of the present moment: ‘practical and normative judgements among alternative possible trajectories of action’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). Strategy work, arising from the ‘I’ or subjective self, can be reflected on using rhetoric with others and thus can become part of the objective or public self or ‘me’. This process thus involves a subjective or private self that informs strategy work, by means of creative rhetoric and that constitutes an ‘I’ by reacting divergently to social conventions and preexisting habits represented by the ‘me’ or objective self. The objective self informs identity work by reflecting on how the ‘I’ of strategy work, in one’s rhetoric with others, becomes reified and accepted as taken-for-granted, and thus how it is made into an objective ‘me’ (Mead, 1934). We define rhetoric as the interactive co-construction of commitments to deal with problematic aspects revealed in both identity work and strategy work. Rhetoric is therefore used in the present to integrate identity work (reformulating the past) and strategy work (reimagining the future). Table 3 shows some examples of how rhetoric is used to express thematic preoccupations relating past and future together. Rhetoric is integrative because it is used to contrast a past anticipation about the future with a present outcome. When past anticipations are different from presently experienced outcomes, then change occurs (Mead, 1934; Peirce, 1998). However, identity work may be used to forget the anticipations that were made, or to overlook the contradictory present evidence. The problem of forgetful decisions shows the importance of rhetoric to integrate identity work about what is past with strategy work about future possibilities. The problem can be appreciated when we consider how reformulating the past by means of distortion can lead to forgetful decisions that have catastrophic consequences. A study of the incremental social construction of acceptable risk in the lead up to the Challenger disaster has described how again and again ‘the limits of acceptable performance were expanded to include something new and unexpected’ (Vaughan, 1996, p. 143). Each time a new type of erosion of the O-rings occurred, it was explained and made familiar and seemingly safe and thus became part of the ever-widening notion of ‘acceptable erosion’ (Vaughan, 1996, p. 140). This shows how progressive anticipations were not contrasted

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Strategy Work as Rhetoric.

Strategy as the Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Future Collective action in professionalized and pluralistic organizations is problematic. Leaders seek to inspire organization members and get their buy into strategy. Often the means to an end are inadequate. Top managers seek to achieve a strategy, and to make means fit the end or vice versa, and seek to make means become adequate for ends. Crises are situations in which awareness of best future action is problematic. Crisis requires that strategy should focus on one urgent problem (D’Aveni & MacMillan, 1990; Kiesler & Sproull, 1982); crisis can be ‘proactively constructed’ by rhetoric (Kim, 1998, p. 506) crisis can lead to mobilization of action (Pettigrew et al., 1992, p. 290). Competition between firms that copy each other suggests a firm needs to be distinctive to steal an advantage. Creative, flexible and novel strategy is a rare resource required for competitive advantage (Barney, 1991, p. 107).

Organizations need to constantly refresh their strategies. Criticism (Dooley & Fryxell, 1999; LePine & Van Dyne, 1998) facilitates organizational survival and prevents them retaining old competences that then become liabilities (Barnett & Hansen, 1996).

Distinctiveness is necessary to obtain competitive advantage (Barney, 1991).

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Anticipates Future Problematic Consequences of Action The leader claims a connection to the organization’s telos, or sacred purpose, where improvement will continue forever. The leader benefits from claim to having superior ability to see the future and to possessing a heroic character. Ends and means is a clear argumentation scheme that provides an agentic and logo-based structure that can easily be communicated to others (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 273).

Kairos justifies action on an opportune and appropriate future occasion (Miller, 1994). A situation of urgency induces resoluteness (Bitzer, 1999). Timeliness of an event may refer to its uniqueness as an opportunity, its precariousness or its irremediability (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 92).

Trope of metaphor represents the future in terms of similarity with the present (Oswick et al., 2002) by reframing what is familiar and by putting it in a new light (Cornelisson, 2005, p. 753; Morgan, 1980; Sackmann, 1989, p. 464). Destabilizing rhetoric emphasizes deviation (e.g. from a performance norm) and gets the hearer to develop implications (McQuarrie & Mick, 1996). Argument by example shows that others have been able to act in some way and this demonstrates that action’s feasibility (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). Trope of irony criticizes status quo by contrasting, e.g. good intention and bad outcome (Hoyle & Wallace, 2008) in order to show its incongruity (Manning, 1979, p. 663) and generates new meaning for future (Green et al., 2009, p. 32). Criticism can be institutionalized by using a dialectical process, a ‘devil’s advocate’, and by sympathetic receptiveness to pathos of underdog (Kim, 1998) and of outsider (Carlsen, 2006). Distinctiveness uses dissociation from other organizations (Cheney, 1983; Perelman & OlbrechtsTyteca, 1969, p. 411), ethos of unique personality of leader and specialness of organization’s strategic intent (Hamel & Prahalad, 1989).

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Table 2. (Continued ) Strategy as the Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Future Ambivalence (e.g. between pride about the past and anxiety about the future) is needed to stimulate unlearning (Pratt & Barnett, 1997) and to creatively perceive a situation from a different angle (Piderit, 2000, p. 790). Organizations contain powerful groups who use ambiguous language about agreeing to future collective action that protects their interests. Getting conflicting groups to agree to act is problematic. Future collective action is facilitated by participation. Organizations are pluralistic, and so means are needed for generating agreement to act collectively. Organizations need to attend to or ignore a future, disruptive event (Marcus & Nicols, 1999). Sometimes it is better to delay present action into the future.

Organizational leaders need to make resolute strategic decisions. Confidence is crucial for propelling executives into action (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 573).

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Anticipates Future Problematic Consequences of Action Contradictory messages from management can create ambivalence in workers (Piderit, 2000).

Ambiguity is used as a smokescreen to preserve and privilege a group’s future position (Middleton-Stone & Brush, 1996, p. 647; Price et al., 2008, p. 180; Sillince & Mueller, 2007; Vaara et al., 2004). Ambiguity is used by the source of a message and enrols the recipient into the co-creation of its meaning (Davenport & Leitch, 2005; Eisenberg, 1984) by inviting future participation (Keleman, 2000, p. 486). Ambiguity is used by the source and encourages future recipients to agree with a message even when they hold different opinions in order to appeal to multiple conflicting audiences (Sellnow & Ulmer, 1995, p. 141). Warnings use appeals to fear (Sillince, 1999, p. 597) or are mixed ambiguously with reassurance (Sillince, 1999, p. 607) and are used when the speaker does not have power (Sillince, 1999, p. 601). Rhetorical strategies for minimizing commitment include avoiding small commitment as it is a ‘slippery slope’ to larger commitment, not committing politically in order to ‘keep one’s powder dry’ and avoiding confrontation in order to ‘live to fight another day’. The future (and therefore the superiority of acting in the future rather than now) can be privileged over the present: e.g. ‘I wonder what sense they will make of the decision in ten years’ time’. Action can be avoided by getting acquiescence by followers using promissory rhetoric (Edelman, 1966) and by prevarication (finding impediments to action). Highlighting a strategy makes real the dominance of future over present (Potter, 1996). The future can be represented as familiar and thus as easily approachable and imminent or as unfamiliar and yet credible, thus highlighting the need for effective strategy (Barry & Elmes, 1997).

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with successive outcomes in a sufficiently sceptical way. This suggests the proposition. Proposition 1. When past anticipations are not contrasted sufficiently sceptically with present outcomes, then forgetful decisions are made. Bearing in mind our argument that learning comes from disparity between anticipation and experience, we suggest that lack of contrast between past and future inhibits learning. Learning involves taking risks that may invoke disappointment or anxiety (e.g. Antonacopoulou & Gabriel, 2001) and thus avoiding defensiveness (Argyris, 1990). Equivocation of past and future, or considering the future to be a seamless projection from the past, may serve to render collective agreement on strategy more likely. This is particularly so in contexts with histories of caution and blame (e.g. Fineman, 2003; Vince & Saleem, 2004). In this case, however, when strategy work is used to reimagine the future in a timid way so that anticipations involve little change, there is insufficient contrast between past anticipations and outcomes to enable learning to occur. Learning is more likely when mistakes and errors are acceptable rather than sanctioned (Edmondson, 1999). Proposition 2. When past anticipations are rhetorically presented as involving too little change, then learning will not occur. Rhetoric may exaggerate the importance of present experience over past anticipations. Rhetoric can be used to exaggerate the details of the object of our attention by making the object become immediately or vividly present (Aristotle, 1991, p. 238; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, pp. 115–117). Such exaggeration can be countered by ‘de-familiarization’ (Barry & Elmes, 1997) which creates ‘imaginative distance’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). The problem of over-valuing present experience suggests the following proposition. Proposition 3. When the importance of present experience is overemphasized in rhetoric, there is insufficient opportunity for any contrast effect with past anticipations to be perceived and thus the potential for learning is not realized. In the foregoing, the past, the future and the present have been treated as significant categories. Their relative significance will vary during an individual’s experience of events and during interaction with others (Mead, 1932). We express the likelihood of such variations in the following propositions. Proposition 4. When the flow of time is interrupted by an event that offers new, emergent possibilities, the relative importance of past and future will shift towards the future and thus towards strategy work.

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Table 3.

Rhetoric as the Integration of Identity Work (Past) and Strategy Work (Future).

Identity and Strategy as the Joint Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Past and Future

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Integrates Past and Future

For something to happen, the future must be made more real than the present (Potter, 1996; Aristotle, 1991; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969).

The future invites urgent intervention and thus becomes amenable to strategic action when it is represented as both unfamiliar and credible (Barry & Elmes, 1997). 1. Unfamiliar (action is necessary therefore for change to happen). For example, metaphor is used such as ‘threshhold’, ‘watershed’, ‘barrier’, and ‘gap’ that separates present from future using some marker of significant change. 2. Credible (action is possible). For example, the future is envisioned as feasible and real by already having happened by use of the future perfect tense (Gioia et al., 2002). Leaders’ ethos or character is judged from past actions but contains an implicit promise for the future (Aristotle, 1984, p. 2157; Aristotle, 1991, pp. 141, 172; Miller, 2003). Argument from waste argues that because huge past effort already invested we should continue in same direction in future (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 279). Slippery slope argument warns against getting sucked into a situation you cannot get out of (Walton, 1992). Device of stages says that if the whole argument put people off in past, break it down into palatable bits and slow-feed them in the future (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 283).

Organizations need leaders who will bridge between past and future (Chreim, 2005). There is the danger of escalation of a modest, past, failing course of action into a huge, future overcommitment of resources (Staw, 1997). Leaders need to avoid taking a project into the future too fast and thus losing political capital accumulated from the past (Denis et al., 1996). Discontinuity required in strategy because future action needs to be different from the past action. Links to the past must be destroyed to accomplish something new (Zerubavel, 2003; Biggart, 1977). How to resolve the dilemma between keeping narrowly to (the presently true) strategy versus flexibly changing to fit what is likely to happen in the future (the probable).

Philosophical pairs such as positioning the past as unreal and the future as real (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 415), exaggeration of contrast (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 411) and ‘semiotic markedness’ (Chandler, 2002, p. 93) dissociate (bad) past from (good) future. Future is made different from past or present by device of defamiliarization (Barry & Elmes, 1997). Rhetoric promotes the probable rather than claiming the truth and thus promotes what is feasible or probable in the future over any current truth (Kerferd, 1999, p. 82).

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Table 3. (Continued ) Identity and Strategy as the Joint Problem: Thematic Preoccupations about the Problematic Past and Future

Rhetoric as the Integrative Response: Organizational Rhetoric that Integrates Past and Future

It is necessary on occasion to decide whether to be cautious or resolute.

Paired, contrary mottos such as ‘Look before you leap’ versus ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ exist that help a person to justify one position or the other (Billig, 1987, p. 236). Comparison of the past and future using ‘thenynow’ and claiming that things are ‘still’ the same as they were so that ‘things always stay the same’.

Sometimes, e.g. to resist change, it is necessary to say that change is improbable.

Proposition 5. When the possibility has been acted on and already has moved into the past, its place among all the other aspects of the past self becomes a focus, shifting importance away from the future and towards the past and thus towards identity work. There has been considerable interest in time and process within strategy theory to reflect the contributions of process philosophy (Whitehead, 1920; Rescher, 2000). Farjoun (2002, p. 571) showed how the representation of strategy as a planned and stable position (Porter, 1996) is mechanistic and static. He compared that approach unfavourably with one that is processoriented and ‘organic’ (Porter, 1991; Melin, 1992; Academy of Management, 1997; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). Moreover, the literature on organizational becoming (e.g. Calori, 2002; Carlsen, 2006; Chia, 1996, 2002, 2003; Chia & King, 1998; Chia & MacKay, 2007; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002; Weick, 1969, 1995) attempts to construct a dynamic, process ontology in which change is important, and takes a phenomenological position of describing subjective experiences of change. Indeed, the becoming literature uses a ‘strong’ process theory that holds that process, movement, flux and change are ontologically more fundamental than entities, structures and persistence (Rescher, 2003). Our approach argues that discontinuities and disruptions are events that come in and break up the process in such a way as to alter how it is experienced, in particular, how the relative importance of past, present and future are metaphorically expressed and reconstructed. Individuals emphasize first one temporal dimension and then another depending on the source of the current disruption. This may be done by means of bringing an event to the foreground or pushing it

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to the back-ground in their rhetoric (Ford & Ford, 1995). For example, individuals may use dissociation of two categories (Perelman & OlbrechtsTyteca, 1969) such as emphasizing looking ahead (being ‘performative’) rather than using peripheral vision (being ‘synoptic’), and one of the categories is foregrounded and the other backgrounded at different times depending upon circumstances (Bergson, 1946, p. 137; Tsoukas & Chia, 2002, p. 570). In classical rhetoric theory, pathos and emotion are crucial to understanding this foregrounding and backgrounding process. The section on the emotions in the Rhetoric (Aristotle, 1991, Section 6) is a theory of rhetorical contexts as produced by psychological state, provoking event and the character of the human actors. Rhetoric therefore provides us with the ability to understand, moment by moment, how we are led from the potential of events as they befall us (i.e. strategy) to what we actually make of such possibilities in interaction with others and how we reconcile that with what we know about ourselves (i.e. identity). How can this help us to understand how past identity and future strategy can be integrated into present action? The clue to the integration process lies in the actor’s emotions. Aristotle non-pejoratively defined passion as that which alters judgement. We find in Aristotle’s time-sensitive account of the emotions a clue as to how to bring the three time dimensions together. Let us select fear, defined as ‘a pain or disturbance due to a mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the future’ (Aristotle, 1991, p. 153) as an example. Fear becomes vividly present to us not by direct experience but through our imagination, through a discursive announcement and signs rather than through facts. ‘The tense is the future, the voice is the subjunctive, the mode is the possible. It is still not really here, and it might not happen, yet it still has an intimacy, or nearness’ (Streuver, 2005, p. 109). Also, fear is based on a historically constructed disposition: ‘if one has neither done nor suffered wrong’ (Aristotle, 1991, p. 156). Note, in this illustrative example of fear, the strong link between present (vividly experienced, ‘intimacy’ and ‘nearness’), future (‘evil in the future’) and past (‘neither done nor suffered wrong’). In balancing past, present and future considerations, the individual becomes a political actor who uses emotion to articulate strategic choice. As we suggested, an emotion such as fear refers to past and future, but at a specific moment one tense is foregrounded, for example the past as the reason for being fearful, or the future as when the feared event may occur. We reconstrue the world when our past anticipation is invalidated by our current experience (Mead, 1934; Peirce, 1998). That invalidation requires

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justification and comes from a recalcitrant situation that unsettles our prior beliefs (Dewey, 1929). Inquiry is then the self-conscious attempt to regain a settled state of belief (Putnam, 1994) given the pragmatist acceptance that all knowledge is tentative. We define emotion as awareness of a change in one’s construing (Kelly, 1955). It follows that if people (re)construe meaning based on their experience versus their anticipation, there may be times of excitement, following validation of anticipations, and anxiety or threat after invalidation. Organization studies scholars have argued that cognition and emotion interact, with cognitive appraisal evoking an emotion, with this influencing later cognitive appraisals (Huy, 2009). Anticipation (when it involves reimagining future scenarios in the light of past history) and reconstruing (reformulating the past in the light of forthcoming events) are therefore both experienced as emotions. For example, those emotions can involve hopeful anticipation which may be invalidated as having been too timid, leading to confident or proud reconstruction, or as having been too optimistic leading to disappointed, angry or hostile reconstruction (depending on whether one viewed the invalidation as one’s own fault, someone else’s fault or untrue). This suggests the following proposition: Proposition 6. Whether or not strategy work or identity work is foregrounded by rhetoric will depend on whether the over-riding preoccupying emotion is portrayed as occurring in the past or in the future.

DISCUSSION Strategy and identity have strong links. Organizational strategy is a way of ‘stabilizing intention’ (Lilley, 2001, p. 76) and this helps the organization to construct a stable sense of identity that enables legitimate, reliable and predictable relationships with external agents. Organizational identity offers one way to explain why a firm chooses one option among many possible options (Stimpert et al., 1998, p. 89). Members’ beliefs about shared identity have strategic significance because it facilitates co-ordination, communication and learning (Eisenhardt & Santos, 2001, Fiol, 2001, Kogut & Zander, 1996, Reger et al., 1998), and these beliefs provide a frame for emphasizing, prioritizing and deploying resources (Glynn, 2000). An example of the strong link between professed or projected identity (Moingeon & Soenen, 2002) and strategy is shown by the fact that firms without a coherent product identity, and thus without a strong corporate identity, face pressure from market analysts to diversify, so that their stock is more easily understood (Zuckerman,

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2000). Identity influences strategy not merely through unconscious habit or conscious heuristic, but because members act according to what kind of organization they believe they belong to: ‘Meaning, understanding and learning are all defined relative to action contexts, not to self-contained and abstract structures. But it is because learning is situated in a (collective) identity that it is also difficult to unlearn’ (Kogut & Zander, 1996, p. 510). Despite these suggestive links between strategy and identity, much of the current theorizing about strategy largely ignores identity. For example, Jarzabkowski’s (2005) account shows that much strategy theory draws on past experience in terms of biases and recursive practices, as well as a heuristic element implied by defining it as ‘an active form of social construction, involving intent, skill and knowledge in the selective recognition and implementation of ongoing activity’ (Jarzabkowski, 2005, p. 31). However, she notes that this tends to overlook the practical-evaluative wisdom through which actors exercise localized judgements within the context of the here and now (p. 32). This view does not allow for the dynamic nature of identity as a source of ‘baggage’ from the past that underlies and explains ‘inertia, competency traps, core rigidities’ or the interactions between these and the continuous adaptation implied in more emergent views of strategizing (Jarzabkowski, 2004). However, she does not deal with how issues of identity shape this interplay between recursive and adaptive strategy practice. By way of contrast, we will argue that viewing such influences from the past as identity resources frees us to understand how people continuously reformulate their notions of the past. Other strands of literature draw an indirect link between identity and the content of strategy in discussions of strategy styles (Bourgeois & Brodwin, 1984; Maguire & Hardy, 2005, p. 14; Mehta, Dubinsky, & Anderson, 2003). Strategy styles that draw on and reflect identity are viewed as contingent upon the purpose of the strategy. For example, when the strategy is to champion change, an appropriate identity for an organization’s leader might be that of commander or designer (Ginsberg & Abrahamson, 1991), whereas when the strategy is to develop new initiatives, a more appropriate identity would be the entrepreneur (Burgelman, 1983). Such contingencybased typologies of strategy styles do not allow us to theorize about changes either in identity or in the purpose or content of strategy. This is because the literature does not relate identity to any processual view of how strategizing is done. In our view, the links between strategy and identity are best explored in processual terms, where both strategy and identity are seen as forms of work that continuously intertwine and interact in the actions of the present moment.

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We have suggested that the lack of an integrated view of strategy and identity means that two big problems in the literature have remained unaddressed. The first problem is that of stability versus change and affects the literature of both strategy and identity. Strategy must be flexible, yet also the population ecology literature has suggested that organizational survival lies in stability rather than change. Identity provides ontological security derived from a sense of continuity with the past, yet also identity is continuously co-constructed in interaction with others. Rhetoric addresses this problem by viewing both identity and strategy as social constructions that carry meanings of stability when this is desired. At the same time, however, both strategy and identity are continuously subject to negotiation and reformulation, as implied by the notion of ‘work’. Rhetoric is effective when it is appropriate to the emotional context of use. Each context has its own emotional colouring or ‘mood’ depending on the nature of the change in construing that individuals become aware of. That change in construing is from what we know about ourselves (i.e. identity) to the potential of events as they befall us (strategy). Therefore, we regard strategy and identity as sources of both stability and change. In this way, we avoid the contradictions generated by many theorists who have argued that one of the identity– strategy constellation is stable and one is unstable. The second problem that of agency relates to the exercise of power and control in defining who we are and where we are headed. We address this problem by arguing that the freedom of action in the present moment is exercised through rhetorical integration of both identity work, which continuously reformulates the individual’s notion of how agency is constrained or enabled by the past, and also strategy work which continuously reimagines how future possibilities either constrain or enable. Thus, although we separate out agency into its temporal dimensions, we offer a framework that makes sense of how these temporal dimensions are integrated in present rhetoric. By separating out identity work as relating to the past, strategy work as relating to the future and rhetoric as in the present, we are able to deal with the constraining or enabling effects of identity and strategy separately, and provide a nuanced view of the agency problem as one of trade-off between past identity and future strategy and show that the trade-off can be continually revised in the present moment using rhetoric. Also the degree to which agency is constrained or enabled is subject to the individual’s discretion to use rhetoric for varying the emphasis between identity (effortfully and perhaps painfully reconstruing the meaning of the past) and strategy (imaginatively reconstruing the meaning of future possibilities).

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The question of whether an organization can be said to exercise agency is related to a view of the organization as a kind of individual. Researchers who are philosophically averse to this notion raise the issue of anthropomorphism and of the separation of levels of identity. We have approached this issue in the following way. Our concept of ‘work’ is rooted in our view that process is more significant than structures. Therefore, we view identity work and strategy work as rhetorical processes in which the past is reformulated and the future is reimagined between individuals who use social interactions to enable them to perform collective action. Thus, identity is continually present within the rhetoric as a set of levels such as exist for individual or organizational identity. ‘Who one is’ as a board member is mutually dependent on conceptions of ‘who we are’ as a board and as an organization. Similarly, strategy is continually present within the rhetoric as a set of levels such as individual strategizing and organizational strategy that are mutually informed and constituted within rhetoric. Therefore, although much previous theorizing has tended to regard levels of identity as important and as problematic, viewing identity work and strategy work as an ongoing, rhetorical process shows that the levels problem derives from viewing identity and strategy as static and reified. Such theorizing has represented levels as problematic and thus has provided grounds for arguing that the concept of organizational identity is anthropomorphic. Our view is that individuals in their ongoing interactions do this transition between levels and what the subjects of our research do (perhaps expressing anthropomorphisms in their rhetoric) should weigh more heavily with us than what we as researchers say we should do (i.e. as philosophically sophisticated social scientists we should avoid anthropomorphisms).

CONCLUSION The globalization of the strategic management field is obstructed by the proliferation of several literatures that have become disconnected from each other. An example is the literatures of strategy and identity that have remained separate partly due to being based within different paradigms. Identity theory is largely based in a social constructionist paradigm, whereas strategy is largely influenced by economics. Yet strategy and identity have many potential links. Strategy may be used to construct a stable sense of identity, whereas identity may be used to explain why a particular strategy is chosen because members act according to what kind of organization they believe they belong to. However, current theory in strategy and identity is

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pursued largely as two separate lines of development. This has led to two problems, first, difficulties of accommodating both flexibility and stability in the same theoretical frame, and second, difficulties in theorizing about the organization’s exercise of its power and control within its environment. The theorization proposed in this chapter provides a new way to interpret the relationship between identity and strategy by seeing the rhetoric used in the present moment as integrating the ‘strategy work’ of reimagining future options with the ‘identity work’ of reformulating the meaning of past actions. By placing strategy and identity within the same field of experienced reality – related but distinct temporal dimensions of agency – the new theorization enables the development of more integrated theoretical and empirical investigation of strategy.

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Vaughan, D. (1996). The Challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture and deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Van de Ven, A. H., & Poole, M. S. (1995). Explaining development and change in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 510–540. Vince, R., & Saleem, T. (2004). The impact of caution and blame on organizational learning. Management Learning, 35(2), 135–154. Walton, D. (1992). Slippery slope arguments. Newports News, VI. Vale. Watson, T. (2008). Managing identity: Identity work, personal predicaments, and structural circumstances. Organization, 15(1), 121–143. Weick, K. E. (1969). The social psychology of organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill. Weick, K. E. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Whetten, D., & Godfrey, P. (Eds). (1998). Identity in organizations: Developing theory through conversations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Whetten, D. A. (2006). Albert and Whetten revisited: Strengthening the concept of organizational identity. Journal of Management Inquiry, 15(3), 219–234. Whitehead, A. N. (1920). The concept of nature – Tarner lectures delivered in Trinity College, November 1919. Cambridge: The University Press. Whittington, R. (1988). Environmental structure and theories of environmental choice. Journal of Management Studies, 25(6), 521–536. Zerubavel, E. (2003). Time maps: Collective memory and the social shape of the past. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zuckerman, E. W. (2000). Focusing the corporate product: Securities analysts and de-diversification. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45, 591–691.

PART III PERSPECTIVES: SYMBOLIC RESOURCES

RHETORICAL HISTORY AS A SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Roy Suddaby, William M. Foster and Chris Quinn Trank ABSTRACT This paper develops a framework for understanding history as a source of competitive advantage. Prior research suggests that some firms enjoy preferential access to resources as a result of their past. Historians, by contrast, understand past events as more than an objective account of reality. History also has an interpretive function. History is a social and rhetorical construction that can be shaped and manipulated to motivate, persuade, and frame action, both within and outside an organization. Viewed as a malleable construct, the capacity to manage history can, itself, be a rare and inimitable resource.

INTRODUCTION There is a growing awareness that firms compete simultaneously in two environments. Firms compete for material resources, that is, economic capital, labor, and input commodities, in the technical environment The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 147–173 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027009

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(Alchian & Demsetz, 1972; Porter, 1985). Firms also compete for symbolic resources, that is, legitimacy, status, and reputation, in the institutional environment (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2005; Suchman, 1995). Traditional strategy research has largely neglected the institutional environment. There is, however, one important exception to this. Legitimacy is a construct that spans both the institutional and technical realms of competitive strategy (Neilsen & Rao, 1987). We now understand that innovations often fail to diffuse in spite of their technical superiority (Arthur, 1994; Lee, O’Neal, Pruett, & Thomas, 1995) largely because they overlook norms of legitimacy (Hargadon & Douglas, 2001; Rao, 2001). Similarly, firms with a sound and successful business strategy sometimes falter when they fail to anticipate emerging social standards, like environmentalism or corporate social responsibility (Baron, 2001). Legitimacy, thus, is a symbolic resource that strategy theorists understand can be translated into economic advantage (Oliver, 1991, 1996, 1997). History is another construct that, like legitimacy, usefully mediates between the technical and symbolic realms. In contrast to legitimacy, however, traditional strategic management research has not yet fully explored the mechanisms by which history can be used to gain competitive advantage. The notion that history can be the source of a competitive advantage is not a particularly new idea. Traditional strategic management research is particularly attentive to the notion that some firms gain access to unique clusters of resources as a result of their history or ‘‘path dependence’’ (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). Porter (1998) makes path-dependent history a cornerstone of his theory of ‘‘competitive clusters.’’ History has also been a useful explanatory variable for understanding strategic change. The differential learning arcs of firms, or ‘‘absorptive capacity’’ is based on the notion that past experiences can enhance a firms’ ability to learn in the present (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Others have observed that the past can make firms rigid. That is, a stubborn loyalty to one’s past history of success can make core competencies become core rigidities, the so-called ‘‘Icarus Paradox’’ (Miller, 1992). A more nuanced view of history in strategic management is offered by the resource-based view, which suggests that a firm’s unique history may confer a sustained competitive advantage because history is valuable, rare, and will be very difficult, if not impossible, to imitate (Barney, 1990, 1991). Such advice offers cold comfort to managers, however, who want to understand how they can best manage their resources. Strategic management researchers have characterized the past as an exogenous variable, beyond the control of managers. That is, they view history as a given, an

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objective fact or a fixed and immutable contextual variable. Similarly, strategy researchers tend to use history as a post hoc form of explanation in which some (successful) firms have a history that confers preferential access to material resources and other (unsuccessful) firms do not. History, from this perspective, is an ex ante assessment of success, not a manageable resource. But this traditional view is based on a narrow and limited understanding of history, one in which the past is an extant and immutable representation of reality. Few historians share such a narrow view of their subject. History is not an objective ‘‘master narrative,’’ but, rather, is a curious mix of objective and subjective reality (Cox & Stromquist, 1998; White, 1978). History is actively constructed and reconstructed by powerful interests within social organizations. History, and its symbolic manifestation through tradition and ritual, is often an elaborate invention used to frame and motivate action (Hobsbawm, 1987) and to construct an imagined sense of common identity and vision (Anderson, 1983). More significantly, history is also an expression of organizational strategy and power in which ‘‘Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’’ (Orwell, 1949). In this paper we explore more fully the role of history in conferring a competitive advantage. In contrast to traditional approaches, however, we define history not as a determinant of access to material resources, but rather as an important symbolic resource in its own right. We demonstrate, with empirical illustrations from prior research, how some firms are better able than others to manage their history. We also develop an analytic framework for understanding how history may be used in organizations as an interpretive device for competitive advantage. The paper has four parts. In the first part, we review traditional understandings of history as an objective reality in mainstream strategic management. In the second, we distinguish between the objective ‘‘past’’ and constructive ‘‘history.’’ We also extend the latter term to introduce the notion of ‘‘rhetorical history,’’ in which managers use the trappings of invented history, tradition, and ritual as a strategic device inside organizations. In the third section, we connect this interpretive understanding of rhetorical history to extant models within organization theory. Specifically, we draw on Weick’s (1995) notion of sensemaking to create a model that uses ‘‘history’’ and ‘‘legitimacy’’ as bridging constructs to connect institutional and economic approaches to strategy at the organizational level of analysis. Finally, in the concluding section we sketch out an agenda for future research on how history can be managed for competitive advantage.

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HISTORY IN TRADITIONAL STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: THE ‘‘PAST’’ Perhaps the first writer to explicitly theorize the role of history in conferring a competitive advantage (or disadvantage) was Stinchcombe (1965, p. 154) who famously observed that ‘‘organizations formed at one time typically have a different social structure from those formed at another time.’’ Stinchcombe hypothesized that the founding conditions of an organization influence its character and become manifest in unique practices, routines, values, and traditions that become imprinted on the organization. Significantly, Stinchcombe also argued that these unique founding conditions are maintained by traditions, ideologies, and vested interests within the organization, causing them to persist, often beyond their usefulness. Stinchcombe’s core idea that firms are differentially influenced by historically specific resources has been interpreted in two distinct ways by theorists in strategic management. One view is to treat history as a constraint, limiting an organization’s ability to adapt to changes in environmental conditions. This was the approach of early population ecology which conceptualized a firm’s founding history as an important determinant of structural inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1989). In this view, history is thought to be a justification for persistent behavior and resistance to change (Boeker, 1989). Miller (1992) adopts a similar view of history as a constraining influence, noting that an organization’s past success can often imperil an organization by encouraging stubborn efforts to recreate its previous success. One interpretation of Stinchcombe’s focus on history as a firm resource, thus, is to see history as a source of inertia. A second view sees history not as a structural impediment to change, but rather as a constraint that narrows the range of choices available to organizations. This view, termed path dependence, takes seriously the interdependence of historical circumstances with the core idea that historical choices both constrain some future choices while simultaneously enabling others (Krasner, 1984). Stated in more probabilistic terms, path dependence is ‘‘a stochastic process whose asymptotic distribution evolves as a consequence (function of ) the process’s own history’’ (David, 2000, p. 5). One of the earliest expressions of the notion of path dependence occurred in David’s (1985) historical analysis of the success of QWERTY as the standard for typewriter keyboards. The historical study demonstrated a range of factors that ‘‘drove the industry prematurely into standardization on the wrong system y ’’ (David, 1985, p. 336). David’s analysis was innovative in that it demonstrated how habituation, high degrees of interrelatedness,

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and ‘‘historical accidents’’ produce a form of historical dynamism that, ultimately, produced suboptimal outcomes. A related foundational piece of research was Arthur’s (1989) study of how VHS came to be the industry standard for videos, in spite of the technological superiority of Sony’s Beta. Arthur (1989) used the term historical lock-in to describe how consumer preferences at one point in history can create interdependencies that generate nonrational outcomes. Taken together, Stinchcombe’s concept of imprinting and David’s notion of path dependence loosely describe a process model of history that has been very influential in various threads of strategy research. Porter (1998), for example, has built his theory of competitive clusters around the idea that history can confer a competitive advantage on co-located firms because they share access to similar resources, particularly expertise and craft knowledge. Porter points to the Dutch transportation cluster as an illustration of this, noting that Holland’s long maritime history meant that co-located competitors could take advantage of many years of expert knowledge in shipping. Other clusters, such as the leather goods trade in northern Italy, furniture in North Carolina, and technology in Silicon Valley, were created largely as a result of the historical accumulation of knowledge that arises from local learning between competitors. History, in this view, is a matter of luck; it confers competitive advantage because it grants access to unique resources (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990; Teece et al., 1997) and because it provides the firm with the ‘‘‘right’’ founding conditions (Baron, Hannan, & Burton, 1999; Marquis, 2003). Within this perspective, history is a category of firm characteristics that range from the highly concrete – that is, a ‘‘repertoire of routines’’ (Teece et al., 1997) – to more abstract notions of organizational culture. Barney (1991, p. 661) thus argues that a firm’s history may be a barrier to imitation, noting that a ‘‘firm with a history significantly different from that of a firm it would like to imitate may find an unbridgeable barrier to imitation. If this firm’s culture is also valuable and rare, then it may enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage.’’ History, thus, can be a firm resource that is rare, valuable, and inimitable. .

THE PAST IS NOT HISTORY While the research described above appears to satisfy recent calls for the incorporation of history into organizational research (Zald, 1993; Kieser, 1994), most historians would not recognize ‘‘imprinting,’’ ‘‘path dependence,’’ or ‘‘competitive clusters’’ as history. Such an objective, scientific

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treatment of events and experiences is more properly termed ‘‘the past.’’ Historical knowledge differs quite significantly from knowledge of the past. There are several reasons for this, each relating to distinct epistemological and ontological assumptions that serve to distinguish the past from history. Foremost, while the past may reflect a realistic record of every event and experience in time, the actual past represents a universalistic ideal account of immense complexity that can never be fully captured by any single historical account. As the famous historian Lowenthal (1985) observes, the past is much bigger than history. By this statement, Lowenthal means that just as no theoretical account can be expected to capture the detail of empirical reality, so too can no human history ever be expected to capture the overwhelming detail of an objective past. The past, thus, reflects an objective reality but history reflects a consensual and collective reality. Lowenthal (1985) similarly notes that, conversely, history is, in many ways, bigger than the past. By this he means that even though historical narratives can never fully capture the empirical detail of the past, it doesn’t necessarily make the past more accurate than historical accounts of the past. History, for example, has the advantage of viewing the past from the perspective of the present. This allows the historian to ignore facts and events that turned out to be inconsequential and emphasize events that were pivotal. It also allows the historian to incorporate the future implications of the past into their historical accounts. So, for example, knowing that the multidivisional form was ultimately successful, allows Chandler to focus on certain events and facts and ignore (many) others. Further, the historian, in identifying sources and events, is already guided by ‘‘working hypotheses’’ of what is to be explained (Ricœur, 1994). In sum, history is subjective whereas the past is objective. History is a persuasive interpretation of the past. This is not to suggest, however, that history is simply ‘‘made up.’’ The past acts as an empirical check on history. As Lowenthal (1985, p. 214) observes ‘‘countless historical impostures have been foisted on a credulous world, but the weight of evidence ultimately corrects many errors and exposes mendacities.’’ Historians, however, would be highly skeptical of the claims of traditional strategy theorists that the past can ever be meaningfully captured by objective methodologies such as event history analysis. There are both epistemological and practical reasons why such attempts to objectively capture history are misplaced. First, historians would argue that reducing history to the past is overly functionalist. That is, such approaches use history as a means of retrospectively explaining how independent elements of organizations, industries,

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and social institutions combine to achieve a degree of stability and order in competitive interactions. Put simply, they offer retrospective reconstructions of the existing competitive order. There is a tendency, thus, to provide linear causal explanations through sequences of events that produce greater efficiency or higher survivability. This ‘‘grand narrative’’ approach, however, tends to overlook the causal messiness of history (Kieser, 1994). It also tends to treat one event as being equivalent in importance and emphasis as another similar event. Thus, event history analysis codes all ‘‘foundings’’ of similar organizations as roughly equivalent experiences (Allison, 1984), which is akin to saying that the founding of Oxford University in 1314 is roughly equivalent to the founding of the Maharishi University of Management in 1971. Second, this view of history is essentialist in that it tends to assume that, as a result of historical conditions (founding, access to resources, etc.), firms assume underlying and enduring characteristics that are relatively constant over time and space. The past, in this view, is considered to be an accumulation of concrete facts and characteristics that occur with causal regularity. Moreover, this view tends to treat time as an ordered and measurably discrete phenomenon (Allison, 1984). This view, however, fails to acknowledge the degree to which historical facts and social memories are reconstructed (Appleby, 1998; Lowenthal, 1985). It also misunderstands the role of the historian as a mere archaeologist of objects of the past. Historians, thus, are thought to ‘‘discover’’ the past. But as historians understand, the past is always ‘‘discovered’’ from the point of view of the present (Gioia, Corley, & Fabbri, 2002). And the present is constantly unfolding. Thus, historical accounts of the multidivisional form taken from the 1970s, when the M-form was a highly successful template of organizing, will be very different from historical accounts taken from the 1980s, when the efficiency and the competitive success of the template were less clear. History, thus, has the benefit of viewing the past through an ever-improving present. A subjective history, thus, offers distinct advantages over an objective past. Historians can impose interpretations of the present on the past to draw unique insights in the same way that ‘‘cartographers use specific projection methods to emphasize certain features or relationships’’ (Doordan, 1995, p. 76). Historians can offer various accounts of the same historical events from different points of view. They can emphasize some facts and ignore others, depending on the research question. In sum, they can use the interpretive element of historical reconstruction to impose order and structure on a, largely, undifferentiated stream of events and facts that constitute the past.

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There is also a strong practical problem with the way strategy theorists have understood and modeled history in their research. Reducing history to the past tends to diminish human agency. This is true for both historians and for managers. That is, most strategy theories treat history (the past) as an extant reality that exists beyond the control of the manager. Some firms ‘‘have’’ history and others do not. Or, more accurately, history, like luck, blesses some firms and curses others. There is little a manager can do to overcome an unfortunate history just as there is little a manager can claim responsibility for from a positive history. From the perspective of traditional strategic management theory, therefore, there is little about history that is either strategic or manageable.

HOW HISTORIANS VIEW HISTORY Strategy research, as a result, has tended to view history somewhat narrowly as an extant and immutable representation of reality – that is, history as a longitudinal accumulation of facts drawn from archival sources. There are, of course, historians who share this view of history in which the researcher is bound by ‘‘stubborn facts’’ (Engels, 1907, p. 149). Most contemporary historians, however, view their data as highly fluid and their method as largely interpretive, in which the facts are often competing and contradictory and require a critical interpretation that goes beyond simply confirming or refuting a causal relationship (Jacques, 2006; O’Brien, Remenyi, & Keaney, 2004). Historical research, thus, is not to be conflated with mere longitudinal study nor should it fall into the trap of ‘‘historicity’’ or applying general theoretical models derived in contemporary circumstances, arbitrarily to the past without also adopting some sensitivity to historical context (cf. Djelic & Durand, 2010). Doing so tends to make the researcher arbitrary in his/her selection of data, overreporting facts that are consistent with the model and under-reporting contradictory facts (Kieser, 1994; Goldthorpe, 1991). Rather, there is an inherently subjective element to historical research and it is often ‘‘unlikely that any two researchers would select the same historical data and interpret these data in the same way in order to prove’’ a given model (Kieser, 1994, p. 617). As Gioia et al. (2002) observe, although historical facts may not change, their interpretation always does. Social historians view history in a much more constructivist way. History is not an objective ‘‘master narrative’’ of real things, events, and people, but, rather, is a curious web of objective and subjective reality

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(Cox & Stromquist, 1998). Rather than ‘‘stubborn facts,’’ history is viewed as an interpretive device through which actors connect the past, present, and future (White, 1978). Strong historical constructivists view history as the reconstruction of the past from the point of view of the conquerors (Appleby, 1998). Thus, Said (1979), in his influential book Orientalism, pointed to European history as a mechanism of portraying Eastern cultures as a monolithic culture that was both distinct from and inferior to Western European cultures. Anderson (1983) adopts a similarly constructivist view of history in his argument that the nation state is an imagined community constructed primarily by histories that elaborate and valorize the role of the nation state. Imagined communities, according to Anderson, are distinct from real communities in that the former are built on face-to-face interactions between individuals, whereas the latter are largely constructed through historical projects of the state such as museums, monuments, and histories. Anderson builds, albeit implicitly, on the prior work of Innis (1950) and McLuhan (1962) who each identify the critical causal connection between printed histories and the creation of broader social institutions, such as the nation state. In contrast to the immutable view of history taken by researchers in strategic management, constructivist historians see history as a malleable resource that creative agents can use to frame action, motivate change, and manage interpretations. Perhaps the best illustration of a constructivist view of history is Hobsbawm & Ranger’s (1983) description of invented tradition, a construct designed to capture the observation that many institutional traditions that are presented as long-standing historical ‘‘facts’’ are in reality relatively recent inventions designed to serve specific organizational ends. So, for example, the Scottish clan tartans, often presented as a seventeenth-century expression of Scottish nationalism, were really invented by Scottish nationalists in the nineteenth century (Trevor-Roper, 1983). Similarly, a number of ceremonies of the British monarchy that are presented as being of great historical antiquity can be traced to relatively recent efforts to smooth over discontinuities in the royal lineage. Hobsbawm (1987) argues that invented traditions were useful devices for the infusion of fresh value in institutions that were in danger of losing their legitimacy. Empirical support for this is provided by Lowenthal’s (1985) classic analysis of how nation states use monuments, geographical remains, and heritage sites to reshape the past according to present interests. It is, perhaps, a bit ironic that strategy theorists see history as a constraining contextual variable, while historians see history as a dynamic

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raw material. In the following section we describe how some corporations extend this latter view to treat history as a competitive resource.

HOW CORPORATIONS VIEW HISTORY Managers and corporate strategists, however, seem to view history as a much more malleable and manageable organizational asset. Perhaps the best illustration of this is The History Factory, a ‘‘heritage management firm’’ located in Washington, DC, whose mandate is to ‘‘help today’s leading global corporations, organizations and institutions discover, preserve and leverage their unique history to meet today’s business challenges’’ (History Factory, 2009). For the past 30 years the corporation has offered a variety of services to large multinational corporations interested in managing their history, both for external and internal stakeholders. Externally, the firm offers a branding and public relations strategy that is constructed around a firm’s unique history and which promises to position the firm and its products or services ‘‘by developing an authentic and evocative vocabulary, imagery and emotional memory’’ using ‘‘compelling stories’’ that unlock the historical value in a brand. Internally, the firm offers historical expertise that can enhance leadership in the firm, manage mergers and acquisitions, and assist in managing diversity. The firm explains how corporations are becoming aware of the competitive advantages of ‘‘applied history’’: In 1979, The History Factory coined the term heritage management to describe its pioneering application of established historical and archival principles to address the most competitive aspects of business. At the time, the concepts of ‘‘applied history’’ and ‘‘archival outsourcing’’ were controversial in academic circles. But the quantifiable returns we delivered for our early clients – many of whom were the most admired companies in the world – only reinforced our confidence in the validity of heritage as a legitimate management tool y The History Factory believes that the world’s most competitive enterprises share our appreciation for the past – and its value and relevance to their future. We are extremely proud that heritage management is now a widely recognized and accepted resource for leveraging the collective memory of organizations – the stories told, the words used, and their commonly understood meanings – to help implement strategies and tactics that shape the future. (History Factory, 2009)

The notion that history is a manageable corporate asset is not new. Almost since the inception of the corporate form, managers have understood that a statement of the corporation’s longevity can construct a sense of stability and legitimacy. Moreover, as Delahaye, Booth, Clark, Procter, and Rowlinson

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(2009, p. 31) observe, ‘‘nearly all companies produce historical accounts of themselves’’ either through formal corporate history texts or through the increasingly prominent ‘‘history’’ section on corporate Web sites. What is unique about contemporary approaches to the management of history, as exemplified by The History Factory, is that corporate strategists appear to have adopted a highly constructivist view of history as a form of persuasion, a rhetorical device that can be manipulated, reconstructed, and, ironically, used to create authenticity. In the following section, we extend the notion of history as a manageable corporate asset. We introduce the term ‘‘rhetorical history’’ to capture the notion that history is, increasingly, a means through which organizations can strategically mediate between their material and symbolic environments. Finally, we explicate the constitutive elements of rhetorical history.

RHETORICAL HISTORY DEFINED History is a key, but often overlooked, competitive resource for organizations. Its value rests largely in its ability to evoke and persuade. In contrast to prior usage in traditional strategy research, however, where history is considered to be an extant and concrete description of events over time, we adopt a constructivist perspective in which history is an interpretive device for imposing culture (Said, 1979), shaping identity, and creating community (Anderson, 1983) and framing the motivation for action and change (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). We adopt the term ‘‘rhetorical history’’ to capture the notion that history can be an effective managerial tool within organizations. As Carroll points out, taking a rhetorical historical perspective is useful for managers and historians because it ‘‘sees how history anchors and justifies contemporary action, how it legitimates new organizational claims through old ones [and] builds modern glory on ancient glory’’ (2002, p. 558). Building on Carroll, we define rhetorical history as the strategic use of the past as a persuasive strategy to manage key stakeholders of the firm. This definition draws together disparate threads of previous work that has acknowledged the use of history in managing organizational change (Carroll, 2002; Gioia et al., 2002), image and identity (Foster & Hyatt, 2008; Ooi, 2002; Rindova & Ravasi, 2009), and culture (Dacin & Dacin, 2008). In the balance of this section we elaborate the intellectual foundations of the construct by tracing its roots in prior literatures on storytelling and discursive history, organizational memory and forgetting, identity and identification, and institutional theory.

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Storytelling Rhetorical history draws in part from early work that established the importance of narrative and storytelling in organizations (Boje 1991, 1995; Barry & Elmes 1997; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1997). Clark (1970) used the term ‘‘organizational saga’’ to describe the powerful effect of the strategic use of stories, symbols, and traditions on future performance. Organizations use these sagas to reinforce a strong collective understanding of their collective history and purpose. Recounting the history of firm successes and failures, thus, has been found to be an important component of organizational learning (Denning, 2000) and helps build organizational culture (Martin, 2000). Critical theorists, however, note that storytelling is often most effective when the storyteller exercises a degree of poetic license (Gabriel, 2000). The utility of storytelling, like rhetorical history, thus, lies less in its accurate rendition of events and more in its ability to create meaning in an organization. The importance of story to rhetorical history works in two ways. A story can be used to generate action by linking events in the past to current and future action; but events can also demand a story so that order and meaning can be created (Ricœur, 1994).

Organizational Memory and Forgetting Rhetorical history also draws from notions of selective memory within collectives – commonly referred to as social memory studies (Heisler, 2008; Olick, 1999). Research in social memory studies focuses on elevating the level of analysis of memory from its traditional groundings in the individual, to understanding how collectives remember (Halbwachs, 1992). An important substream of this research is organizational forgetting (Blackler, Crump, & Macdonald, 1999; de Holan & Phillips, 2004; Casey, 1997; Walsh & Ungson, 1991). Researchers have understood for some time now that, as organizations learn, some learning dissipates over time. Such accidental unlearning tends to reduce a firm’s competitiveness (de Holan, Phillips, & Lawrence, 2004). Rhetorical history, however, emphasizes the deliberate elements of organizational memory and forgetting. Most research in this area treats memory and forgetting as incidental outcomes of the productive process in organizations. The notion of rhetorical history acknowledges the fact that, in some organizations, these processes are formalized within the firm and are performed as part of an intentional effort to persuade. That is, organizational memory and forgetting are viewed as manageable activities.

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Organizational Identity As a theoretical construct, organizational identity has had a substantial impact on the field of organizational studies. Albert and Whetten’s (1985) position that organizations have a central, distinct, and enduring identity has led to a host of investigations that have examined the impact of a common identity on organizations (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Fiol, 1991; Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000; Gioia & Thomas, 1996; Golden-Biddle & Rao, 1997). Managing the history of an organization is an effective way for managers to substantively manage organizational identity. Often the history of an organization is indelibly tied to its practices. For example, ceremonies and bodily practices are essential ways that memories are developed (Connerton, 1989). In particular, Mosse determined that the process of nationalization can be encouraged through the use of a ‘‘secular liturgy’’ (1975, p.16). This liturgy is composed of three components: festivals, rites, and symbols. The goal of the liturgy is to identify a story or myth from the past and to then connect this ‘‘history’’ to different symbols. The association of the symbols to a particular version of the past makes the history of the nation concrete. These symbols and the histories these symbols represent are then celebrated at different organized events such as festivals and ceremonies. When individuals engage in sanctioned activities, this provides structure to individual participation. This structure also creates a sense of belonging that helps create identification with a particular nation (Foster & Hyatt, 2008). In so doing, the history that is being memorialized is further ingrained into the lives and identity of the participants. This type of rhetorical history is consummatory – it is intentionally emotive and reaffirming. Rhetorical history draws, finally, from an emerging stream of research that recognizes the role of persuasive speech in organizations (Green, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Sillince & Suddaby, 2008). Rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, has a long history in the humanities. More recently, however, there is a growing interest in the use of persuasive techniques in economics (McCloskey, 1985) and management (Fine, 1996; Jarzabkowski, Sillince, & Shaw, 2010). Specifically, rhetoric has been shown to be a key strategy in facilitating institutional change such as the adoption of a new organizational form (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005) or the diffusion of organizational practices (Kennedy & Fiss, 2009; Zbaracki, 1998). We apply rhetoric, in this context, to the strategic use of history in processes of organizational legitimation and change.

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RHETORICAL HISTORY IN PRACTICE While prior research in storytelling, organizational memory/forgetting, and organizational identity effectively locates the intellectual roots of rhetorical history, they fail to capture the high degree of agency inherent in the construct. That is, the literature on storytelling and organizational memory tend to view collective memory as a somewhat organic or emergent process that lacks intentionality. Our notion of rhetorical history, however, views firm history as a deliberate and strategic construction – an organizational resource designed to confer identity, motivate commitment, and frame action amongst organizational stakeholders (cf. Suominen & Mantere, 2010). Rhetorical history is not an emergent, but a deliberate product of firm strategy. The term describes how actors within organizations engage in the ‘‘strategic appropriation of the past’’ (Carroll, 2002, p. 557). A good example of this is derived from the organizational forgetting literature described above. While much of this literature has focused on instances of forgetting that diminish a firm’s effectiveness, that is, learning decay, there is another form of forgetting that actually enhances firm performance – when forgetting is intentional and is part of a deliberate strategy to rhetorically reconstruct a firm’s history by excising embarrassing or compromising elements of a firm’s past conduct. Booth, Clark, Delahaye, Procter, and Rowlinson (2007), for example, recount how the publishing giant Bertelsmann AG propagated the legend of how the corporation suffered closure and harassment from the Nazis during the Second World War and was one of the only non-Jewish media companies shut down during the Nazi regime. The legend was formalized in a corporate history, published in 1986, repeated on the corporate Web site, and used prominently in public speeches and presentations. An independent study by academic historians, however, refuted the company legend and showed that the company had in fact enjoyed success during the war largely because it was willing to publish anti-Semitic material. The history, according to the report ‘‘was invented shortly after the War in order to receive a publishing license from occupying forces in Germany.’’ The Bertelsmann case is, of course, an extreme example of how firms employ rhetorical history in practice. Most quotidian applications of rhetorical history in corporations are much more prosaic. Many large companies, for example, commission corporate histories. Historians distinguish between business and corporate histories. Business histories are genuine histories, usually conducted at arm’s length from the subject of the account by academic historians. Corporate histories, by contrast, are usually

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commissioned by the corporation. They tend to focus only on that corporation and are often of ‘‘limited scholarly depth’’ (Jones & Sluyrterman, 2003, p. 112). In the context of our argument, corporate histories are largely rhetorical histories – reconstructions of the past intended to valorize the corporation and advance its purposes. While corporate histories in book form were often confined to only the largest (and wealthiest) corporations, most modern companies with a presence on the World Wide Web have a segment devoted to the firm’s history. Corporate Web histories are very similar in form and content to their book counterparts. In fact, corporate histories, like romance or mystery novels, are an established genre. Delahaye and colleagues (2009) analyzed published corporate histories (both Web and book versions) of 37 UK and 46 US corporations (taken from the 2004 Fortune Global 500). Their content analysis determined that the histories were highly similar in form and content. They are nearly always chronological, usually do not reveal the author, and tend to present the corporate narrative as ‘‘an unproblematic chain of selected events marking [the firm’s] growth and expansion’’ (Delahaye et al., 2009, p. 35). Perhaps unsurprisingly, business success is the overriding theme of all corporate histories and controversy or failure is rarely if ever recounted, something Ferguson (1998, p. 133) has described as a ‘‘teleology of success.’’ The practice of rhetorical history, however, extends far beyond simple sanitized chronologies. A number of studies have demonstrated how firms, including Absolut Vodka (Ooi, 2002), Jack Daniels (Holt, 2006), and Tim Hortons (Foster, Suddaby, Minkus, & Wiebe, 2010), ‘‘invent’’ firm histories for marketing purposes. More interesting, perhaps, is how these invented histories become reified and, over time, become legitimate rallying points for firm recruitment, strategic planning, and change efforts. Dacin and Dacin (2008), for example, in their study of the ‘‘Aggie Bonfire’’ at Texas A&M University, show how invented traditions can be used to rhetorically construct the semblance of continuity and identity in a period of considerable upheaval and social pressure to change. Rowlinson and Hassard (1993) offer what is arguably the most powerful illustration of rhetorical history in practice in their account of the shifting histories of the Cadbury Corporation. Cadbury (now Cadbury Schwepps) is a UK-based confectionary and beverage manufacturer founded in 1824 by two Quakers, John and Benjamin Cadbury. Tracing through a variety of corporate histories of Cadbury, Rowlinson and Hassard (1993) demonstrate a variety of rhetorical ‘‘inventions’’ in which the history of the firm was reconstructed in an effort to strategically position the company.

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First, the company elected to celebrate its ‘‘centenary’’ somewhat arbitrarily in 1931, as opposed to its authentic centenary of 1924, largely as a reaction to the extremely successful bicentenary of its main competitor, Fry’s. Second, one of the corporate histories conveniently switches founders, ignoring the actual founders John and Benjamin Cadbury, and acknowledging George and Richard Cadbury, who took over management of the company in 1861. George and Richard were the preferred ‘‘founders’’ because their strong religious beliefs as well as their success in improving the profits of the company provided a much more consistent narrative of how religion and economics combined to create a successful corporate culture. Finally, Rowlinson and Hassard (1993) demonstrate how the firm’s Quaker roots are at times emphasized and at other times deemphasized in reaction to prevailing social norms about controversial issues such as slavery, gender in the workplace, and labor relations practices. Rowlinson and Hassard’s (1993) analysis of the corporate histories of Cadbury’s effectively demonstrates rhetorical history in practice. They demonstrate how Cadbury historians take a relatively recent innovation, such as Cadbury’s commitment to the welfare of its employees, and embed that commitment in the history of the firm in order to create a continuous and enduring narrative of enlightened labor–management. The authors describe this process as a means of both inventing and infusing value in an organization by selectively reconstructing its history. The practice of rhetorical history has become increasingly institutionalized in corporations. One of the more prominent examples of this is the recent emergence of formal corporate museums. Corporate museums are formal exhibits appended to, or part of, privately owned or publicly traded corporations that collect, display, and interpret organizational artifacts to employees, customers, and/or the general public (Danilov, 1992; History Factory, 2009). Corporate museums are institutionalized versions of an organization’s memory (Nissley & Casey, 2002) that provide audiences with what Ooi (2002) refers to as a ‘‘packaged past.’’ Rindova and Ravasi (2009) analyzed four corporate museums in Italy (Ducati, Alfa Romeo, Alessi, and Piaggio) and concluded that such a proactive formalization of history is crucial in helping companies justify and legitimate future strategic action within the organization. Employees express a felt pressure to act in accordance with the espoused history of the organization, and key executives used the espoused history as a yardstick to assess the authenticity of decisions regarding new products or new lines of business. On occasion an invented firm history becomes memorialized in a living museum or heritage site. A number of corporations have created living

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museums, termed ‘‘factory tourism’’ by critics and ‘‘brand experiences’’ by proponents, including The World of Coca Cola, Legoland, and Hershey’s Chocolate World. Corporate heritage sites are the contemporary version of the once popular factory tour. Factory tours not only often interfered in productivity, but sometimes also served to damage the reputation of the firm. Heritage sites, by contrast, not only offer an opportunity to control the visitor experience more closely, but also tend to generate positive revenue for the corporation. Rowlinson (2002) observes that Cadbury World in Bournville, UK, turned a profit by year eight and, by year ten had hosted over 5 million visitors. Heritage sites, like corporate histories and museums, are memorialized and concrete versions of rhetorical history. They present carefully constructed revisionist versions of a firm’s past. Rowlinson (2002) notes that Cadbury World conveniently omits mention of the Quaker-founded firm’s involvement with slavery (which occurred twice, once in the nineteenth and again in the twentieth century). Nor does it acknowledge the local controversies created by outsourcing production during recent times of high local unemployment. Further evidence of the institutionalization of rhetorical history is the formalization of the role of the corporate historian as a distinct occupational role in the modern corporation. Many Fortune 500 corporations employ at least one corporate historian (Martin, 1981). While most of the key duties of in-house historians are unsurprising (i.e., manage documents, capture oral histories), others are clearly related to strategic issues in the firm. Historians, thus, interact with lawyers in determining document retention policies (Martin, 1981). They also interact with the marketing department in public relations campaigns (Chandler, McCraw, McDonald, Tedlow, & Veitor, 1996). Somewhat more surprising, perhaps, is that historians are identified as key agents in implementing the adoption of major organizational change programs such as total quality management (Clinton, Williamson & Bethke, 1994). While it is perhaps easy to dismiss these activities and functions as simple marketing gimmicks, or critique their largely ceremonial nature and clear lack of accuracy, we cannot deny the significant focus on history as a highly persuasive and common element. Corporations clearly seem to find that history persuades. Gioia et al. (2002) believe that history and historical phenomena are increasingly prevalent in modern corporations. History seems to hold a symbolic gravitas and legitimacy that other forms of persuasion simply cannot attain. Moreover, corporations are willing to devote considerable resources to managing their history, suggesting that

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history, itself, is a valuable resource. In the section that follows we extend the notion of history as a rare, valuable, and inimitable resource.

RHETORICAL HISTORY AS A STRATEGIC RESOURCE The foregoing discussion suggests that corporations have recognized history as a valuable competitive resource and are actively exploring practices that will enhance their capabilities in managing, elaborating, and exploiting it. The way corporations are using history in practice stands in sharp contrast to the ways in which history is characterized in theory, both in strategic management and organization theory – that is, as a source of rigidity or resistance to change. Oliver (1997) captures this view best with her observation that firms become captives of their history and that historical norms and traditions can produce ‘‘cognitive sunk costs’’ or historical attachments that often make managers make suboptimal choices. Barney (1990) offers a somewhat different view in suggesting that although firm history can be an impediment to change, it can also be a valuable aspect of firm culture. Firms with a unique story, Barney (1990) argues, can create a firm-specific, nonimitable culture that can be difficult to imitate and, therefore, serve as the source of a sustainable competitive advantage. This view seems more consistent with our understanding of how corporations are using history in practice. Firms appear to have at least a working understanding of the distinction between the past and rhetorical history. Moreover, firms seem to understand that while history may constrain strategic action, the capacity to manage history confers a competitive advantage. In the balance of this section we sketch out a theoretical model of how rhetorical history can be a source of sustained competitive advantage. We begin with the view that organizations are interpretive systems (Daft & Weick, 1984) and that rhetorical history is a key mechanism of collective interpretation or sensemaking. Weick (1995) notes that sensemaking is inherently historical or retrospective. Weick (1995, p. 127) suggests that organizational sensemaking is ‘‘a retrospective activity in which many possible meanings need to be synthesized.’’ History, in this context, must be reconstructive in large part because its value lies less in its accurate rendering of past events than in its ability to accommodate and align the interests of competing stakeholders both within and outside the organization. As Gioia et al. (2002) observe, ‘‘[organizational] history must be treated as malleable – subtly but significantly open to revisions that make it

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conform to current needs and perceptions.’’ The strategic value of rhetorical history, thus, is its flexible capacity for integrating and aligning multiple and often contradictory interests. As the historians note, the value of history is not in its ability to faithfully recount the past, but rather in its capacity to offer ‘‘an intelligible rendering of the complexity of human experience’’ (Doordan, 1995, p. 76). Viewed in this way, rhetorical history becomes a key strategic resource for firms (cf. Suominen & Mantere, 2010). Without any attempt to be exhaustive, we identify and elaborate three propositions about the role of rhetorical history in competitive strategy. First, we propose that rhetorical history confers legitimacy. Second, rhetorical history confers identity. Third, rhetorical history facilitates strategic change. We elaborate each of these propositions in the balance of this section.

Rhetorical History Confers Legitimacy Previously we noted the tendency of firms to indicate their date of establishment as a means of communicating legitimacy. A bank established in 1885 and still operating today indicates a high degree of stability, continuity, and capacity to survive. But history offers more than just measures of longevity as a means of constructing legitimacy. History is a lens or a framework for presenting information in such a way that infuses value (Selznick, 1949). Time lines can be constructed in ways that confer teleological purpose on what might otherwise be considered random and disconnected events. Periods can be imposed on time lines that further inject meaning onto competitive activities. An illustrative example can be drawn from the actions of the Securities Exchange Commission in their attack on the emergence of multidisciplinary professional firms, spearheaded by the Big Five audit firms. One of the first tactics the SEC employed was to construct a time line on their Web site of regulatory actions taken over the years to prevent multidisciplinary practices. While the time line looked authoritative and extended back several decades, the reality is that audit firms only engaged in multidisciplinary activities since the early 1980s. History, however, was a key rhetorical strategy used to both promote and deny the legitimacy of an emerging new organizational form (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). A skillful approach to history, thus, can impose order and sense on the random complexity of competitive interaction in such a way that constructs (or destroys) legitimacy.

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Rhetorical History Confers Identity Previously we described the intellectual roots of rhetorical history as drawn, in part, from identity theory. Although most previous work on organizational identity has been largely essentialist, recent work by Glynn (2008) suggests that firms actively construct their identity from elements of their institutional environment. The result is that organizational identity is built through an ‘‘institutional bricolage y where organizations incorporate cultural meanings, values, sentiments and rules into their identity claims’’ (Glynn, 2008, p. 424). This process helps explain how organizations in the same field can be isomorphic and yet still have some distinct elements to their organizational identities. For the bricolage process to work the organization requires raw materials. These raw materials can be history, traditions, symbols, and other organizational artifacts (Pedersen & Dobbin, 2006). A series of recent studies demonstrates more precisely how history is used to construct a firm’s identity in the context of competitive strategy. Brunninge (2005, p. 2009), for example, relates how two Swedish companies, truck manufacturer Scania and the Handlesbanken bank, used rhetorical reconstructions of their histories to, respectively, fend off a hostile takeover and initiate a successful move to internationalize. Consistent with the argument presented here, Brunninge suggests that history is used to construct ‘‘self-understanding’’ in organizations, a term that connotes equal elements of sensemaking and identity. Brunninge observes different categories of rhetorical history in these firms – scientific history, or what we would term ‘‘authentic history’’; moral history or history as a legitimating tool and ideological history or history as a form of identification. His key contribution, however, is that a reconstructed history can offer a firm a focal point – an identity – for making decisions about the future.

Rhetorical History Facilitates Strategic Change An essential challenge for change theorists is the ability to create a sense of continuity and identity of organizational values in the midst of chaotic and profound structural change (Hinings & Greenwood, 1988). Selznick (1957) describes this challenge as the need to maintain ‘‘institutional integrity’’ while managing change, and a series of writers, primarily from the ‘‘design school’’ of organizational change, have acknowledged the importance of being sensitive to a firm’s history while projecting scenarios of future change (Miller & Friesen, 1980, 1982; Mintzberg & McHugh, 1985; Greenwood & Hinings, 1993).

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While prior studies acknowledge the importance of history in managing change, they imply a relatively passive stance toward history. History is merely a constraint to strategy, or a roadblock to the envisioned future that must be avoided. Managers effecting change must simply be sensitive to history. There is no suggestion that change agents should actively manage or reinterpret the firm’s history in light of the intended change. Rhetorical history introduces a higher degree of agency into the process by suggesting that, first, the past of the organization is subject to multiple interpretations and, second, the task of a change agent is to construct an interpretation that makes sense of where the organization was in the past, where it is now and where it will be in the future that connotes both a sense of identity and integrity of core values and an impression of progress (Gioia et al., 2000; Bartunek, 1984).

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS The purpose of this essay is to underscore the importance of rhetorical history as a competitive organizational resource. While organization theory acknowledges the importance of history in strategy, the tendency is to see history as a constraint on action. We adopt a different perspective, viewing history as both an enabler and constraint on action. Our notion of history, however, draws from the paradigms of symbolic interaction and subjective interpretivism (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) in which history is understood as ‘‘the concerns of the present imposed on the past’’ (Doordan, 1995, p. 76). We use the term rhetorical history to differentiate our view of history from more traditional interpretations in the strategy and organizational literature. Our subjective and interpretive view of history, perhaps surprisingly, offers a much more pragmatic, agentic, and functionalist role for history in organizations. Viewed in this way, history becomes a tool that helps structure the somewhat chaotic flux of attributes and interests in the modern corporation. More importantly, like legitimacy, history offers a means of integrating the material-economic and symbolic-institutional realms within which contemporary corporations compete. It accomplishes this by imposing order and structure on subjects (sensemaking) in time, in the same way that maps order and structure subjects in space. We hope this essay has elevated our sensitivity to how history is used strategically in organizations. Many questions remain. We need to explicate, for example, the role of the corporate historian. Why does this corporate role exist and how does it relate to formulating strategy? What pressures or

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conflicts are imposed on historians’ professional autonomy as a consequence of being in a corporation? We also need to understand the contingent relationships between history (and time) in different competitive contexts (cf. Djelic & Durand, 2010). Is rhetorical history more prominent in ‘‘high velocity’’ contexts (Eisenhardt, 1989) such as the technology industry than in industrial contexts that value (the illusion of) stability such as the professions, banking, or family businesses? How is history reflected in the process of strategy? A number of strategic planning techniques employ an implicit model of history. Scenario planning, for example, makes some core assumptions about the nature of history and the connections between past, present, and future. How do practitioners, in these contexts, rhetorically characterize history? How do they resolve conflicts between competing rhetorical accounts of the past? In other words, how does the chronology of events – this followed by that – become ‘‘that came from this?’’ Similarly, we need to better attend to how practitioners translate symbolic resources, like history, into material resources, and vice versa. Are some mergers motivated by the acquisition of history? How has this acquired history been converted to other, tangible resources. Finally, how does an acquired history improve performance? Our primary point is that management scholars need to adopt history as a legitimate subject of theoretical discussion and empirical inquiry. Ideally, such research will be interdisciplinary and will embrace methods from both history and management. Doing so should help management researchers shed prevailing misconceptions about history as a definitive account of the past and allow us to attend more carefully to the fascinating ways in which practitioners, however intuitively, seem to be engaging with rhetorical history in the day-to-day management of their enterprises.

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WHERE STRATEGY MEETS CULTURE: THE NEGLECTED ROLE OF CULTURAL AND SYMBOLIC RESOURCES IN STRATEGY RESEARCH Elena Dalpiaz, Violina P. Rindova and Davide Ravasi ABSTRACT In this paper, we discuss how ‘‘cultural capital’’ and ‘‘symbolic capital,’’ understood as specialized subsets of intangible resources and capabilities, enable firms to achieve valuable strategic positions in ways that are currently underexplored by mainstream strategy literature. We articulate the similarities and differences between cultural and symbolic capital and the intangible assets that have been the focus of mainstream strategy researchers, such as intellectual, social, and reputational capital. Our theoretical arguments build on insights from a number of studies conducted primarily in non-North American settings that have shown how symbolic properties of products create value. We conclude by delineating future avenues of research that strategy scholarship should consider in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships between intangible resources and capabilities, and value creation. The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 175–208 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027010

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INTRODUCTION In strategic management research, the resource-based view has emerged as one of the dominant perspectives to explain persistency in interfirm performance differences (Barney & Arikan, 2001). Central to this perspective is the understanding that resources – defined as ‘‘the tangible and intangible assets firms use to conceive and implement [y] strategies (Barney & Arikan, 2001, p. 138)’’ – and capabilities – defined as the ability of the firms to develop and leverage on resources (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997) – affect the costs and the revenue-generating potential of firms’ productive activities (Grant, 1996b). This theoretical perspective has spurred considerable research on the tangible and intangible assets of firms (see Newbert, 2007 for an assessment). In particular, intangible resources, such as knowledge (Grant, 1996b; Nickerson & Zenger, 2004), identity and culture (Barney, 1986; Fiol, 1991), reputation (Barney, 1991; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Rindova, Williamson, Petkova, & Sever, 2005), and celebrity (Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006) that are characterized by high degrees of social complexity and causal ambiguity have been suggested as central to the creation of sustainable competitive advantage. While developing a systematic and an insightful theory about the basis of competitive advantage, the resource-based view has been criticized for its limited attention to the specific mechanisms through which different types of resources are deployed to create value, as well as to the processes through which value is realized in the marketplace (Moran & Ghoshal, 1999). In this paper, we seek to extend the resource-based view research by highlighting two specific blind-spots and suggesting the need for greater research attention to the use of cultural and symbolic resources in order to overcome these blind-spots. Specifically, we join previous critiques of strategy research for its supply-side focus and note that: (a) extant research has focused on producer activities and on the cost side of the value-creation equation (see Priem, 2007) to the neglect of the role of consumer perceptions and practices; and (b) extant research has focused on the importance of technology in value creation to the neglect of cultural and symbolic resources (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008; Rindova & Petkova, 2007). With regard to the supply-side focus of strategy research, Priem (2007) recently observed that strategy researchers have traced competitive advantage in firm’s positioning within industry structure (Porter, 1980, 1985), the characteristics of resources that firms possess (Barney, 1991), and their knowledge (Kogut & Zander, 1992) and dynamic capabilities

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(Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000), and has neglected the role of consumers’ perceptions and valuations in determining the extent to which a given firm and its products are creating value in the market place. The supply-side focus of extant strategy research is also evident in the treatment of the value of resources – a critical attribute associated with their effect on sustainability of competitive advantage – as determined by exogenous environmental factors (Barney, 1991). We argue that as a result of this blind-spot, current strategy research has limited understanding of how consumers relate to and value products, and of how their perceptions of value affect firm-level value creation. It is fairly obvious that because consumer evaluations ultimately determine the ‘‘exchange value’’ of the products and services of a firm, the value-creating potential of its products depends on how much consumers are willing to pay for them. Yet, strategy research has seldom concerned itself with the bases of consumer evaluation of products. In our view, a comprehensive theory of value creation should incorporate the consumer perspective regarding a firm’s offerings. The development of such a perspective in strategy research has been deterred by overreliance on an economics perspective that characterizes markets as consisting of atomistic individuals that make decisions on the basis of their idiosyncratic utility functions (Frenzen, Hirsch, & Zerillo, 1994). Research in the sociology and anthropology of consumption, however, has amassed considerable evidence that consumption is socially and culturally embedded (see Arnould & Thompson, 2005, for a recent review). Inclusion of individuals in social networks (Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010), participation in consumption communities (Kozinets, 2001; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), and general reliance on institutional and cultural resources for sensemaking and action (Hargadon & Douglas, 2001) all affect how consumers make choices. These studies point to the limitations of the atomistic model and further suggest the need for theories that account for the effect of societal culture on consumers’ choices and evaluations of new products.1 A second limitation of extant strategy research is that it follows a more or less implicit assumption that consumers value products for their technical quality and performance (Pitelis, 2009) and that willingness-to-pay increases almost exclusively as a result of improvements in the technical features of products. Accordingly, the attention of scholars has focused on the intangible resources and capabilities that underlie technological product innovation (Helfat & Raubitschek, 2000). While this research has contributed much to our understanding about how firms compete along technological trajectories (Dosi & Grazzi, 2010) by developing complex

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technological resources (Rosenbloom & Christensen, 1994), it provides an incomplete account of value-creation processes. In this chapter we seek to provide a new direction in strategy research on value creation by drawing attention to the role of firms’ cultural and symbolic resources. We focus on these types of resources because research in consumer behavior shows that the symbolic attributes of products are increasingly driving consumption choices in industries ranging from clothing, furniture, and cars (Bourdieu, 1984; McCracken, 1988), to personal computers (Belk & Tumbat, 2005; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), home appliances, and mobile phones (Pantzar, 2003). Converging evidence from multiple branches of the social science suggests that the ‘‘exchange value’’ of products is increasingly determined by the extent to which they can be used to signify, that is to communicate meanings regarding individual and social identities (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). Further, work in sociology (Bourdieu, 1984; Goffman, 1959) and anthropology (Douglas & Isherwood, 1979/1996; McCracken, 1988) suggests that the meanings that products signify depend on their cultural significance, that is, on their socio-cultural intersubjective meanings (see Weick, 1995 for a discussion of these different types of meanings). Please note that ‘‘socio-cultural meanings’’ do not refer to the organizational-level intersubjective meanings commonly studied in management research on organizational culture (Barney, 1986; Schein, 1985), but to the societallevel intersubjective meanings that arise from institutionalized schemas and concepts (DiMaggio, 1997; Hargadon & Douglas, 2001).2 The relevance of societal-level socio-cultural meanings has been investigated by various branches of the social sciences; yet, it has remained outside the scope of issues investigated by strategy researchers. Instead, strategy researchers have assumed that consumers’ preferences are ‘‘stable, focused on use values, individually formed, and exogenous (DiMaggio 1997, p. 43),’’ and are therefore under limited control by the firm (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). In contrast to this approach, we assume that consumer preferences reflect intersubjective socio-cultural meanings, and that developing specialized resources and capabilities for using and leveraging such meanings affects the value-creating potential of a firm’s products. We theorize two such sets of resources and capabilities, which we term ‘‘cultural’’ and ‘‘symbolic’’ capital. We do so in order to offer a more culturally embedded perspective on value creation and to expand extant understanding regarding the resources and capabilities that affect value creation and competitive advantage. Our ideas build on current strategy research on intangible assets, such as intellectual and social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), and reputational

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capital (Fombrun, 1996). Intellectual capital refers to the knowledge and knowing capability of firm (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), social capital to the relationships that facilitate the circulation of knowledge, as well as access to other resources (Adler & Kwon, 2002), and reputational capital to a broad group of intangible resources based on favorable stakeholder perceptions, such as reputation (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990), celebrity (Rindova et al., 2006), legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), and status (Podolny, 1994). This body of work is relevant to our ideas because it has analyzed how social interactions and perceptions accumulate and stabilize over time to become resources that influence both value creation and value realization (Moran & Ghoshal, 1999). As a result, it has expanded extant understandings regarding the mechanisms through which firms create value, and gain and sustain advantageous competitive positions. Two additional bodies of work informed our ideas. First, we were informed by strategic research that studies the so-called ‘‘cultural’’ or ‘‘creative’’ industries (Glynn, 2000; Hirsch, 1972; Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). These industries produce products that are, by definition, ‘‘media for affect[ing] meanings (Scott, 2006, p. 18),’’ such as arts, books, music, movies, and TV programs. These products are seen as ‘‘directed at a public of consumers from whom they generally serve as an aesthetic or expressive rather than clearly utilitarian function (Hirsch, 1972, pp. 641–642).’’3 This research provides some insights regarding the nature of cultural and symbolic capital, but has not studied if and how such resources apply outside the domain of cultural industries and in the context of industries producing product viewed as ‘‘tools’’ (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). Second, a number of recent studies carried out primarily – although not exclusively – in non-North American settings provide some preliminary evidence that cultural and symbolic resources and capabilities influence competition in a variety of industries conventionally considered to be outside the realm of cultural production, such as of furniture, lighting, fashion, cuisine, mobile phones, and PCs (e.g., Baum & Lant, 2003; Cappetta & Gioia, 2006; Cillo & Verona, 2008; Djelic & Ainamo, 2005; Durand, Rao, & Monin, 2007; Ravasi & Rindova, 2008; Rindova & Petkova, 2007; Verganti, 2008). While it could be argued that cultural and symbolic resources may be relevant to competition and value creation in these specific non-North American settings of these studies, we believe that the observations from these studies have important implications for strategic management research in general. Indeed, some might argue that European-based firms develop and engage more frequently the type of resources that we term ‘‘cultural’’ and ‘‘symbolic’’ and make products that

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are valued for their meanings in addition to their function. However, a vast body of research in marketing, anthropology, and sociology of consumption shows in affluent markets consumers increasingly value products for their cultural and symbolic properties (see Rindova, 2007; Ravasi & Rindova, 2008, for a relevant discussion). However, the practices that enable producers to create such value may remain relatively rare and may be more readily observed in some non-North American contexts that are characterized by a long-standing cultural tradition of valuing symbolic and aesthetics product attributes (Crane & Bovone, 2006). Regardless of the reasons that may be generating differential level of attention among strategy scholars to the cultural and symbolic aspects of competition, the studies attending to these issues in non-North American settings provide valuable initial glimpses into the use of cultural and symbolic resources by firms competing in conventional industries to pursue new forms of value and advantage. In this paper, we set out to generalize these insights by developing some theoretical ideas about the development and deployment of ‘‘cultural’’ and ‘‘symbolic’’ capital. We define cultural capital as a subset of cultural resources (from those broadly available in a societal culture), and capabilities to manipulate them that are internalized by the firm and are deployed in its value-creation strategies. We define symbolic capital as the stakeholder perceptions that the socio-cultural meanings embodied and represented in a firm’s products and activities are socially distinctive and, therefore, identity- and status-enhancing (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). By linking and integrating ideas from these different areas of research, we seek to expand ‘‘the basket’’ of intangible resources and capabilities studied by strategy researchers and to connect extant research on cognitions and perceptions as resources to socio-cultural research on concepts and symbols as resources. We believe that such an approach enriches the resource-based view in strategy and opens up the field for incorporating a rich body of work on the relationships between meanings and value. Taking this broader view of intangibles is important for advancing the field of strategy both from a theoretical and pragmatic standpoint. Theoretically, it will enable strategy researchers to account not only for the effects of perception, cognition, knowledge, and obligations, but also for the effects of culturally situated meaning-making processes. Although meaningmaking depends on perception, cognition, and knowledge, it is distinct in that it involves issue of self, identity, and the relationship between ‘‘self ’’ and society. As a result, the study of cultural and symbolic resources will enable strategy researchers to contribute to the broader dialogue taking

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place in the social sciences about the relationship between meaning and value. It will also provide strategy researchers with the opportunity to study the interrelationship and potential integration between these new sets of resources and those that have already attracted the attention of strategy researches – for example, intellectual, social, and reputational capital (see Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 1998 for a discussion of resource integration and value creation). Pragmatically, a broader view of intangible assets and of their interrelationship will enable strategy scholars to study previously unexplored processes of value creation, thereby expanding our understanding of competition and competitive advantage.

EXPANDING THE BASKET OF INTANGIBLES Intangible resources internalized by firms, and capabilities to leverage them, are often discussed as ‘‘forms of capital’’ (e.g., Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998 for social and intellectual capital). The label ‘‘capital’’ is used not only as an economic metaphor to evoke the idea that the accumulation of a given type of resource can yield returns, but also to emphasize the interrelatedness and convertibility of different forms of capital (see Adler & Kwon, 2002, pp. 21–22 for a detailed discussion of the properties of intangible forms of capital). The concept of capital applied to various types of intangible resources emphasizes specifically (a) the need for investment in the accumulation and maintenance of those resources and capabilities over time; (b) the fact that resources and capabilities exist and are integrated into bundles; and (c) that these bundles are important for firm’s value-creating strategies.4 Strategy research to date has emphasized three main types of intangible capital: intellectual (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), social (Adler & Kwon, 2002), and reputational capital (Fombrun, 1996). In this section, we first develop the concept of cultural capital and we identify its similarities to and differences from intellectual capital, as well its relationships to both intellectual and social capital. In order to do so, we synthesize extant understanding of intellectual and social capital along two dimensions (components and accumulation process), and then discuss the concept of cultural capital along the same dimensions. Next, we develop and discuss the concept of symbolic capital and its relationships with both reputational and cultural capital. Our approach focuses on highlighting the similarities and differences, as well as interrelationships of cultural and symbolic capital to the

Examples

Definition

Social

Reputational

Cultural

Comparison of Different Types of Intangible Capital.

Knowledge and knowing capability of a firm

Set of cultural resources, Set of resources Favorable stakeholder and capabilities to rooted in perceptions about firm’s manipulate them that relationships to ability to deliver quality, to are internalized by the facilitate firm’s spark audience excitement, firm and are deployed action to conform to societal in its value-creation norms and expectations, or strategies to achieve standing in the hierarchy of quality and capability in a given exchange network  Technical or process  Networks (ties/  Reputation  Knowledge and  Celebrity knowledge density) knowing capability of  Capability to manage  Resources  Legitimacy artistic and cultural  Status technical or process (types/ movements  Knowledge and knowledge quantity)  Other types of knowledge  Reciprocity knowing capability of and capability, e.g., about socio-cultural trends markets, human resources, etc.

Intellectual

Table 1.

Symbolic capacity of signs incorporated for example in brands and logos, product physical features/styles, and firm’s activities/ artifacts

Stakeholder perceptions that the socio-cultural meanings embodied and represented in a firm’s products and activities are socially distinguishing and therefore, identity- and status-enhancing.

Symbolic

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 Product technological innovation  Patents  Other performance and competitive advantages

Effects on firm performance

Absorptive capacity Internal development Learning Spillover and hiring Knowledge transfer

    

Accumulation process (examples)

 Past demonstration of quality (reputation)  External validation of firm’s action consistency with norms and beliefs of a field (legitimacy)  Past demonstration of quality and affiliation in network (status)  External validation by institutional intermediaries  Stakeholder perception  Hiring individuals who are carriers of specific knowledge  External collaborations with artists, experts, and cultural intermediaries  Creation of ad hoc structures to engage in cultural activities  Change in New product development process  Creation of boundaryspanning roles

 Access to  Increased stakeholder’s  Innovation based on information willingness to exchange new meanings  Power/influence  Development of resources with the firms  Solidarity  Improved ability to access unconventional other resources strategies  Strategic renewal

Long-term investment strategies to establish/ maintain network

 Increased customers’ willingness to pay

 Designing products inscribed with target meanings  Communication (advertising and branding)  Intermediation of critics/gatekeepers  Consumer practices of display and use

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intangible assets already studied by strategy researchers. We do so to encourage strategy researchers to both leverage existing understandings about intangible assets, as well as to develop new ones. By emphasizing similarities we seek to point to possibilities for applying current understanding and insights to the new forms of capital we propose. In contrast, by highlighting the differences we seek to draw attention to the need for extant understandings to be extended and new insights to be gained into the nature and use of this specialized class of capitals. Table 1 summarizes our ideas about the similarities and differences among intellectual, social, reputational, cultural, and symbolic capital.

Intellectual, Social, and Cultural Capital In this section, we argue that cultural capital is a specialized subset of intellectual capital because it is composed of a firm’s knowledge and knowing capability of a specific type. Therefore its accumulation process and effects on performance are distinct and require specific research and management approaches. In order to highlight effectively similarities and differences, we begin by summarizing briefly extant understanding about intellectual and social capital. We then develop our insights about cultural capital in terms of components and accumulation process, and for each dimension we highlight how cultural capital differs from the other forms of capital. Intellectual Capital Definition. Intellectual capital is defined as ‘‘the knowledge and knowing capability of a collective entity such as an organization’’ (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998, p. 245). Therefore, it is composed of knowledge that firms exploit, build, and manage to implement their strategies. Knowledge is considered a critical resource for competitive advantage (Grant, 1996a; Kogut & Zander, 1992) and a large body of research has been conducted on both knowledge management and the accumulation of specific types of technological knowledge and capabilities (Almeida, 1996; Brusoni & Prencipe, 2006; Dushnitsky & Shaver, 2009; Hargadon & Sutton, 1997; Mowery, Oxley, & Silverman, 1996). Intellectual capital derives from both individual (knowledge as a resource) and organizational characteristics (knowledge as a capability) (Grant, 1996a; Nonaka, von Krogh, & Voelpel, 2006) and as being tacit and explicit at both levels (Hargadon & Fanelli, 2002; Nonaka, 1994).

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Accumulation Process. Multiple studies have explored a variety of issues related to the accumulation (and management) of this type of capital. For example, attention has been devoted to how to absorb knowledge from the external environment (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990), transfer it within (Ghoshal, Korine, & Szulanski, 1994; Szulanski, 1996) and across (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Szulanski & Jensen, 2006) firm’s boundaries, and protect it from other firms (Agarwal, Ganco, & Ziedonis, 2009; Dushnitsky & Shaver, 2009), to what constitutes efficient governance mechanisms for preventing knowledge to spillover via employees’ mobility (Klepper & Sleeper, 2005; Wang, He, & Mahoney, 2009), and to how organize for exploiting knowledge transfer (e.g., Madsen, Mosakowski, & Zaheer, 2003). Social Capital Definition. The origin of the concept is generally ascribed to the sociologists Coleman (1988) and Bourdieu (1986). Social capital can be defined as the ‘‘set of resources rooted in relationships’’ (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998, p. 243) to facilitate firm’s action. Much confusion surrounds the identification of components of social capital (see Adler & Kwon, 2002 and Glanville & Bienenstock, 2009 for a review). According to Glanville and Bienenstock (2009), social capital has three components: social networks (number of ties and density), resources (type and quantity), and reciprocity (felt obligations). First, different network structures allow firms to access different types of resources. For example, dense networks are beneficial for preserving resources whereas sparse networks are more beneficial for searching and leveraging resources not possessed by a given actor (Lin, 2001). Second, reciprocity is a component of social capital (rather than an antecedents or outcome). In order to exploit/leverage connections to get resources out of them, connections must be of a particular type, that is, they must be connections of perceived obligations (Bourdieu, 1986). Third, the type and amount of resources possessed by other firms in the network and accessible through such a network determine the level of social capital within the network. Accumulation Process. The process of accumulation of social capital is described as a conscious and unconscious long-term investment strategy designed to establish or maintain relationships of perceived obligation that can be accessed to some future occasion (Bourdieu, 1986). Indeed, firms tend to accumulate different types of connections that can be leveraged at different times depending on need (Glanville & Bienenstock, 2009). Social capital enhances access to tangible and intangible resources. For example,

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it facilitates the development of intellectual capital (see Adler & Kwon, 2002 for a review) and of cultural capital, as we discuss next. Cultural Capital Definition and Examples. We use the concept of ‘‘cultural capital’’ at the organizational level to refer to the set of cultural resources, and capabilities to manipulate them, that are internalized by the firm and are deployed in its value-creation strategies. Specifically, Rindova (2007) suggests that the value-creating strategies based on cultural capital involve generating original products without relying on technological change, creating rich and nuanced connections among product categories, and connecting the firm’s creative processes to those of customers. The concept of cultural capital we discuss here should not be confused with the well-established notion of ‘‘organizational culture’’ as a VRIN resource to be used to build and sustain competitive advantage (see Mintzberg et al., 1998). Whereas organizational culture refers to the beliefs, values, assumptions, and symbols that are developed inside a firm, cultural capital refers to the internalization of cultural resources that circulate in the societal culture at large. The concept of cultural capital we advance here parallels the concept of cultural capital at the individual level of analysis (Bourdieu, 1984; Holt, 2000; Rindova, 2007). Individual cultural capital refers to the distinctive resources and capabilities related to cultural traditions and trends that individuals accumulate, and that guide their consumption choices and practices. We extend this idea to the organizational level to argue that organizations may too develop and accumulate such distinctive capabilities and resources to guide their product development value-creating strategies. Recent studies suggest that some firms indeed accumulate different types of cultural resources and use them for strategic purposes. For example, Rindova, Dalpiaz, and Ravasi (Forthcoming) document how Alessi – an Italian manufacturer of kitchen- and houseware – internalized different types of cultural resources and used them to continuously change the meanings of its products. As a result, it was able to discover new customers, new uses, new strategic positions, and generally to develop unconventional strategies that defied industry conventions and appealed to an increasingly diverse set of customer groups. Alessi’s experience exemplifies the more general concept of cultural capital, defined as knowledge and knowing capability of artistic and cultural movements, as well as of socio-cultural trends, that enable firms to make

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distinctive choices about the products or services they offer. The nature of this knowledge as ‘‘capital,’’ that is, as accumulated combinations of resources and capabilities, enables the firm to make choices that are not only distinctive, but appealing to various consumer audiences. For example, Rindova, Dalpiaz, and Ravasi (Forthcoming) show that as Alessi accumulated diverse cultural resources and developed capabilities to integrate them, its products appealed to more customers and to customers willing to pay higher prices. For example, over time Alessi discovered a consumer segment willing to forgo functionality in favor of enhanced aesthetic properties and contemporary style, and to pay a substantial premium for that type of new products. It also found a segment composed of arts and design collectors who valued Alessi’s artistic creations. Finally, it discovered a relatively broad, young audience in the middle home segment that desired colorful products made of plastic and expressing emotions, irony, and play. Verganti and colleagues (Dell’Era, Marchesi, & Verganti, 2008; Verganti, 2006) observe similar processes in several European manufacturers of furniture and lighting who repeatedly introduce product innovations based on the formal properties of their products, altered to reflect ideas from different intellectual movements in the fields of arts and architecture. These new product forms stimulated new demand and/or greater willingness to pay for these novel artifacts. A firm’s cultural capital may also incorporate knowledge and knowing capability of contemporary social trends and tastes that enable the creation of distinctive product offerings. Djelic and Ainamo (2005) show that the commercial performance of mobile phones can be enhanced when producers develop knowledge of social trends and cultural meanings, which then inform their design choices. They find that the Finnish producer of mobile phones Nokia designs and develops new products that purposefully combine technological innovation with product forms that resonate with current socio-cultural trends. Similarly, Lampel (2001, p. 304) suggests that the use of ‘‘spectacle’’ can speed up the adoption of new technologies as spectacle changes the ‘‘atmosphere surrounding the emergence of a new technology.’’ These studies therefore support the view that organizational artifacts and products are associated with a variety of meanings emanating from their formal and aesthetics properties (see Rindova & Petkova, 2007 for a discussion); that meanings inhere in organizational artifacts beyond the subjective perceptions of the individuals using them (Fleming & Spicer, 2005); and that firms can enhance their value-creating strategies and gain a competitive advantage by accumulating cultural capital.

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Accumulation Process Like intellectual capital, where individual employees (engineers, scientists) are carriers of technical knowledge (e.g., Saxenian, 1990; Song, Almeida, & Wu, 2003) that is learnt during their education path and during their tenure in the firm (Bhide, 1994), cultural capital can be accumulated through employment of individuals who carry specific knowledge that is different from technological, customer, or market knowledge. For example, whereas technical knowledge and capabilities are accumulated through the hiring of engineers and scientists (Leonard-Barton, 1992), the accumulation of cultural capital requires hiring of artists, architects, and designers (Buchanan, 1995). These specialists in the fields of art and architecture can help the firm understand the logics, dynamics, and trends of ‘‘art-worlds,’’ as well as their influences on the broader societal culture. Firms may also have ‘‘initial endowments’’ of cultural capital in the form of senior managers with personal interests or affinities toward arts and humanities. For example, some evidence exists that European furniture firms creating products that are distinctive based on their meanings, tend to have design managers or CEOs with degrees in humanities (Dalpiaz, 2010), life-long relationships with architects and designers (Dell’Era et al., 2008), or are design experts themselves (Ravasi & Lojacono, 2005). For example, Stefano Marzano, CEO and chief creative director of Philips Design, is a professor at the Domus Academy in Italy, and a lecturer at Milan Politecnico. Under his guidance, Philips has changed the design of its products to communicate emotional meanings and has led Philips’ products to be collected by modern art museums (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). Like intellectual capital, the accumulation of cultural capital also depends on the development of social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). For example, anecdotal evidence exists that a firm’s cultural capital develops through external collaborations with artists, architects, and cultural intermediaries, such as design schools and museums. Such actors become part of the firm’s network and serve as conduits of knowledge of changing trends and artistic movements (Dell’Era & Verganti, 2009), and/or as ‘‘interpreters’’ of societal trends for industrial purpose (Dell’Era et al., 2008). Further, they often bring their own networks of relationships with museums, galleries, and other artists. Knowledge and familiarity with individuals who are deeply engaged in the domain of arts (e.g., sculptors, architects, cartoonists, and museums curators) can help firms absorb complex socio-cultural meanings. For example, Rindova, Dalpiaz, and Ravasi (Forthcoming) find that Alessi developed collaborations with

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hundreds of designers, architects, and artists with various types of artistic skills belonging to different artistic movements. It also organized seminars with experts in other disciplines (anthropologists, semioticians, etc.) and relied on psychoanalytical theories to understand the different types of meanings (e.g., related to specific social groups in a given historical time or emotions evoked by given shapes and textures and colors) that objects elicit. Similarly, Verganti (2006) notes that Artemide, a firm producing lighting systems, funded a world-renown group of architects – Memphis – in order to ‘‘learn’’ new design languages. More generally, firms such as Artemide, Alessi, and Kartell operating in industries such as furniture, lighting, furnishing accessories, and kitchenware have been found to maintain extensive collaboration networks with artists and architects with the explicit goals of being connected to different artistic traditions and trends. In addition to hiring and collaborating with carriers of cultural knowledge, firms employ specific structures and mechanisms to build knowing capability. Research on intellectual capital shows that the technical knowledge residing in individuals becomes knowledge of the firm through learning mechanisms such as experience accumulation and knowledge articulation and codification (Zollo & Winter, 2002), and through the integration of knowledge (Grant, 1996a) and its embeddedness into routines (Levitt & March, 1988; March, 1991; Nelson & Winter, 1982). Our review suggests that firms can similarly develop cultural capital by (a) creating new ad hoc structures to engage in cultural activities, (b) overhauling the way in which they develop new products, and (c) creating new boundary-spanning roles. First, anecdotal evidence suggests that the firms that have become known as the ‘‘Italian design factories’’ have proactively organized exhibitions featuring their products – on their own, and in collaboration with modern art museums around the world. Some even founded their own corporate museums as specialized forms for exhibiting their historical productions and interacting with cultural institutions (Ravasi, Rindova, & Stigliani, 2009). Alessi’s museum, for example, receives 30 loan requests a year from modern art museums around the world and organizes several exhibitions about specific product-related initiatives every year. Second, evidence exists that firms also change their new product development processes in order to deploy both cultural and intellectual capital in new product design. Practices for prototyping and mass production are stretched to enable different artistic languages to be expressed in the product form design and produced through industrial means. Such adjustments have been documented in studies of Italian manufacturers of

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kitchenware (Rindova, Dalpiaz, & Ravasi, Forthcoming; Salvato 2006, 2009) and lighting (Ravasi & Lojacono, 2005; Zurlo, Cagliano, Simonelli, & Verganti, 2002). Third, firms can create specific boundary-spanning roles designed to facilitate the development of knowledge of socio-cultural trends, as well as the identification of promising artists and architects for inclusion in the firm’s collaboration networks. Cillo and Verona’s (2008) study of design centers in fine fashion highlights that different strategies of stylistic innovation in the fashion industry involve several different types of search, as well as different mechanisms for integrating the designer (and/or the design unit) with those responsible for production and commercialization. At Alessi, a new role of ‘‘authenticity keeper’’ was created to buffer the interactions between engineers and external artists who were working together to develop the same product and who were carriers of specific and contrasting logics (Dalpiaz, Rindova, & Ravasi, 2010). Overall, the evidence suggests that cultural capital is accumulated through means similar to those used for the accumulation of intellectual capital, but also requiring different emphasis and value orientations, as the latter are inherent components of capability development (see Leonard-Barton, 1992). It also highlights the complexity of cultural capital accumulation, suggesting that it is likely to be a rare and difficult-to-imitate resource, which can provide firms with sustainable competitive advantage. Several differences between cultural and intellectual capital make the challenges associated with cultural capital accumulation even more apparent. The knowledge and knowing capability that constitute cultural capital differs from those that constitute intellectual capital in terms of (a) content (e.g., knowledge of artistic and socio-cultural trends vs. technical knowledge), (b) characteristics of the knowledge (indeterminate vs. determinate), and (c) the ways in which knowledge and knowing capability can be accumulated and deployed. These three aspects are interrelated. While the difference in content may appear trivial, this is hardly so. The development of knowledge regarding artistic movements and socio-cultural trends relies on fundamentally different epistemologies and methods from those used in science and engineering, which underlie the development of technical or scientific knowledge (see Snow, 1998, for a discussion of the differences between humanities and science). Further, whereas the subject matter of technological and scientific knowledge is determinate (Buchanan, 1995), the subject matter of cultural knowledge is indeterminate, that is, it admits alternative resolutions and interpretations, in contrast to the physical laws or technological necessities that underlie technological solutions.

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As Buchanan (1995, p. 25) explains, cultural knowledge is ‘‘open to questioning by the general public, as are all matters of public policy and personal action, where things may be other than they are.’’ Therefore, in contrast to technical knowledge, cultural knowledge is indeterminate and more ‘‘perspectival’’ in nature as it cannot rely on the laws of science to discover ‘‘a solution’’ to a problem. These differences affect the accumulation and deployment of cultural capital and, ultimately, its integration with technological knowledge. While recognizing the differences, strategy researchers also need to recognize the complementarities between intellectual and cultural capital in contributing to value-creating strategies of firms. First, the deployment of cultural capital in product innovation can help clarify and enhance the perception of value generated by novel technologies (Rindova & Petkova, 2007). Second, the knowledge about technology and processes (composing intellectual capital) appears to underlie the capability of firms to create novel product forms that innovate in terms of product cultural meanings. For example, Verganti (2008) emphasizes that Italian manufacturers such as Kartell have enhanced their knowledge in technology and production processes in order to produce objects as designed by artists. Rindova, Dalpiaz, and Ravasi (Forthcoming) similarly observe that the accumulation of new cultural resources led Alessi to expand its technological knowledge and to pursue new technologies, previously outside the scope of the firm’s operations, such as plastic, glass, wood, and ceramic. Therefore, researchers need to understand both how cultural capital accumulates and how it can be integrated with the current stock of intellectual capital in a given firm.

Reputational and Symbolic Capitals In this section we suggest a further expansion of the basket of intangible assets studied by strategy researchers by highlighting the similarities and differences between the general class of intangible assets that we refer to as ‘‘reputational capital’’ (Fombrun, 1996) and the set of resources and capabilities we term ‘‘symbolic capital.’’ Reputational Capital Definition. A considerable body of strategic and organizational research has developed showing that favorable stakeholder perceptions have substantive consequences on firm performance (Barnett, Jermier, & Lafferty, 2006; Deephouse, 2000; Fombrun, 1996; Hall, 1992; Jensen & Roy, 2009;

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Podolny, 2005; Rao, 1994; Rindova et al., 2005; Roberts & Dowling, 2002). Scholars have advanced different concepts to describe these different types of favorable stakeholder perceptions (see Pfarrer, Pollock, & Rindova, Forthcoming for a discussion). For example, reputation refers to stakeholder perceptions about a firm’s ability to deliver value along a series of strategic dimensions (e.g., product quality, management effectiveness, financial profitability) (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990); legitimacy reflects perceptions of desirability and appropriateness of firm’s actions and structures relative to industry and societal norms (Suchman, 1995); status is based on perceptions of a firm’s standing in the hierarchy of quality and capability in a given industry or exchange network (Podolny, 1994); and finally, celebrity is based on large-scale public attention and strong positive emotional responses (Rindova et al., 2006). While many different terms are used to describe favorable stakeholder perceptions, in this paper, for the sake of simplicity, we use ‘reputational capital’ as an umbrella term to encompass all these favorable stakeholder perceptions (cf. Fombrun, Gardberg, & Barnett, 2000).5 Accumulation Process. Different forms of reputational capital also accumulate through different processes (see Pfarrer et al., Forthcoming; Rindova et al., 2006 for detailed discussion). For example, reputation accumulates through strategic actions that signal and deliver different levels of quality and value (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Rindova, Petkova, & Kotha, 2007; Rindova et al., 2005); legitimacy derives from conformity of firm’s actions and structures to norms and beliefs in the industry, whereas celebrity, in contrast accumulates through nonconforming actions that attract media attention and embellishment (Rindova et al., 2006). Further, the accumulation of several of these assets has been related to actions of institutional intermediaries who have been argued to generate status orderings (Rao, 1994), endow actors with legitimacy (Pollock & Rindova, 2003; Zuckerman, 1999), define the content and composition of their reputation (e.g., Rindova et al., 2007), and endow them with the popularity of celebrities (Rindova et al., 2006). While the specific processes of accumulation may differ, all of these forms of capital derive from favorable stakeholder perceptions, often combined with endorsement by institutional intermediaries, such as the media. Overall, this research has contributed to strategy research an understanding of the value-creating effects of perception and cognition – at the individual, organizational, industry, and market levels of analysis (see Rindova, Reger, & Dalpiaz, Forthcoming for a review). We extend this work further by developing

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theoretical ideas about the types of perceptions that generate what we term ‘‘symbolic capital,’’ discussed next. Symbolic Capital Definition and Examples. Symbolic capital refers to stakeholder perceptions that the socio-cultural meanings embodied and represented in a firm’s products and activities are socially distinguishing and therefore, identity- and status-enhancing (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). The socio-cultural meanings associated with a firm’s products depend on the signifying effects of the signs incorporated in firms’ artifacts (Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004; Rindova & Petkova, 2007). Specifically, firm products, logos, brand names, and advertising images have all been shown to contain signs that consumers use to enact aspirational identities and to position themselves in a given social space (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). Visible and tangible association between products and producers – through a recognizable logo or brand name – allows the ‘‘transfer’’ of identity-relevant meanings from a producer to its products and, through practices of use and display, onto final consumers (McCracken, 1986). The fact that the well-known logos of Harley-Davidson, Apple, and Nike, among others, have also become popular tattoos is a striking manifestation of the extent to which consumers rely on firm-based symbols to express a sense of identity. Our argument is that firms that develop such symbols enjoy a distinct type of capital – namely, symbolic capital. Examples of the accumulation and deployment of such symbolic capital exist in a variety of industries. In fashion apparel, an original style and skilful use of communication establish fashion designers, in public perception, as interpreters of modern aesthetics (Cappetta, Cillo, & Ponti, 2006). Symbolic capital is then accumulated through the use of name, logo, and style in repeated shows. Accumulated symbolic capital imbues products with status- (‘‘in’’ or ‘‘out’’) and identity-relevant (sexy, sophisticated, understated, self-confident, etc.) meanings that justify the high price that consumer pay to satisfy their needs for social identification and distinction (Gronow, 1997). In technology industries, ethnographic research shows how the popularity of Harley-Davidson motorcycles arises from a combination of technical and symbolic attributes; and that even when technical attributes underperformed, Harley-Davidson remained a symbol for a personal ethos built upon values of freedom, Americanism, ruggedness, and manliness (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Similarly, the survival of Apple Computers in the late 1980s and in the 1990s is attributed to a bedrock of loyal customers – the so-called ‘‘Mac users’’ – who used Apple products as

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symbols of freedom, anarchy, and fun (Belk & Tumbat, 2005) that distinguished them from the ‘‘herd-oriented’’ PC users (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). The symbolic capital accumulated by Apple through the years played an important part in the success of the iPod – which was ‘‘neither the first nor the technologically superior digital music player in the market (Time, 10th December 2003).’’ Symbolic capital, then, contributes to value creation because it increases stakeholders’ willingness to pay, as they perceive value not only in the product’s functions, but also in its capacity to express and communicate about their social status and identity (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). The forgoing examples suggest a close relationship may exist between symbolic capital and corporate brands, when the latter are built around identity-relevant meanings and interpretations about a specific producer or product. Early brands and branding activities were essentially used to reassure consumers about product quality; they facilitated the accumulation and deployment of reputational capital by linking previously anonymous and undifferentiated products to specific producers, whose claims for quality could be systematically tracked and compared to competing products (Keller, 2002). However, recent research emphasizes that brands encapsulate a complex set of socio-cultural meanings (Holt, 2002; Schroeder & Salzer-Morling, 2006), and that branded products provide consumers ‘‘vessels of self-expressions’’ (Holt, 2004, p. 3). In other words, consumers find some of the meanings, attributes, values, and ideas that compose a brand image valuable to construct their identities. Douglas Holt refers to these brands as ‘‘identity brands’’ (2004, pp. 3–4). Therefore, it is important for strategy researchers to recognize that whereas not all brands embody identity-relevant meanings, some brands are associated with symbolic capital, which is an intangible asset to the firm, similar to reputational capital. Accumulation Process. The process through which symbolic capital accumulates also appears to exhibit complex social interactions among firms, intermediaries, and stakeholders (Hirschman, 1986; Ravasi & Rindova, 2008) that have been associated with the accumulation of reputation and legitimacy (Fombrun, 1996; Suchman, 1995). Producers seek to influence the meanings that stakeholders associate with their products through product design and advertising (McCracken, 1986; Wernick, 1991). Design can inscribe products with formal elements, such as shape, color, and material, often referred to as ‘‘design language’’ (Mono, 1997). These formal elements trigger both conscious and unconscious meanings that

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become associated with product artifacts (Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004; Rindova & Petkova, 2007). Firms further surround their products with explicit communications, such as framing the product in advertising messages (e.g., Keller & Lehmann, 2006) or its use by celebrities who tend to be seen as representing different lifestyles and characters (Cappetta & Gioia, 2006), in an effort to transfer specific target meanings to their products and artifacts (e.g., Alvesson & Robertson, 2006). Through design and communication, however, firms can only attempt to imbue their products with meanings. While objects can evoke meanings through their formal properties (Rindova & Petkova, 2007), the subjective states of perceivers, such as their idiosyncratic goals and own cultural resources (Hatch & Rubin, 2006; Holt, 1995), affect the process considerably, making meaning-making a complex process. The accumulation of symbolic capital ultimately depends on stakeholder perceiving the firm, its products, and artifacts as identity-relevant and identity-enhancing. Recognized critics also influence the meanings associated with products by providing ‘‘expert’’ advice, which consumers use as ‘‘proxy’’ judgments of the symbolic value of hard-to-value artistic and symbolic attributes (Wijnberg, 1995; Wijnberg & Gemser, 2000). Because critics apply different criteria depending on their own social roles and aspirations (Capaldo, 2007; Wijnberg & Gemser, 2000), they shift and refract the meanings that come to be associated with the firm’s products. These observations point to the complexity of symbolic capital accumulation, suggesting that it is likely to be a rare and difficult-to-imitate resource, which can provide firms with sustainable competitive advantage. Symbolic capital bears important similarities and differences with reputational capital. First, like reputational capital, it is composed of stakeholders’ perceptions regarding the value of the firm’s products. Whereas in the case of reputational capital these perceptions tend to focus on quality, in the case of symbolic capital perceptions focus on symbolizing capacity. Symbolic capital therefore accrues to firms for the distinctive, ‘‘special’’ identity-relevant and identity-enhancing characteristics of their products and activities. In other words, it accrues to firms when what they do becomes personally meaningful to individuals, and when it is also socially distinctive. This combination is obviously a tall order for firms, underscoring the likelihood that symbolic capital is not only valuable, but also rare, and difficult to create or substitute. Like reputational capital (Rindova et al., 2006), the accumulation of symbolic capital is influenced by a firm’s social capital, that is, by the intermediation of actors that have the power to bestow value on products in

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given markets (Rindova & Fombrun, 1999) such as the media (Hirschman, Scott, & Wells, 1998), and formal and informal opinion leaders (Weiman, 1994). For example, reviews and comments of critics and fashion journalists determine the symbolic content of goods because they influence how consumers interpret the efforts of designers and advertisers (McCracken, 1986). The accumulation and preservation of symbolic capital, then, require producers to carefully establish and manage social relationships with these intermediaries in order to build and maintain stakeholder perceptions about the meanings evoked by their names and products (Cappetta & Gioia, 2006; Fombrun, 1996). Symbolic capital can accrue also from distinctive subcultures of consumptions (Kozinets, 2001) and brand communities (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995) that develop around culturally meaningful and identity-enhancing products and brands. These communities come to develop specific understandings and a sense of ‘‘ownership’’ and emotional engagement with the object of their consumption (brand, product features, logo, etc.), and may (a) resist attempts to alter meanings associated to given signs, and (b) become source of new symbols (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). Therefore, a direct involvement with these communities may be crucial to develop symbolic capital through understanding their ethos, internal social structures, and unique forms of expression, and to deploy it in ways that connect with current cultural meanings and interpretations. Finally, differently from the perception that constitutes some reputational capital, stakeholders’ perceptions that constitute symbolic capital are concerned not only with the extent to which a given quality characterizes a given firm (e.g., high or low reputation or status; legitimacy or lack thereof ), but also with the actual content of the quality, as it is based on how stakeholders interpret a firm and its products relative to their sense of self and identity. As a result, firms may vary not only in level, but also in the content of their symbolic capital. For example, within the same level of status in the hierarchy of fashion firms (e.g., fine fashion), the symbolic capital of one firm (e.g., Gucci) differs considerably from that of another one (e.g., Ferragamo), and the difference derives from the diverse sets of meanings ascribed to each firm (Cappetta & Gioia, 2006). Thus, while one firm’s products evoke meanings of classic, comfortable elegance, another firm’s products evoke meanings of edgy wealth and power. Since such meanings appeal to different – potentially similarly welloff customers groups – symbolic capital may provide firms with a particularly unique resource that can serve as the basis for highly inimitable strategies.

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The Effect of Cultural and Symbolic Capital on Firm’s Performance By deploying cultural and symbolic capital, firms can produce objects that, like traditional cultural products, are appreciated for their meanings, and not only for their function. Firms that invest in their cultural capital (i.e., that invest in the accumulation of knowledge and knowing capability of cultural trends, etc.) develop a better understanding of the signs and symbols that have the potential to enhance consumers’ identity and status. Therefore, the accumulation and deployment of cultural capital is instrumental to the subsequent accumulation of symbolic capital through the manufacturing of products that users choose to signal identity, distinction, taste, and refinement. These two specialized resources open up an additional path for value-creation because they enable firms to expand the benefits experienced by consumers from their products (Ravasi & Rindova, 2008). In addition to increasing customers’ perception of value, research shows that the development of these types of capital enables firms to formulate unconventional strategies (Rindova, Dalpiaz, & Ravasi, Forthcoming) and foster firm’s strategic renewal (Ravasi & Lojacono, 2005).

WHERE DOES STRATEGY MEET CULTURE? In this paper we have argued that two specific blind-spots limit the breath of strategy research: (a) predominant focus on producer activities and on the cost side of the value-creation equation (see Priem, 2007) to the neglect of the role of consumer perceptions and practices; and (b) predominant focus on the technical characteristics of product innovations to the neglect of their symbolic and aesthetic properties (see Rindova & Petkova, 2007). Drawing on observations from studies conducted in several non-North American settings, and integrating them with extant work on intangibles assets and creative industries, we suggest that strategy research can develop a more comprehensive account of the resources and capabilities employed in valuecreation process by considering the development and deployment of what we term cultural and symbolic capital. Such a consideration alleviates the blind-spots in strategic management research by (a) accounting for how producers can create value by producing products that are bought for their meanings (in addition to their function); and (b) showing simultaneously the need for understanding a different class of resources and capabilities, and the possibility for extending extant understanding on intangible assets to these types of capital.

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Our general point here is that the forms of capital we have proposed are both similar and dissimilar to the core intangible assets, of which they are specialized subsets. Therefore, it is important for strategy research to investigate and understand the specific similarities and dissimilarities. Simply subsuming cultural capital under intellectual capital may limit our understanding of its distinctive contribution to the value-creation process; and vice-versa, failing to recognize that cultural capital is based on a type of knowledge and knowledge capability, as is intellectual capital, may limit the understanding of the common management aspects of both, as well as their ‘‘combinability.’’ Our larger point is that only after these forms of capital are recognized theoretically and explored empirically, their effects on the overall value-creation process can be understood. We relate our ideas about the nature and accumulation of cultural and symbolic capital to current strategy research on intellectual, social, and reputational capital, and we stress the importance of these forms for the value-creating strategies of firms. Future research is needed on these processes of their accumulation and deployment (especially in combination with other more conventional types of resources) to understand (a) the extent to which they may be rare and difficult to imitate or substitute, as we suggested; and (b) the extent to which they contribute to value creation and appropriation. Our paper is inspired by the progress that strategy research has made by considering how cognition and perceptions affect the firms’ intangible assets, such as intellectual, social, and reputational capitals. We hope that by bringing together insights from various studies that note the importance of cultural and symbolic aspects of competition, we can stimulate strategy researchers to examine the effects of cultural and symbolic resources on strategy and competitive advantage. While we provide some initial theoretical ideas about what these types of capital are at the firm’s level of analysis, and how they accumulate, much conceptual and empirical work awaits. A systematic investigation of the processes of development and deployment of these forms of capital has much to offer to strategy research seeking to understand the dynamics of resources accumulation and capability development in general, as well as the effects of asset interconnectedness. For example, Rindova and colleagues (Forthcoming) provide an intriguing account of the processes and mechanisms through which firms operating in conventional industries can develop cultural capital drawn from different domains in order to effect strategic change. Their study shows that the process is fraught with contradictions and uncertainty,

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but also highly rewarding in terms of the competitive advantages it bestows. Interconnectedness and creation of unique bundle of VRIN resources is key to competitive advantage (Mintzberg et al., 1998). Research investigating the conditions under which it is beneficial for firms to seek to develop and integrate such resources in their resource bases can add much value to our current understanding of competitive advantage and industry evolution. Our discussion of the development processes associated with these forms of capital suggests the importance of future research that examines how their accumulation affects the ability of a firm not only to create, but also to capture value, as two issues appear salient. First, many of the studies that provided the basis for our theoretical ideas suggest the importance of actors external to the organization, such as renowned architects or design experts, as well as gatekeepers and critics for developing these forms of capital. In the context of more traditional types of capital this would suggest that these actors may stand to capture much of the value created in the process. Yet, the extent to which this dynamic holds in contexts where firms may be seen as co-creators and/or enablers of creative expression needs to be examined. Second, as consumers adopt firm products as means of personal expression, they may provide firms with innovative ideas and deep understandings of social dynamics, thereby lowering the cost of product innovations and extensions.

Exploring Interconnections among Different Forms of Capital Whereas the link among intellectual, social, and reputational capital has been already explored (e.g., Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Rindova & Fombrun, 1999), future research should investigate how cultural capital and symbolic capital relate to each other and how they relate to the other forms of capital. Investigating questions regarding how cultural and symbolic capital may combine with other resources and capabilities in the firm, as well as the question of how they can be converted into economic resources, is central to incorporating these topics into mainstream strategy research. Insights should be gained with regard to how these different types of capital interact with each other, how firms can develop and manage them simultaneously, and what practices and structures firms can adopt in order to deploy and blend them. For example, it has been argued that social capital is a substitute of economic resources when connections to relevant actors compensate for the lack of financial resources in order to attain a given goal (Adler & Kwon,

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2002). Similarly, it can be argued that symbolic capital may be a substitute for economic resources as its possession may reduce the need for costly investments in advertising. However, the opposite argument can be made too that the possession of symbolic capital requires sustained investments in advertising to maintain it while reducing the need for, and the costs of, developing products with cutting-edge cultural resonance. Further, symbolic capital seems to relate to reputational capital both in direct and indirect ways. Indeed, the content of symbolic capital leveraged or communicated by firms determines the likelihood of accumulating reputational capital in the form of legitimacy (Zott & Huy, 2007). It seems reasonable to believe that symbolic capital can be converted into reputational capital also through exploiting social capital. Studies in the fashion industry (e.g., Breward, 2003) suggest that connections to arbiters in one’s network (fashion magazines and their editors) are needed not only to build or maintain stakeholders’ perceptions about the meanings evoked by a fashion firm and its products (i.e., its symbolic capital), but also to build its reputation or define its status relatively to competitors (i.e., its reputational capital). Future research therefore should investigate thoroughly the processes through which firms can manage external perceptions to accumulate and communicate symbolic capital, in addition to the intermediation of arbiters (Breward, 2003) and critics (Wijnberg & Gemser, 2000). Cultural capital too may relate to other forms of intangible capitals in important ways. Some of the work that has alluded to this asset suggests that it may complement intellectual capital, as the knowledge about technology and processes (composing intellectual capital) appears to underlie the capability of firms to create novel product forms that innovate in terms of product cultural meanings (Verganti, 2008). In addition to complement it, cultural capital can also push for the development of intellectual capital (Rindova, Dalpiaz, & Ravasi, Forthcoming). Future research therefore should investigate how the two forms of knowledge interact in both product development and production processes. Cultural capital also relates to social capital. For example, connections to artists, museums, architects etc. are essentials for building and accumulating cultural capital and for engaging in cultural activities because they are the gatekeepers to the cultural world (Verganti, 2006). Yet, cultural capital enables a firm to expand its social capital by enabling it to recognize new artistic movements and/or artists that can enhance the symbolic capacity of its products. Therefore, it is important for future research to explore how firms can manage the interactions between these capitals in strategy development and implementation.

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CONCLUSIONS In this paper we suggest a new direction for strategy research by emphasizing the role of cultural and symbolic capital in value-creation processes. We argued that two specific blind-spots limit the breath of strategy research on value creation and competitive advantage. Drawing on observations from studies conducted mainly in non-North American settings, and integrating them with insights on intangibles assets and cultural industries, we argue that a more comprehensive account of the resources and capabilities employed in value-creation process should include the development and deployment of cultural and symbolic capital, and their interrelationships with other forms of intangible assets that have already attracted scholarly attention in strategy.

NOTES 1. We use the term ‘‘general societal culture’’ to refer to a part of a social world within which a set of common, even if not completely shared understandings exists (Stahl, 2002). 2. Organizational culture has already been recognized as a VRIN resource (cf. Mintzberg et al., 1998). 3. More recently, Hirsch (2000) extended the definition of cultural products also to some material goods such as gourmet food. 4. We recognize that numerous definitions of what resources and capabilities exist. To some, ‘‘resources’’ refer to ‘‘all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, information, knowledge, etc. controlled by a firm (Barney, 1991, p. 101).’’ Others distinguish between ‘‘resources’’ and ‘‘capabilities’’ conceptually: resources are assets (Barney & Arikan, 2001), whereas capabilities are the firm’s ability to leverage them (Teece et al., 1997). The concept of capital enables us to acknowledge the distinction between capability and resources, and to emphasize the need to accumulate both. 5. Pfarrer et al. (Forthcoming) refer to the reputational capital as ‘‘socialapproval assets.’’

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors acknowledge support from the CIBER Center of the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin and the Centre for Research in Organization and Management (CROMA) of Bocconi University.

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PART IV APPLICATIONS

CONSUMING STRATEGY: THE ART AND PRACTICE OF MANAGERS’ EVERYDAY STRATEGY USAGE Kimmo Suominen and Saku Mantere ABSTRACT Although the managerial profession is subjugated by the discipline of strategic management, managers are not completely subordinate to it. Instead, they are able to use the institutionalized discourse of strategic management, which is not their own product, in novel and creative ways. In this paper, we focus on the tactics that managers, as central strategy practitioners, use to consume strategy. Drawing on the work of the late Michel de Certeau as a theoretical lens, we conduct an empirical analysis of discourse, produced by 36 managers operating in three case organizations. This analysis allows us to elaborate on three different tactics of strategy consumption: instrumental, playful, and intimate. The results capture the reciprocal dynamics between the micro- and macrolevels of strategy discourse, that is, between strategic management as an institutional body of knowledge and the discursive practice of individual managers.

The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 211–245 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027011

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INTRODUCTION It is exceptional to come across an organization that does not have any plans or objectives labeled as strategic, whether it is operating in the private, public, or third sector. Indeed, strategy seems to have penetrated almost every organization, obligating managers to follow suit and submit themselves to the principles of strategic management, a discourse (Knights & Morgan, 1991) which has almost become an industry, and whose members construct and produce strategies and strategic practices that are further applied in different organizational settings (Whittington, 2006). Critical management scholars have started to recognize that strategic management is not a value-neutral body of knowledge of factors influencing organizational performance or competitive advantage. Strategic management is also an ideology (Shrivastava, 1986). It subjugates us as we are repetitively participating and performing its ceremonies and practices (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Laine & Vaara, 2007; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008; Mantere & Vaara, 2008). It dominates the way we manage others and are managed ourselves, not only for operative and middle managers (Mantere, 2008), but also managers at the very top of the organization (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Lilley, 2001). The notion of managers being subjugated by strategy discourse might sound surprising. Indeed, many managers actively try to learn strategy and one can expect almost all managers to express positive sentiment about strategy. This is however, not the issue. The issue is that while managers may often have a choice about which strategy they choose, they seldom have a choice about whether to incorporate a strategy or not (Shrivastava, 1986; Knights & Morgan, 1991; Inkpen & Choudhury, 1995). Consider a middle manager confronting a CEO, or a CEO confronting the shareholders, arguing that the firm should not be managed strategically, but according to management discipline X. The fact that we may actually have difficulties thinking of a word to replace X shows how effective strategy is at silencing alternative conceptions of management. Rather, other disciplines show an allegiance to strategy, evident in the use of the term ‘‘strategic’’ in association with other management disciplines: strategic human resource management, or strategic communications, to name just two. Yet, while strategy is something that contemporary managers have little choice about, managers are not completely subordinate to it. Instead, in this paper, we illustrate ways in which they use this strategy discourse in their life situations. Managers invent novel and creative ways of consuming strategy in their everyday practice. This radically alters our view of the relationship

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between strategy and organization. Managers, as central practitioners of strategy, are regarded as users of strategy, consuming it creatively for their own purposes through their discursive practices, that is, their ways of talking. This is to say that while managers – or other organizational members for that matter – have little choice over accepting strategic management as the dominant management discourse, they exert agency over what to make of this discourse in their practice. This view can be contrasted with the Foucauldian notion of displacing the subject; subjects have little choice over the production of discourses but are masters of consumption. We apply the late French theorist Michel de Certeau’s (1988) idea of ‘‘consumption’’ as a theoretical lens in this work to explain and understand how managers practice strategy. De Certeau conceived social practice as being constituted in relationships between producers, who create dominant institutions, and consumers, who find ways in which to dwell within the institutional landscapes produced by those in power. Consumption, as de Certeau calls it, is a collective activity that makes ‘‘transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy’’ in order to adapt it to its own interest and rules (ibid, p. xiv). He defines the nature of consumption as the following: ‘‘consumption’’ [y] characterized by its ruses, its fragmentation (the results of the circumstances), its poaching, its clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short by its quasi-invisibility, since its shows itself not in its own products (where would it place them?) but in an art of using those imposed on it. (de Certeau, 1988, p. 31)

The everyday practices of managers, like tactics and ways of talking, show how they are creatively using, resisting, and appropriating the strategy discourse imposed on them by the orthodoxy of strategic management. This strategy consumption represents the art and practice of everyday strategy usage. Through our discourse analysis of the talk of managers in three case organizations, we can offer a novel view into strategy as social practice practiced within organizations. It will also allow us to elucidate a new form of agency that managers practice within the bounds of strategy discourse. Our interest is not limited to top managers, those who are traditionally conceived as ‘‘strategists’’ in the organization (Chandler, 1962; Andrews, 1971; Porter, 1985). Instead, our data set contains middle managers as well. For our purposes, middle and top managers are not categorically different. Middle managers play diverse roles in the strategy process to the point of driving strategic renewal (Burgelman, 1983; Floyd & Lane, 2000; Wooldridge, Schmid & Floyd, 2008); top managers are subjugated by strategy discourse as well as others in the organization

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(Knights & Morgan, 1991). This means that the focus on consumption has implications for our conception of strategic organization. The classical ‘‘design’’ view on strategic management (cf. Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 1998) suggests that strategic management uses the organization to achieve its aims. The critical, in particular the Foucauldian, view (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008) suggests a more fundamental usage: the discipline of strategic management re-enacts itself by building managers into its image. De Certeau’s work on consumption denies either effect but suggests that usage is bidirectional: in their consumption activity, managers also use strategy for their purposes. This suggests that the strategic organization is not a mere tool for strategy implementation but has ‘‘a life of its own.’’ Our empirical analysis below suggests something of what this life entails.

STRATEGY AS DISCURSIVE PRACTICE In this work, our strategy conception stems from the practice (Jarzabkowski, 2005; Whittington, 2006) and discursive (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Vaara, Kleymann, & Seristo¨, 2004; Laine & Vaara, 2007; Mantere & Vaara, 2008; Vaara, 2010) perspectives of strategy. The practice approach to strategy could be seen as ‘‘a part of a broader concern to humanize organizational and management research,’’ since it attempts to ‘‘understand human agency in the construction and enactment of strategy’’ by focusing on the actions and activities of a strategy practitioner in it (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007, p. 6). Rather than treating strategy as a naturally occurring phenomenon, a characteristic of well-performing organizations, the practice view utilizes ‘‘the sociological eye’’ and treats strategy like any other institutionalized activity in our lives (Whittington, 2007). One of the key objectives of strategy-as-practice research has been to understand the linkages between strategy as a microlevel activity within organizations, as an organization-level practice, and as an extraorganizational industry in its own right (cf. Johnson, Melin, & Whittington, 2003; Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whittington, 2008a; Vaara, 2010). Whittington (2006, pp. 614–615) highlights three concepts that should be taken into account when studying the relationship between the structure and individual. First, there is the concept of ‘‘society,’’ a field or system, such as shared understanding, cultural rule, language, or procedure, which is guiding, setting the scene, and enabling human activity. Second, there is the concept of ‘‘individuality’’

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that refers to people’s creative and partly unexpected activity in practice. The third concept is the ‘‘actor,’’ which means strategy practitioners, individuals performing and using strategy. The practice theory views these themes as interrelated parts of the whole. The actions of individuals cannot be separated from society, but society itself is, on the other hand, produced by these actions. (ibid.) Another stream of strategy research, relevant to the present study, is the work of scholars who focus on strategy as a linguistic phenomenon. According to these authors, strategy is a discursive construction produced in talk (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Barry & Elmes, 1997; Hardy, Palmer, & Phillips, 2000; Vaara, Kleymann, & Seristo¨, 2004; Laine & Vaara, 2007; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008; Mantere & Vaara, 2008; Phillips, Sewell, & Jaynes, 2008; Vaara, 2010). The authors strongly resonate with Knights and Morgan (1991), who define strategy as: set of discourses and practices which transform managers and employees alike into subjects who secure their sense of purpose and reality by formulating, evaluating, and conducting strategy. (Knights & Morgan, 1991, p. 252)

However, we also acknowledge that discourses, such as strategy, are not only totalities (cf. Foucault 1972, p. 55) that dominate individuals, but that discourses can also be used and applied as resources (Hardy et al., 2000) by individuals. That is, also strategy discourse can be consumed by managers in different ways for their own benefit, and it is these discursive consumption tactics that this paper studies. There are clear continuities between the practice and discursive literatures. Much of strategy as a social practice is discursive in nature (Mantere & Vaara, 2008). The process of strategizing usually involves lots of talk and text, such as memos, meetings, presentations, storytelling, and conversations, among others. Also the outcomes of strategizing are discursive, like strategy plans, vision statements, speeches, and PowerPoint slides, just to mention a few. (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2003, p. 112). Managers also spend a lot of time communicating and promoting strategy, trying to ‘‘sell’’ it to their different stakeholders with means that are fundamentally discursive and rhetorical by nature. Discourse is their resource by which strategy is constructed, maintained, and sustained (Johnson et al., 2008a, p. 42). Strategy discourse acts as a resource for legitimating particular organizational realities as salient against competing ones (Neilsen & Rao, 1987; Vaara & Monin, 2010). Strategy discourse does not simply mirror reality, it creates it. Strategy does not just react to problems existing in organizational environment, but also constitutes and defines those problems

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by appearing as a natural and unquestioned way to solve them (Knights & Morgan, 1991; Grandy & Mills, 2004). Strategy discourse is not a unanimous enterprise but a polyphonic project that receives different kinds of emphasis in different contexts (Barry & Elmes, 1997; Seidl, 2007; Mantere, 2010). Competing macrolevel strategy discourses can be located in wider societal contexts, but these same discourses can (and most likely will) be utilized and consumed in different ways at the microlevel (Seidl, 2007). Again, we can make a distinction between societal-level strategy discourses that embody general elements of strategic management, and organizational-level strategy discourses that include contextual and content-specific strategies of organizations. That is, while the former discuss strategic management at a general level, the latter has organizational-strategy formulators planning and discussing what the organization should do in certain situations. The notion of production adopted here encompasses both the organization-level, as well as field-level forms of production.

TACTICS OF STRATEGY CONSUMPTION A focus on strategy consumption thus allows for the linking of strategy practice at various levels of analysis, identified as crucial for the project of understanding strategy as a social practice (Whittington, 2006; Johnson et al., 2008a). What is consumption? In his sociology of practice, de Certeau used the term to describe how different cultural and societal mass products are used by ordinary people in their everyday life. For de Certeau, the term ‘‘consumption’’ holds a positive connotation since it has a sort of redemptive effect and meaning in our lives (de Certeau, 1988; cf. Mitchell, 2007). De Certeau investigated the ways in which users operate, not just as passive and obedient beings who are guided by the established rules, but as improvisatory users who are creatively using and transmuting the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and rules. He raised the consumers, the ‘‘unrecognized producers, poets of their own acts, silent discoverers of their own paths in the jungle of functionalist rationality,’’ as the central actors of everyday life (de Certeau, ibid, p. xviii). To de Certeau, consumption is an activity that uses institutionalized, mass-produced, and imposed goods and products for one’s own purposes. The consumer cannot ‘‘own’’ the product or structure he/she is consuming; neither can he/she escape it in many cases. This leaves him/her in the situation of making something out of the system or product that is imposed

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on him/her, adopting and using it intentionally. Consumption like this is characterized by its ruses and fragmentation. It poaches and shows itself not in its own products, but in an art of using those that are imposed on it, making it clandestine, invisible, tacit, and tireless by nature (de Certeau, 1988, p. 31). Although de Certeau raises the everyday practices of individuals to the podium, he does not, however, want to return to individuality. Moreover, de Certeau views subjects as mere vehicles or authors of consumption. His investigation is concentrated on ‘‘modes of operation’’ or ‘‘schemata of action’’ rather than ‘‘the subjects who are their authors or vehicles’’ (de Certeau, 1988, p. xi). His interest is not in the individual subjects per se, but more likely in the modes or logics of operations, or the consumption tactics that the consumers use, which he considers to be socially shared by nature (for alternative solutions to the structure/agency dilemma, see Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). In this paper, we shall employ de Certeau’s theoretical concepts to look at ways in which managers at various level of the organization consume strategy. As de Certeau (ibid, p. 37) points out, consumption is ‘‘an art of weak,’’ which means that consumers do not have the power to change the discourse, but rather to subvert and modify it. Although managers often have little choice over whether to treat strategy as relevant or not, we shall illustrate, however, the tactics they employ to actualize themselves as ‘‘poets of their own acts’’ (ibid, p. xviii). As was the case with de Certeau, it is the tactics that hold our interest, not the subjects themselves.

THREE CASE ORGANIZATIONS As the topic area is largely unexplored, a qualitative, theory-building approach was considered appropriate (Lee, Mitchell, & Sablynski, 1999). We chose a multiple case setting, based on interviews, as we wanted to move beyond contextual depth to a wider level of generality about the condition of the strategist (Langley, 1999). The research data were produced in three very different case organizations. When the research data were produced at Industrial (name changed), our first case organization, it had just finished describing its strategy process. Industrial is a global manufacturing company, operating in chemicals. The strategy process chart they had just produced was the main artifact for strategizing at Industrial. The chart consists of two circles, the first representing strategy creation and the second strategy implementation.

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Traditionally, Industrial had had robust methods when it came to strategic planning, and now, due to the new strategy process diagram, strategy implementation received more interest and resources. Many members of Industrial’s top management, including the senior vice president of strategic planning, who was responsible for the strategy process, seemed to have rather high expectations for the strategy process. The second case organization, Polytechnic (name changed), is a Finnish multisector polytechnic. Polytechnic provides education to thousands of students in three faculties that are further divided into a dozen degree programs. Although Polytechnic operates under a City Council and the Ministry of Education, it has autonomy in its internal affairs and it is managed by a board and a rector. At the time the data were produced at Polytechnic, the organization was implementing its strategy. A special effort was put on a strategic theme called ‘‘R&D operations,’’ which aimed to increase the amount of Polytechnic’s research and development conducted in cooperation with its external stakeholders. The motivation for promoting the R&D at Polytechnic was both internal and external. Due to previous changes in the Finnish legislation, the polytechnics were obligated to engage in R&D. However, Polytechnic also considered that successful R&D would legitimize its activities and improve its brand. This attempt to pursue R&D represented a big change at Polytechnic, especially for those who were supposed to engage in R&D in addition to their teaching duties. The third company, Insurance (name changed), is an insurance company that provides insurance services to its customers in different customer segments. These services are produced at the headquarters of Insurance by the business units, and market operations like marketing, selling, and customer service are performed by the customer service organization spread across the business area. Insurance has a long history in the business, and its current organizational form is actually the result of many mergers and acquisitions over the years. It has a strong strategic intent to be a customerdriven company. It also has a developed strategy process which governs and guides the strategy work done in the company. Although Insurance is known in the industry for its rather conservative growth strategy, recent years have seen great financial success, and during the last 18 years the company has improved its annual profit records. Thus, some are afraid that this unparalleled success might have made people feel too ‘‘comfortable,’’ which may prevent further changing and development. Thus, recently Insurance has pursued extensive strategy communication, emphasizing that every employee should understand and adopt its strategic intent and develop his/her everyday work to coincide with the strategy.

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METHODOLOGY The data set of this study was produced during 2003–2008 in three case organizations (see Table 1). At Industrial, the data were produced over a two-year period from 2003 to 2005; at Polytechnic, from May to August 2004; and at Insurance, from 2007 to 2008. The data consist of interviews, written documents, Web pages, observations, and media coverage. The entire interview data produced from all three case organizations consist of 33 individual and group interviews (consisting of 36 interviewees). For the purposes of this paper we focus on these interviews. Each semistructured interview took 1–2 hours and was recorded with the approval of the interviewee and transcribed verbatim. Case-specific interview outlines were formulated for each organization to ensure that the interviewees within every case organization were asked the same questions, with some modification to facilitate local vocabulary. In the interview situations, the interviewees were encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences about the issues and themes that they considered meaningful and important, whether they were included in the interview outline or not. Also, the interviewees were asked to justify and describe their ideas and views through stories and examples in order to enhance the data with narrative. All in all, an effort was made to make the interviews an interventive and confrontative arena by discussing certain issues more than once during the interviews and by encouraging the interviewees to share different and even contradictory ideas and opinions instead of emphasizing consistency (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, pp. 164–165). In order to increase the validity of the study, other data sources and methods were also used to create triangulation (Silverman, 2006, pp. 291– 292). Observations were a major data source, mainly used as background information when constructing case descriptions and analyzing the interview data. Because of the differences in the case organizations’ data production processes, there is more observation data available from Industrial and Insurance than Polytechnic. Observation data helped us to put the interviews into perspective and locate them contextually. In addition, different organizational documents, the Web sites of the case organizations, and media coverage were used as background information when constructing case descriptions and analyzing the data. The data were analyzed using discourse analytic methods. Discourse analysis is neither a clear-cut research method as such, nor a unified enterprise, but more like a theoretical framework that includes and allows different kinds of applications and focus areas (cf. Potter & Wetherell, 1987,

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Table 1. Data Source

Data Production at the Case Organizations. Industrial

Polytechnic

Interviews

Ten interviews conducted in 2003. Interviewees were chosen from the top and middle managers of Industrial, from different parts of the company.

Documents

Documents concerning strategy and other subjects as background information. The material was useful when describing the contextual factors of Industrial.

Six interviews (three individual and three pair interviews, a total of nine interviewees) were conducted in 2004. The interviewees were chosen from the top and middle managers of Polytechnic, from different parts of the organization. Documents and Web pages of the organization were used as background information in constructing the case description and analyzing the data. Polytechnic’s Web sites and old annual reports were used as a source of background information in constructing the case description.

Observations

The authors were present in various strategy workshops and seminars both as observers and facilitators. These sessions provided us with a chance to observe how strategy was communicated and consumed by the managers of Industrial.

Insurance 18 interviews were conducted in 2007. The interviewees were chosen from the top and middle managers of Insurance in three different units.

Documents received from the company helped construct the case description of Insurance and contextualize the interviews.

The first author was present in various strategy workshops and seminars both as an observer and a facilitator. These observations provided us with a more thorough understanding of Insurance’s organizational culture.

pp. 6–8). Discourse analysis has been influenced and informed by a variety of studies, from sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, and as Grant, Hardy, Oswick, and Putnam (2004) put it, it is a ‘‘plurivocal project.’’ The common ground for all these approaches is a constructivist view, which

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regards reality as socially constructed (Berger & Luckmann, 1967), and discourse analysis aims to uncover and study these construction processes by providing us with an understanding of the construction, maintenance, and change of social reality (Hardy, 2001). As Phillips and Hardy (2002, p. 2) put it, this is valuable because ‘‘without discourse, there is no social reality, and without understanding discourse, we cannot understand our reality, our experiences, ourselves.’’

Identifying Macrodiscourses To understand the dynamics of strategy discourse in the construction of organizational reality, we first focused on identifying competing macrodiscourses of strategy that describe the desired and/or ideal state of strategy both in the case organizations and in general. In the data, managers seemed to draw upon these discourses when discussing how they would like to act in strategy work and what strategy should be in an ideal world according to them. We coded the data and categorized this kind of talk in terms of the differences, similarities, and patterns that could be found in it (Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 168). By drawing on Fairclough’s (1992, p. 64) three different aspects of the constructive effects of discourse, we constructed categories by asking (a) how the talk constructs the systems of knowledge and beliefs in the case of strategy, that is, what strategy is according to the talk, and (b) how it is practiced. We were also interested in finding out (c) how talk constructs social identities and subject positions, and (d) how it produces social relationships between people. We soon noticed that different categories of talk contained features of ‘‘isms’’ like humanism and rationalism, and even religion, and they were used both as means and causes when the managers tried to build their point of view. They appeared to be resources whose nature made them easy to draw upon (ibid, pp. 85–86). Coding allowed us to come up with different categories of talk that seemed to have their own special characteristics. We decided to call these categories of talk macrodiscourses of strategy, since they clearly construct strategy as a universal phenomenon by drawing on broad societal discourses and isms (cf. Alvesson & Ka¨rreman, 2000). There appeared to be five such macrodiscourses: militaristic, mechanistic, humanistic, pragmatic, and spiritual macrodiscourses. As macrolevel discourses they are not only present in the case organizations, but also exist in the sphere of culture of a larger management and strategy discourse. They are derived from the social context of strategy (Fairclough, 1992, p. 73) and used and maintained by

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different strategy practitioners of the strategy community. In this respect, they are ‘‘imported’’ to the case organizations from the outside (Phillips et al., 2008, p. 782).

Identifying Tactics of Consumption: (Re)Production and Usage After discovering de Certeau’s work, we began to recognize the role of macrodiscourses as products of consumption more clearly, that is, managers seemed to consume and use them for their own purposes and ends creatively. This urged us to analyze how these macrodiscourses were consumed by individuals. As a result, we identified two discursive practices of strategy consumption: (re)production and usage. These two discursive practices indicate that strategy consumption is something that includes both the production and use of strategy (cf. de La Ville & Mounoud, 2003, p. 108). The first discursive practice, (re)production, recognizes and discusses strategy and strategy-work ideals peculiar to the case organization, aided by macrodiscourses of the strategy. Similarly, it generates and grounds strategy as a management discipline by bringing strategy into being and giving it meaning for further usage (Fiske, 1989, p. 35). In most cases, (re)production originated as a result to a question like ‘‘How do you see strategy?’’ in the interviews, but it was also a topic that the interviewees returned to at different phases of the interview situations. (Re)production is characterized by normative and idealistic talk. It often consumes strategy as something that it should be, rather than something it actually is at the moment. Usage is more clandestine (de Certeau, 1988, p. 31) and tacit in comparison to (re)production. It is characteristically hidden within the ‘‘official’’ strategy discourse. It literally uses and applies the macrodiscourses (re)produced earlier for one’s own purposes and ends. While analyzing the data, we noticed that there seemed to be three kinds of rhetorical usage tactics, each seeming to fulfill its own function and purpose (cf. Potter & Wetherell, 1987, p. 168). First, there was talk that constructs strategy as a device, something that is used as a tool or method in strategy work to gain something. This talk was manifested in the expressions that describe strategy as a ‘‘way’’ or ‘‘means’’ to do something, or managers describing how what ‘‘strategy means’’ for them. We decided to call this usage tactic instrumental. The instrumental tactic uses strategy as a device, an instrument (cf. Hendry, 2000), which is used as a means in managerial work. The tactic aims at making strategy habitable by adapting and

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poaching it for managers’ purposes of some kind. The instrumental strategy usage, at first glance, appeared to be a literal adoption of strategy discourse, but once we took a closer look, we noticed that it is often the letter of strategy that is adapted, not the spirit. To some extent, instrumental strategy ‘‘bends the rules’’ of strategy by revising and applying them to drive one’s own agenda. Second was talk that takes a rather ironical and critical stance against strategy and sort of plays with it. We decided to call this usage tactic playful (cf. de la Ville & Mounoud, 2003, p. 105). While analyzing the data, we soon noticed that when strategy is used playfully, most use it for their own pleasure. Indeed, we found Fiskes’s (1989, p. 47) idea very fitting for our purposes, when he concludes that the pleasure provides ‘‘one’s own meanings of social experience’’ and avoids ‘‘the social discipline of the power-bloc.’’ Again, in de Certeau’s terms (1988, pp. 31–32), the playfulness transfers strategy ‘‘into to another register.’’ However, the accounts of playful strategy usage did not seem to produce any material outcomes for the managers, neither were they able to cite what they gained by adopting this attitude, but what they did keep was their status and subjectivity (Fiske ibid., p. 36). In the playful accounts, managers may also dis-indentify themselves from strategy, criticize it, and amuse themselves with the ridiculous aspects of it, but still perform it in their work. By doing this, they both dis-identify and (re)produce strategy at the same time (Fleming & Spicer, 2003). So, a playful tactic like this is used to maneuver and create space within the hegemony of strategic management. The playful tactic is also a comedic strategy narrative that constructs strategy as a carnival and allows managers to amuse and entertain themselves with it. Third, there was talk that constructed strategy as a personal experience and/or issue for the managers. This kind of intimacy means the managers’ personal relationship and attachment to strategy. Here, strategy appeared neither as an instrument for doing something, nor something to play or amuse oneself with, but an arena that provides managers a way and means to construct their existence, subjectivity, and identity in relation to it (see Sillince & Simpson, 2010 for linkages between strategy work and identity work in organizations). Whereas in the playful tactic, the managers resisted strategy’s colonization of their subjectivity playfully, here they instead seemed to use it to construct and shape their subjectivity and identity as managers. They use strategy ‘‘narcissistically pleasing oneself, instead of others’’ to summon up their emotional desires and pleasures (Featherstone, 2007, p. 27). This is why we decided to name the third strategy usage tactic intimate.

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Dynamics of (Re)production and Usage Strategy consumption is something that happens in between the dominant strategy discourse and managers’ own use of it. Consumption is a mediating factor between structure and subject. The strategy consumption process, or the trajectory, as de Certeau would call it, includes two sides. Firstly, managers consume strategy by (re)producing it with the help of the macrodiscourses of strategy. The (re)production of strategy brings strategy into being by constructing it as management discipline. Secondly, the managers use strategy tactically for their own purposes through three different tactics (instrumental, playful, intimate). The consumer performing this process is an individual manager located in a particular local discursive context. In order to understand strategy consumption, this context has to be taken into account, since talk does not exist in a vacuum. The primary local context of consumption wherein the manager operates is his/her own organization, which is taken under consideration in this work. However, it has to be noted that the manager also operates in a wider social context that extends beyond the limits of a particular organization. This is the context that hosts the macrodiscourses of strategy that are imported into the case organizations for strategy consumption. This dynamics also fits Fairclough’s (1992, p. 73) three-dimensional conception of discourse. The macrodiscourses represent the social practice of strategy while the (re)production and usage are discursive practices. Here text is considered as the discursive activity of the managers (Fairclough, 2005) that are poets of their actions, in the midst of the strategy discourse.

MACRODISCOURSES OF STRATEGY The macrodiscourses of strategy are discursive structures that the managers use as resources when consuming strategy. To some extent, they could be characterized as cultural ‘‘commodities,’’ manifestations of the body of strategic management that the managers are unable to escape, but can use and apply in an individual and contextual manner. The first discourse, militaristic (Mil) macrodiscourse, brings strategy back to its roots (Bracker, 1980; Knights & Morgan, 1995; Grandy & Mills, 2004) by seasoning it with war rhetoric. The militaristic macrodiscourse paints a violent and war-like picture of strategy. The discourse portrays strategy as a ‘‘battle plan’’ or projection that guides the actions of organizational members. Strategy aims

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at winning battles or killing enemies, while a business environment is viewed as the ‘‘battlefield,’’ and managers as the ones capable of seeing the whole battlefield. The organization is conceived to be in a constant battle against its environment and competitors, who are referred to as ‘‘enemies.’’ The militaristic discourse also glorifies managers, stressing their role as commanders of their troops. It clearly positions them as the officers, who are not just highly capable but also legitimized to give orders to people executing the strategy orders. Strategy is executed through the commands and orders given by these ‘‘generals’’ or ‘‘commanders.’’ The employees, considered as ‘‘troops’’ or ‘‘soldiers,’’ are responsible for executing these orders obediently, while fighting on the ‘‘front line.’’ Besides that, the militaristic discourse is also very masculine by nature. Soldiers are considered ‘‘boys’’ and the generals and commanders are most likely understood as men. This kind of a ‘‘disciplining discourse’’ reproduces and maintains certain organizational hierarchies and command structures in strategy process and organizational decision-making (Mantere & Vaara, 2008). Like the militaristic discourse, the mechanistic (Mec) macrodiscourse constructs strategy as a posture: a ‘‘position,’’ ‘‘set of targets,’’ or ‘‘plan’’ that is designed or planned by the top managers of the organization (cf. Ansoff, 1984). However, the mechanistic discourse draws on technological rhetoric, conceptualizing the organization as a machine that executes strategy accurately. The mechanistic macrodiscourse explains little of the content of strategy, but discusses the processes and mechanisms through which strategy is (or should be) accomplished in the organization. According to the mechanistic discourse, the strategy process is a one-way; mainly top-down process, where strategy ‘‘cascades’’ down through different organizational levels and layers. The discourse includes many discursive practices that highlight this vertical dimension and nature of strategy. Strategies are made at the ‘‘top’’ of the organization, and ‘‘implemented’’ to ‘‘practical people’’ at the lower levels of the organization. After the strategic objectives are set, they ‘‘cascade’’ downwards in the organization. In the mechanistic discourse such strategy implementation is described with metaphors like ‘‘rolling out’’ and ‘‘cascading.’’ These expressions show how strategy implementation is regarded as a goal-setting process wherein a grand strategy is divided into subgoals and targets. These procedures and mechanisms are designed and set by top management. While the militaristic macrodiscourse positions managers as central players in the strategy, the mechanistic macrodiscourse outlines the role of technologies (Mantere & Vaara, 2008) and mechanisms in strategy.

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The discourse views implementers of strategy as parts of the machine, passive recipients of strategy, who are capable, motivated, and willing to implement strategy when provided with sufficient objectives and targets through the mechanisms. They are given ‘‘inputs,’’ and certain ‘‘outputs’’ are expected and measured with the use of ‘‘meters’’ and ‘‘metrics.’’ Like the militaristic discourse, the mechanistic discourse leaves little, if any, room for improvisation or application. It assumes that strategy should be implemented as such, and behavior and organizational structures should be changed according to it (cf. Chandler, 1962). In some cases the mechanistic discourse even says that people should be ‘‘forced’’ to implement strategy. The humanistic (Hum) macrodiscourse is in many ways different from the militaristic and mechanistic macrodiscourses discussed earlier. The humanistic discourse stresses the importance of participation and dialogue (Mantere & Vaara, 2008) and the significance of the entire personnel in strategy work. It places humans, as willing and thoughtful actors, at the center of strategy work at every level of the organization. The humanistic discourse stresses the voluntaristic nature of humankind. It claims that people cannot be forced to follow strategy of any kind without their consent. The discourse emphasizes the role of ‘‘participation’’ as a precondition for a successful strategy process. It assumes that when people at different levels of the organization are allowed to ‘‘participate’’ in strategic planning, they will also ‘‘commit’’ themselves to strategy implementation. This also holds true for the opposite scenario: if people are excluded from the strategy creation process, they are unlikely to feel ‘‘ownership’’ for the strategy, therefore distancing them from it. The discourse of humanism also brings up ‘‘meaningfulness’’ as a condition of successful strategy implementation. The more meaningful people find strategy, the more willing they are to act according to it. It says that strategy is a common issue for the members of an organization. Strategies are not commands given by top management, but are instead agreed and ‘‘shared contracts’’ that are guiding the coherent and consistent action of the organizational members. This kind of discourse has also received more attention among popular strategy writers (cf. Kim & Mauborgne, 2005, pp. 171–184), which may explain why managers find it particularly appealing. As the humanistic macrodiscourse enhanced willingness and meaningfulness in strategy work, the pragmatic (Prag) macrodiscourse highlights the significance of tangibility and practicality as a means of understanding and adopting strategy. The pragmatic discourse considers strategy a part of the everyday activities of the organization; in some cases it even says that strategy is action per se (cf. Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). It also stresses the

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importance of translating strategies into grassroot action by making them practical, understandable, and concrete (Mantere & Vaara, 2008). The pragmatic macrodiscourse views strategy as a sort of ‘‘guidance’’ steering the everyday actions of the organization. It says that this guidance should be considered and reflected when making decisions at every level of the organization, all the time. While the macrohumanistic discourse emphasized the meaningfulness of the strategy for the individual, the pragmatic macrodiscourse highlights its tangibility and practical value in terms of applicability. The pragmatic discourse also outlines the language of strategy. It says that strategies should be made ‘‘clear’’ so that their meaning for practice is understood. The discourse is against the abstract strategy language, using metaphors such as ‘‘hieroglyphs’’ to characterize undesired expression. When strategies are clear and concrete, they are understood and adopted more likely, the pragmatic idea suggests. The spiritual (Spir) macrodiscourse does not discuss religion or religious issues as such, but tends to draw on the spiritual and mystical (Mantere & Vaara, 2008) rhetoric by comparing strategy to a spiritual experience and practice. The spiritual discourse brings up faith and the experiences with faith as preconditions and antecedents of strategy. It regards strategy as something that is almost beyond the material world, connecting it to a metaphysical reality greater than oneself. Strategy is thus a practice that connects oneself with the higher-level purposes of an organization and gives people a sense of belonging (Ashforth & Pratt, 2003, pp. 93–94). The spiritual macrodiscourse constructs strategy as a matter of ‘‘faith.’’ Faith in strategy enables people to serve something purposeful and greater than their personnel aspirations (Pfeffer, 2003). Strategy is manifested through ‘‘vision’’ and ‘‘mission’’ statements, both concepts adopted originally from spiritual vocabulary. Strategy is a practice that gives people mission and vision, a purpose and direction, and connects them with the higher-level purposes of the organization. Strategy is a ‘‘journey’’ into the vision for the people. The spiritual macrodiscourse also brings up the sense of belonging. According to it, faith in strategy gets people to feel as if they belong to the organization and invest in realizing its purpose. While committed to the ‘‘values’’ of the organization, they feel a sense of purpose and significance. Hence, the spiritual discourse emphasizes the symbolic nature of strategy. Strategy is a sacred mission or vision that requires faith in order to live according to it. The spiritual discourse positions managers as ‘‘messianic’’ leaders, prophets, or priests, who have the ‘‘wisdom’’ to lead their people to a better future, a prophetic promised land. The role of managers is to believe in strategy sincerely, in order to be able to make their own subordinates

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believers and disciples of the strategy too. Their obligation is to share and spread the gospel of strategy further. Again, the employees are considered as ‘‘followers’’, closely following the guidance of strategy. Organizational members favorably disposed toward strategy are called ‘‘true believers of strategy.’’ Having become believers of strategy, the subordinates become spokesmen for the strategy themselves.

(RE)PRODUCTION OF STRATEGY Even as we found that macrodiscourses impacted the lives of managers, we also found practices regarding how the macrodiscourses were reproduced through managerial agency (Heracleous & Barrett, 2001). (Re)production is a discursive practice that constructs and maintains strategy as a management discipline. It brings strategy into being by defining the discipline of strategy at the societal level and localizes it to the case organizations. We saw evidence of the (re)production of all of the five macrodiscourses. As each of them constructs and holds its own views and ideas about strategy and strategy work, the managers may use them skillfully as resources when (re)enacting an organizational reality. These macrodiscourses exist in a wider social context, which means that they are brought into the case organizations from the outside and are imported as discourses by nature. They can be recognized from the case organizations as well as from the wider strategy and management discourse (Table 2). The (re)production of strategy is a very dominant, obvious, and visible part of strategy consumption in the data. (Re)production constructs an epic narrative of strategy, outlining and discussing not only strategy and strategy work peculiar to each case organization, but also the ideals that are present in the wider strategy discourse. Managers seem to (re)produce strategy in similar ways in different case organizations (Table 2), which recalls the ideas of the rational strategy approach. The following quotes from the managers of case organizations illustrate how they (re)produce strategy: It [strategy] is the way we reach our vision [y] it’s our lifeline, or an operating manual for success. (Industrial) You must have the most inspiring vision. [y] And in order to realize the vision, actions are derived from it, strategic ladders that are climbed up to reach the vision. (Polytechnic) Strategy consists of the choices that we do, [it states] where are we headed, and how do we will get there. (Insurance)

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Table 2. Discursive Practice (Re)production

Strategy (Re)production at the Case Organizations. Industrial

Polytechnic

Insurance

Strategy is a way or means to reach the vision or to win the war. (Spir & Mil)

Strategy means realizing the inspired vision. Strategy is ladders or road signs that lead to the vision. (Spir & Mec) Strategy, as an agreed contract, requires the participation and involvement of the entire personnel. (Hum)

Strategy describes the vision or intent Insurance aims at. (Spir)

Strategy is created and executed through a systematic strategy process. (Mec)

Strategy concerns the entire personnel and everyone should be able to realize it in his/her everyday work. (Hum & Prag)

Strategy is pragmatic and should be taken to the grass roots, where everyday decisions are being made. (Prag)

Strategy sets conditions on how the company proceeds toward the vision. (Mec & Spir) Strategy should be a coherent part of everyday life at Insurance. (Prag)

Here, strategy appears to managers mostly as a way or journey into the defined vision of the organization, which can be interpreted as a reference to the spiritual macrodiscourse. Strategy is portrayed as the ‘‘way,’’ ‘‘plan,’’ or ‘‘choices’’ on how to reach the ‘‘vision’’ – a journey into salvation for the strategy believers. This kind of journey metaphor was commonly used in every case organization to illustrate the nature of strategy. It is interesting how the terms ‘‘vision’’ and ‘‘mission,’’ both of which derive from spiritual rhetoric, are (re)produced by the managers so frequently and consistently. This may indicate that these expressions are not only deeply rooted at the case organizations but also at strategy discourse, although the consumers, here managers, might not recognize or acknowledge the religious underpinnings. Again, at every organization managers also outline how strategy should concern the whole personnel and how it should be realized in the everyday actions of the organization, which refer to the humanistic and pragmatic macrodiscourses. The following comment from the manager of Insurance is an illustrative example of that: That [strategy] would be taken to the most concrete level possible, so that the individual seller understands what this means ‘‘in the context of my everyday life.’’ [y] This thing belongs to everybody, and it brings benefits for the customers, and for us, as well as for the company.

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To some extent, the mechanistic macrodiscourse is also present in every case organization, as the managers emphasize mechanisms and processes that relate to strategy. In the following, the manager from Industrial accounts for the functioning of his/her company’s strategy process in a very mechanical manner: Well, to put it shortly, we have some intention of what we want to accomplish, a vision state, and then we have a predefined mode of operation, and then we have a disciplined practical implementation. The process is very logical, as it can be in an engineer-based firm. The strategy is formulated at the top management level of a firm and then it is cascaded through these different business plans into practical action.

As can be seen, for most parts, the accounts of (re)production are faithful to the rational strategy approach (cf. Chandler, 1962; Ansoff, 1984). Top managers formulate visions and strategies that are further implemented in an organization. This could be read as a sign of the dominance rational strategy discourse has over managers. This finding confirms the Foucauldian (1972, p. 55) idea that discourses, as manifestations of power structures, dominate managers. In practice, many managers do not have a choice whether or not to apply strategic practices in their work. The similarity may also reveal that certain root metaphors, such as the metaphor of the journey (Inns, 1996), have been deeply embedded and institutionalized in the strategy discourse and have become a socially accepted way to describe strategy. The journey metaphor seems to provide us with a means to describe the progress, direction, and purpose of an organization (and its strategy) in a manner that makes sense to us.

USAGE TACTICS: INSTRUMENTAL, PLAYFUL, AND INTIMATE Usage tactics are discursive practices that describe how the managers use and poach the strategy, (re)produced preciously, in creative ways (Table 3). This side of strategy consumption could be characterized as a ‘‘quiet’’ part of strategy consumption. The macrodiscourses of strategy are also applied as resources in this discursive practice, but in a more clandestine and subtle manner. Their consumption is somewhat hidden by nature, since usage is scattered over the (re)production of strategy. It represents ‘‘devious’’ and ‘‘dispersed’’ talk that does not manifest itself through its own products, but more likely through ‘‘ways of using’’ strategy (de Certeau, 1988, pp. xii–xiii).

Usage: Playful tactic

Usage: Instrumental tactic

Discursive practice

Polytechnic

Insurance

Managers parody the methods used as symbols and tools in Insurance’s strategy communication. (Spir)

Managers ridicule the role of Insurance’s top management and headquarters in strategy. (Prag & Spir)

Managers amuse themselves by joking about the abstract content of Insurance’s strategy. (Spir)

Managers use Insurance’s strategy as a tool to motivate and inspire their subordinates. (Hum & Spir) Managers use Insurance’s strategy as a means to justify and legitimize choices and decisions. (Prag)

Managers use Insurance’s strategy as an intent that they make tangible and execute as a part of their job as managers. (Prag & Mec)

Strategy Usage Tactics at the Case Organizations.

Managers use strategy to analyze their Managers produce elegant strategy business environment systematically papers for the City Council to and to create a shared legitimize and report organizational activities as an administrative task. understanding of it. (Hum & Mec) (Mec, Spir, & Prag) Managers use strategy to set targets Managers use strategy to differentiate and objectives. (Mec) Polytechnic from its competitors and improve its brand. (Prag) Managers use strategy to build Managers create substrategies to secure and ensure that their unit is in commitment and involvement in line with Industrial’s strategy and their own units. (Prag, Hum & Spir) appears legitimized. (Hum & Mec) Managers use Industrial’s strategy as a Managers use strategy to solve problems in their own units. (Mec & loose framework or guideline, which Prag) leaves them room to maneuver with their own substrategies. (Prag) Managers question and joke about the Managers joke with the poor quality of Polytechnic’s strategy and ignore role of Industrial’s headquarters and its guiding effect in their work. top management as central (Spir) strategists. (Mec & Spir) Managers amuse themselves with the Managers construct and portray cultural differences between administration-driven strategy work different parts of Industrial that and its mechanisms as unsuitable prevent the company from and ridiculous for Polytechnic. operating coherently and realizing (Mec) its strategy in a desired way. (Prag)

Industrial

Table 3.

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Usage: Intimate tactic

Discursive practice

Polytechnic

Insurance

Managers use strategy to glorify Managers reveal how they take risks Managers devote and submit themselves as strategic leaders. (Mil) and use prohibited tricks in order to themselves to Insurance’s strategy. cope and maneuver with (Spir & Mil) Polytechnic’s strategy in their work. (Prag & Mec) Managers outline how they lack Managers share how they themselves Managers reveal how they feel support in Industrial’s strategy feel intimidated, sidelined, and themselves helpless and incapable in process. (Hum & Prag) dominated by others when taking front of Insurance’s vague strategy, part in Polytechnic’s strategy work. although they are expected to know (Hum) its practical meaning thoroughly. (Prag) Managers dis-identify themselves from Managers dis-identify themselves from Managers pass and ignore parts of Industrial’s strategy that do Polytechnic’s strategy swiftly when Insurance’s strategy by silencing it not concern them. (Prag) they consider it unsuitable for and ignoring some of its practices. themselves. (Mec) (Prag)

Industrial

Table 3. (Continued )

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Our discourse analysis revealed three tactics that were used across all three organizations, and across different managerial accounts. We shall call them the instrumental, playful, and intimate tactics. We shall address each tactic in turn. Importantly, Table 3 illustrates how the macrodiscourses are adapted to local use when managers pursue the various tactics in the case organizations. When using strategy instrumentally in the case organizations, the managers catch the rational ethos of strategy embodied in the accounts of strategy (re)production. For instance, at Industrial, managers analyze their business environment and set targets and objectives based on it; at Polytechnic, they try to position their organization into the market; and at Insurance, they use strategy as a direction for creating motivation and commitment among their subordinates. However, managers also use strategy for their own purposes and intentions instrumentally with methods that may break down with the (re)production of strategy. This is an example of ‘‘bricolage’’ (‘‘an artisan-like inventiveness,’’ cf. Jarzabkowski, 2004), an activity that combines and connects bits of strategy discourse to managers’ own repertoires. For instance, in some parts of the instrumental tactic, strategy is used for a manager’s personal goals and purposes, such as at Industrial, where the business unit managers treat strategy as a loose framework that allows them to maneuver (opportunistically) with their own unit-specific strategies (cf. Laine & Vaara, 2007). The following quote shows this kind of usage in practice: They don’t pay an awful lot of attention to how you reach your profit margins. [y] Industrial’s strategy tells roughly the businesses we want to be in. [y] Industrial’s strategy limits the scope of the business units, but as such, a business unit can create its own strategy rather freely under those boundaries.

Again strategy was used in case organizations to secure and legitimize managers’ work (Industrial) and to justify decisions and choices (Insurance). Here, the managers clearly apply strategy for their own purposes, for building legitimacy for their work (cf. Knights & Morgan, 1991) or solving practical problems by labeling them ‘‘strategic,’’ as is the case at Insurance. However, in many cases strategy is also used for more collective purposes, mainly for the benefit of a manager’s unit (Polytechnic and Insurance), in some cases even for the sake of the whole organization (Polytechnic). In many cases, instrumental strategy consumption aims at coping (Chia & Holt, 2006) with the strategy. It may not necessarily turn strategy into something totally different, since it does not have the power to do it, but more likely operates within it by plying it and trying to cope with it.

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While the instrumental tactic adopts strategy and maintains its rational ethos by using it instrumentally, the playful tactic takes strategy more creatively and less seriously. It is also more critical toward strategy than the instrumental tactic, as can be seen in the cases of Industrial, Polytechnic, and Insurance. For most parts, the playful tactic embodies a critique and resistance toward strategy and its methods, which can be read as a sign of cynicism from the managers. However, playfulness is not purely an explicit resistance of strategy, but more likely an opportunistic, subtle, and silent pragmatism, which resists and subverts strategy implicitly and quietly on its own terms (Fleming & Sewell, 2002). For instance, in every case organization strategy and strategy work is a source of amusement for the managers, which allows them to joke and ridicule it. In the following, the manager of Insurance describes playfully his/her company’s efforts to communicate strategy: When the new employees arrive and when the new strategy period begins, a sort of strategy booklet is delivered to every employee [of Insurance]. It was like Mao’s Red Book.

Comparing strategy to Mao’s book is quite a clever discursive move from the manager. In a way, Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book was also a ‘‘strategic’’ tool to change the Chinese people and society just like Insurance’s strategy is an attempt to change Insurance’s employees and working culture. By distributing ‘‘the strategy booklet’’ to every employee of Insurance and requiring people to read it, the management of Insurance engages in the same kind of a practice as that of the Chinese government to subjugate the employees. This example shows how humor is a central feature of the playful strategy consumption in case organizations. Ironic and cynical humor is used in a carnival-like manner, not only to subvert and resist but also to cope with the power of the strategy discourse imposed on the managers. Irony provides them with a way to criticize and challenge the sacred norms of the strategy in a way that might be considered illegitimate, if expressed in any other words (cf. Fleming & Sewell, 2002). Irony also represents the rhetoric that holds managers apart from strategy and channels criticisms, disagreement, and/or frustration toward it, and it is dissembled in such a way that it is difficult to understand without knowing the context wherein it is used. Being cynical, it sees through the strategy and its practices, and considers them repressive by nature. The playful tactic also uses contradictions and comparisons as rhetoric resources when illustrating the absurdity of strategy in some cases.

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In the case of intimate strategy usage, de Certeau’s remarks about the ‘‘clandestine’’ nature of consumption are most obviously materialized. The intimate tactic shows how managers use strategy discourse creatively to construct their own subjectivity based on it and in relation to it. For instance, at Industrial, managers glorify themselves as ‘‘strategic leaders’’ with it; at Polytechnic, they construct themselves as fearless and brave agents who dare to take some risks in order to cope with strategy; and at Insurance, they show their subjection to it by devoting and submitting themselves voluntarily to the company’s strategic intent. However, in every case organization, managers themselves feel somehow repressed by the strategy, either lacking support in strategy work (Industrial) or feeling sidelined and intimidated (Polytechnic) or helpless and incapable when faced with strategy (Insurance). The following comment from the manager of Polytechnic shows how he/she has been forced to accept strategy: Of course I know it [Polytechnic’s strategy] quite well, because I have had to swallow it. [y] But it has been shoved down your throat, given to you ready-made. You have learned here over the years that [strategies] are not worth questioning. If you do, your faculty will face revenge by the top management.

Again, in every case organization managers dis-identify themselves from strategy if they find it unsuitable for them for some reason. This kind of strategy usage may indicate that strategy does question and confront the managers’ identity and may force them to dis-identify from it, maybe even sabotage the whole strategy (cf. Guth & MacMillan, 1986). These findings show that strategy is not just an instrument or a plaything for managers, but that it also evokes emotions, such as fear and insecurity, and reveals something private and literally intimate about their relation to strategy.

DISCUSSION The practice approach has urged us to study the practice of strategy both at intra- and extra-organizational levels (Whittington, 2006). In this work, we sought a way to bridge this gap by studying the use of strategy and by showing how strategy, as an institutionalized management discipline, is practiced, that is, consumed by managers in three case organizations. As a result, we have shown how the two context-specific and embedded discursive practices of strategy consumption, the (re)production and consumption, are closely connected to the macrolevel strategy discourses present in the wider strategy and management literature. By showing this interconnection,

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we have demonstrated how managers, as strategy practitioners, consume and use different macrodiscourses of strategy. The results also show that strategy is consumed and used by managers in more creative and improvisatory ways than the previous, namely rationaloriented, strategy research has shown. Jarzabkowski (2004) introduced the concept of ‘‘management practices-in-use’’ to explain and describe how institutionalized practices, such as strategy, can be used in ways that may not comply with the original purpose of practice. The strategy usage illustrated in this work sheds light on the use of strategy practices by pointing out how strategy is practiced by managers with improvisatory and adaptive manners for their contextual and situational needs. For instance, when using strategy instrumentally, managers analyze their business environment, set targets and objectives (Industrial), and try to position their organization on the market (Polytechnic). Here their strategy usage is reminiscent of the rational strategy approach in various ways (cf. Chandler, 1962). However, in other areas, mangers seem to use strategy instrumentally for totally different purposes than the rational ethos would suggest. For instance, the legitimization aspect (Neilsen & Rao, 1987; Vaara & Monin, 2010; also see Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010) seems to be acute in every case organization, as strategy provides the managers with the means to watch their back and justify their positions. At Polytechnic and Insurance, managers apply strategy instrumentally to motivate their subordinates. Strategy seems to offer them a device that connects their work with that of their subordinates to the objectives and higher-level purposes of their organization. Although strategy is almost unanimously acknowledged ((re)produced) as a management discipline in the different case organizations, the way it is used by the managers in their everyday life is very context-specific and largely based on their individual needs. This finding shows that strategy is an indefinite and versatile (and maybe even precarious) practice for managers (Whittington, 2003), and that they use and consume this practice in multiple ways and with multiple means which may even depart from the ideals they themselves attach to. Different kinds of ideals and models (macrodiscourses) can be used creatively by managers, depending on their prevailing situation and needs. For instance, at Industrial, strategy is treated as a loose framework that allows managers to maneuver freely with their own substrategies (cf. Laine & Vaara, 2007). At Polytechnic, managers perform some prohibited actions and tricks in order to cope with strategy in their everyday work. They also use strategy to solve major problems in their units by labeling them as strategic. These findings show how the strategic

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actions of managers may not necessarily arise from the intended and intentional strategies, as purely rational thought would suggest, but rather they emerge from everyday ‘‘practical coping’’ and ‘‘dwelling’’ of managers when things are labeled and regarded as strategic (Chia & Holt, 2006, 2009). This is also in line with the ideas of the processual strategy approach (cf. Mintzberg & Waters, 1985). Previous work on strategy discourse has already shown that strategy is not a unanimous discourse, but more likely consists of different kinds of (even contradictory) ideas and types of discourse (Laine & Vaara, 2007; Mantere & Vaara, 2008; Phillips et al., 2008). The results of this work show how different macrodiscourses of strategy can coexist within the same organization and be used tactically for different purposes by its managers. For instance, the spiritual macrodiscourse is used widely as a resource to (re)produce strategy as a sacred journey into the intended vision of the organization. The same macrodiscourse is, however, also used as a means to ridicule and joke about the role of the top management in strategy work, as is the case at Industrial and Insurance. Alternatively, as Mantere and Vaara (2008) discovered, spiritual language can be used in an intimate way to address the realization of the meaningfulness of a manager’s work as a part of an organization. This example shows how strategy discourses can be polysemic resources, having a number of meanings and ways of using them (Hardy et al., 2000), and that strategy consumption is a discursive accomplishment that capitalizes and appropriates the discursive space between the discursive structures (macrodiscourses of strategy) and the user (manager). Our analysis demonstrates that managers (re)produce strategy in relatively similar ways in different case organizations, often in ways that mirror the ideas of the rational strategy approach. Here, strategy generally appears to managers as a way or journey into the defined vision of the organization, which can be interpreted as a strong reference to the spiritual macrodiscourse. Again, at every organization, managers outline how strategy should concern the whole personnel and how it should be realized in the everyday actions of the organization, which refer to the humanistic and pragmatic macrodiscourses. To some extent, the mechanistic macrodiscourse is also present in every case organization, as managers emphasize mechanisms and processes that relate to strategy. This finding confirms the Foucauldian (1972, p. 55) idea that discourses, as manifestations of power structures, dominate individuals. In practice, many managers do not have a choice whether or not to apply strategic practices in their work. Strategy is imposed on them by the Zeitgeist that treats strategy as a superior

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management discipline (cf. Knights & Morgan, 1991; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2008; Ortmann & Seidl, 2010), and the similarity found in the accounts of the strategy (re)production seems to indicate this. It may also reveal that certain root metaphors, such as the metaphor of the journey (Inns, 1996; Mantere & Vaara, 2008), have been deeply embedded and institutionalized in the strategy discourse and have become a socially accepted way to describe strategy. The journey metaphor seems to provide us with a means to describe the progress, direction, and purpose of an organization (and its strategy) in a manner that makes sense to us. However, the (re)production of strategy is only the other side of the strategy consumption process, since managers are also able to use and subvert strategy in creative ways (Table 3). Strategy use is an area that has been somewhat neglected in previous research on strategy discourse. Through these accounts of strategy usage, we can not only learn what is being done with strategy, but also how strategy is consumed stylistically by managers (de Certeau, 1988). The accounts demonstrate how strategy is consumed in a more creative and intimate way than that shown by previous strategy research. Instrumental strategy usage stems largely from the contextual and situational needs of managers, departing from the rational ethos of strategy in some cases. Previous research on strategy discourse has identified several power effects of strategy (Knights & Morgan, 1991). The results of this work show how managers can subtly use and apply these power effects in practice. For instance, managers make strategies appear important and legitimate to others (Industrial and Polytechnic) and in this way use strategy to demonstrate their managerial rationality. They also legitimize their exercise of power to their subordinates by using strategy to justify the choices and decisions that have been made (Insurance). These examples show how strategy discourse can be used to justify and legitimize many things in organizational life (cf. Vaara & Tienari, 2002; Vaara et al., 2004; Suddaby et al., 2010). On the other hand, playful and intimate strategy usage tactics depart even more clearly from the ideas of the strategy (re)production. These strategy usage tactics show how managers shape and consume strategy and strategic issues actively and individually. For instance, the playful usage tactic seems to be highly critical toward top management in every case organization. At Polytechnic and Insurance, the content of the strategy and the methods and tools that are used in strategy work are harshly criticized. It is also interesting to note how dis-identification becomes a central feature of intimate strategy use in every organization, as managers seem to produce and construct their role as bystanders in strategy. Strategy usage like this

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does not produce any tangible or concrete results, and can thus often be regarded as unproductive. Nevertheless, as we have seen, they are anything but innocent or empty accounts, but colorful and interesting notions about the cynicism and humor related to the strategy work that may distance the practitioners from strategy or force them to dis-identify from it (Fleming & Spicer, 2003; Mantere, 2003). They certainly influence the way that managers act and master strategy in their work. Accounts of playful and intimate strategy usage also represent very artful and skillful styles of using strategy discourses. The critical views on strategic management (Shrivastava, 1986; Knights & Morgan, 1991; Ghoshal, 2005) can be criticized for being too deterministic in its relation to agency (Heracleous & Barrett, 2001; Mantere & Vaara, 2008). To some extent, it may be guilty of downplaying the role of agency in the construction, reproduction, and transformation of discourse, by ignoring the fact that individuals are not as passive and powerless as the Foucauldian tradition of the discourse analyses may suggest (Reed, 2000). This work outlines the agency of individual managers who use and appropriate strategy discourse in their everyday life actively and artfully. Although strategy discourse definitely ‘‘transforms managers [y] into subjects’’ and makes them follow its principles (Knights & Morgan, 1991, p. 252), managers are also able to transform and subvert the strategy discourse to fit their own preferences and desires. By showing this kind of strategy consumption, this work stresses the dynamic relationship between discourse and power (Hardy & Phillips, 2004), and the dynamics between agency and structure, by showing that although macrodiscourses have power over us we can use and (re)produce them in novel ways. Intimate and playful strategy usage tactics tell us how the managers engage themselves in strategy personally, either struggling with its meaning vis-a`-vis their subjectivity (Laine & Vaara, 2007) or using it to construct their identity (Sillince & Simpson, 2010). The struggles become most obvious in the case of playful and intimate strategy usage. Especially playful strategy usage is in most parts quite cynical and critical toward strategy and its manifestations. By showing detailed descriptions of this kind of strategy usage, this work shows how managers artfully resist strategy. They use and appropriate the strategy discourse skillfully for their own purposes to resist and alternate it, while at the same time articulate and talk in ways that do not directly confront the dominant discursive regime (Mumby, 2005). By doing this, they fix the meaning of the strategy discourse and consume it in their own terms. This finding shows that resistance toward strategy is seldom evident and direct, but more likely implicit, hidden, and playful by nature.

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Previous work on strategy discourse has shown how different strategy discourses can either promote or prevent participation and engagement in the strategy process (Mantere & Vaara, 2008). In the case of intimate strategy usage, this work shows how lack of chances for participation and poor applicability of the strategy can make managers dis-identify themselves from it. On the other hand, intimate strategy usage also shows how managers can engage themselves strongly in strategy with different discursive resources. For instance, the militaristic macrodiscourse can be used to glorify managers as strategic leaders, and the combination of militaristic and spiritual macrodiscourses can be used to construct managers as obedient and submissive foot soldiers or followers of strategy (cf. Knights & Morgan, 1991). These results confirm the finding that strategy discourse not only produces different subject positions for the individuals alone, but can also be used by individuals to construct and realize their subjectivity (Laine & Vaara, 2007).

CONCLUSION: USABILITY OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY From the outset, the mainstream of strategy literature has regarded strategy and organization as separate issues: strategy formulation being followed by implementation, termed as the ‘‘allocation or reallocation of resources – funds, equipment, or personnel’’ (Chandler, 1962, p. 11). The accepted notion that strategic decisions are followed by implementation often leads to the idea that managers are able to realize strategies by ‘‘twisting organizational levers,’’ resulting in configurations that control cognition and behavior in ways that support strategy. While the strategy/implementation split has been challenged a number of times, both practitioners and academics are affected by the notion that strategic analysis and organizational activities are fundamentally separate categories, where good performance is created by the second following the first. Our approach to the topic has certainly been radical, if strategy is viewed from the ‘‘design lens’’ (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2008b). Our results do, however, offer practical implications as well. Our illustration of the tactics of consumption underscores the importance of official strategy’s ability to address issues relevant to people’s work practice. While the implementation view would characterize the success of strategy realization in terms of the organizational members’ activities being redirected in a

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specific way, perhaps we should treat the usefulness and usability of official strategy as a success factor for strategy realization to augment and challenge popular conceptions such as resistance to change (Hrebiniak, 2004), reward systems (Hrebiniak & Joyce, 1984; Kaplan & Norton, 1996), staff understanding and subunit goals (Kaplan & Norton, 1996), or control structures and practices (Simons, 1995). Does official strategy meet the needs, concerns, and anxieties of managers at various levels? Is it capable of offering answers to pressing questions? Our analysis also suggests a number of areas for further research. First, in this study, strategy consumption was studied at the level of top and middle managers. In order to broaden the scope, further research should concentrate on the employee level. It would be interesting to compare how different groups within an organization consume strategy and strategic issues. Indeed, few accounts of strategic management from the viewpoint of the operative personnel yet exist (but see Mantere, 2005). Second, it would be interesting to take a more ethnographical and longitudinal approach to strategy consumption, and to study how a group of managers (and employees) would consume strategy in their talk during a longer period of time. This kind of approach would increase our understanding on how usage tactics evolve and change over time. Third, it would also be interesting to study how individuals use different kinds of consumption tactics in different forums and platforms when addressing strategy to different audiences. Fourth, it would be interesting to concentrate on a single strategy usage tactic presented in this work, for instance, playful strategy use, and study how it is manifested in different organizations and contexts. Playful strategy usage embodies an interesting form of resistance toward strategy, and thus it would be interesting to study what provokes and fuels this kind of consumption. Finally, one of the limitations of this work is the fact that strategy consumption has been studied at the level of strategic management practice. We still know relatively little about how certain individual strategic practices, such as the Balanced Score Card or Porter’s Five Forces, are used in different contexts and situations. Further research should thus narrow the scope and focus on a single practice or few practices and study how they are used as strategy practices.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank Joel Baum and Joseph Lampel for their comments on the paper. The authors are also indebted to Katriina Karkulehto, Kaisa-Riikka Salomaa, and Jouni Sipponen for their

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contribution to data collection in the three case organizations of this work. The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Finnish Work Environment Fund and The Finnish Workplace Development Programme TYKES.

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BEYOND THE HYPE: TAKING BUSINESS STRATEGY TO THE ‘‘BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID’’ Kamal Munir, Shahzad Ansari and Tricia Gregg ABSTRACT Recent studies in strategy have highlighted both the successes and failures of applying conventional perspectives in strategic management to developing markets. Within this debate, Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) strategies, aimed at exploiting high-volume, low-margins strata at the bottom of these societies, have particularly drawn interest. We critically examine the emergence and evolution of BoP strategies and compare their anticipated outcomes to some of the empirical evidence. We then draw on the concept of global value chains to usefully extend the BoP concept, and suggest areas for further theory building and empirical research. We offer a typology of BoP ventures, and suggest appropriate levels of public– private engagement to achieve the desired social and economic outcomes.

INTRODUCTION Globalization is most often associated with the rise of western-style capitalist structures, diminishing the ability of the nation state to regulate

The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 247–276 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027012

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business activities and increasing the power and influence of transnational business firms (Fiss & Hirsch, 2005; Palazzo & Scherer, 2008). While globalization stands to transform the relationship between state and economy, its benefits have been hotly debated. More recently, the failure to predict the rapidity and scope of the global financial crisis has shaken deep-seated beliefs in a purely market-based logic, with an increase in public expectation of business’s role in society (McKinsey Global Survey, 2009). However, at the same time, capitalist business practices and the neoliberal rhetoric of market liberalization have been increasingly embraced by public welfare organizations, leading to the growth of social entrepreneurs and ‘‘new public management’’ (e.g., Sagawa & Segal, 2000). In the midst of this debate, strategic management scholars have added their own voice by emphasizing the need to bring strategic management theory to bear on critical social policy debates that can not only benefit both social policy experts and strategic management scholars, but also provide opportunities to test and extend received strategic management literature (Augier & Teece, 2008; Barney, 2005; Ellig, 2001). More recently, strategic management researchers have generated considerable excitement in this area, following the publication of C. K. Prahalad’s (2002) The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Prahalad and other Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) proponents take a favorable stance toward globalization and the ‘‘marketization’’ of social welfare, arguing that the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) can increase the wealth of people living in developing areas, specifically those designated as the BoP. The ‘‘Bottom of the Pyramid’’ doctrine is based on a ‘‘doing well by doing good’’ logic, arguing that selling to the poor can simultaneously create profits and eradicate poverty. A large part of the world population with lower income levels, long ignored as an attractive market by both MNCs and large domestic companies for general lack of purchasing power, has been recast by BoP proponents as a potentially attractive market for corporations to sell low-cost innovations. BoP proponents also advocate the use of private corporate power rather than the initiatives of governments, donors, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to help out underserved communities in developing countries. Indeed, scholars have argued that many government and NGO-based development projects have degenerated into global ‘‘charity,’’ rather than serving to empower local communities (Burkey, 1993; Davis, 1993). The BoP concept has generated both skepticism and enthusiasm among management scholars who either criticize it as unworkable or hail it as innovative. Supporters argue that the poor need not be seen only as aid recipients but as customers with significant latent purchasing power.

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Such emerging markets can be unlocked by corporations that can identify and invest in these new ‘‘business and social’’ opportunities as a means of commercial revitalization and ethical commitment (Bornstein, 2004; Hart & Christensen, 2002; Martinez & Carbonell, 2007). Examples include offering ‘‘catalytic innovations’’ – simpler, good-enough alternatives for an underserved group of customers – such as mobile-telecom operators offering financial services through the mobile phone in BoP markets where few have access to formal banking services (Christensen, Baumann, Ruggles, & Sadtler, 2006). Critics argue that marketizing social welfare will bring neither profitability nor prosperity as MNCs are contributing to the creation of nonessential consumer needs rather than genuinely serving basic needs. The BoP proposition, they argue, is characterized by hyperbole, and the ‘‘fortune and glory’’ at the BoP is a ‘‘mirage’’ that may end up doing more harm than good (Davidson, 2009; Karnani, 2007b). Arguments against the BoP proposition also include an underemphasis on the role and responsibility of the state to provide public services and on much needed reform in the financial, legal, regulatory, and social mechanisms to protect the vulnerable poor (de Soto, 2000; Sachs, 2005). Not surprisingly, the BoP doctrine has been criticized for ‘‘romanticizing the poor’’ (Banerjee & Duflo, 2007; Karnani 2007c) and even labeled as ‘‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’’ This raises an interesting question: Should BoP be seen as a potential market to make money (‘‘profit from’’) or as a victimized community that needs assistance (‘‘profit for’’)? Are business and social welfare inherently incompatible, or can the two logics be mutually reinforcing? Although many studies conceive social and business value creation as distinct categories (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006), logics from these different domains may not be inherently incompatible. For instance, Peredo and Chrisman (2006) built a case for the notion of ‘‘community-based enterprise’’ for development in impoverished communities, arguing that natural and social capital are integral and inseparable from economic considerations (cf. Townsend & Hart, 2008). In the case of student ‘‘eco-entrepreneurship’’ in university settings, Mars and Lounsbury (2009) highlighted the blend of competing environmental and market logics as the environmental movement came to embrace the market as well as activism. Yet, blending logics from historically polarized domains is no easy task and may be construed as an attempt of one domain to appropriate or hegemonize the discourse from another domain. In this vein, BoP ventures could be seen to represent the colonization of the social welfare space by business practitioners, paving the way for strategy scholars to occupy this space.

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This polarization of views around BoP strategies ties into the larger academic literature surrounding globalization and economic development in developing countries. Indeed, at one level, globalization debates are about conceptualizing developing countries as contexts that would benefit from the application of a market logic in general, and the formulation of clever business strategies in particular. It is argued that isolationist policies and closed business systems lead to waste and economic stagnation (Bhagwati, 1994; Krueger, 1990; Krueger & Tuncer, 1982; Little, Scitovsky, & Scott, 1970). More markets are thought to encourage greater exchanges of labor, capital, and information, leading to increased efficiency, innovation, and an eventual rise in standards of living (Ohmae, 2002; Wolf, 2004). At the other extreme, it is argued that the imposition of western-style market structures institutionalizes greed, increasing the divergence between rich and poor. More specifically, it has been argued that following western demands for reform has not improved economic welfare in many developing countries (Dansereau, 2005; Stiglitz, 2008) and that many OECD and East Asian countries were able to successfully develop under conditions of relative isolation from the global economy, with little MNC engagement (Amsden, 2001; Chang, 2003; Wade, 2004). Proponents of BoP strategies support the former view of globalization, where greater integration into market systems is seen to lead to growing welfare. In contrast, critics of BoP strategies support the latter view of globalization, where expanding globalization is seen as leading to exploitation and inappropriate use of markets. Although BoP strategies have garnered significant support in the management field, we argue that the discourse requires redirection and reevaluation in order to truly move away from a position of what could be seen as corporate colonization toward a possibility of global harmonization. In the remainder of this essay, first, we examine the emergence and evolution of the BoP discourse. Second, we chart the growing adoption of strategic management principles in developing markets, highlighting concepts such as strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social entrepreneurship. We then compare the BoP model to similar streams of research in nonmanagement fields. We then offer a typology of BoP ventures, ranging from market-driven to knowledge-driven ventures, depending on the level of MNC commitment to the BoP. For each type, we also suggest a corresponding form of public–private partnership. Finally, using our typology of BoP ventures, we suggest new avenues to expand the BoP discourse. While the BoP idea is intriguing and paves the way for the application of strategic management thinking to contexts that have traditionally been

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considered out of its domain, this is not the first time such ideas have been advanced. Although BoP models have been hailed as an innovative application of strategic management to social welfare problems, strategic management principles have been applied to developing markets in recent years. In particular, as the strategy field has grown, management scholars have adapted and reframed social issues in terms of mainstream strategy principles. For example, proponents of strategic CSR and social entrepreneurship have used strategy concepts to make similar arguments. We provide a brief review of these concepts below.

BLENDING WELFARE LOGICS AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Strategic CSR The concept of business’s social responsibility originated in the 1950s (Garriga & Mele, 2004; Windsor, 2006) and has since expanded into the blanket term of CSR, which often includes offshoot terminology such as corporate citizenship and corporate sustainability (Hemphill, 2004; Maxfield, 2008). CSR can include a broad category of activities including stakeholder management, issues management (Wood, 1991; Garriga & Mele, 2004), environmental assessment (Wood, 1991), strategic philanthropy (Windsor, 2006), cause-related marketing, local integration, and maintaining human rights (Garriga & Mele, 2004), to name just a few. While CSR activities are typically viewed as voluntary, proactive corporate actions beyond making money to address social and environmental issues, strategic decisions to positively influence demand for products often motivate and direct seemingly altruistic CSR initiatives (Devinney, 2009). Though CSR and strategic management remain largely separate areas, there have been some areas of overlap in the two fields. Strategic CSR focuses on the question: ‘‘Does it pay to be socially responsible?’’ Initially, CSR was viewed as an entirely separate activity to mainstream strategy which could affect corporate profitability either positively or negatively (e.g., Vogel, 2005). Starting in the 1970s, academics published several quantitative studies that examined the correlation between CSR and profits, often with mixed results (Aupperle, Carroll, & Hatfield, 1985; Margolis & Walsh, 2003; McGuire, Sundgren, & Schneeweis, 1988; McWilliams & Siegel, 2000; Waddock & Graves, 1997). Unable to provide a clear-cut answer on financial

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gains (Devinney, 2009; Margolis & Elfenbein, 2008; Vogel, 2005), the strategy literature has since taken the approach that CSR can be used to gain competitive advantage. For example, McWilliams and Siegel (2001) argue that CSR can be used by firms as a differentiation strategy in an increasingly competitive landscape. They demonstrate that businesses such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and organic farmers can charge premium prices from consumers willing to pay more for socially responsible goods. More recently, Porter and Kramer (2006) argued that companies should move away from reactive CSR seen in positioning strategies to proactive CSR, which can be developed as a core capability. As an example, Nestle´ has used its interest in helping small farmers in developing regions to gain privileged access to its commodity purchases (Porter & Kramer, 2006). However, McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright (2006) caution that developing CSR into a capability may not necessarily yield sustainable competitive advantage. Since CSR activities tend to be highly visible, they may be easily imitated and the costs of maintaining the capability may outweigh any small first mover advantages (McWilliams et al., 2006).

Social Entrepreneurship While strategic CSR explores how CSR can be used to increase profits, the social entrepreneurship literature explores how incorporating profit-making business models into the traditional structure of NGOs can better serve the community (Lounsbury & Strang, 2009). Because definitions of social entrepreneurship have been developed in a number of different domains, such as not-for-profits, for-profits, the public sector, and combinations of all three, there is no precise definition of social entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Strang, 2009; Peredo & McLean, 2006; Short, Moss, & Lumpkin, 2009; Townsend & Hart, 2008). While the primary focus of such ventures ‘‘is on social value, economic value creation is seen as a necessary condition to ensure financial viability’’ (Mair & Marti, 2006, p. 36). However, while social entrepreneurs may start with the primary goal of eliminating social problems, Bloom and Chatterji (2009) argue that scaling such enterprises requires profitability, leading to an adoption of mainstream strategy concepts such as alliance building and effective market positioning. Indeed, Short et al. (2009) claim that social entrepreneurs need to fully embrace concepts in strategic entrepreneurship in order to be more successful. Given such needs, the boundaries between commercial organizations and social enterprises are not that distinct. Although Austin et al. (2006)

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acknowledge that there are certain broad similarities between profit-driven commercial organizations and social entrepreneurs, they argue that a purely commercial entity cannot be a social entrepreneur. Unlike commercial organizations that focus on pursuing new, high-growth opportunities, social entrepreneurs typically aim to meet existing underserved basic needs, often partially rely on extraorganizational support, and must resolve potentially conflicting interpretations of value from numerous stakeholders in order to fulfill their social roles (Austin et al., 2006). In contrast, Mair and Marti (2006) maintain that commercial ventures can be social entrepreneurs as long as social welfare is given relative priority over financial profit, citing examples such as Grameen Bank, Aravind Eye Hospital, and SEKEM as evidence. Yet when compared to Austin et al.’s criteria, Mair and Marti’s examples appear somewhere in between the two poles of the pure social entrepreneur and the pure commercial enterprise. In fact, there is a spectrum of socially oriented organizations, ranging from those where profit is absolutely vital for delivering social value to those where profit plays only a small role in their operations, and the boundaries between for-profit organizations and not-for-profit organizations are becoming increasing vague (Peredo & McLean, 2006).

Summary Comments To sum, BoP is not the first concept where strategy scholars have claimed that business can play a central role in improving social welfare while simultaneously gaining competitive advantage. The development of strategic CSR demonstrates an effort to commoditize social responsibility and appropriate it as a firm resource. In addition, social entrepreneurship represents further colonization by the strategy domain, as NGOs are encouraged to apply traditional profit-making practices in order to achieve their social aims. Although these represent only a few examples of how strategic management principles have been applied to other areas, they illustrate a growing trend toward expanding the domain of strategic management. Indeed, strategy scholars are beginning to look further afield for strategy applications. For example, strategy scholars (Barney, 2005; Mahoney & McGahan, 2007) argue that strategic management offers a new perspective for government and should, therefore, be considered in public policy. Mahoney and McGahan (2007) suggest applications such as capability management in the public sector, using resource-based views for property

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rights and natural resources. As a result, the BoP literature in the strategy domain represents only one of many such cross-cutting applications of strategy principles, a trend that appears to have increased in response to globalization in recent years. But what are the core elements of the BoP thesis? We dig deeper into this emerging body of literature under the banner of BoP strategies.

STRATEGY AT THE BOP In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Prahalad champions the ‘‘marketization’’ of social welfare in what is purportedly a harmonious hybridization of strategic management and CSR, where one mutually reinforces the other in a complementary relationship. BoP literature can be divided into two streams: initial conceptualizations described as BoP 1.0 and subsequent refinements labeled as BoP 2.0.

The Birth of ‘‘BoP 1.0’’ The BoP strategy literature specifically targets a commercially driven audience, typically MNCs. Applying ethical CSR arguments to strategy, Hahn (2009) notes that since globalization has allowed MNCs to supersede government in their ability to enforce rights, they have a moral obligation to ‘‘do good.’’ And, not only do MNCs have an ethical mandate, they also have the capabilities to coordinate the various institutions and resources required for building capacity such as economic infrastructure in developing countries (Hart, 2007; Hahn, 2009). Furthermore, Hart (2007) argues that the global reach of MNCs puts them in a unique position to facilitate bilateral knowledge transfer, creating virtuous cycles of growth as innovations are transferred back and forth between developing and developed markets. The essence of the BoP concept is that MNCs can earn more profits by directly providing social goods and services to the BoP, that is, people who earn less than $2 per day. In fact, its proponents (e.g., Prahalad & Hammond, 2002; Prahalad, 2006) argue that a BoP strategy is a commercial and social win-win. First, the BoP market is supposed to provide a significant untapped growth opportunity for MNCs since the BoP is primarily served through an informal economy, which is insufficient to meet its total market needs (Ricart, Enright, Ghemawat, Hart, & Khanna, 2004).

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While the individual purchasing power of a single member of the BoP community is minimal, taken on aggregate, the value of the entire BoP market estimated at 2.7 billion (Vachani & Smith, 2008) is substantial, estimated to be $12.5–15 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) (Prahalad, 2006). Additionally, the rapid urbanization and use of information technology in developing countries have made access to the BoP relatively easy (Prahalad, 2006). Such trends have generated increased awareness and acceptance of global brands and high-technology goods, favoring MNC entry (Prahalad, 2006; Prahalad & Hammond, 2002). Furthermore, a corporate BoP orientation can drive creativity and innovation through what Hart and Sharman (2004) describe as ‘‘competitive imagination.’’ Since BoP goods require significant cost reductions to make them affordable, firms are faced with the need to innovate and increase productivity to efficiently mass market low-priced products and services, such as pharmaceuticals and medical care (Prahalad, 2002; Prahalad & Hammond, 2002). The BoP is also considered the ideal market for introducing and refining disruptive innovations (Christensen et al., 2006; Harjula, 2007; Ricart et al., 2004). Since there is little direct competition, firms have the ability to experiment and learn before launching new products into more competitive, high-value markets (Harjula, 2007). To do this, Simanis and Hart (2006) advocate taking a real options approach, introducing a portfolio of products on a small scale in the BoP market. By diversifying the risk involved, MNC can later ramp up the most successful products on a large scale with reasonable expectations of generating a profit. In addition to financial benefits, Prahalad (2006) argues that BoP ventures provide a significant social benefit. By treating the BoP as consumers, MNCs are taking the first step in facilitating economic inclusion and social empowerment. By giving them more choices, and the information necessary to make more choices, the BoP will be able to leverage their new knowledge and self-respect to create their own innovations and enterprises. In doing so, the BoP can further integrate into the world economy through partnerships with MNCs, leading to widespread economic growth (Prahalad, 2006).

Problems with ‘‘BoP 1.0’’ Critics, however, are skeptical of both the financial and social benefits of the BoP approach. For instance, Davidson (2009) argues that BoP advocates wrongly confuse CSR with charity and undermine CSR principles by privileging a firm’s shareholders over other firm stakeholders

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(employees, customers, suppliers, and the communities in which it operates) and emphasizing profit maximization as the sole purpose of the firm. Bottom line, he argues, cannot be measured only in economic terms but must reflect, and in some cases be tempered by social and environmental metrics sometimes referred to as the ‘‘triple’’ bottom line. The BoP by definition are not ‘‘ordinary’’ consumers, and therefore, a firm’s responsibilities to them are in no way ordinary (Davidson, 2009, p. 31). The BoP approach has also been criticized for overestimating the value of the BoP market, in terms of both overall population and consumption rate (Karnani, 2007b; Warnholz, 2007; Seelos & Mair, 2007) and underestimating the cost of business (Karnani, 2007b; Warnholz, 2007). Citing data from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (the private sector arm of the World Bank group) for a poverty line of $1,000 at PPP, which corresponds roughly to the commonly used $2 per day in 1990 prices standard), Karnani (2007b) argues that BoP market value may only be $0.36 trillion at exchange rates1 or $1.2 trillion at PPP. In short, critics argue that the alleged large and lucrative market at the BoP is only a ‘‘mirage.’’ Critics go on to argue that Prahalad’s ‘‘success stories’’ tend to be examples that are actually priced out of the BoP market (Karnani, 2007b; Warnholz, 2007), meaning that firms are mostly targeting the middle and upper classes in developing countries (Warnholz, 2007). For example, Jenkins (2005, p. 533) notes that Prahalad ‘‘consistently overestimates the potential purchasing power of poor people, often by extending the definition of the poor to include those who are relatively well off by developing country standards.’’ While the profitability potential of BoP strategies has been questioned, critics (Walsh, Kress, & Beyerchen, 2005) are equally skeptical of the alleged link between consumption and poverty alleviation. More specifically, Karnani (2007a) writes that BoP products often fail to meet any critical needs and, sometimes, even perpetuate social wrongs. To illustrate, the sale of Hindustan Unilever’s (HUL) ‘‘Fair & Lovely’’ skin whitening face cream relies on supporting stereotypes of beauty in India. Although the product was a profitable and fast-growing brand, in this case, HUL’s BoP strategy may have hurt the cause of social welfare, as it limited the choices available to women and tied their self-esteem to conformity with a stereotype. Given that consumers have inadequate protection, the poor should not be flooded with nonessential products that do little for increasing social welfare and may even damage social harmony (Karnani, 2007a). Consequently, instead of raising the standard of living of the poor in developing countries, MNC activities might result in further polarization between developing and developed countries.

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Introducing ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ In the wake of criticisms questioning the ultimate profitability (Karnani, 2007b; Warnholz, 2007; Seelos & Mair, 2007) and social value (Karnani, 2007a: Karnani 2007b, Seelos & Mair, 2007; Walsh et al., 2005), the BoP strategy literature has evolved from viewing the BoP as ‘‘consumers’’ to viewing the BoP as ‘‘producers’’ or members of the production chain. This shift has occurred gradually as some of the literature has started to include themes pertaining to the development of skills in the BoP (Karnani, 2007b; Kirchgeorg & Winn, 2006). Labeling early conceptualizations as ‘‘BoP 1.0,’’ these changes have been formalized into what has been described as ‘‘BoP 2.0,’’ complete with a new ‘‘BoP Protocolt’’ for MNCs (Hart, 2007). The primary social value of the ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ concept is the incorporation of, and the subsequent skill transfer to, the BoP in MNC operations. For example, Gardetti (2005) writes that the MNCs need to build capacity for the BoP to participate in retail business and recognize opportunities for new products and services through closely observing their own community. Additionally, the BoP could be trained to perform labor-intensive parts of production locally (Karnani, 2005; Ricart et al., 2004). And, most importantly, this shift has emphasized the need for MNCs to include the BoP in product development and adaptation, giving them the opportunity to ‘‘cocreate’’ or ‘‘coinvent’’ rather than remain passive consumers (Hart, 2007; Kirchgeorg & Winn, 2006; London, 2007; London & Hart, 2004; Ricart et al., 2004). Building such skills in the BoP empowers them to consume and produce more, leading to the ultimate goal of poverty reduction (Kirchgeorg & Winn, 2006; London & Hart, 2004). These concepts have been further institutionalized through the recent launch of the ‘‘BoP Protocolt.’’ This protocol is primarily championed by Hart (2007), who, along with several collaborators (Simanis & Hart, 2008), has established a BoP Learning Laboratory at Cornell University to guide MNCs in BoP practices (c.f. http://www.BoP-protocol.org). The first step of the protocol involves extending the existing scope of MNC stakeholders to engage fringe members, namely, the BoP in a constant dialogue. MNCs, it is argued, should immerse themselves in the environment of the fringe stakeholders to better understand the issues faced and BoP reactions to possible solutions. Having done so, MNCs then need to organize the system into building an ecosystem of feedback links among the concerned parties. At this point, MNCs would be in a position to create a BoP enterprise, initially through pilot testing several small-scale projects before ramping up

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to full production levels. Also, throughout these stages, MNCs should include and build BoP capabilities as much as possible (Hart, 2007). While ‘‘BoP 1.0’’ was criticized for being exploitative as discussed above, ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ has had far less opposition in the literature. This latest incarnation of BoP strategy represents a step forward in the discourse as it attempts to replace the tenuous link between consumerism and poverty reduction with economic empowerment of the BoP through skill building, knowledge sharing, and active engagement with MNCs. In this way, ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ makes a more persuasive argument for the compatibility of profits and social gains. While BoP 2.0 is a significant step forward over BoP 1.0, even this reconceptualization is not without its critics.

Problems with ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ The main critic of ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ is Karnani (2007c), who argues that the literature overemphasizes the importance of microcredit and entrepreneurship. He argues that academics have tended to confound self-employment with entrepreneurial drive among BoP members, most of whom are selfemployed out of necessity rather than desire. As a result, the self-employed often have few skills and minimal resources, while facing intense competitive pressure (Karnani, 2007c). Several scholars (Arnould & Mohr, 2005: Gardetti, 2005; London & Hart, 2004; Seelos & Mair, 2007) have noted that the social goal of BoP ventures would only succeed if both the BoP and MNCs are able to build mutual trust, a requirement that may be difficult to meet in practice. Furthermore, though coinvention would likely result in better suited products, it is not yet clear whether these products would generate enough profits to secure a long-term commitment from MNCs to continue their involvement. Moreover, scholars have noted that BoP 2.0 models do not adequately address how BoP development could be reconciled with the potentially disastrous effects on the ecological environment (Hahn, 2009; Kirchgeorg & Winn, 2006). Intensified growth, prosperity, and improvement of the living standard at the BoP accompany increasing resource consumption and worldwide environmental degradation. Therefore, a development of the BoP on the basis of the western model of living is ecologically unsustainable mostly due to the limited resources and assimilation capacity (Sachs, 2005). Hahn (2009) has called for the inclusion of ‘‘intragenerational justice’’ (social and economic adjustments within shorter time frame of existing generations) and ‘‘intergenerational justice’’ (preserving the basic life

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resources for successive generations on an equivalent level to previous generations) into the market system to develop an integrative and holistic model of the BoP that is sensitive to the connections between poverty alleviation at the BoP and overall sustainable development. Without such an approach, Hahn (2009) argues it is problematic, if not impossible, to improve the situation of the poor by simply copying the resource-intensive western way of living to the ‘‘BoP’’ due to the limited carrying capacity of the earth. It could be argued that conceptualizing the BoP contexts just as other markets but with lower purchasing power has serious limitations. ‘‘BoP’’ people may not represent readymade ‘‘markets’’ with atomized consumers who have adequate livelihood and are only waiting for an expanded ‘‘choice’’ of western products and services. While BoP 2.0 has begun to take into account some of the structural issues of power and inequalities that plague most BoP communities and deprive them of dignified livelihood, problems remain. Practicing business ‘‘as usual’’ in low-income markets has often proven to be a recipe for failure, and corporate strategies may need to be redefined when it comes to addressing low-income markets. What is particularly problematic is that a significant degree of BoP argumentation hinges on success stories – sampling on the dependent variable – not uncommon in business practice (Walsh et al., 2005). As Strang and Macy (2001, p. 155) note: ‘‘success stories dominate business discourse to the virtual exclusion of close theoretical or comparative analyses.’’ A review of some of the empirical evidence though scant will suggest to what degree BoP ideas are worthy of the excitement that they have generated and whether BoP is simply a management fashion.

BOP STRATEGIES IN PRACTICE How have BoP strategies fared in improving the lot of those at the bottom? The surprisingly scant existing empirical work shows mixed outcomes in working with and selling to the BoP. We review some of the BoP proponents’ claims vis-a`-vis product innovation, inclusion of communities in the production chain, and corporate collaboration with nontraditional partners. While these ventures represent some effort and benefits for BoP, they do not meet all the claims they make. Also, contrary to the tendency within the literature, it is not always easy to label a particular venture as unqualified success or failure. Table 1 provides an overview of some of the empirical literature presented below.

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Table 1.

Empirical Literature Overview. Authors

BoP ‘‘successes’’ Product modification Local employment Nontraditional partnerships BoP ‘‘failures’’ Product modification Local employment

Anderson and Billou (2007); Prasad and Ganvir (2005) Anderson and Billou (2007); Anderson and Markides (2007); Prasad and Ganvir (2005) Seelos and Mair (2007)

Schwittay (2009); McFalls (2007) Schwittay (2009); McFalls (2007)

BoP ‘‘successes’’ Attempts to demonstrate the viability of BoP-driven joint product development and BoP inclusion in the value chain, for instance, include a series of ‘‘success’’ stories. For example, Anderson and Billou (2007) argue that the Chinese firm Haier modified their washing machines to include vegetable-washing and cheese-making settings, which made it a more attractive multipurpose product for the BoP (Anderson & Billou, 2007). This example, however, appears to conform more to the traditional practice of modifying existing products for the developing market, rather than jointly inventing products specifically tailored to the needs of the BoP, and in the process, transfer some of their product development expertise to the BoP. Although Haier was successful in selling to, and possibly meeting some needs of the BoP, they did not appear to transfer or build any skills including the BoP in the product development process. There are some promising cases of MNCs including the BoP in other areas of the value chain. In the retail and distribution segments, HUL uses local entrepreneurs to sell their products in remote areas, typically employing rickshaw and canoe salesmen. Additionally, street performers are regularly hired to advertise new products since a large portion of the BoP may be illiterate or lack media access (Anderson & Billou, 2007; Anderson & Markides, 2007). Yet, the benefits of BoP inclusion even in slightly higher value-added segments of the production remain questionable. For example, Prasad and Ganvir (2005) write that Tata Consultancy partnered with NGOs to design and produce much-needed water filters in India. The manufacture of these water filters were carried out by members of the BoP local entrepreneurs who attended a two-day training session on how to assemble

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the filters (Prasad & Ganvir, 2005). While Prasad and Ganvir argue that this was a successful example of technology transfer, their work indicates that the manufacturing steps were essentially ‘‘deskilled,’’ compromising the filtration quality in order to be easily comprehensible to the BoP. As a result, the success of the project in either building real capabilities in the BoP or providing adequate clean water remains in question. Other successes include collaborations that businesses have developed with nontraditional partners in the BoP. For example, Seelos and Mair (2007) cite the much lauded case of GrameenPhone/GrameenTelecom. The two organizations were formed as a joint venture between Telenor, a Norwegian firm, and Grameen Bank to deliver mobile phone services in Bangladesh. GrameenTelecom, a nonprofit firm, helps local entrepreneurs, typically women to start phone shops through facilitating microloans from Grameen Bank and organizing logistics with GrameenPhone. In contrast, GrameenPhone maintains the telecommunications infrastructure and earns profit by selling airtime to the shops. Citing such examples, Seelos and Mair (2007) argue that MNCs should focus on developing long-term partnerships with existing organizations in the BoP in order to avoid conflict. However, if MNCs can make sufficient profit through long-term agreements with local partners, it seems unnecessary for them to risk starting an independent venture. In this respect, the MNC enhances social welfare through including the NGO in its value chain rather than by directly engaging and building skills in the BoP, as advocated by BoP 2.0 proponents.

BoP ‘‘failures’’ While the literature labels certain BoP ventures as ‘‘successes,’’ other cases have been described as ‘‘failures’’ due to the withdrawal of the MNC from the venture. One such example includes the group of BoP initiatives launched by Hewlett-Packard (HP) under former CEO, Carly Fiorina (McFalls, 2007; Schwittay, 2009). HP’s umbrella program, called e-Inclusion, deployed small pilot projects in Cost Rica, South Africa, India, and Brazil. In Costa Rica, HP partnered with the Costa Rican Foundation for Sustainable Development to finance the construction of rural Internet centers. Then, locals would be hired to act as door-to-door salesmen for Internet services. Working off commission, the salesmen would receive service orders from a wide geographic area and fulfill them at the nearest Internet center (Schwittay, 2009). Since the project was eventually

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terminated after Fiorina’s departure from HP, it has been considered a ‘‘failed’’ BoP venture. However, it is worth noting that one concrete contribution of HP’s ‘‘failed’’ projects – the employment of local entrepreneurs in the distribution channel – is actually the same as the contribution of other ‘‘successful’’ ventures in the literature. Other HP programs, such as the i-community projects, were also terminated after a short duration, leaving participants feeling like ‘‘guinea pigs’’ with little control over the situation (Schwittay, 2009). Furthermore, McFalls (2007) argues that HP lacked strategic commitment, devoting only minimal resources with no clear guidelines on how to improve and better adapt products based on its usage by the BoP. And, while the project was supposed to build BoP capabilities, it was entirely managed and directed by HP with no input from the local participants and only minimal oversight from the government partners. As a result, far from empowering the BoP, the local community instead felt marginalized and exploited (McFalls, 2007). To sum up, the empirical examples present a mixed view of strategy at the BoP. The success stories presented do not appear to meet the social and financial goals necessary to be considered unqualified examples of ‘‘win-win’’ enterprises. In particular, there is little emphasis on two significant issues. First, while profitability and market share are easily measured and understood, BoP inclusion and empowerment are not. Far from being straightforward, the examples show the difficulties in determining how ‘‘inclusive’’ any one strategy is and whether BoP capabilities are being strengthened or exploited through such participation. Additionally, other than being classified as poor and enterprising, little has been done to develop a people-centered perspective (Burkey, 1993) to understand the BoP and listen to the ‘‘voices of the poor’’ (Narayan, Chambers, Shah, & Petesch, 2000) that are arguably a central input to sound BoP strategies. We know very little about the economic lives of the extremely poor: the choices they face, the constraints they grapple with, and the challenges they meet (Banerjee & Duflot, 2007). Additionally, the BoP model lacks adequate feedback mechanisms between the intended beneficiaries (i.e., the BoP) and the organizations that are attempting to serve them making it difficult to gauge its demonstrated effectiveness at achieving results on the ground. But, even with these limitations, are BoP strategies a means to reconcile strategy and social welfare in a process of harmonious globalization? Or do BoP ventures demonstrate how strategy thinking has attempted to appropriate the social welfare domain in an attempt to colonize developing markets?

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We argue that some of the limitations in the BoP approach could be remedied if strategy scholars engaged more deeply with existing work in development studies and other related fields. In particular, we argue that insights from global value chains (GVCs) can be particularly useful for enriching the strategic approach to addressing BoP markets.

MAKING BOP A PART OF THE GVC So where does BoP go from here? In essence, the BoP (2.0) question, in particular the more refined BoP (2.0) version, is concerned with enrolling previously overlooked ‘‘BoP’’ communities in production networks. The limited success of BoP strategies in achieving that goal reveals problems with the conceptual foundation on which the idea currently stands. In this regard, the BoP literature, we argue, could benefit from a greater engagement with work on GVCs. Scholars outside the strategic management domain have long been interested in the phenomena of globalization in production networks and its subsequent impact on third world producers. Stemming from work in sociology, Gereffi (1994) argues that the effects of economic globalization on developing economies could best be understood through the framework of GVC, a concept that has been used in other fields of management. In this case, a value chain is defined as all the value-added activities from the beginning of a product idea to its final disposal after use (Kaplinsky & Morris, 2001). As a result, a value chain can include a range of organizations and groups, from suppliers and subsidiaries to standards setting bodies and research consortia members (Ernst, 2002). In an era of increasing globalization and distributed operations, the concept of GVCs has been embraced by scholars in multiple fields, spurring new research in development studies (c.f. Kaplinsky & Morris, 2001; Keane, 2008, etc.) and ongoing research in sociology (c.f. www.globalvaluechains.org). Further empirical studies based on this proposition has particularly focused on the power of core firms, usually MNCs in value chains and its effects on the overall governance of the worldwide production system (Giuliani, Pietrobelli, & Rabelotti, 2005). At one end of the spectrum is equal power distribution among value chain members (Gereffi, Humphrey, & Sturgeon, 2005; Giuliani et al., 2005; Schmitz, 2005). At the other end of the spectrum is a complete control over a value chain by a lead firm due to full or partial ownership of the other members. In between the two extremes, the governance structure is based on relational power

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depending on the level of interdependence, trust, and information complexity (Gereffi et al., 2005; Giuliani et al., 2005; Schmitz, 2005; Sturgeon, 2000). By focusing on how GVC governance and MNC power affects third world producers, scholars have recently used their work to inform government policies for industrial upgrading in developing countries. Table 2 provides a brief summary of selected key studies. These studies indicate that firms and entrepreneurs in developing countries face severe power asymmetries with MNCs. More specifically, power concentration in MNCs allows them to determine the rules of the GVC and demand high-performance standards, resulting in barriers to entry for producers in developing countries with little resources and effectively shutting them out (Kaplinsky, 2001; Nadvi, 2004). Since MNCs have little or no incentive to train and incorporate producers in developing countries into their production system, Fitter and Kaplinsky (2001) argue that government intervention is seen as necessary to help developing producers enter into any given value chain and upgrade to higher value-added activities. In order to achieve this outcome, Ernst (2002) advocates broadening the domestic knowledge base and developing specialized national capabilities. More specifically, Nadvi (2004) argues that governments should help firms comply with standards, gain required certification, and increase efficiency. In other words, governments may have a role to play despite increased involvement of corporations, and BoP strategies may only be effective in the presence of complementary government policies. On the surface, the arguments made by ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ proponents parallel those made in studies of the globalization phenomena. However, unlike ‘‘BoP 2.0’’ advocates, GVC scholars argue that MNCs were unlikely to Table 2. Authors Ernst (2002)

Sample Value Chain Policy Studies. Findings

Broaden knowledge base; develop specialized capabilities Fitter and Kaplinsky Re-balance power relationships (2001) Kaplinsky (2001) Facilitate entry and movement to higher value added; build complementary industries and skills Nadvi (2004) Facilitate entry; improve efficiency and knowledge transfer Gereffi et al. (2005) Facilitate entry and movement to higher value added

Locations Asia-Pacific Africa Africa

Vietnam, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa Asia-Pacific, Kenya, USA

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support third world producers on their own initiative, a conclusion based on in-depth empirical observations of industrial capacity in developing countries and the power exercised in GVCs. Indeed, the strength of the GVC research relies on detailed empirical results from GVCs led by large MNCs that would have the greatest impact in the third world. As a result, the GVC literature offers insights into determining the real position of MNCs toward developing country producers. In contrast, many of the ‘‘successful’’ BoP examples and case studies rely on smaller companies rather than large MNCs or, at best, specific subsidiaries and single projects of MNCs with limited scale. This is not in line with previous BoP claims that MNCs are best suited to handling poverty issues in developing countries. Furthermore, in addition to exploring policy solutions to help third world producers, GVC academics have also begun to consider the real impacts of inclusion on developing countries. For example, although it is established that developing country producers must find a way to work more equally with MNCs, some scholars (Bair, 2005; Coe, Hess, Yeung, Dicken, & Henderson, 2004) argue that the real benefits to the poor depend on the ability to continue capability building once in the GVC. They worry that mere entry into a GVC can create lock-in as MNCs or other more powerful companies in the GVC will prevent third world producers from upgrading to higher value-added activities. In short, the GVC literature has considered the possible challenges of including the developing world in MNC production. Insights from the GVC literature present interesting opportunities to extend current understanding of BoP strategies. Though initiated in the field of sociology, GVCs have become a crosscutting area of study, which encompasses work from scholars in development studies, economics, and sociology. Thus, by incorporating ideas from the GVC literature, the BoP literature can take advantage of insights drawn from a broader base of scholars who have previously done research on issues concerning developing countries. While the BoP literature currently places little emphasis on government policies, the GVC literature and the mixed empirical evidence for BoP projects point to the need for a much more central role for government. Additionally, the BoP literature tends to ignore some of the potential growth problems that the BoP will face as they try to advance within an MNC production chain.

EXPANDING ‘‘STRATEGIES AT THE BOP’’ One possible solution to these limitations is to categorize BoP ventures according to how BoP integration affects knowledge transfer. As existing

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empirical evidence suggests, BoP venture are not uniform in their inclusion of the BoP. By first understanding what types of BoP ventures exist, appropriate government policies could be designed to stimulate further social and economic growth in the BoP. Typology of BoP Ventures As discussed earlier, recent BoP literature has emphasized the importance of understanding the specific needs and capabilities of the BoP in order to view them as producers. Accordingly, the level of BoP integration into the production cycle may serve as a proxy for economic development, assuming that greater integration will lead to poverty alleviation through more skill building and knowledge transfer. Given existing conceptual and empirical examples of BoP engagement, BoP ventures can be roughly classified into four generic groups: market driven, distribution driven, production driven, and knowledge driven. Table 3 provides a brief description of the typology. To illustrate how ventures should be categorized, the previously cited Haier case could be classified as a market-driven BoP venture targeting sales and consumption. For example, Haier engaged the BoP in end-user feedback for their washing machines. However, by only passively observing them, Haier did not allow the BoP the opportunity to actively participate in the production chain, precluding their direct involvement in the production cycle. Since Haier had no need for investment in the BoP in order to conduct such observations, their level of commitment remained minimal. An example of a distribution-driven venture could be HUL’s employment of rickshaw drivers and boat owners to deliver products to remote areas. While HUL directly employed members of the BoP in the production chain, these employees were primarily located in the distribution channel, often Table 3. Venture Type

BoP inclusion

Market Driven

BoP Venture Typology. Distribution Driven

End-user feedback; Retail outlets; market study delivery participation

MNC investment Minimal Government Regulation participation

Low Regulation

Production Driven Raw material production; commodity production Medium Regulation/ Cooperation

Knowledge Driven R&D; specialized manufacturing

High Cooperation

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performing the same types of jobs that they would have without HUL’s involvement. As a result, the BoP were provided with basic unskilled employment but not necessarily the ability to build on any existing skills or to expand into new skills. Although HUL may need to make some minimal investments to hire such workers, the unskilled nature of the job means that the employed BoP are easily replaceable. Therefore, the level of MNC commitment here is low. Next, an agricultural project, such as Nestle’s BoP venture, could be an example of a production-driven BoP venture, which employs the BoP as raw material suppliers. In this case, the BoP would be utilizing their existing agricultural skills and, if they learn to farm more efficiently, building on those skills. If MNCs do help the raw material suppliers become more efficient, their level of commitment to the BoP increases to a medium level. However, raw material production may not be enough to extend BoP capabilities into the high value-added and more knowledge-intensive areas of the production chain. If BoP are included in more knowledge-intensive areas, this would be a knowledge-driven BoP venture that requires BoP integration into the higher value-added areas of a production chain, such as R&D or specialized manufacturing. Since the amount of technical knowledge required in this case is high, MNCs may have to invest significantly in BoP capabilities, resulting in a more equitable relationship between the two parties. Once the various types of BoP ventures are understood, appropriate government involvement could increase the likelihood of success of the venture from both a financial and social perspective. Mutual cooperation between government and MNCs can provide more legitimacy for the venture and reduce the overall risks faced by all parties (Rangan, Samii, & Van Wassenhove, 2006). Indeed, scholars have drawn attention to the increasing interdependence of the private and public sectors and the blend, or coexistence, of multiple competing and/or complementary logics from different domains (Mars & Lounsbury, 2009; Peredo & Chrisman, 2006; Townsend & Hart, 2008). For example, Mahoney, McGahan, and Pitelis (2009) argue that private and public sectors can no longer be treated independently and that private–public interactions need to be evaluated on the basis of overall global sustainable value creation. However, since the empirical literature shows that there is no single BoP model, it is unlikely that a ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ government policy for regulating BoP markets would be effective. Instead, government participation should be tailored to the type of venture. For example, a market-driven BoP venture may be seen as exploitative since MNCs have the opportunity

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to glean knowledge from the BoP while providing minimal skills transfer in return. In this case, government regulation, such as minimum local employment requirements, may be needed to ensure that the BoP can enter MNC production. Next, while a distribution-driven venture provides basic employment, it may also be considered exploitative by taking advantage of low labor costs. Furthermore, basic or unskilled employment may not provide sufficient opportunity for capability building. As a result, a combination of collaboration and regulation between MNCs and government, such as mandatory subsidized training programs, may be required to entice MNCs to build capabilities in the BoP. While the previous two stages suggest the need for regulation and oversight, government participation in production- and knowledge-driven BoP ventures may take on a more collaborative role. For example, by initiating a production-driven venture, MNCs have already demonstrated that they are willing to build and maintain skills in the BoP by including them as suppliers. In this case, the government may be able to work cooperatively with MNCs to establish a stable supplier base by helping identify potential candidates, subsidize advanced training and technical support, and broker appropriate contracts between the MNC and local suppliers. MNCs would benefit by utilizing government resources to mitigate the high uncertainty of using local suppliers, while government participation could help BoP suppliers to gain knowledge and business experience by incentivizing MNC commitments. Similar collaborative efforts can increase the likelihood of success of knowledge-driven ventures with further emphasis on high value-added activities. In this way, government–MNC relationships can be reciprocal, as both parties would more likely be committed to the success of the venture. Furthermore, government could help MNCs transition from one type of BoP venture into another by working collectively to determine what skills and resources are needed to bridge the gap. While the GVC literature also advocates government intervention, it focuses on policies that are crafted without coordination and input from business. Instead, we argue that if both government and MNCs understand how different types of BoP ventures operate, they would be better able to work together to shape mutually beneficial policies and business models that lower the risks of producing at the BoP.

Final Remarks In this chapter, we have only scratched the surface and our observations are aimed at provoking fresh perspectives into how BoP strategies can be made

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more potent for the BoP itself. In advancing a ‘‘people’s case’’ as against simply a ‘‘business case’’ for the BoP approach, we have argued that there is a pressing and persistent need for a critical investigation of the potential and limitations of BoP initiatives in developing countries. While we applaud the BoP initiative to create new value through innovation and capturing the return from the innovation either as commercial profits for the innovator or as social benefits for the beneficiaries, we place a word of caution against what we view at present a rather strategy-centric view of BoP that emphasizes profit-making and win–win situations. And while social and commercial value creations may share an underlying dynamic, the BoP approach tend to ignore more sensitive questions around the actual impacts of BoP initiatives, the roles of power differentials and inequalities in mediating such interventions, and the need to go beyond ‘‘one size fits all’’ approaches toward a more nuanced understanding of what BoP strategies mean for the underserved and marginalized communities in developing countries. Uncritical acceptance of the argument that BoP approach can solve complex problems associated with poverty in developing countries may end up doing more harm than good. Admittedly, private–public partnerships at the BoP will be difficult to implement and are likely to require a detailed consideration of the various stakeholders’ goals and interests. Scholars have only recently begun to explore the internal organizational challenges that can pose significant barriers to bringing BoP projects from idea to action, even within the most proficient and forward-thinking MNCs (Olsen & Boxenbaum, 2009). More specifically, private–public partnerships are often plagued by difficulties with making timely decisions (Alexander, Comfort, & Weiner, 1998; Broadbent, Gray, & Jackson, 2003; Klijn & Teisman, 2003), lack of clear focus, and achieving the appropriate levels of commitment from all stakeholders (Alexander et al., 1998; Klijn & Teisman, 2003; Kwak, Chih, & Ibbs, 2009; Wettenhall, 2003). To mitigate such problems, Alexander et al. (1998) suggest delineating well-defined roles and responsibilities among the different parties, with clear lines of accountability to each other. Additionally, Kwak et al. (2009) argue that such partnerships may require governments to establish appropriate regulatory frameworks and act as the coordinator in all phases of the project. Successful private–public partnerships also depend on effective knowledge sharing and building long-term relationships, which should be periodically reevaluated based on changing local contexts (Alexander et al., 1998). Furthermore, much work is needed to understand effective implementation including the impact of poverty alleviation on environmental sustainability (Hahn, 2009).

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However, the first step toward understanding how to achieve social welfare and poverty alleviation is to determine how the BoP are involved in production chains and what actions are required to move them into higher value-added activities. While the typology we have offered is fairly generic and requires refinement, it nonetheless represents an initial attempt to categorize the different ways in which BoP can participate in the production cycle and the level of commitment required by MNCs. An empirical refinement of this typology could provide clearer representations of exactly what economic benefits the BoP can expect to achieve from different enterprises. It is also crucial for MNCs to understand BoP ventures in terms of their level of engagement rather than simply according to product categories. While product types will no doubt affect the operation of the venture, MNCs must be able to manage and coordinate the production cycle, a task that would be impossible without thorough knowledge of how it will involve the BoP. Once the typology we offer is further refined, it can be used to provide insights into how government participation could jumpstart BoP ventures and facilitate transitions among different forms of ventures. Government policies could be used to not only mitigate risks for MNCs, but also provide some protection to the BoP from succumbing to MNC interests. Moreover, this typology is not meant to deemphasize the institutional context of the BoP. Further research in this area is required to understand which BoP model is best suited for a particular institutional setting. Indeed, previous work in the CSR discourse (Campbell, 2006; Rodriguez, Siegel, Hillman, & Eden, 2006; Landrum, 2007; Oosterlaken, 2008) indicates that social change and capability building may be heavily dependent on the institutional environment and the social context of a particular region or nation. Finally, advancing different types of BoP projects may also require a major reconsideration of existing conceptualizations of the fundamental role of the corporation in society (Palazzo & Scherer, 2008). Despite increasing globalization and shifting societal parameters, dominant theories about the role of the corporation are rooted in neoclassical economics and continue to draw a strong line between private business activities and public political responsibilities (Mahoney et al., 2009). Since efficient markets are seen to erode profits, competitive advantage arises from the very market imperfections in the provision of private goods that impose public costs and reduce social welfare. Yet private corporations are not expected to directly or fully pay for these costs of production despite reaping considerable private benefits. While we have moved away from Milton Friedman’s famous notion that ‘‘the only social responsibility of business’’ is to make profit,

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reconciling business profits and social welfare may require a radical restructuring of the political economy and fundamental rethinking about the different roles of a corporation in society (e.g., Banerjee, 2008; Windsor, 2001). Business corporations enjoy and continue to prosper due to the special privileges, rights, and power that society accords them; the relationships between business and society need to be reconfigured in a manner that they reflect overall societal and not just corporate interests.

NOTE 1. From the perspective of multinational companies, the BOP market size is $0.3 trillion, since companies necessarily convert local currencies into home currency at exchange rates.

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PART V GENEALOGIES

STRONG IN THE MORNING, DEAD IN THE EVENING: A GENEALOGICAL AND CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZATIONAL SELECTION Marie-Laure Djelic and Rodolphe Durand ABSTRACT A key component of evolutionary models in economics and organizational research, the notion of organizational selection is rarely the object of inquiry. It generally suggests instead a neutral and unquestioned process, a mechanism explaining organizational success and survival. In this chapter, we explore the variation of selection; we problematize the notion of selection and do an exercise in conceptual genealogy. We differentiate between three patterns of firm selection: Darwinian, strategic, and institutional and define the associated ‘‘embedded rationalities’’ that buttress those different selection patterns. We illustrate how selection differed and evolved through time by exploring two empirical cases – France and the United States. Building upon our empirical exploration, we stress some important contributions for three theories familiar to strategy scholars – resourcebased view, population ecology, and institutional theory. We also point to

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some consequences for empirical research and suggest new directions for future work on the dynamics of organizational action.

INTRODUCTION The idea of selection – whether explicitly or more implicitly – is essential and influential in the economics and organization literature (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Aldrich, 1999; Baum & McKelvey, 1999; Hannan, Polos, & Carroll, 2007). Often viewed as a mechanism explaining success and survival, selection is in general not treated as an object of study but rather as a neutral or unquestioned process. Selection-dependence models have been developed to account for empirical phenomena (Barnett, 1997; Dobrev, Salih Zeki Ozdemir, & Albert, 2006; Kuilman & Li, 2009) but this has rarely come together with a contextualization of organizational, institutional or societal characteristics (Zucker, 1989; Baum & Powell, 1995). Evolutionary models assume that selection is always operative – it never stops measuring ‘‘fit’’ or sifting declining maladaptive forms (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Nelson, 1990; Carroll & Hannan, 2002; Hannan, Polos, & Carroll, 2007). While, in those models, variations are manifestations of the passing time, selection as a mechanism seems immutable. As Max Weber already alerted us a long time ago, ‘‘selection is eternal because no means can be devised to fully extirpate it’’ but the reasons why conditions favor or undermine a social form or agent ‘‘are so manifold that a unitary expression (for this process) would be unsuitable’’ (Weber, 1978, p. 38; Breiner, 2004, pp. 291–92). More recently, Isaac and Griffin (1989) warned us against the risks of neglecting how much history and theory are intertwined and that time is not ‘‘ahistorical’’ per se. Kieser suggested also that ‘‘when confronted with long term developments,’’ the assumption that ‘‘evolutionary mechanisms do not change over time does not hold’’ (Kieser, 1994, p. 612). Those warnings have started to be heeded. A number of notable contributions have attempted to connect more tightly selection-dependent models to particular environmental and institutional contexts (Baum & Oliver, 1992; Dobbin & Dowd, 1997; Ingram & Simons, 2000). On the whole, though, the contingent nature of organizational selection – from both a genealogical and contextual perspective – has remained under-theorized. The object of this chapter is precisely to problematize the idea of selection and to place it at the center of inquiry. Building on March’s (1994) invitation to question the ‘‘evolution of evolution,’’ we consider the variation of selection and even the ‘‘selection of selection’’ over time (see Powell,

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Rahman, & Starbuck, 2010 for a compatible project on ‘‘competitive advantage’’). Thus, we propose that both the notion of selection and the value attached to it evolve through time and space. Going one step further, we suggest that different forms and conceptions of selection reflect different ‘‘embedded rationalities.’’ ‘‘Embedded rationalities’’ are the background frames, the contextual lenses through which individual and collective actors perceive and read the world (Granovetter, 1985; Zukin & DiMaggio, 1990; Kristensen & Zeitlin, 2000). As they become dominant and broadly shared within a particular group, as they stabilize in time, those embedded rationalities tend to become transparent and even invisible to the actors involved. A contextual and contingent understanding is in the process being reinterpreted as reflecting something like ‘‘natural law’’ (Dobbin, 1995; Dobbin & Dowd, 2000; Ferraro, Pfeffer, & Sutton, 2005). In order to illustrate and document both the variety of embedded rationalities when it comes to the concept of selection and the process by which one of these rationalities has progressively taken over and imposed itself as quasi-natural law in the economics and business literature, we do an exercise in conceptual genealogy (Foucault, 1994). We compare the historical evolution of the concept of selection in France and in the United States. We choose these two countries because they constitute distant alternatives, in history, with respect to principles of economic action and organization (Dobbin, 1994; Djelic, 1998; Hall & Soskice, 2001). From this empirical exploration, we are able to provide evidence for and systematically differentiate between three patterns of selection that reflect and suggest strikingly different embedded rationalities – Darwinian selection, strategic selection, and institutional selection. The universalizing use of the concept of selection, dominant in a lot of the strategy literature in particular, refers in fact to Darwinian selection – hence to one pattern of selection among others. As we progress through our empirical exploration, we aim to contribute more particularly on three main issues that are also weaknesses, we propose, in contemporary theorizing. The first issue is the lack of contextualization of the concept of selection in most of the current economics and business literature. In this chapter, we question such a decontextualized understanding of selection. We propose that the emergence of organizational forms and speciation might result not only from variations of those forms but also from different selection patterns dominant in different contexts. The emergence of organizational forms can reflect, in other words, a variation of the notion of selection through time and place. A second issue we consider is that of the consequences of selection. Some contributions tend to associate selection with isomorphism and convergence (Hannan & Freeman, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995). Others argue instead that selection leads to

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speciation as expressed by different organizational forms and strategies (Amburgey, Dacin, & Kelly, 1994; Rao & Singh, 1999). We suggest that these different and sometimes contradictory findings question the validity of a universal and decontextualized understanding of selection. A last issue for consideration is the level of analysis. In strategy as in biology, there is a debate as to where selection operates and dominant influence really lies – genes, individuals or species in biology (Dawkins, 1989; Hull, 2001), resources, firms, or populations in strategy (Barney, 1991; Aldrich, 1999; Carroll & Hannan, 2002). This raises the question of where selection really applies when scholars invoke selection efficiency. We suggest that there could be variability in dominant patterns of selection across levels of analysis. One could see, for example, a dominant pattern at the national level and pockets at the industry or organizational levels (sometimes quite important ones) reflecting and revealing other patterns of selection. This chapter has three main sections. First, we define our concepts – selection, selection patterns, and embedded rationalities – and briefly present our methodology. Second, we present a conceptual genealogy of the notion of selection in France and in the United States. These two cases are used as illustrations. Third, we suggest a number of theoretical and empirical implications. Overall, at the theoretical level, we argue that evolutionary models should come to be informed by a contingent understanding of selection patterns. At the empirical level, we propose that future studies should include more indicators to control for alternative conceptions of selection and avoid sweeping and problematic generalization (Denrell, 2003; Ferraro, Pfeffer, & Sutton, 2005). At a more practical level, we contend that any conclusion on the effectiveness of particular managerial practices and strategic decisions should be taken with heightened caution and considered in light of contextual ‘‘embedded rationalities.’’

DEFINITIONS, THEORETICAL EXPLORATIONS, AND METHODS Right after World War II, strategy and business studies imported the evolutionary tradition from social science and economics (Campbell, 1965, 1990; Hodgson, 2002; Bowler, 2003). Evolutionary models soon became highly influential and were applied, from the mid-1970s on, to populations as well as to organizations (Hannan & Freeman, 1977, 1984; Aldrich, 1979; McKelvey, 1982). According to these models, inspired by Darwin’s seminal work in biology and its further development through population genetics,

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selection comes after variation – i.e., a significant and heterogeneous alteration of an entity. Selection is the operation through which certain variations are retained while others disappear. Selection Patterns In evolutionary models set within this tradition, selection is somewhat of a black box, a neutral and unquestioned mechanism. For the selection pattern that tends to be dominant in these models, we use the label ‘‘Darwinian.’’ However, if we consider the organization and business literature that does not inscribe itself in an evolutionary tradition, we are able to identify different patterns of selection. We consider, in particular, two alternative patterns of selection – that we label respectively ‘‘strategic’’ and ‘‘institutional’’ selection. As it is impossible to review all research dealing with organizational selection in strategy, organization theory and adjacent fields, the picture we provide of selection patterns’ main dimensions is naturally schematic. We differentiate between our three ideal-types along five main dimensions (Weber, 1978): the driving principle of selection, the dominant selection criterion, the outcome of selection, the nature and time dimension of the evolution process as a whole, and the role in return of given agents in the process. Table 1 brings together the comparison of our three selection patterns. Evolutionary models in strategy and business studies are for the most part associated with Darwinian selection (Baum & McKelvey, 1999). The driving Table 1.

Selection Patterns.

Darwinian Selection

Strategic Selection

Institutional Selection

Driving principle of firm selection Selection Criteria

Market

Power

Network

Necessary Based on economic efficiency

Contingent Defined by powerful agents

Role of firms

Evenly distributed Insignificant Progress Gradual

Unevenly distributed Weak Exemplarity Gradual and potentially radical Interventionist

Contextual Dependent on institutional norms Unevenly distributed Potentially strong Legitimacy Coevolutionary

Outcome for the firm Process of evolution Embedded rationality

Liberal–conservative

Normative

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principle of Darwinian selection in strategy and business studies is the market mechanism that filters through multiple variations at the firm or population level (Baum & Dobbin, 2000; Hannan & Freeman, 1977, 1984). The dominant selection criterion is market or economic efficiency. Selected variations are those that maximize the fit of an entity with its environment and carry relative advantages in terms of cost, efficiency, productivity, or innovativeness. The relative advantage of variations is randomly distributed at the population level and predominantly expressed in terms of technological or market advance (Nelson & Winter, 1982). Darwinian selection generates technological and economic progress, favoring as an outcome surviving (i.e., superior) firms and customers (Nelson, 1990). The ensuing process of evolution is gradual through time: firms or populations change incrementally rather than through radical jumps (Carroll & Hannan, 2002). Finally, in Darwinian selection, the impact of a particular firm on the process of selection is hypothesized as insignificant. If we plow through the richness of business studies, we do find evidence that selection can be conceived of in other ways. ‘‘Strategic selection’’ is one possible alternative (see also Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). The driving principle there for selection is power. Some actors have the power and capacity to carve, shape, and transform the economic landscape and to orient the process of selection (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). High-handed fiat of this kind is the prerogative of powerful agents, i.e., star CEOs of large firms or key political decision makers (Murtha & Lenway, 1994; Ingram & Simons, 2000). Selection criteria are then contingent and reflect the objectives, values, interests, and projects of these key actors (Useem, 1982; Boddewyn & Brewer, 1994; Dobbin & Dowd, 2000). An important outcome of strategic selection is exemplarity. The selected form becomes a symbol; the selected firm becomes a champion of national ambitions and identity. A number of illustrations come to mind: Nokia in Finland, Siemens in Germany, Zara in Spain, and so forth. The process of evolution tends to be gradual, as a whole, but the possibility exists of radical reorientation reflecting power shifts or major national decisions. We find examples of that in the profound transformation of the English national business system in the 1970s and 1980s or in the radical reorientation of the Finnish innovation system during the 1990s. Finally, the capacity to influence is not evenly distributed – access to key nodes of power (economic or political) being the lever here. On the whole, though, and on average, a given firm is not influential (Russo, 1992). The literature also points to another potent ideal-type – ‘‘institutional selection.’’ The driving principle, there, is the network. The structure of the network, position in the network, status-ordering indicators and fit with

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social, institutional, and cultural norms and values condition a firm’s survival and performance (Zukin & DiMaggio, 1990; Baum & Oliver, 1992; Uzzi, 1999; Kogut & Walker, 2001). Selection criteria are contextual and may change through time. They depend on institutional norms and dominant ideological and cultural paradigms (Fligstein, 1990; Fiss & Zajac, 2004; Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003; Zajac & Westphal, 2004; Simmons & Elkins, 2004). The key outcome for selected firms is legitimacy. Legitimate firms will survive – and they could be at the very same time quite inefficient in market or technological terms, i.e., strong survivors but weak competitors (Barnett, 1997). The process of evolution as a whole is, in this perspective coevolutionary – shaped by reciprocal interactions and influences between firms and institutions (Lewin & Volberda, 1999).1 The role of firms in the selection process is unevenly distributed and could potentially be quite strong. The structure and nature of networks and status-ordering indicators depend in part on firms themselves, particularly in their interaction with specific agencies (e.g., professional associations, accreditation agencies, administrative bodies, lobbyists). Under institutional selection, the possibility for given actors or firms to influence the criteria of selection does exist through an involvement in the elaboration of rules, norms, and standards (Zucker, 1988; Fligstein, 2001; Garud, Jain, & Kumaraswamy, 2002; Rao et al., 2003; Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006).

Embedded Rationalities The patterning of social life reveals not only the aggregation of individual and organizational behaviors but also the presence of structuring institutions. This, essentially, is the idea behind the concept of ‘‘embeddedness’’ (Weber, 1978; Granovetter, 1985; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). Building upon the notion of embeddedness, we define ‘‘embedded rationalities’’ as the background frames, the localized lenses through which individual and collective actors see the world. For readers familiar with Foucault’s work, the idea of ‘‘embedded rationalities’’ proposed here is quite close to Foucault’s concept of ‘‘episteme’’ – i.e., ‘‘the unconscious of knowledge, a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist’’ and more generally of the actors themselves (Foucault, 1994). This idea finds further convincing expression in Frank Dobbin’s work (see also Djelic, 1998; Kogut & Walker, 2001; Hall & Soskice, 2001; Guille`n, 2002). Dobbin (1994) argues that the development of railways in the United States, Britain, and France during the 19th century was nationally specific and that the process reflected in each

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case a unique political and industrial culture only visible from an outsider’s standpoint. Those national political and industrial cultures are, in Dobbin’s account, stable and long-lasting frames, shaping institutional arrangements and policies in those three countries over the long term. The conclusion Dobbin reaches is that there can be several efficient ways to organize a given industry, contingent upon the embedding national culture or, as we would call it here, contingent on the ‘‘embedded rationality.’’ In time, when embedded rationalities stabilize, they have a tendency to become transparent and invisible to the actors involved. The following account of transformations in the American railway industry nicely illustrates the idea that contextual frames can become taken for granted and harden, as it were, into perceived ‘‘natural’’ or extra-social laws: When federal law encouraged price fixing, analysts had dubbed the rail industry ‘naturally cooperative’. Yet, after federal law outlawed cartels and enforced price competition, leading railroads to merge to escape rate wars, analysts dubbed the industry ‘naturally monopolistic’. Instead of drawing the lesson that government anticartel law made merger a sensible business strategy, analysts drew the lesson that economic laws produced antitrust legislation and competitive pricing alike. In short, by beginning with the premise that policy choices are driven by extra-social economic laws, analysts naturalized policies and hence presumed that they did not need to be explained (Dobbin, 1995, pp. 278–279).

While embedded rationalities tend to be quite stable and resilient, they are not, naturally, completely impervious to change. Change can be envisioned as radical rupture at breaking points or moments of crisis, often in the face of external shocks (Djelic, 1998; Hanson, 1998; Mahoney, 2000). More recent contributions, though, tend to suggest that change of embedded rationalities can also be of a more gradual but transformative kind, as it were a partly endogenous logic (for a more systematic review see Djelic & Quack, 2007). Certain studies suggest the importance of interpretation (Fligstein, 1990; Campbell, 2004) or ‘‘mindful deviation’’ (Garud & Karnoe, 2001) as a mechanism opening up the possibility for change. Other contributions point to the importance of the ‘‘diffusion’’ of embedded rationalities and to associated processes of translation, adaptation, and hybridization (Jacoby, 2000; Campbell & Pedersen, 2001; Djelic, 2006). Others still emphasize the fact that several embedded rationalities, including contradictory ones, can coexist in a particular institutional space (Crouch & Farrell, 2002; Schneiberg, 2007). At any point in time, some may be active and others dormant, but subtle external or internal pressures may lead to a rebalancing (Morgan & Quack, 2005). On the whole, we propose that embedded rationalities are more likely to change through an historical sequence of

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multiple junctures that cannot be fully anticipated, reflecting a combination of external and internal pressures, rather than through a major, externally driven jolt or crisis (Djelic & Quack, 2007). Organizational selection reflects at a particular point in time and space dominant embedded rationalities. For us, selection is a mechanism that legitimizes organizational demise or success (Durand, 2006). Hence, to understand the meaning of firm performance and survival in a particular context, we need to make explicit which type of selection pattern is effective and which embedded rationality prevails. In a purely theoretical endeavor, we characterize here the embedded rationalities that correspond to each of the three selection patterns – empirical illustration will follow in the next section. Darwinian selection, we propose, fits with a liberal–conservative embedded rationality where selection (1) is thought of as a natural principle (2) that promotes economic efficiency and (3) responds to a vision of natural, predetermined, and gradual progress. Strategic selection corresponds to an interventionist embedded rationality where (1) selection abides by principles enforced by powerful actors whose authority and legitimacy are accepted, (2) serves particular if not particularistic interests, and (3) needs to be counterbalanced by more or less potent counter-powers. Institutional selection, finally, points to a normative embedded rationality where selection (1) emanates from collective frames, (2) defends an entrenched sharing of economic surplus reflecting past negotiations and power plays, and (3) is enacted through powerful and stable institutions that embody norms for organizational survival. These different rationalities can coexist; although, depending on eras and areas, one type of embedded rationality might prevail over others.

Some Theoretical Explorations If we accept the diversity of selection patterns and connect it to a variability of embedded rationalities, then this implies that the outcomes of organizational selection are contextual and contingent. We explore, theoretically, three different and consequential outcomes in turn – firm performance, the nature of entrepreneurship, and the nature of competition. With respect to firm performance, different selection patterns will have a different effect. In Darwinian selection, many entrepreneurial ventures are launched and succumb rapidly to the liability of newness. The relative advantage of firms is temporary, individual firms cannot influence the selection criteria and abnormal returns will exist but tend to be not

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sustainable. As a consequence, the variance of performance between firms could be quite high but the observed mean of performance should be relatively low. In strategic selection, the role of powerful agents is critical and it has an impact on industry structure. In general, it will favor a situation where, in a given industry, a small number of major players (and at the extreme a single national champion) coexist with a plethora of small and dependent firms. Major players act as buffers for smaller companies (often suppliers and co-contractors) with unequal performance. Smaller firms survive because a few major companies absorb the cost differentials relative to more competitive suppliers. Altogether, because of this socially accepted counterbalancing mechanism of price and profit regulation, the observable mean of firm performance should be moderately high and variance should be low. In institutional selection, firms may have a significant influence on selection criteria, depending on their structural position and their political and social legitimacy. Oligopolistic situations are likely to correspond to this selection pattern, where a few very large firms compete for leadership. There is no accepted industry leader and members of the oligopoly vie for the position, bringing about instability for their network of suppliers and allies. Under institutional selection, firm performance is likely to be higher on average than under other selection patterns owing to the oligopolistic form of competition. At the same time, firm performance will also reflect the nature – and in particular the stability – of the firm network. Therefore, the variance of firm performance is likely to be fairly high. Not only do selection patterns affect firm performance, they also impact upon the nature of entrepreneurship. A Darwinian selection pattern is conducive to a traditional form of entrepreneurship – namely technological or market entrepreneurship (Shane & Venkataraman, 2001). In this context, those who are the first to recognize and seize technological or market opportunities will strongly benefit. A strategic selection pattern calls for a different type of entrepreneurial resource to outperform competition. Political entrepreneurship is likely there to be more appropriate. Political entrepreneurship seeks to influence selection criteria, through cliques and clans and access to political decision makers (Murtha & Lenway, 1994; Russo, 1992). Finally, an institutional selection pattern calls for cultural and institutional entrepreneurship. Cultural entrepreneurship suggests the infusion of strategies and business propositions with meanings and ‘‘stories’’ that resonate with the broader cultural environment (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001). Institutional entrepreneurship suggests that companies find ways to intervene in the development of new rules and norms for the competitive game (Garud et al., 2002; Hardy & Maguire, 2008).

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Finally, the diversity of selection patterns also reflects upon the nature of competition – and more particularly upon the time dimensions associated with competition. Prior research has pointed at the critical effect of time in strategy research, through a focus on timescales and temporal intervals (Zaheer, Albert, & Zaheer, 1999), on causal sequence and influence (Mitchell & James, 2001), or on statistical validity in longitudinal analyses (Isaac & Griffin, 1989). In particular, Isaac and Griffin (1989), Zucker (1989), and Zaheer et al. (1999) remark that timescales matter as much as levels of analysis and distinguish micro- and macro timescales. Reflecting on this matter from our genealogical perspective would seem to bolster this claim. In particular, we propose that the pace and timescale stability prevailing among competitors are closely dependent on selection patterns. A gradual but continuous process of change in Darwinian selection means that the pace of change in this selection pattern is rapid. But the short-lived competitive advantages associated with Darwinian selection induce high variability both at micro- and macro timescales – strong in the morning, dead in the evening. The situation is different when strategic selection predominates. Changes are more observable at the macro level through visible industrial reorganization that sets the rhythm of competition. At the microscale level, we find more stability within the circle of smaller competitors. Finally, institutional selection means a slower pace of change because of the coevolutionary process implied by successive rounds of negotiation and network influences. Oligopolistic players defend their position through lobbying activities and social intervention and, in the process, protect themselves from failure. Macroscale time variability is therefore limited. At the same time, the increasing density of legitimacy pressure and the multiplication of actors there (watchdog associations, NGOs, accreditation bodies, standardizers, rating agencies, and other third parties) generates intense activity. Microscale time variability could therefore be quite high.

Methods for a Conceptual Genealogy Our objective in this chapter is to problematize the concept of selection and to address in particular the three issues outlined in the introduction – lack of contextualization, expected consequences of selection, and level of analysis. With this objective in mind, we engage in conceptual genealogy, tracing the changing understandings of the word ‘‘selection,’’ and their embeddedness in different contexts. Conceptual genealogy is a ‘‘history of interpretations, the history of words, ideals and metaphysical concepts’’ (Foucault, 1984,

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pp. 91–93). The rationale behind such an approach is the conviction that social activity is contextual. A naturalistic and ahistorical use of concepts places major limits, we suggest, on our understanding of social reality, with problems such as theoretical inadequacy, confusion in analysis, and dubious validity of the concepts used. A deeper understanding ‘‘presupposes knowledge (y) about the alternative interpretations of concepts that the historical agents had in their hands’’ (Palonen, 2002). Conceptual genealogy has been gaining ground in social sciences in general, as a counterweight to the dominance of normative and naturalistic approaches and methods (Skinner, 2002; Koselleck, 2002; Palonen, 2002). Conceptual genealogy implies the use of historical analysis as a methodological tool. There is still today a profound epistemological gap between historians on the one hand and organization and strategy scholars on the other (see also Suddaby, Foster, & Trank, 2010). Historians would reproach strategy and organization scholars for their disregard of ‘‘differences in culture or time’’, for ‘‘squeezing phenomena into rigid categories and to top it all’’ for ‘‘declar(ing) these activities as scientific’’ (Kieser, 1994, p. 612). Strategy and organization scholars in turn ‘‘see historians as myopic fact collectors without a method, the vagueness of their data matched only by their incapacity to analyse them’’ (Kieser, 1994, p. 612). Such a gap is detrimental to a more accurate understanding of organizational situations that are unique and historically path dependent but still can be framed in theoretical causal chains (Schneiberg, 2007; Durand & Vaara, 2009). The good news is that such a weakness has been well diagnosed and that calls for bridging this gap are becoming louder and clearer (Isaac & Griffin, 1989; Kieser, 1994; Clark & Rowlinson, 2004; U¨sdiken & Kieser, 2004; Booth & Rowlinson, 2006). There are different ways to try and propose a dialogue – i.e., to reconcile an attention to historical complexity with the search for theoretical regularities. The one we have chosen here is to work through a combination of ‘‘ideal-types’’ (the selection patterns and embedded rationalities) and case comparison (Weber, 1978). We naturally do not pretend to historical exhaustiveness but we choose a meaningful and telling comparison (Chandler, 1962; Foucault, 1994; Yin, 2002; Schneiberg & Clemens, 2006). We draw our empirical material from two country cases – France and the United States – because they epitomize two strikingly different systems of economic action and organization (Whitley, 1999, Hall & Soskice, 2001) and as such make for a good and more powerful comparative set (Skocpol & Sommers, 1980, p. 183). We do not fall into historical anecdotes but we are not deductive either. We describe briefly the ideological and institutional contexts in both countries and argue that those influenced the particular

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meanings that came to be attached to the concept of selection in each case as well as the associated outcomes.

SELECTION IN FRANCE AND IN THE UNITED STATES: AN HISTORICAL FORAY France and the United States are often depicted and represented in the literature as constituting distant alternatives with respect to principles of economic action and organization (Dobbin, 1994; Djelic, 1998; Whitley, 1999). On a number of dimensions, this can easily be documented. At the same time, an historical foray into the ‘‘variation’’ of ‘‘selection’’ in both countries points to a more messy picture. In each of the two country cases, we find variability and variation, through time, in selection patterns. We also find that projection at the level of discourse has sometimes been singularly decoupled from what happened in reality with respect to selection patterns. In this section, we explore this complexity. France and the Dominance of Strategic Selection Colbertism, or high-handed political fiat in economic affairs, can easily be associated with the strategic selection pattern as we have defined it earlier in this chapter. Unmistakably, Colbertism has profound roots in France. Still, a foray into French economic history shows that the dominance of this selection pattern was at times contested. This was true, for example, between 1774 and 1776 when Turgot was Minister of Louis XVI and pushed forward the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was also true both at the end of the 19th century and after World War I, when laissez faire, economic liberalism, and Darwinian selection tended to dominate. Colbertism again came to be contested in the 1990s and early 2000s when the neoliberal wave put its mark on France as on many other countries (Campbell & Pedersen, 2001; Hancke´, 2002; Djelic & Amdam, 2007; Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009). The 2008–2009 crisis clearly dealt a blow to this latest offensive of liberalism and Darwinian selection. In short, and over the long period, Colbertism seems to have had the upper hand in France. French Physiocrats as Local Champions of Darwinian Selection The term ‘‘Physiocracy’’ means ‘‘government of nature’’ and refers to an intellectual school that flourished in France during the 18th century.

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The Physiocrats believed and claimed that the only source of wealth for a nation lay in its agricultural production. Franc- ois Quesnay, the main figure of that school of thought, repeatedly argued that agricultural activity was the only productive activity. The reasoning was that only the earth could really produce value and surplus – in the sense of producing something new where there had been nothing. Coupled with this vision of an agricultural powerhouse driving national wealth was a set of conditions that would smooth the process and stimulate wealth creation. A starting point was the principle that each individual strove to maximize her own satisfaction with a minimal amount of trouble and effort. From this understanding of ‘‘human nature,’’ the Physiocrats derived the doctrine of Natural Harmony. They claimed that the aggregate maximization of individual satisfaction would necessarily and naturally mean a maximization of satisfaction for the collective and for society as a whole. And they called for a reduction if not disappearance of what they saw as possible impediments to the maximization of individual and hence collective satisfaction. In that context, they argued for laissez faire and free trade, championing the removal of barriers to exchange and trade. They extolled competition and denounced corporations as well as unjustified situations of monopoly. Unsurprisingly, Adam Smith held the Physiocrats in high esteem. There is a fair degree of compatibility between the Doctrine de L’Harmonie Universelle and Adam Smith’s reliance on the invisible hand of the market. Hence, classical economic ideas coupled with an understanding of organizational selection as a natural principle that promotes economic efficiency were available in France from the 18th century on (see also Powell et al., 2010). What is more, they were available as homegrown tradition, not as a mere product of intellectual importation. However, in their institutional struggle against mercantilism and over the long period, the Physiocrats and later on the liberals and the neoliberals were dwarfed in France. Altogether, they failed to take over, secure or create those institutional hubs that could have stabilized, perpetuated, and diffused their theoretical system. Darwinian selection, and its corresponding liberal–conservative embedded rationality, were never lastingly installed as a consequence. A Dominant Paradigm – Colbertism and High-Handed Fiat Jean-Baptiste Colbert became Finance Minister of Louis XIV in 1661 and in that function he set a path that would structure for many years, and even centuries, economic development in France. Colbertism was historically the archetype of French mercantilism. Colbert and his central administration

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encouraged the multiplication of manufactures that sold high value-added goods and thus contributed to the inflow of precious metals. The French administration granted a number of privileges such as exclusivity over a market for a given period of time. It gave seed capital to initiatives it sought to encourage. The Colbertist administration stimulated national industry through control of foreign trade, subsidies to French exporters, and high tariffs on foreign goods. Colbert also barred foreign trade in French colonies, keeping the latter as exclusive purveyors of raw materials for French firms and reserved markets for French goods. Some of the features of early Colbertism would influence, time and again, French economic policy in the following centuries. The Second Empire (1852–1870) was another period of high-handed fiat and strong political monitoring of the economy. France built its railways then, launched a largescale industrialization process, and modernized its banking system – all under strong impulse and direct control of the sovereign state. The interdependence between the polity and the economy has clearly been a lasting and highly structuring feature of French political economy, characteristic of early Colbertism, the Second Empire or even more recently of the period of economic development that followed World War II well into the late 1980s (Djelic, 1998).2 Most of the time, this interplay has meant in fact partial subservience of the economic sphere to bigger and wider goals – related to state building and national development.

France and the Practice of Strategic Selection All in all, principles of economic action have had more to do over the past three centuries in France with Colbertism than with physiocratic inspiration. In Colbertism, selection is not a natural and gradual process brought about through competition – as is the case with Darwinian selection. Nor should it play at the micro level since particular individuals and organizations have only partial and distorted visions and interests. Instead, central power emerges as the main driving principle of selection; we can talk of ‘‘highhanded fiat.’’ The hand exists and it is the highly visible hand of the polity – even if there can be sometimes delegation at the industry or at a local or regional level. This central polity should establish and guarantee order, organization, and rational discipline within its territory. It should direct and supervise the combination of individual efforts so as to ensure a better position on the international scale for the collective being as a whole, i.e., the nation. Competition can be envisioned but merely as a tool to be used sparingly to stimulate production and efficiency in particular situations.

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This tool should remain under the full control of either an interventionist central power or of corporatist and professional bodies. From the mid-18th century, French industries have been structured and protected by various forms of professional or industrial arrangements. Guilds were key players in the early part of the period. They slowly gave way in time and ententes or loose cartels took over, particularly after 1870. Cartels were used to stabilize relationships between members of an industry. The idea was to prevent destructive struggles and shelter firms from rapid or radical technological shifts. Through industry-wide agreements, prices were kept at a level where less efficient firms survived and more efficient ones prospered, enjoying higher profits than could have been possible in a competitive context. Auguste Detoeuf, a leader of the French business community before World War II and Chairman of the large French electrical company, Alstom was clear about it: Agreements and cartels, because they protect us from the destructive impact of financial concentration, allow small and medium-sized firms to survive. Now, it is thanks to and through small and medium-sized companies that economic and social relations remain reasonable and are prevented from becoming unbearable and inhuman (quoted in Dussauze, 1938, p. 110).

In sum, France has long epitomized a notion of selection that fits the ‘‘strategic selection’’ ideal-type presented above.

From Darwinian to Institutional Selection in the United States On the other side of the Atlantic, in the dynamic New World of the 19th century, things were different. There, the idea of free competition and Darwinian selection were embraced and valued as powerful mechanisms of change, social fluidity, and progress. The importation of economic laissez faire to the United States came together with a fascination for evolutionary theories, popularized by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. Soon, however, the American society had to deal with the potentially disruptive or even destructive fallouts of Darwinian selection. The result, in time, was the construction in the United States of a ‘‘workable’’ practice of competition that amounted to what we have defined above as ‘‘institutional selection’’ (Sklar, 1988). Darwinian selection was still structuring part of the discourse and theory but in practice, Darwinian selection had been tamed and largely displaced by institutional selection (Djelic, 1998).

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Darwinian Selection and its Unanticipated Consequences During the second half of the 19th century, Herbert Spencer promoted in Europe and diffused in the United States the ideas of both perpetual adaptation and survival of the fittest. Spencer defended a view where ongoing differentiation and specialization of an entity coincides with the development of the environment that surrounds it. Spencer’s ‘‘theory of inevitable progress’’ had quite a significant impact in the United States. According to Spencer, progress was the necessary outcome of evolution as long as the natural process of evolution was left full and free rein. Spencer identified the struggle for survival as the main mechanism around which this natural process articulated (Haines, 1988). And this struggle for survival was often associated, combined, and conflated in his writings and those of his followers with the classical economists’ understanding of competition (Hodgson, 1993; Durand, 2006). The outcome of this mechanism was that, ultimately, the fittest were being selected while the maladaptive were eliminated over time. The Spencero–Darwinian arguments resonated with the conditions that characterized the United States after the civil war. This was a time of upheaval, turbulence, transformations, and unpredictable developments where the old rules were inadequate and the new ones still to be invented (Josephson, 1932; Kolko, 1963; Chernow, 1990). Spencer’s ideas hence became the intellectual foundation for a ‘‘social Darwinist’’ ideology that seduced American ‘‘Robber Barons.’’ The ‘‘Robber Barons’’ were that generation of businessmen, who thrived initially on the chaotic conditions associated with the American civil war and then established firmly their power and legitimacy during the period of corporate reinvention of American capitalism, at the end of the 19th century (Sklar, 1988; Roy, 1997; Djelic, 1998; Perrow, 2002). The evolutionary argument seemed to give legitimacy to violent and rapacious behavior, as necessary stages leading to progress through struggle. The elimination of the ‘‘weak’’ and the institutionalization of a hierarchical and unequal division of labor were also justified in this way. Soon, however, the victims of Robber Barons’ capitalism – smaller business owners, farmers in particular, and civil society in general – became increasingly vocal. Channelled through the Populist movement (Goodwyn, 1976), their discontent targeted rapacious and violent practices but also the somewhat paradoxical consequences of ‘‘free competition’’ – the rapid emergence and constitution of larger and larger aggregates of economic power (see also Powell et al., 2010). Indeed, the ‘‘elimination of the weak’’ meant that the strong became stronger. But the Robber Barons themselves

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became dissatisfied in time with systematic chaos and struggle for survival in a free-for-all context. The winners of today were likely to be the losers of tomorrow – strong in the morning, dead in the evening. The consequence was that they turned to cooperation and collusion in an attempt to stabilize their environment. The 1870s and 1880s were therefore characterized by a proliferation of loose networks and agreements in the form of cartels, pools or trusts which peaked by 1890 (McCraw, 1984; Chandler, 1990; Fligstein, 1990). On the whole, those cartels proved to be relatively fragile constructions. They often failed and failure would generally be followed by another wave of ruinous competition and a new attempt at cartelization. By the late 1880s, this complex and somewhat paradoxical situation had turned the issues of competition and cartelization into real political and social debates in the United States. Regulating Competition: The Sherman Act and its Unintended Consequences The enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act, in 1890, was a direct outcome of this period of turmoil and a reaction to the significant concentration of power of cartels and trusts. The initial intent of most congressmen, partly under pressure from the strong movement stemming from civil society, had been to prohibit all forms of interfirm collaboration so as to reestablish the conditions for competition and Darwinian selection (Peritz, 1996). However, the 1890 final version of the Sherman Act regarded as unlawful those ‘‘contracts or combinations in restraint of trade or commerce’’ (Section 1, outlining what came to be known as ‘‘the commerce clause’’). In a series of cases, the Supreme Court applied the commerce clause when violations occurred between states – concentration of power within a given state did not fall under its ruling. Hence, as long as cartels, trusts, and other loose interfirm networks had an impact on interstate commerce, they were outlawed under the Sherman Act (amounting to 85% of 322 cases during the 1890–1930 period). Somewhat unexpectedly, tight combinations and mergers were able to escape regulation under the Sherman Act provided they belonged to a given state. American states, starting with New Jersey in 1889, amended their corporate charter to allow unrestricted intercorporate stock ownership. New Jersey had become the first state to allow a corporation to be created for the sole purpose of owning stock in other corporations; other states followed rapidly (Roy, 1997). The holding company, as this device came to be known, became a powerful legal tool through which industries could organize and check competition. Between 1895 and 1904, 300 firms per year on average entered mergers and incorporated into holding companies – frequently in New Jersey

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(Parker-Gwin & Roy, 1996; Roy, 1997). Simultaneously, loose interfirm networks were rapidly disappearing from the American industrial scene (McCraw, 1984; Chandler, 1990). In an ironic twist of history, the fight for competition in America had led in an indirect and partly unexpected manner to the emergence of large, integrated firms. An institutional context relatively unfavorable to cartelization turned out to be fertile ground for oligopolies (Thorelli, 1954; Bittlingmayer, 1985; Fligstein, 1990; Dobbin, 1994; Djelic, 1998). In the process, the concepts of competition and selection were reinvented. Neoclassical competition and Darwinian selection remained dominant ideological frames of mind in the United States, shaping discourse and theory. On the ground, though, and in practice, the words ‘‘competition’’ and ‘‘selection’’ came to refer to a very different reality. The ‘‘workable’’ concept of competition that emerged in that country around the turn of the 20th century was shaped and defined in great part by the antitrust legislation and its particular interpretation and implementation. Competition in the United States became associated with oligopolistic markets and not with the classical or neoclassical multi-actor markets. A small number of big players became the rule in most industries. Each one of those players could be big enough to realize economies of scale and scope – which, de facto, stemmed at least in part from control over a big market share. The interactions, however, among those big players or between them and more marginal ones, were strictly and systematically monitored under the American antitrust regime – with little if any room left for collusion or other forms of ‘‘anticompetitive’’ or predatory practices. The nature of selection, as a consequence, was affected: the Darwinian selection pattern was significantly tamed in practice by institutional rules and logics.

Learning from the Cases and Their Comparison From the French case, we learn that Darwinian selection historically had proponents in France. It was debated and presented as an alternative to a Colbertist conception of economic development. All in all, though, Darwinian selection remained marginal in France and had little impact on policy making. Economic affairs were deemed too important to be left to market logics, i.e., to the control of uncoordinated individuals. Order and coordination, direction and discipline came through powerful actors who defined the criteria and processes of selection. Concretely, powerful actors were a mix of guilds, cartels, and associations on the one hand, a central

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polity on the other. From such a perspective, selection emerged as a strategic process leading to exemplarity in the form of a ‘‘national project,’’ ‘‘national champions,’’ or the defense of ‘‘national interests’’ – sometimes perverted into the preservation of national elites (Hancke´, 2002). The French case is on the whole quite representative of the ‘‘strategic selection’’ pattern, while not exclusively associated with it. Entrepreneurship, in this context, has been at least in part of the political kind. The economic performance of national champions tends to be, on average, moderate to high and the variance of intra-industry firm performance is limited by the existence of ententes, interlocks, and collusion. Over time, and with political reorientation, macroscale variability can be quite significant but this is generally associated with microscale stability as the industrial and economic fabric of the nation should be protected. In the American case, Darwinian selection had a strong impact as an idea from the 19th century on. Parts of the business community used the idea that progress should naturally emerge from unfettered competition to legitimize actions and decisions that could be harmful to others or to the community (Perrow, 2002). In time, this led in fact to the creation of strong imbalances of power on the market. And, by the late 1880s, federal authorities used the idea that unfettered competition meant progress to justify state intervention and regulation with a view to reestablishing and preserving the conditions for free competition and Darwinian selection. Ironically, the interplay between this latter project and the American institutional setting had rather unintended consequences. It stimulated if not triggered the first large-scale merger movement, leading in time to the reorganization of most American industries as oligopolies (Sklar, 1988; Djelic, 1998). In the background, the concept of Darwinian selection remained dominant in the normative discourse – of economists, regulators, and legislators or even lay persons. The reality, however, and the practice both with respect to economic action and regulation were significantly decoupled from that discourse. Oligopolistic markets do not create the conditions for free competition and Darwinian selection. Rather, in oligopolistic markets, organizations survive when they create dense ties with their institutional environments, adapting to its demands and obtaining social and political endorsement. Selection, there, is of the institutional kind. While technological and market entrepreneurship was better suited to the first period, institutional selection calls for a form of entrepreneurship that is more cultural and institutional. Darwinian selection in the period before regulation was associated with low on average and highly variable firm performance. Instability, partly as a consequence, became unbearable and meant extremely high microscale and

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macroscale variability. Once regulation and institutional selection set in, firm performance stabilized at higher levels. Intra-industry microscale variability remained significant but there was much greater stability at the macroscale level.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Drawing on the cases and on what we can learn from each of them as well as from their comparison, we now turn to the three issues outlined in the introduction – the lack of contextualization of selection, the expected consequences of selection, and the level of analysis. We then discuss a number of theoretical implications while pointing also to some consequences for empirical research. Contributing to Three Issues First, putting forward the idea of variable selection patterns and embedded rationalities allows us to better integrate the concept of selection into its geographical and historical context. Rather than an immutable natural law, selection appears to be a contextual and dynamic mechanism. Darwinian selection is one pattern of selection, useful for theoretical reflection and empirical simulation but we identify (at least) two other patterns of selection. Different patterns of selection correspond to different embedded rationalities that legitimize organizational demise and success. An embedded rationality can become transparent and in a sense invisible to actors themselves. At the same time, in a given context, actors will not necessarily all share the same embedded rationality (Schneiberg, 2007; see the interesting works on business groups and the different consequences for performance, e.g., Khanna & Yafeh, 2007). Second, we propose that the two notions of ‘‘selection patterns’’ and ‘‘embedded rationalities’’ pave the way for a genealogical perspective on organizational selection and its consequences. The literature points to seemingly contradictory and apparently incompatible consequences, where selection could lead either to organizational isomorphism or to speciation and variance. For instance, the expansion across the world of Americantype forms of corporate governance creates a powerful isomorphic pressure. A closer look, though, shows that these models tend to be adopted and translated in somewhat different ways in different countries (Djelic, 1998; Kogut, Walker, & Anand, 2002; Fiss & Zajac, 2004; see also

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Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). This can certainly be connected and in fact accounted for by the existence and predominance in those different countries of various selection patterns. Depending on which embedded rationality prevails in a particular context (liberal–conservative, interventionist, or normative), organizational variation and organizational selection will take different forms. Diffusion of practices could be serendipitous, hierarchical, or status-laden. And as we stated earlier, performance characteristics, entrepreneurship types, and time efficacy could differ. A genealogical and contextual perspective on selection should make it possible to account for such diversity of consequences – not by adjusting a one-fits-all notion of selection but by tracing the historical and social-cultural contingency of models of organizational survival and demise. Third, this chapter makes a contribution to debates on levels of analysis. Developing a multilevel perspective on selection requires going beyond traditional conceptions of vertically nested levels (resources, firms, and populations). To deploy such perspectives, we propose, there is a need to integrate a focus on those actors that shape the embedding context in which bundles of resources, firms and industries, or populations set themselves. Legitimating agencies, for example, professions or communities are likely to impact upon the evolution of embedded rationalities and, hence, ultimately also on organizational selection. Those kinds of actors are clear mechanisms for bridging the various levels across which selection plays out. Legitimating agencies – like accreditation agencies or standardization bodies for instance – imprint markers and signals unto organizations and impact, as a consequence, selection processes and outcomes (Casile & Davis-Blake, 2002; Durand & McGuire, 2005). Professions as trans-organizational groups (increasingly transnational) define logics and representations that contribute to define selection criteria. Very often, professions become involved and inscribed within broader normative and regulatory settings (Lounsbury, 2002; Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). Finally, communities bring together under various umbrellas individuals, groups, and organizations that share common cognitive and normative values and/or common projects (Jones, 1995; Djelic & Quack, 2010). Communities can lead to or generate social movements; they might also imply identity clashes, a redefinition of the social compact, and induce behavioral but also cognitive and even ethical changes (Durand, Rao, & Monin, 2007; Guthrie & Durand, 2008; Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009; Djelic & Quack, 2010). Overall, legitimating agencies, professions, or communities deserve our attention because they play an increasing part in framing the rationalities that apply in a given context. These transversal and bridging mechanisms complement a more classical

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approach to nested levels of selection and allow for a better understanding of the selection process and its impact on organizational performance.

Theoretical Implications The genealogical and contextual perspective on selection that we propose here questions at least three theories familiar to strategy scholars: the resource-based view, population ecology, and institutional theory. We can neither review in depth each theory and its different variants nor study all implications. We limit ourselves to stressing critical implications in each case. Resource-Based View: Selection and the Situatedness of Resources An important assumption of the Resource-Based-View (RBV) is that strategic resources, through their intrinsic properties, turn into a comparative advantage for the organization that owns those resources. Rarity, inimitability, and non-transferability are examples of resource properties. Rents (abnormal profits) accrue to companies possessing resources endowed with these properties. Two questions handicap today the RBV and our genealogical approach to selection could help. Debates are ongoing to determine whether competitive advantage is logically and ontologically distinct and distinguishable from resources, spreading a suspicion of tautology damageable to RBV (Powell, 2001; Durand, 2002; Durand & Vaara, 2009; Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). Next, by concentrating its efforts on an intraorganizational level of analysis, RBV could well downplay the role of structures on strategic advantage and performance. First, our approach makes it possible to disconnect in part the value of resources from their inherent properties and characteristics. In RBV-like competition, what is important is not so much resources as their properties (Durand & Vaara, 2009). We contend that the assumption relating resource ownership causally to superior performance is flawed. For instance, GE has mastery in financing complex multibillion projects and P&G possesses marketing maestria. Another firm with similar resources may not yield abnormal returns because selection patterns may not retain the properties that make these resources and capabilities distinctive. Second, the value of these properties is not evenly distributed across the world. Political, cultural, sociological determinants encode and constrain the experience of competition in different markets (see Suddaby et al., 2010). To understand why immense resources (GE’s capital resources and P&G’s marketing knowledge) fail in given contexts (for instance, the failure of GE’s

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acquisition of Honeywell in Europe in 2001), one must realize that distinct embedded rationalities buttress different selection patterns – hence we suggest a situatedness approach to resources. From this perspective, two research paths look promising for RBV. First, RBV scholars should think about the operationalization of resource properties (rareness, transferability, imitability, and so forth) in connection with selection patterns. Second, we need more studies testing how a firm that controls specific resources can resist selection pressures in different environments with distinct types of selection patterns (e.g., across national boundaries). Population Ecology in International Contexts Our approach also has implications for research within the population ecology tradition. A strong question around population ecology bears on the use of demographic trends as proxies for competition and legitimacy (Zucker, 1989; Isaac & Griffin, 1989; Baum & Powell, 1995). By contextualizing the selection patterns that prevail in a region or another, population ecologists could better describe selection pressures and the influence of legitimacy and competition and refine the explanation they provide of firm survival. This is applicable at the state level in the United States (Schneiberg, 2007) but may be even more relevant for international studies. Indeed, in other geographic regions, like Europe, the Middle-East, or Asia, the assumption of a common selection pattern allowing observers to assume time and space commensurability does not hold long (Dobbin, 1994; Baum & Powell, 1995). For instance, few studies compare populations internationally and how the development of a population in one country affects legitimacy and competition as well as founding and disbanding rates in other countries.

Institutional Theory and Hybridized Legitimacies Finally, institutional theory may find interest in the genealogical approach to selection presented here. For a long time, institutionalists have uncovered the mechanisms that contribute to organizational isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). More recently, the question of institutional change has become predominant and institutional theory has dealt with this in part through the concept of ‘‘institutional entrepreneurship’’ (Hardy & Maguire, 2008; Greenwood, Oliver, Suddaby, & Sahlin-Andersson, 2008). Our concept of selection patterns could help refine the notion of institutional entrepreneurship. In fact, our approach suggests that the type of entrepreneurship most likely to apply is closely connected to selection patterns and embedded

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rationalities. Entrepreneurship may have to be more market and technologyoriented under a Darwinian selection pattern. It should probably be more political under a strategic selection pattern and more institutional or cultural only in those environments that are characterized by an institutional selection pattern. Our perspective on selection also points to a promising avenue for theoretical exploration in institutional research. An important frontier today for institutional theory is to approach the situations of encounter and interface between different institutional logics. This preoccupation runs parallel to our questions here on what happens at the points of interface between different selection patterns and different embedded rationalities. We need to provide theoretical accounts of those situations of dissonant encounters. Some prior works have begun exploring these themes (Ingram & Simons, 2000; Marquis & Lounsbury, 2007). Will one selection pattern prevail over the other – and in this case which one and through which process? Will there be transformation and hybridization of selection patterns through the process of encounter? Those are all questions triggered by the perspective we adopt in this essay. We suggest that they are also highly relevant paths to explore today for institutional theory.

Implications for Empirical Research While dominant theorizing on selection bids for universality, bringing in the two notions of ‘‘selection pattern’’ and ‘‘embedded rationality’’ makes selection a more contingent object to study. From the study presented here, we draw a first implication for empirical research. If we want to understand the process of organizational selection, we need to explore the environment in which organizations devise strategies and make decisions. Our notion of environment encompasses ideological and institutional contexts, cultural backgrounds and structural legacies all leading to variations in the meaning of apparently ‘‘universal’’ or well-shared notions, like money, wealth, or performance. As Zelizer (1989) uncovered the concealed and plural meanings of money, a generic term so common in economic and sociological studies, we strove to uncover the often-ignored assumptions contained in a term common to evolutionary studies: selection. Therefore, when conceiving of organizational evolution, we should qualify the embedded rationality (liberal–conservative, interventionist, or normative) that each group of agents extols (firms, other collective actors, and institutions). Controlling for period and region in models is not enough to really account for the shifting

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nature of the notion of selection or for the uneven influence of actors in their field. A control for the type of embedded rationality championed by particular actors should probably be introduced in our models. This operationalization requires thorough analysis of texts produced by these agents, oral, written, graphical, etc. that express their views in terms of what is legitimate to live and what is acceptable to trim. Another line of empirical research concerns the explanation of significant changes in organizational forms or legal structures (such as the development of holding companies, the legal inscription of limited liability, the diffusion of vertical integration or process outsourcing, the multiplication of independent regulatory agencies, a spreading wave of nationalization or on the contrary privatization, and so forth), the creation or disappearance of professions (e.g., key account managers, strategic planners, knowledge managers, investor relations, or risk management officers). These major changes often reveal debates, contestation, and conflicts between different embedded rationalities. The creation or suppression of institutions may also follow the swing from a dominant embedded rationality to another. Rao et al. (2003) show how (1) the degree of theorization of new logics, (2) the emergence of new professional associations, and (3) the modification of social and professional identification processes are variables that impacted the embedded rationality of chefs and customers, and gave preeminence to Nouvelle cuisine over Old cuisine among French culinary elite. They used variables such as the number of published articles in favor of Nouvelle cuisine as well as the number and affiliation of chefs participating in the new professional associations as proxies for theorizing embedded rationality and the power of activism. Finally, much work remains to be done to explain the conditions in which a shift takes place from one selection pattern to another. Our U.S. case study provided us with an occasion to comment on the shift away from the Darwinian selection pattern, but we need to understand the reverse movement – going from strategic or institutional selection patterns to a Darwinian pattern as it happens in situations of deregulation, privatization, or reinvention of an organizational field. An interesting case to look at, among many others, would be the shift toward a Darwinian selection pattern in the telecommunication industry after the Telecommunication Act (1995).

CONCLUSION AND A FEW POINTS OF CAUTION In sum, this chapter has offered a genealogical and contextual perspective on organizational selection patterns and their variation. Selection should

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not remain a black box. Even if ‘‘selection is eternal,’’ the ways in which it operates vary through time and space (Weber, 1978, p. 38). Hence, organizational selection needs to be problematized and contextualized. We argue that it is possible to account for the construction of distinct embedded rationalities that lead to different notions of organizational selection. As much as scholars must avoid the seductive assumption of selection uniformity and universality, practitioners should be aware of the embedded rationalities in which they operate, especially when going international. Through a genealogical approach of embedded rationalities and selection patterns, as well as the proposition of a multilevel perspective bridging and going beyond traditional levels of analysis, this chapter has suggested new directions for future research on the dynamics of organizational action at the resource, ecological, and institutional levels. Still, this genealogical approach to organizational selection is not exempt of limitations. We mention here only the three most important ones. First, we presented ideal-types of selection patterns described along five dimensions. Ideal-types are nice tools to reflect and theorize on reality but suffer from definition rigidity. We ask readers to accept the benefits of using ideal-types as we accept their inherent limitations. As Max Weber already showed when exploring authority principles and economic forms of organizations, reality is often more complex and hybrid (Weber, 1978, pp. 10–20). Ideal-types are conceptual shortcuts to reality; they are not always descriptive of that reality. Second, we have not looked into the articulation of the different dimensions defining selection patterns. Does one dimension prevail over others? Neither have we explored why and how one selection pattern fades and another becomes dominant. Is there, historically, a logical path and a natural ‘‘evolution of selection’’ – away from a pattern and toward another? We are aware of the need for a lot more work in those two directions. Still, we venture a perspective on these important questions. We propose that all dimensions are important in structuring and defining the selection pattern (rather than one dimension superseding all others). We also suggest that all path combinations are possible across the three selection patterns – there is no necessary or easy linear path or progression. We can probably identify situations that exhibit a move from Darwinian to strategic or institutional selection or in reverse from institutional to strategic or to a more Darwinian pattern. Third, methodologically speaking, genealogical approaches are probably not as deductive as organization or strategy scholars would expect. Genealogical studies strive to uncover the origins of some constitutive properties of our societies. Purity, holiness, madness, discipline, sexuality, money, the body, childhood, and other debated notions in contemporary

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societies have benefited from in-depth genealogical research. In our disciplines however, few studies have attempted to explore and question taken-forgranted notions and mechanisms such as selection – but also competition, profit, value, authority (see Powell et al., 2010 on ‘‘competitive advantage’’). Hence, one should not take our case analyses for what they are not. They are not direct evidence for our theoretical propositions but meaningful archival ‘‘remains’’ that help us reflect on the conditions of organizational selection.

NOTES 1. Kogut et al. (2002) propose an interesting illustration. They look at one single strategy (inter-industry diversification) in five different national contexts. They find that patterns of diversification diverge considerably across countries despite strong arguments (theoretically and empirically based on American studies and data) claiming the superiority of one type of diversification over others. The explanation is that national economic structures provide a context that conditions the emergence of structural opportunities, the coupling of agents with resources, and the orientation of acquirers’ behavior. Technological characteristics matter but do not determine diversification patterns as observed in various contexts. Interactions between industrial and institutional but also cognitive structures explain more of the observable strategic reorientation. 2. Even contemporary developments in French economic life are clear signs of this political–economic interplay – see the manner in which in 2002 the CEOs of Vivendi Universal and France Telecom were sacked and replaced and how an ‘‘economic patriotism’’ terminology has marked Jacques Chirac’s second presidential term (2002–2007). An even more recent example is the involvement of the French government, in 2009 and 2010, in redesigning French energy champions (Gaz de France and Suez, EDF, or Areva).

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EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN ORIGINS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Thomas C. Powell, Noushi Rahman and William H. Starbuck ABSTRACT This chapter explores the origins of the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and early 20th century economics. This theme, which forms the core of modern Strategic Management, was a battleground for debates about the value of abstract theory versus observations about real-life events. Intellectual genealogies, citations, and other sources show the central roles played by the University of Vienna and Harvard University. These two institutions strongly influenced the theory of monopolistic competition as well as all three modern views of competitive advantage – the industrial as expressed by Porter, the resource-based as expressed by Penrose, and the evolutionary as expressed by Schumpeter.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Voltaire, Horace Walpole, and Napoleon concurred that history is a fable agreed upon. Alas, doctrinal history in economics seems to be a variety of fables not agreed upon. – Paul Samuelson (1991, p. 570) The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 313–351 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027014

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The field of Strategic Management exists because some firms earn higher returns than others do. If this were not true, Strategic Management would have no purpose. For example, in the 40-year period beginning in 1960, Merck’s average ROA was 16.9% and Warner–Lambert’s was 8.1%. Merck’s ROA was above the industry average and higher than Warner– Lambert’s in all 40 years. Such facts invite causal explanations and Strategic Management tries to provide them. The chief explanation is competitive advantage. The theme of competitive advantage holds that firms perform differently because they have different properties that do not diffuse to competing firms. Indeed, competitive advantage is the core theme in contemporary Strategic Management, and explaining the persistence of abnormal profits lies at the heart of Strategic Management research. Other important themes – such as distinctive competence, imperfect competition, monopolistic competition, resource dependence, and strategic groups – are subthemes within the overall theme of competitive advantage. In real life, as distinguished from economic theory, competitive advantage – how to get it and how to prevent it – is a very old theme. Humans have been talking about inequality among competitors and what is now classified as monopolistic competition for thousands of years, at least. As early as 50 BCE, Romans enacted laws intended to make business competitors more nearly equal; and several centuries later, the emperors Diocletian and Zeno issued stronger laws about competition. During the medieval period, merchants throughout Europe agreed among themselves to regulate terms of trade, and governments gradually codified these agreements as national laws. People have long found ways to reward excellence or innovation through the granting of partial monopolies (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ engin/trademark/timeline/tmindex.html). Around 500 BCE, the Greek city of Sybaris granted chefs exclusive rights to prepare their prize-winning recipes. During the 1300s and 1400s, England, Florence, and Venice gave inventors exclusive rights to their inventions. When craft guilds formed in the 1400s and 1500s, they used trademarks to guarantee quality. For Anglo-Saxons, the 17th century brought debates about when monopolies were desirable or undesirable. In the legal case of Darcy v. Allin in 1602 (also called The Case of Monopolies), the court ruled that Queen Elizabeth had established an improper monopoly. The court argued that all monopolies are harmful to society because they prevent some people from practicing their trade and allow monopolists to charge high prices for low quality goods. Two decades later, the English Parliament granted monopolies to guilds and gave inventors patent protection for 14 years.

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A Turbulent Backdrop for Simple Abstractions The 18th and 19th centuries brought further change. Humans were discovering new ways to study their physical and social environments, including new empirical methods such as laboratory experimentation and statistical analysis, and they were discovering new areas to investigate, such as psychology and sociology. During the 1700s, various authors – including Johann Joachim Becher, Pierre le Pesant Boisguillebert, Richard Cantillon, and Adam Smith – contributed to public debate about factors affecting the effectiveness of economic systems (McNulty, 1967). A few years later, various authors – including Adam Ferguson, John Stuart Mill, Justus Mo¨ser, Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, and Emmanuel-Joseph Sieye`s – contributed to public debate about societal organization (Starbuck & Baumard, 2009). By 1844, Auguste Comte’s A General View of Positivism was predicting the onset of social science. However, the 18th and 19th centuries also made people and their social relations more complex. People created public schools and began to work in large factories. Literacy increased, and new technologies made it possible to undertake large-scale projects that required large organizations. The number of organizations multiplied many times. Schools began to teach engineering and business subjects, which supported rapid expansion of employment for managers. New transportation and communication systems allowed organizations to expand over large geographic areas. Economists struggled with these changes. On one side, they wanted to understand actual events, even if the events were complex and the phenomena kept changing. On the other side, mathematics demanded simplicity and some economists, especially in Britain and France, believed economic theories should rely on mathematics (Kesting & Vilks, 2004). For example, Nicolas de Condorcet, who contributed to the development of calculus, was a student and friend of Jacques Turgot, an economist. The economist Antoine Cournot studied with Lagrange, Laplace, and one of Condorcet’s students, Jean Hachette. By the mid 1800s, economists had developed formal models of competitive and monopolistic markets in equilibrium. Many British and French economists had convinced themselves that it was better to understand long-run equilibria than to try to disentangle dynamic processes, and that it was better to understand simple models of extreme market conditions than to venture into the confusion of real-life markets. A few economists did analyze the conceptual space between perfect competition and monopoly. After observing an actual duopoly in the

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production of spring water, Antoine Cournot (1838) discussed duopolists who compete on output. He showed that, in equilibrium, duopolists should produce more output at lower prices than monopolists, and less output at higher prices than perfect competitors. He inferred that as the number of producers rises, quantities and prices should converge to those in a perfectly competitive market. Most economists ignored Cournot’s theories at the time, and 36 years passed before Le´on Walras (1874) brought new attention to Cournot’s work. Later, Joseph Bertrand (1883) provided an analogous formulation for duopolists competing on price. Francis Edgeworth (1897) criticized Cournot’s and Bertrand’s solutions to the duopoly problem. He showed how price competition between two firms with capacity constraints or rising marginal costs might not have a determinate solution. Henry L. Moore (1906) criticized Cournot, Bertrand, and Edgeworth for making unrealistic assumptions in order to simplify their reasoning. He argued that unrealistic assumptions about ‘‘perfect competition’’ or ‘‘perfect monopoly’’ lead to imperfect inferences about real markets. There were also economists who doubted the usefulness of mathematical models and advocated stronger empirical foundations. In Germany, economic historicists sought to extract contemporary lessons from historical data. In Austria, Carl Menger and his students drew inferences from their perceptions of the everyday actions of business people and consumers. One can see these contending pressures in the writings of Cambridge economist Alfred Marshall, whose Principles of Economics (1890) dominated much of 20th century economics. Marshall built on classical theorists such as Smith and Mill, but also embraced a range of economic views. He acknowledged the work of French theorists, he took interest in Germans’ historical analyses and Austrians’ subjective marginalism, and he appreciated the complexities of actual business practice (Hodgson, 2005). His Principles deals with topics that are still important today, such as entrepreneurship, rents to business ability, appropriability of quasi-rents, market structures, economic geography, intertemporal choice, and moral hazards in investment banking. However, the part of Principles that dominated economics for decades was Marshall’s mathematical account of price theory. Like Marshall, most academic economists believe that progress in economic theory requires formal models underpinned by simple assumptions. So bounded, mainstream economic theory is not about real-life people or firms, but about how a price system might allocate scarce resources in a hypothetical market economy. Up to 1950, most of the attention was on perfectly competitive or monopolistic markets, and Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman cemented such theorizing for most economists.

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Samuelson’s (1947) Foundations of Economic Analysis reformulated almost all of economic theory algebraically, and soon became the required text for North American doctoral students. Friedman (1953) gave a rationale for unrealistic theoretical assumptions, arguing that assumptions should be judged not by their realism but by their ability to help economists make better predictions. Confronting Complex Realities Although formal modeling dominated 20th century economics, some economists dissented and tried to make sense of phenomena as they saw them. Indeed, the economists who influenced modern ideas about competitive advantage were mainly dissenters who argued that economic theory should pay more attention to real-life phenomena. Most of these dissenters worked at prestigious universities such as Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Heidelberg, Johns Hopkins, Leipzig, London School of Economics (LSE), Oxford, and Vienna. One well-known maverick was Thorstein Veblen (1904), who argued that all successful firms have a degree of market power arising from advertising, location, natural resources or prestige. Another was Henry L. Moore (1906, p. 215), who protested that economists make inferential errors when they apply theories of hypothetical markets to actual competition, ‘‘which, to a large extent, is in a state intermediate between perfect monopoly and perfect competition.’’ Herbert Davenport (1904, p. 45) claimed that firms make capital investments for the express purpose of gaining monopoly power: ‘‘ y the expenses of stifling competition are capital outlays, invested as the costs of a monopoly to be obtained; so also the tribute paid to escape cut-throat competition is a capital cost of production.’’ One of the first economists to use the term ‘‘competitive advantage’’ was John A. Hobson, a British dissenter who argued that profits from innovation do not revert to employees as higher wages. Rather, he said, the entrepreneur gets ‘‘a competitive advantage which is as large as he can make it, and as long as he can hold it; and in many instances the gain vastly exceeds any payment necessary to evoke the change. Some gain is necessary, but the actual gain is determined by considerations of monopoly or scarcity.’’ Hobson (1904, pp. 467, 469) continued: Is there any economic force which shall bring into the field a sufficient number of new entrepreneurs to beat down profits, and so to expand the demand for labor in general as to raise its price? y the contrary is notoriously the case y Over a large proportion of the

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field of activity, partly by preoccupation of markets, partly by superior experience in special lines of business, partly from superior access to sources of supply or to the use of capital, partly by express or tacit agreements, entrepreneurs have restricted effective competition among themselves.

Hobson’s paper articulated three propositions that survive in the contemporary theme of competitive advantage: 1. Firms are not homogeneous. They differ from each other and the differences persist due to first-mover advantages (‘‘preoccupation of markets’’), experience, innovation, access to resources, and collusion. 2. Few markets are perfectly competitive or perfectly monopolistic. Most have elements of both competition and monopoly, with differentiated firms seeking abnormal profits or rents. 3. Innovations enable some firms to earn abnormal returns, and these returns may persist, even in the face of competitive imitation and technological change. Today these statements are well understood, but this was not true at the turn of the last century. In 1904, there were few empirical data on firm performance, no MBA programs, no strategy consultants or management gurus. Beyond the oligopoly models mentioned above, there were no theories to explain how heterogeneous firms compete in the same market, and economists did not see this as an interesting problem. Hobson’s discussion of ‘‘competitive advantage’’ was largely ignored. ‘‘Competitive advantage’’ gained little traction for Hobson, but it did not fall completely out of use. MacGregor (1914) used it in reference to German coal syndicates. Kibler (1926, p. 24) wrote, ‘‘Business is essentially dynamic, and progress in method and procedure must ever be coincident with the abandonment of standardized concepts and the blazing of new trails. Competitive advantage, in fact, often arises out of successful experiment.’’ In a tire industry study, Reynolds (1938, p. 462) wrote, ‘‘Product differentiation has been adopted as a means of securing competitive advantage without the risks of price competition.’’ Penrose’s work on firm growth marks the beginning of competitive advantage as a modern concept in business strategy. In discussing underutilized productive services, Penrose (1955, p. 537) wrote, ‘‘If the services were used in the production of products new to the firm, a competitive advantage would obtain over firms not having this free or joint element in costs.’’ By linking unused productive services to firm growth, she established theoretical foundations that would later form the core of the resource-based view of the firm.

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Another well-known contributor is Michael Porter, whose early contributions (Caves & Porter, 1977; Porter, 1980) grounded the concept of competitive advantage in principles of industrial organization developed by Edward Chamberlin, Edward Mason, and Joe Bain. Porter’s thesis supervisor, Richard Caves (1984), published one of the first academic papers with the term ‘‘competitive advantage’’ in the title. In later work, Porter (1985, 1996) combined economic reasoning with consulting frameworks such as value chains and activity maps to model firm-specific competitive advantage. Our historical investigations began with three contemporary views of competitive advantage: the industrial, resource-based, and evolutionary views. The three views offer different explanations for unequal firm performance. In the industrial (Porterian) view, firms earn monopoly rents through protected market positions, so firms’ critical properties are cost structures and externally perceived differentiation. In the resource-based (Penrosian) view, firms earn monopoly rents through access to scarce inputs, so firms’ critical properties are intangible resources that are internal and specific to the firms. In the evolutionary (Schumpeterian) view, firms earn monopoly rents through entrepreneurial innovation and opportunism, so firms’ critical properties are the abilities to find and exploit new market opportunities. All three views draw upon a common theoretical rationale: monopolistic (or imperfect) competition. We then searched for educational and conceptual antecedents of these three views, and our findings surprised us. Although we had come to think of competitive advantage, monopolistic competition, and the three views as mainstream concepts, we discovered that these concepts had arisen largely in rebellion against mainstream economic theories. Although we had expected to find an ever-spreading tree of people who had contributed ideas and exerted influence, we discovered that participation had been quite focused, and developments had had some surprising contributors. Although we had expected to find that each of the three views had distinct antecedents, we discovered that the main contributions to all three views and their uniting theory had come from the same intellectual genealogies and a small number of educational institutions. For instance, Edith Penrose and Michael Porter both stem from a genealogical branch headed by Ludwig von Mises of University of Vienna. Mises supervised the dissertations of Fritz Machlup and Gottfried Haberler. At Johns Hopkins, Machlup supervised Penrose, and at Harvard Haberler supervised Richard Caves, who supervised Michael Porter. Hence, Mises links the industrial and resource-based views. Moreover, Mises studied under Eugen von

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Bo¨hm-Bawerk (at Vienna), who also taught Joseph Schumpeter. Hence, Bo¨hm-Bawerk links genealogical chains that span the industrial, resourcebased, and evolutionary views of competitive advantage, and dissertations were not the only links between these three views. We found the web of contributions so interesting that we decided to focus on the historical foundations of competitive advantage, terminating the investigation around 1940. Many more people have contributed to understanding of competitive advantage, especially to the evolutionary and resource-based views – including Armen Alchian, Igor Ansoff, Jay Barney, Peter Drucker, Michael Porter, Philip Selznick, David Teece, Birger Wernerfelt, and Sidney Winter. Nevertheless, these more recent contributions are likely to be familiar to readers whereas the older influences have received little attention. Our focus on earlier contributions implies that the chapter omits topics that became important later. For example, theory and empirical work at Oxford University and Carnegie Institute of Technology influenced behavioral views in Strategic Management; although Oxford’s studies began before 1940, their impact was postponed by World War II. Fields such as Sociology, Marketing, and International Economics developed concepts that parallel competitive advantage (e.g., distinctive competence, transvection, comparative advantage). During the late 20th century, business schools and consultancies became key sources of new ideas on competitive advantage, and research on competitive advantage was influenced by institutions such as the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and RAND Corporation. These new ideas and research often deal with topics that had little importance before WWII because governments have changed their policies about competition, industrial structures and technologies have changed, and the world economy has become more globalized.

VIENNA AND HARVARD To begin our investigations, we searched dissertation archives to find the supervisors and dissertation topics of the main contributors to competitive advantage. We began with Michael Porter, Edith Penrose, and Joseph Schumpeter. For example, Michael Porter’s (1973) thesis, Retailer Power, Manufacturing Strategy and Performance in Consumer Goods Industries, was supervised by Richard Caves. We then searched the previous generation, and more previous generations, to establish the dissertation-based lineage

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for each of the three views. To support these lineages, we also searched public sources and citation records for evidence of significant influence beyond dissertation supervision. For example, Porter and Caves cited Edward Mason and Joe S. Bain as key influences. Table 1 shows dissertation detail for 19 key figures, beginning with Bruno Hildebrand’s thesis at Marburg in 1836, and including Schumpeter’s thesis in 1906, Penrose’s in 1951 and Porter’s in 1973. As noted above, dissertation genealogies for the three views of competitive advantage converge to Eugen von Bo¨hm-Bawerk at University of Vienna. However, this is only part of the story. Combining dissertation evidence with other sources shows the joint influence of two dominant genealogies – one mainly at Vienna, the other mainly at Harvard, and these genealogies link to each other. One such link is Gottfried Haberler, who studied with Mises at Vienna and supervised Caves at Harvard. Both genealogies also have ties to German historicism at universities in Heidelberg, Jena, and Leipzig. Fig. 1 gives a very simplified graph of the dominant genealogies, and additional contributions from Cambridge and Chicago. Fig. 2 gives a more detailed view of individuals in Germany, Vienna, and Harvard. On the right, Carl Menger heads the Viennese side. On the left, a cluster of German historicists influenced Menger and Richard Ely, who supervised the dissertation of Allyn Young; Young, in turn, supervised Edward Chamberlin and Edward Mason. The arrowheads overstate causality, as authors chose whom to cite and students chose dissertation supervisors; all of these people showed considerable independence of thought. Harvard and Vienna attracted exceptionally able students and especially at Vienna, some students were attracted by a culture of intellectual adventure and challenge to orthodoxy. Ensuing sections of this chapter discuss individual contributors in these genealogies. Some of them contributed ideas, others popularized and disseminated those ideas, others encouraged skepticism about generally accepted theories, and still others fostered social interactions that created momentum for change. A penultimate section mentions parallel developments at Cambridge and Chicago.

Carl Menger and the University of Vienna 19th century Austrian economists questioned the abstraction and macroeconomic premises of British-French mathematical models. Their dissent

History & Political Science Law

Law Political Economy

Law Political Economy

Economics Economics Law

Karl Knies

Carl Menger

Eugen von Bo¨hm-Bawerk

Friedrich von Wieser

Richard T. Ely Allyn A. Young Joseph Schumpeter

Doctorate Ph.D. Doctorate

Doctorate

Doctorate

Doctorate

D.Phil.

Philosophy, History Doctorate & Political Science

Wilhelm Roscher

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History

Field

Bruno Hildebrand

Name

1879 1902 1906

1875 1883

1875 1880

1867

1846

1838 1840

1836

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Table 1.

Heidelberg Wisconsin Vienna

Vienna

Jagiellonian (Krakow) Vienna Vienna

Marburg

Go¨ttingen Berlin

Marburg

University

Dissertation

No dissertation for doctorate. Habilitationsschrift: Grundsa¨tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre No dissertation for doctorate. Habilitationsschrift: Kritische Beitra¨ge zur volkswirtschaftlichen Lehre vom Gute und der Gu¨ternutzung No dissertation for doctorate. Habilitationsschrift: U¨ber der Ursprung und die Hauptgesetze des wirthschaftlichen Gu¨terwertes No dissertation A discussion of age statistics U¨ber die mathematische Methode der theoretischen Nationalo¨konomie

Historia Praenestis oppidi

Xenophontis et Aristotelis de oeconomia publica doctrinae illustratae De historicae doctrinae apud sophistas majors vestigiis

Doctorates.

Karl Knies Richard T. Ely Eugen von Bo¨hm-Bawerk

Carl Menger

Carl Menger

Georg Gervinus & Karl O. Mu¨ller; Leopold Ranke Bruno Hildebrand

Gustav A.H. Stenzel

Dissertation supervisor(s)

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Ph.D. Ph.D. Ph.D.

Economics

Economics Economics

Law Economics Economics

Fritz Machlup Edward H. Chamberlin Gottfried Haberler

Economics

Economics

Economics

Edith Penrose

Richard E. Caves

Michael E. Porter

Joe S. Bain

Ph.D.

Ph.D.

Ph.D.

Ph.D.

Ph.D.

Doctorate

Edward S. Mason

Friedrich A. von Hayek

Doctorate

Law Political Science Law Political Science

Ludwig von Mises

1974

1958

1951

1940

1927

1925 1927

1925

1921 1923

1906

Harvard

Harvard

J Hopkins

Harvard

Vienna

Vienna Harvard

Harvard

Vienna

Vienna

The value, depreciation and replacement of durable capital goods The economics of the international patent system Recent developments in generalequilibrium international trade theory Retailer power, manufacturing strategy and performance in consumer goods industries

Dumping: A study of certain international trade practices Die Goldkernwa¨hrung The theory of monopolistic competition Der Sinn der Indexzahlen

Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel Zur Probemstellung der Zurrechnungslehre

Richard E. Caves

Gottfried Haberler

Edward Chamberlin and Edward Mason Fritz Machlup

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises Allyn A. Young

Eugen von Bo¨hm-Bawerk Friedrich von Wieser, Othmar Spann, Hans Kelsen Allyn A. Young

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German Historicism Heidelberg, Jena, and Leipzig

Universities of Cambridge and Chicago

University of Vienna

Harvard University

Monopolistic competition

Industrial view

Resource - based view

Fig.1.

Evolutionary view

Institutional Influences.

began in 1871 with Carl Menger’s Grundsa¨tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (translated in 1950 as Principles of Economics) (1871). Menger’s central thesis, and the defining tenet of Austrian economics, was that economics should not start with macroeconomic processes, but with the reasoning used by individuals (as he perceived them). Menger argued that people have different subjective valuations (utilities) for goods, and they choose actions that yield the greatest marginal benefit. German scholars had long been concerned with how to reconcile subjective evaluations with macroeconomic behavior (Priddat, 1998), and Menger’s book, which used no mathematics, explained how individuals’ actions could aggregate into macroeconomic phenomena. He pointed out that the aggregation of individual actions could have macroeconomic consequences that the actors had not anticipated (Hochwald, 1974). Menger’s ideas gave the Austrian School a character distinct from the rest of economics. He disputed claims by Ricardo and Walras that prices represent ‘‘objective’’ values and he asserted that mathematical equations cannot accommodate the complexity and uncertainty of economic behavior. Menger acknowledged the contributions of German economists (Milford, 1995), but disagreed with their emphasis on inferences from empirical data

M.E. Porter (b. 1947)

R. Caves (b. 1931)

J.S. Bain (1912-1991)

E.S. Mason (1899-1992)

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

GERMAN HISTORICISM

W.G.F. Roscher (1817-1894)

Evolutionary view

G. Haberler (1900-1995)

J. Schumpeter (1883-1950)

F. Wieser (1851-1926)

F.A. Hayek (1899-1992)

C. Menger (1840-1941)

Resource-based view

E. Penrose (1914-1996)

F. Machlup (1902-1983)

L.E. Mises (1881-1973)

E.R. Böhm-Bawerk (1851-1914)

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

Fig 2. Intellectual Genealogies. Solid Lines Indicate Dissertation Supervision; Dashed Lines Indicate Significant Intellectual Influence as Evidenced by Citations, Acknowledgments, Biographies, or Other Sources. Arrows may Overstate Causality, as Authors Chose Whom to Cite and Students Chose Dissertation Supervisors; All of These People Showed Considerable Independence of Thought. All Genealogies Included Many More People Than Shown.

Industrial view

E. Chamberlin (1899-1967)

A.A. Young (1876-1929)

R.T. Ely (1854-1943)

K.G.A. Knies (1821-1898)

F.B. Hildebrand (1812-1878)

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(Hu¨lsmann, 2007). German economists, in turn, attacked Menger’s ideas for their lack of empirical support and emphasis on subjective values (Ha¨user, 1988). In Britain and North America, Menger’s ideas became the focus of fierce debate for several decades following 1880 (Hodgson, 2005). Menger’s subjective marginalism attracted exceptionally bright students to Vienna for doctoral studies. Early students included Eugen von Bo¨hm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser, two childhood friends who later became brothers-in-law. After they completed their doctorates, Menger sent them to Germany to study with Hildebrand, Knies, and Roscher. Menger believed Bo¨hm-Bawerk and Wieser should understand what the German economists had to say even if their historical methodology was misguided. Their visits to Germany strengthened Wieser’s belief in societal evolution and reinforced both men’s opposition to Marxism (Yagi, 2005), and did not dim their enthusiasm for Menger’s ideas. Bo¨hm-Bawerk supervised the dissertations of Joseph Schumpeter and of Ludwig von Mises, who links the genealogies of Edith Penrose and Michael Porter. Menger and Bo¨hm-Bawerk contributed to modern ideas on competitive advantage by emphasizing real-life decision-making, and by fostering a subculture that challenged British-French economic orthodoxy. The students of Menger, Bo¨hm-Bawerk, and Wieser include some of the most influential economists of the 20th century, including Hayek, Schumpeter, Mises, Machlup, and Haberler. Collectively, Austrian economists gained a reputation for advocating free-market capitalism and opposing central planning and socialism. Schumpeter’s impact is such that JSTOR contains 94 articles with ‘‘Schumpeter’’ in the title. After studying with Menger, Bo¨hm-Bawerk, and Wieser, he spent several years as a professor in Austrian and German universities before moving to Harvard. There, he taught many who later became very successful economists, although his criticism of Keynesian economics made him an outlier. Like most Austrian economists, Schumpeter was skeptical of government intervention and a supporter of free enterprise. Unlike most Austrian economists, he advocated mathematical formalism in economics. His first article showed the relevance of mathematics to economics, and he was a founder of the Econometric Society, serving as its fifth president (1940–1941). It has become obligatory to cite Schumpeter in strategy research on dynamic capabilities, innovation, and entrepreneurship – elements in evolutionary views of competitive advantage. He shared with Wieser and the German historicists an interest in the historical evolution of societies, the contributions of entrepreneurs to economic change, and the contributions

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of social classes, experience, habits, and routines to societal continuity (Samuels, 1983). Schumpeter argued that, without entrepreneurs, economic systems would converge on static equilibria, and these equilibria do not occur because entrepreneurial innovations create competitive disruptions. Schumpeter offered two compatible theories of innovation, sometimes labeled Marks I and II. Mark I claimed that innovation and technological change come from ‘‘entrepreneurial spirit’’; it is entrepreneurs who drive economic progress (Schumpeter, 1934, 1939). Mark II claimed that innovation and change come mainly from large companies investing in research and development; it is large firms that drive economic progress (Schumpeter, 1942). Ludwig von Mises was one of the foremost proponents of free-market economics. He contributed to modern ideas on competitive advantage by challenging accepted economic theories, encouraging debate and dissent, and by supervising outstanding doctoral students such as Haberler and Machlup. During the 1920s and 1930s, he led a ‘‘Privatseminar’’ in Vienna that provided a forum for debates on economic policy, public policy, and research methods in the social sciences (Mises, 1962); the regular participants included Haberler, Hayek, and Machlup. After 1940, Mises held a visiting appointment at New York University and conducted private seminars. Hayek’s contributions to economic theory and method are too vast to summarize briefly (http://hayekcenter.org/; Tomo, 2003). Like Mises, he was a strong critic of government economic controls. From 1921 to 1931, Hayek and Herbert Furth ran a ‘‘Privatseminar’’ in Vienna attended by Haberler, Machlup, and others. He moved from Austria in 1931 and spent most of his career at LSE and the University of Chicago. His earlier writings focused on macroeconomics, and his influence on competitive advantage stems mainly from later contributions on knowledge and information. In particular, he argued that information has value because everyone’s information is incomplete. According to Landreth and Colander (2002, p. 495), ‘‘Hayek raises the legitimate question of how the knowledge presumed to be held by market participants in equilibrium is acquired by the participants. Mainstream theory assumes that the knowledge is given. Hayek argues that an important role of markets and the process of competition is the discovery of knowledge not previously available.’’ Summarizing his views in a 1968 lecture, Hayek (1968, p. 10) said, ‘‘competition is important only because and insofar as its outcomes are unpredictable and on the whole different from those that anyone would have been able to consciously strive for.’’ Hayek’s (1945) paper on knowledge and adaptation

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is highly cited in the literature on knowledge-based competitive advantage (e.g., Grant, 1996; Nonaka, 1994; Spender, 1996). Fritz Machlup fled Nazism in 1933, and worked at the University of Buffalo, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and New York University. Best known are his writings on the production and distribution of knowledge and international monetary economics. In 1937, he proposed an elaborate classification of different forms of competition, and in 1939 he supported Chamberlin’s emphasis on product differentiation and monopolistic competition (Machlup, 1937, 1939). Among his many doctoral students was Edith Penrose, whose dissertation he supervised at Johns Hopkins. According to Connell (2007, p. 230), ‘‘What Machlup gave to students under his mentorship was an appetite for methodological rigor, a passion for detecting, measuring and verifying change, and a framework for organizing the knowledge emerging from their research.’’ Machlup mentored Penrose throughout her career, and they exchanged letters until he was 80 and she 65. After completing her dissertation, Penrose (1960) did fieldwork at an explosives firm, the Hercules Powder Company, an experience that gave her insights about firm growth. Later, she elaborated her insights in The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (1959), in which she argued that underutilized productive services provide firm-specific opportunities for capacity expansion and competitive advantage (Lockett, 2005; Thompson & Wright, 2005). Later contributors such as George Richardson and David Teece translated Penrose’s ‘‘resources’’ and ‘‘services’’ into a vocabulary of capabilities and path dependence, linking Penrose to the dynamic capabilities view of the firm (Foss, 1994; Loasby, 1999; Richardson, 1960, 1972). Today, scholars see this book as a key precursor to the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997; Wernerfelt, 1984). As shown in Fig. 2, Gottfried Haberler supervised Richard Caves at Harvard, who in turn supervised Michael Porter. In Vienna, Haberler’s closest friends had been Hayek, Machlup, and game theory pioneer Oskar Morgenstern. In 1936, Haberler moved to Harvard, where he stayed for 35 years. Like Schumpeter, he was a critical figure in exporting Viennese thinking to Harvard, and he supervised many students, including Paul Samuelson. Haberler’s writings criticized government economic intervention, advocated free trade, and analyzed the causes of business cycles. He also wrote about ‘‘comparative advantage,’’ a concept that may have influenced later thinking about competitive advantage. Although the idea that nations have comparative advantages in international trade dates to Robert Torrens in 1815 and David Ricardo in 1817, Haberler (1930) explained comparative advantage in terms of a nation’s marginal

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opportunity costs of producing alternative goods (Deardorff, 2005). As precursors, Haberler cited Adam Smith and Frank H. Knight (Bernhofen, 2005), although his explanation resembles Theodore Yntema’s (1928) account of a monopolists’ opportunities in multiple markets and Joan Robinson’s (1933) imperfect competition, which we discuss below. Austrian economists from Menger to Haberler introduced dynamic new ideas about economic uncertainty, knowledge, innovation, and disequilbrium, along with a passion for debating and challenging economic orthodoxy. Landreth and Colander (2002, p. 495) summarized the crucial themes of Austrian economics as follows: Economic analysis is a process, not a static interaction of individuals, and time is an essential consideration. It sees competition as a dynamic process through which high profits are eliminated over time. But those profits play a very important role in driving the system. y Individuals are assumed to operate in a changing environment in which information is limited and the future unknown. The most interesting analysis, in their view, derives from studying not equilibrium itself but the process through which individuals grope toward equilibrium, a process that emphasizes the entrepreneurs and that mainstream economics calls disequilibrium.

Although Austrian economists significantly influenced thinking about competitive advantage, many researchers on competitive advantage may be unaware of this influence. For example, Caves and Porter (1977) and Caves (1980a, 1980b) cited more than 100 books and papers, but cited none of the above-named Austrians. In a private correspondence, Porter said that he believed Austrian economics did not influence his ideas on competitive advantage. Penrose (1959) cited only Machlup (her supervisor) and Schumpeter (once disapprovingly). Wernerfelt (1984), Barney (1986a), and Peteraf (1993) cited no Austrians. Rumelt (1984) and Barney (1986b, 1991) cited only Schumpeter, and Conner’s (1991) exhaustive historical review of the resource-based view cited only Schumpeter. Although he had cited Schumpeter in earlier works, Winter (1987) cited no Austrians on the subject of knowledge and competence as strategic assets. Among more than 120 citations on dynamic capabilities, Teece et al. (1997) cited only Schumpeter. In short, these papers create an incorrect impression that the Austrian influence reduces to Schumpeter’s views on innovation and entrepreneurship. Although North American authors on competitive advantage have tended not to cite Austrian economists, Hayek and others have received significant attention from European authors (see Ortmann & Seidl, 2010). Moreover, Foss argued that many elements of North American theories of the firm appeared first in the works of Austrian economists other than Schumpeter.

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He (1994, pp. 32–33) gave credit to Hayek and Mises for concepts such as property rights, complementary assets, asymmetric information, nonmaximizing behavior, the principal–agent relationship, and the distinction between planned and spontaneous orders. Indeed, the Austrian influence on competitive advantage may be largely indirect, through 20th century theories of the firm. For example, Ronald Coase studied with Hayek at LSE, and cited Hayek’s (1933) paper in the ‘‘The Nature of the Firm’’ (1937). As Coase’s heir to transaction cost economics, Williamson (1979, 1985, 1998) cited Hayek’s (1945) paper, as did writers on agency and other theories of the firm (e.g., Fama & Jensen, 1983; Grossman & Stiglitz, 1980). Papers on competitive advantage that do not cite Austrians directly often cite theories influenced by Austrian views, such as those of Coase and Williamson. Jacobson argued that the Austrians, especially Hayek, anticipated most of the key ideas on competitive advantage, notwithstanding present-day unawareness of this influence. He (1992, p. 784) opined that Porter (1990) ‘‘advocated a number of views that move away from the static concepts of traditional IO to those that more closely resemble Austrian thinking.’’ He (Jacobson, 1992, p. 803) also said, ‘‘Austrian thought and the resourcebased view of the firm, in particular, exhibit a great many similarities. For example, both schools of thought place similar emphasis on firm heterogeneity and invisible assets.’’ In conclusion, Jacobson (1992, p. 802) claimed that modern strategy theory is ‘‘articulating the Austrian perspective as it pertains to strategic issues,’’ and that research on the dynamics of competitive advantage ‘‘can be seen as forming an ‘Austrian School of Strategy.’’’

Historicists, Allyn Young, and Harvard University The Harvard genealogy also had German origins. While Carl Menger was dissenting from British-French economics in Vienna, Wilhelm Roscher was leading an alternative dissent in Go¨ttingen and Leipzig – economic historicism. Historicism, popularized by German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770–1831), asserted that all intellectual and cultural activities, including economic behavior, can only develop organically over time, and must be understood in historical context. In this view, human behavior does not follow natural laws but evolves idiosyncratically according to people, time, and place. Economic development is contextual and uncertain, though it

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may unfold in historical stages, as in Karl Marx’s historical determinism (Backhaus, 1995; Small, 1924; Wolowski, 1878). In the late 1800s, historicists such as Roscher dominated German economics. Two German historicists – Bruno Hildebrand in Jena and Karl Knies in Heidelberg – admired Roscher and held similar ideas, though they had not been his students. Knies was the most eclectic of the group, and probably had more influence on economics outside Germany (Papadopoulos & Bateman, 2010; Small, 1924). His earlier writings included an analysis of advertising (Fullerton, 1998), and denials of the existence of causal laws in economics, arguing that economists can reason only by analogy. He insisted that economic behavior reflects diverse motives, not merely a desire for wealth. Perhaps Knies’s greatest contribution was his seminar in Heidelberg, which became a wide-ranging forum for theory development and critique. Schumpeter (1954, p. 850) reported, ‘‘Karl Knies was above all a great teacher who made Heidelberg a center of study and research in which the most diverse types were welcomed and made to work together.’’ In the 1880s, few North American universities offered doctorates or graduate courses in the social sciences, so students often went abroad for graduate studies (Blasi, 2004). They were especially attracted to German universities, which generated much of the academic research at that time (Fetter, 1925; Parrish, 1967). One of these adventurers was Richard T. Ely, who first intended to study philosophy but developed an interest in agrarian problems after meeting political economist Johannes Conrad at the University of Halle. In due course, Ely chose to study economics and political science at the University of Heidelberg, where he was supervised by Karl Knies. In later life, Ely (1938) described Knies as ‘‘My Master.’’ When Ely returned to the United States, he became the first economics professor at the newly created Johns Hopkins University, which had been modeled on German universities. A decade later, Ely became founding director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History at the University of Wisconsin. In 1893, he published a textbook, Outlines of Economics (Ely, 1893), which became the best-selling American text and remained so until 1930. The textbook’s success was surprising because Ely was widely considered an economic rebel. He tried to persuade American economists of the value of economic historicism, and he became a founder and leader of the American Economic Association, an insurgent movement against orthodox economics (Ely, 1936). In 1894, the Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction sought to oust Ely from his professorship on the ground that he taught ‘‘utopian, impractical, or pernicious doctrines’’ that promoted social anarchy. There followed a

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famous trial that ended with the University’s endorsement of academic freedom. Although Ely opposed laissez-faire economic policies and argued that governments should regulate monopolistic and exploitive economic activity, he was far from being a radical socialist. Rather, he believed that political economy should provide a Christian moral and intellectual framework for an organic society. One of Ely’s students was Allyn Abbot Young, who sits atop the Harvard genealogy. Young graduated from college at the age of 16 and earned his doctorate at Wisconsin. He held academic posts at Wisconsin, Western Reserve University, Dartmouth, Stanford, Harvard, Washington University, Cornell, and again Harvard, and he made significant contributions on monopolistic competition, value theory, antitrust policy, economic measurement, and the theory of increasing returns. He (1928) especially criticized mainstream economic theory for emphasizing equilibria and he called attention to the way past events influence present possibilities – path dependency. Sandilands (1997, p. 1260) judged, ‘‘Young was perhaps the most respected American economist of his day.’’ Colleague Wesley Mitchell said, ‘‘For economic investigation Young was remarkably endowed. He united in rare measure mathematical powers, historical learning, and philosophical grasp’’; and John Maynard Keynes wrote that Young ‘‘was the outstanding personality in the economic world and the most lovable.’’ Young left Harvard after only seven years for a temporary post at LSE, and he died there. Young resembled his mentor Ely in his willingness to challenge economic orthodoxy, and he had profound effects on colleagues and students (Sandilands, 1999). He advised or supervised many economists who later became influential, including Edward Chamberlin, Frank Knight, Edward Mason, and Nicholas Kaldor, who contributed to the ‘‘Cambridge critique’’ of neoclassical theory (discussed later). One former student, Lauchlin Currie, observed to Blitch (1983, p. 14), ‘‘Perhaps the most enduring lesson I learned from Young was that the subject was wide open to modifications and improvements. y Young gave the impression of thinking as he went along. He continually opened up exciting vistas.’’ Another former student, Earl J. Hamilton, told Blitch, ‘‘What I treasure most of all is the inculcation of his firm belief that the world is full of interesting problems, about which we know next to nothing and that if one tackles them and really studies them, there is no limit to what one can achieve except limitations inherent in himself.’’ Young was among the first economists to discuss monopolistic competition and product differentiation. For the second edition of his Outlines of

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Economics in 1908, Ely added three former students as coauthors, one of them Allyn Young. Young wrote the chapter on monopoly (Blitch, 1985), in which he (Ely, Adams, Lorenz, & Young, 1908, p. 195) explained that trademarks create product differentiation that can increase profitability: Trade marks y are used largely in competitive businesses, and help establish what is called good-will. They are an aid to the shrewd and capable in the general effort to escape what may be designated as the ‘‘dead level’’ of competition. They are a monopoly not in the sense of giving exclusive control of one sort of business, but in the strictly legal sense that no one else may use them. A clever device, coupled with excellence and advertising, may have very high value. The purchaser of oysters, for example, may feel that when he buys oysters of a particular ‘‘brand’’ (trademark), he is getting oysters, plus something else; or in other words, not merely oysters such as others sell, but a particular excellence which can nowhere else surely be had. It is merely this ‘‘plus something else’’ that is a monopoly. Great importance is attached to ‘‘establishing a brand name’’.

In the 3rd edition of Ely, Adams, Lorenz, and Young (1916, p. 196), Young stated more clearly that product differentiation creates a market that falls between monopoly and perfect competition: In so far as a successful business man in a competitive field is able to induce people to believe that it is better to purchase his particular brand of goods than to take the chance of getting a possibly inferior quality by purchasing his competitor’s products, he may be able to lift himself a little above the ‘‘dead level’’ of competition. He may even find that he can increase his net profits by putting the price of his goods somewhat higher than that at which precisely similar goods are sold in the market. By thus successfully marking off his product as something distinct from and possibly superior to his competitor’s goods, he is able to obtain which might be termed a quasi-monopoly. But because his power to control the price of his product is in general much more limited than that of the true monopolist, and because competition limits and conditions his activities in other ways, his business is more properly called competitive than monopolistic.’’

Young also pointed out that product differentiation shifts responsibility for firm performance from the industry to individual firms (Blitch, 1985), a key premise in all views of competitive advantage: ‘‘The getting of profits is not merely a matter of indirect competition among industries; it is a matter of direct competition among individual establishments’’ (Ely et al., 1916, p. 534). Allyn Young was the key intellectual influence on Edward Chamberlin, whose book Monopolistic Competition (1933) became the classic theoretical work on product differentiation, and a landmark for the concept of competitive advantage. As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Chamberlin (1961, p. 518) had written a course paper on current debates over monopoly bias in railway rates. In that paper, he argued that since ‘‘competition will force a single price in each market,’’ then unequal prices

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signal ‘‘a very slight element of monopoly.’’ Intrigued with the notion of ‘‘a synthesis between monopoly and competition,’’ Chamberlin hoped to write his dissertation on this topic. Chamberlin (1961) knew that this middle ground had been explored by others (including Young), but saw an opportunity to integrate diverse perspectives into a single theory (Reinwald, 1977). Chamberlin moved his studies from Michigan to Harvard, and after passing his general examination, made what he (1961, p. 525) called ‘‘an intensive foray into the literature of patents and trademarks. The starting point was the position taken by Allyn Young in the chapter of which he was the author in Ely, Outlines of Economics’’ (quoted above). Young became Chamberlin’s dissertation supervisor. Chamberlin’s (1927) dissertation provided the first theoretical analysis of firm heterogeneity and product differentiation. It became the core of his 1933 book, Monopolistic Competition, which showed that actual competition among firms seldom conforms to the stylized market structures of mainstream theory. According to Chamberlin (1961, p. 540), ‘‘Monopolistic Competition was an attack not on Marshall, but on the theory of perfect competition. It was directed (1) against those ‘pure theorists’ to whom the theory of our subject is perfect competition; but even more (because more numerous), (2) against those who simply regard ‘competitive’ and ‘monopolistic’ as separate categories with different principles in each case and a pure line of distinction between them.’’ Another of Young’s students was Edward Mason, who earned his doctorate at Harvard and taught there for 46 years. He devoted much effort to issues of world economic development, such as US labor policies, the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, and creation of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Starting in the 1930s, he and Edward Chamberlin cotaught a seminar on industrial structure that became the birthplace for the modern field of Industrial Organization. Mason’s (1939) lasting contributions include the initial conception of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm (SCP), which holds that industry structures (concentration, barriers to entry, returns to scale) foster and constrain firm conduct (pricing, quality, output), which in turn determines economic performance (Grether, 1970; Lee, 2007; Phillips & Stevenson, 1974). This model became a foundation for the industrial view of competitive advantage. Joe S. Bain attended the Chamberlin–Mason seminar and wrote his dissertation under their joint supervision. After leaving Harvard, Bain spent his entire career at Berkeley, where he built his research on empirical studies relating to SCP. His studies examined relations among industry

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concentration, returns to scale, pricing, entry barriers, and profitability in specific industries. In 1982, the American Economic Association anointed Bain ‘‘the undisputed father of modern Industrial Organization Economics.’’ Another colleague of Chamberlin and Mason was Gottfried Haberler, who had begun his career in Vienna. As a doctoral student, Richard Caves developed an interest in the economics of international trade and wrote his dissertation on this topic under Haberler. Caves continued to publish about trade throughout his career, especially on the effects of international trade on industrial structure. Caves’ first professorial job was five years at Berkeley, where he, Joe Bain, and Julius Margolis collaborated on a study of Northern California’s water industry. This experience seems to have confirmed his interest in SCP, for he later made many contributions to that paradigm. For example, Caves (1980a, 1984) modernized SCP and spelled out its behavioral aspects. He added as factors to consider managers’ perceptions, the availability of reliable information, and first-mover advantages. He inverted the causal arrows by pointing out that conduct affects structure and performance affects conduct. He recognized the relevance of corporate strategy to SCP, while citing management authors such as Kenneth Andrews, Igor Ansoff, and Alfred Chandler. Inversion of the causal arrows in SCP transformed competitive advantage from a topic of occasional interest in economics to a topic of consuming interest in business policy. Economists had viewed competitive advantage as a partial monopoly earned by some firms in some markets – an awkward target for theorizing. Caves saw that the behavior of firms could change industry structure, which implies that firms can proactively create competitive advantage. Of course, this insight had been implicit in various contributions as far back as Marshall, Hobson, Young, and the Austrian economists, but Caves made it explicit. Since our investigations focus on the period before WWII, we do not describe more recent developments. However, we would be remiss not to mention Michael Porter, who communicated the insights of Industrial Organization Economics to an audience of managers and scholars in Strategic Management. Porter encountered his thesis supervisor Richard Caves while he was studying business economics at Harvard Business School. In a 2002 interview (Porter, Argyres, & McGahan, 2002, p. 43), Porter described the collision between economic and managerial perspectives at Harvard: In 1971, I entered the Ph.D. program in business economics y and took a course in industrial organization from Richard Caves across the river. It was a surreal experience.

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In both business policy and industrial organization, we were talking about industries. There were lots of common issues but no real connection between the two fields. And so right then and there, it became clear that there was an opportunity to bring industrial organization thinking into the study of strategy, and vice versa.

Caves and Porter coauthored empirical studies, one of which (1977) introduced the idea that industries contain subgroups having distinctive constraints and opportunities – what have come to be called ‘‘strategic groups.’’ Regarding his cost and differentiation bases of competitive advantage, Porter said (Porter et al., 2002, p. 44): I decided that fundamental to any theory of positioning had to be superior profitability. This in turn required competitive advantage, and fundamental to any thinking about competitive advantage was scope, or the breadth of the company’s strategic target. That led to the generic strategies [low-cost leadership, product differentiation, and market specialization].

CAMBRIDGE AND CHICAGO Cambridge University In 1933, the same year Chamberlin published The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Cambridge economist Joan Robinson published The Economics of Imperfect Competition. The two books had many similarities (White, 1936), but Chamberlin’s received more theoretical attention, especially in North America. In works on competitive advantage, Penrose (1959) cited both Chamberlin and Robinson, and Barney (1986b) acknowledged their joint influence on early developments in the resource-based view. Like Vienna and Harvard, Cambridge had become a battleground for debates on theory versus reality. By the 1920s, Alfred Marshall’s fame and influence had made Cambridge one of the most respected centers of economic thought. Arthur Pigou, Marshall’s favorite student and intellectual heir, based The Economics of Welfare (1920) on Marshall’s theory of industrial organization, which characterized industries by returns to scale (increasing, decreasing, or constant). Another Cambridge economist, John Clapham (1922a, 1922b), attacked the Marshall–Pigou view, asserting that these categories were ‘‘empty boxes’’ without meaning in the real world. He argued that even if industries had such properties, the Marshall–Pigou assumption of ‘‘other things being equal’’ was never met in practice. Clapham’s critique stimulated three economists to further analysis: Roy Harrod (1931) at Oxford, Allyn Young (1928) at Harvard, and Piero Sraffa

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(1926) at Cambridge. Sraffa published first and most prominently. His famous paper ‘‘The law of returns under competitive conditions’’ showed the impossibility of supply–demand equilibrium if firms have increasing returns to scale. Sraffa (1926, 542) saw that economists should not discuss perfect competition in isolation from monopoly, since actual industries ‘‘will be scattered along the intermediate zone.’’ A few years later, in reply to Dennis Robertson’s defense of Marshall, Sraffa wrote, ‘‘We seem to be agreed that the theory cannot be interpreted in a way which makes it logically self-consistent and, at the same time, reconciles it with the facts it sets out to explain. Mr. Robertson’s remedy is to discard mathematics, and he suggests that my remedy is to discard the facts; perhaps I ought to have explained that, in the circumstances, I think it is Marshall’s theory that should be discarded’’ (Robertson, Sraffa, & Shove, 1930, p. 93). Joan Robinson attended Sraffa’s lectures at Cambridge, and his critique became a key stimulus for The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933, p. v). In Robinson’s words, ‘‘Mr. Sraffa’s article must be regarded as the fount from which my work flows, for the chief aim of this book is to attempt to carry out his pregnant suggestion that the whole theory of value should be treated in terms of monopoly analysis.’’ A second stimulus for Robinson’s book was an article by Theodore Yntema (1928) on the marginal revenue curve, a concept new to Cambridge economists (Aslanbeigui & Oakes, 2006; Robinson, 1994). Robinson learned of Yntema’s article via an essay written in 1930 by an undergraduate student of Joan’s husband, Austin Robinson. The Robinsons discussed the essay with their friend Richard Kahn, and began to debate a fundamental question: What are the consequences of imperfect competition for actual industries and firms? In 1930, Robinson had no formal association with Cambridge University; she had received a mediocre grade on her degree examinations and her only publication was a book review. To obtain a formal appointment, she needed to publish a work worthy of academic attention and respect. Therefore, she set out to write a book developing the full real-life implications of marginal revenue and imperfect competition. Aslanbeigui and Oakes (2006, p. 418) summarized her view as follows: Joan Robinson maintained that the methods of her time were ‘‘only capable of giving unreal answers to unreal questions.’’ The questions were unreal because they were derived from the logical possibilities of economic method, which abstracts from the properties of economic phenomena. The answers were unreal because their referents were not economic facts but artifacts of method. Thus any correspondence between the results of theoretical analysis and actual economies was purely fortuitous.

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Robinson’s book provides another example of the simultaneous emergence of new ideas in intellectual centers widely separated by geography (1933, pp. xi–xii); it reported that Roy Harrod, Erich Schneider, Heinrich von Stackelberg, and Theodore Yntema had independently discovered the marginal revenue curve. Harrod was at Oxford University; Schneider was at University of Bonn in Germany (as a student of Schumpeter), then in Denmark; Stackelberg was at University of Cologne; Yntema was at University of Chicago. Chamberlin and Robinson published their books in the same year, and their distinctive contributions have roused much debate (Samuelson, 1967). Nicholas Kaldor, Allyn Young’s student at Harvard and Robinson’s colleague at Cambridge, argued that the books dealt with different problems: Chamberlin’s with a hybrid form of competition, Robinson’s with monopoly. Of Robinson’s book, he (1934, p. 336) wrote, ‘‘No student of the theory of monopoly could fail to obtain a firmer and more inclusive grasp on the subject. y But of ‘‘imperfect competition proper,’’ of the kinds of problems presented by her at the beginning, there is little to be found.’’ Blaug (1985, p. 392) asserted that Robinson’s book ‘‘merely refined Marshall’s theory of monopoly without claiming that a new instrument of analysis was required to deal with market structures characterized by product differentiation and advertising expenditures. Despite superficial similarities between the two books it is now perfectly obvious that Chamberlin was the true revolutionary.’’ Both Chamberlin and Robinson influenced the emergence of the theme of competitive advantage. Robinson’s book was less influential, but this may be due to factors other than its merits – such as growth of the economics profession in North America, the fact that Robinson had wider interests and soon turned to other problems, the presence of a business school at Harvard in the 1930s to translate industrial organization into management practice, and the absence of such a school at Cambridge.

University of Chicago Samuelson (1991, p. 573) pointed to four ‘‘American pioneers in monopolistic competition’’ – Edward Chamberlin, John Maurice Clark, Jacob Viner, and Theodore O. Yntema. The most surprising part of this attribution is the inclusion of Chamberlin, for Clark, Viner, and Yntema had all worked at the University of Chicago, where Samuelson had studied

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and where students and faculty saw Chamberlin and Robinson as mere embellishers of concepts that had originated at Chicago. Jacob Viner, a Canadian, worked at Chicago from 1916 until 1946, when he moved to Princeton. He published research on international trade, the history of economic thought, and the theory of the firm, especially relationships between firms’ short-run and long-run cost curves. Bloomfield (1992, p. 2071) asserted that Viner ‘‘anticipated many of the essential ideas underlying the theory of imperfect or monopolistic competition.’’ A passage from a brief chapter by Viner (1921, pp. 345–346), published six years before Chamberlin’s dissertation, is worth quoting at length: Between the perfect market and the monopoly market there is y a gradation from those which closely resemble but not fully approach free and energetic price competition to those which closely but not fully approach complete monopoly control over price. Producers always desire as full a measure as possible of control over the prices of their products. They fear price competition, because with the importance in modern industry of direct or overhead costs, price-competition always threatens to become cut-throat competition. Moreover, they dislike frequent fluctuations in price. They seek every possible means, therefore, of withdrawing their products from the field of keen price competition, and in pursuit of this end they use a variety of devices such as special brands, trade marks, patents, style differentiation, even different methods of wrapping or different containers, to differentiate their products from those of their competitors. If they succeed in developing a special demand for their products, such producers find that to some extent they can determine their prices independently of the prices of their competitors and still maintain their sales. The importance of advertising to producers of commodities only slightly differentiated from competing articles is obvious. Competition between such producers tends more and more to become competition in sales efforts, such as special displays, number of salesmen, volume of advertising, and tends to refrain from price-cutting as a means of stimulating sales. Specialized commodities of this kind tend to be less responsive in their price to changing conditions of production or consumption than perfect market commodities, more responsive than monopoly products; their producers can exercise more control over their prices than producers of commodities for a perfect market, less control than producers for a monopoly market; the products are not standardized as between producers as compared with perfect market commodities; they are not as much differentiated from rival commodities as are monopoly commodities.

Samuelson credited both Viner and Theodore Yntema with having conceived the marginal revenue curve that inspired Joan Robinson. Describing a course he took in 1935, Samuelson (1972, p. 7) reported, ‘‘Viner made clear at the beginning that he would not be covering the latest wrinkles in the theory of imperfect or monopolistic competition. However, since Viner himself, along with his student Theodore Yntema, had independently discovered the marginal cost-marginal revenue conditions for maximization of an imperfect competitor’s profits, much of what was

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contained in the Chamberlin and Robinson treatises was adequately covered.’’ Jacob Viner did not know calculus and he based his statements on graphs and intuition, so he was not confident that he had drawn the right conclusion. Viner encouraged Yntema, a former student with strong mathematical training, ‘‘to examine the problem more carefully in the hope of establishing conclusions definitely related to the varying conditions of cost and demand’’ (Yntema, 1928, p. 686). Starting with the mathematical appendix to Marshall’s Principles, Yntema (1928, p. 687) used calculus to state the profit-maximizing conditions for a monopolist selling in two markets. A few years later, Yntema participated in one of the first symposia on imperfect competition (Schumpeter et al., 1934), where he analyzed the behavior of competitors each of whom faces a different demand curve, and he used this analysis to draw inferences about the effects of advertising on prices. Later, Yntema (1941, p. 274) observed, ‘‘Perfect competition does not exist and could not exist in any significant part of the economy, because the conditions necessary for its existence cannot be satisfied.’’ John Maurice Clark worked at Chicago from 1915 until 1926, when he moved to Columbia University. Chamberlin (1961) said that his ideas had been influenced by Clark’s (1923) Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs, in which Clark discussed product differentiation and why firms sell at different prices despite competition. Clark (1923, p. 418) said, ‘‘In a sense each competitor has a monopoly of the difference in quality (real or supposed) between his goods and his rivals’, and this qualified monopoly is a feature of the typical ‘competitive’ market’’’ (Cordell, 1972; Fiorito, 2009). Like so many of the key figures in the history of competitive advantage, Clark pondered the gap between abstract economic theory and its practical consequences. He (1925, p. 223) claimed that perfect competition, even if possible, would not produce desirable consequences in practice: ‘‘ y a certain amount of difference in prices in a market is a necessary condition for the existence of healthy competition, and for that reason should not be regarded as an ‘imperfection of the market,’ as it so often is.’’ Furthermore, Clark (1925, p. 222) wrote, ‘‘Every competing producer does his best to convince his customers that his goods are different from his competitors’, and that the latter are really inferior substitutes, thus lending the demand for his individual product more resistance to the attacks of competitors – making it less elastic. He can, however, never hope to make it as inelastic as if he controlled his competitors’ goods as well as his own.’’ Later, Clark proposed that economic policies should foster ‘‘workable competition,’’ and he identified many types of monopolistic competition. He remarked,

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‘‘It would be a truism to say that the most effective forms of competition we have, or can have, are imperfect forms, since there are no others’’ (1940, p. 242). All of the great economics departments have had internal diversity of opinion. At Chicago, Frank H. Knight provided such diversity all by himself. He was opinionated and acerbic, and his brilliance dominated a department of brilliant colleagues. Biographies of Knight routinely label him a ‘‘deep thinker’’ because he blended philosophy, psychology, and pragmatism into his economics, which was itself a blend of conflicting viewpoints – including Austrian marginalism, Marshallian abstraction, and Veblenian institutionalism. Knight was also unimpressed by the contributions of Chamberlin and Robinson. He (1939, p. 361) wrote: ‘‘The theory of imperfect competition is largely just theory of monopoly, and this has been as well established in economic theory as the theory of competition, for at least a half century, – since the first edition of Marshall’s major opus. The proud and defiant air of revolutionary novelty with which the doctrine is put forward by many of the expositors, and hailed by many others whose main interest is to evade and discredit any sound economic analysis, is not only false to facts but has done great damage to our science and to the hope, already dim enough, for sound social policy.’’ Knight went on, ‘‘Most of what is important in this field was said by Cournot an even century ago. y as I see it, the relation between perfect and imperfect competition is essentially the relation between theory and reality or practice in economics, or more accurately, between the more general theory and theory in a form applicable to reality.’’

CONCLUSION Formal theories such as theories of perfect competition and monopoly demand so much completeness and logical consistency that they become hollow caricatures of their creators’ intentions and invite dissents. The theme of competitive advantage arose through such dissents. These dissents disclosed logical inconsistencies in mainstream theories and showed gaps between the theories and actual market behavior. Eventually, the dissents exposed the theory of perfect competition as an untenable and selfcontradictory strawman (Richardson, 1998). Obviously, thinking about competitive advantage did not stop in the mid 20th century. Few of the economists discussed above paid attention to intrafirm influences such as decision-making and organizational structures.

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With few exceptions, economists saw competitive advantage as something to observe rather than to manipulate. It was only later, when the debate expanded beyond economics, that consultants and business scholars, working in a new discipline called Strategic Management, developed prescriptive models for creating, enlarging, and defending competitive advantage. After the mid-1900s, Europe lost much of its influence as North America gained in intellectual strength. Two forces contributed to this shift: the rise of Nazism and the growth of business education. The effects of Nazism are implicit, and sometimes explicit, in the events described above. Starting in the 1930s, Jews fled continental Europe, and although some of them moved to England, many more moved to North America. Nearly all of the Austrian economists, even those who were not Jewish, advocated individual liberties and free enterprise, so Nazism threatened to treat them as ideological enemies. Business education in North America grew rapidly after World War II. In 1956, less than 43,000 Americans were graduating from collegiate business programs per year, and by 2005, this number had grown to 318,000. In 1956, just over 3,000 Americans were graduating from MBA programs per year, and by 2005, this number had soared to more than 146,000. The growth in student numbers brought new resources to business schools, which sought academic recognition by investing in research. Business schools create demand for courses about strategies and strategizing, and the number of strategy scholars has surged over the past five decades. Before 1960, few professors dedicated themselves to ‘‘business policy’’ and they did not produce empirical research. Empirical studies began in the 1960s, and by 1971, the Academy of Management included enough strategy researchers to form a Business Policy and Strategy division. By 1981, this division had grown to 1380 members, and in 2010, it has over 5,000 members (Shrivastava & Lim, 1989; AOM website). Strategy researchers have generated a significant body of theory, research, and prescriptive advice on competitive advantage. In sum, economists in Europe and North America built the foundations for what is now a complex and evolving body of thought on competitive advantage. Will future evolution make the framework obsolete? Possibly so. Just as monopolistic competition supplanted a simple model with one that better explains actual events, monopolistic competition and its successors are vulnerable to replacement. The microprocesses by which firms acquire commodity inputs or market positions, and convert them into unique and longstanding economic advantages, remain unclear. Equilibrium conditions

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incorporate assumptions that make equilibrium impossible, and evidence has shown equilibrium to be both rare and fleeting. Current research in Strategic Management deals with complex issues such as these, and solving them may require paradigmatic change.

POSTSCRIPT: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOHN HOBSON? The introduction to this chapter noted that John Hobson (1904) gave a modern definition of competitive advantage more than 100 years ago. What influenced Hobson’s thinking and what effects did his thinking have? The answers to these questions are among our most interesting discoveries. Hobson’s early writings aroused such strong opposition from prominent economists that he had to leave academia, yet he published in prestigious academic journals and both Vladimir Lenin and John Keynes acknowledged his influence on their ideas. Because he argued that human welfare should be evaluated according to qualitative criteria as well as quantitative, he has now become venerated as a forefather of a growing movement toward humanistic economics. Hobson had a life-changing experience at the age of 16, when he attended a Cambridge University extension course that emphasized the moral foundations of political economy. Thereafter, he never accepted economic views that focused on measured quantities, ignored unmeasured qualities, or claimed that actual economic behaviors come close to optimizing human welfare. Later, Hobson came to admire the thinking of John Ruskin (1881), who vehemently opposed ‘‘crass materialism’’ and ‘‘ostentatious consumption’’ and criticized capitalism for promoting social inequity and for treating humans as labor inputs. Hobson studied classics at Oxford during the late 1870s, but received mediocre marks and regarded himself as an academic failure. He began a career in teaching classics in secondary schools, but two people induced him to change careers. The first was his wife, Florence Edgar, who had strong interests in social issues, including women’s rights. She reinforced Hobson’s moral and humanist perspective on economics. The second was businessman and mountaineer A. Frederick Mummery, with whom he discussed political economy. Hobson moved to London, where many people were discussing new political and social issues and forming new activist organizations. For 10 years, Hobson wrote a column about life in London and social issues for

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his father’s newspaper and taught extension courses for the Universities of London and Oxford. However, Hobson and Mummery (1889) coauthored a book, The Physiology of Industry, that said the excessive, unearned income of the wealthy induced them to over-invest, which caused under-consumption of capital goods, production gluts, depression, and increasing unemployment. Francis Edgeworth of Oxford University reviewed the book and belittled it. This began a persistent conflict between Hobson and Edgeworth, which escalated when Hobson (1900) criticized marginal analysis, a crucial assumption in the theories of both Edgeworth and Alfred Marshall. Edgeworth and Marshall were the leading economists of the day, but this did not deter Hobson. Indeed, when Hobson wrote about competitive advantage, as quoted in this chapter’s introduction, it was in the context of an attack on Edgeworth’s marginal analysis. Hobson (1904, p. 460) wrote, ‘‘Professor Edgeworth, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (January 1904) appears to think the Differential Calculus will assist him to find the productivity of the marginal shepherd by starting from the productivity of an infinitesimal margin of him.’’ Hobson argued that marginal reasoning gave too much credit to entrepreneurs and ignored institutional constraints that gave entrepreneurs advantages over workers. To put it simply, Hobson gave a definition of competitive advantage because he wanted to expose competitive advantage as socially harmful. As early as 1893, he (1893, p. 401) had written: How far the actual distribution in a society approximates to the ideally best or the ideally worst condition depends entirely upon the operation of those forces which apportion the consumption of the objective surplus or rents. Under present conditions it appears that the apportionment is ruled by forces social, political, economic, which assign various and shifting amounts of monopolistic power to the owners of the requisites of production, and that the operation of these forces is to no appreciable extent affected by considerations, drawn from any estimate of the subjective surplus or net gain of human welfare.

Hobson found it increasingly difficult to obtain teaching assignments at the Universities of Oxford and London. Believing that Edgeworth and Herbert Foxwell, another marginalist, were using their influence to block his employment, he finally gave up hope of obtaining a university appointment (Maclachlan, 2002–2003; Richmond, 1978). Hobson did, nevertheless, continue to write prolifically about economics and social issues, and he ultimately published 53 books and hundreds of articles, both academic and popular. He finally received academic recognition when the University of Manchester gave him an honorary doctorate near the end of his life.

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Inherited wealth allowed Hobson to write on whatever interested him and to involve himself in social causes. He became well known as a critic of British imperialism, and he was one of the earliest British enthusiasts for sociology. He was in demand as a public speaker. Throughout Hobson’s life, his concerns remained fundamentally moral and social, and he devoted much effort to searching for a nonreligious basis for ethics. He joined ethical societies, and through them, he influenced the formation of both the Liberal Party and the Labour Party in Britain. Economics and politics, he said, were subordinate to the social ethics that promotes human welfare (Freeden, 1973). If John Hobson were participating in current debates in Strategic Management, he would ask: Is competitive advantage ethical? Is it fair? Is competitive advantage good, not only for individuals and firms, but for society as a whole? Does competitive advantage improve human welfare?

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This chapter has benefited from corrections, information, and suggestions from Jay Barney, Brad Bateman, Art Bedeian, Nicolai Foss, Peter Kesting, Karl Milford, Walt Nord, Michael Porter, and Joe Salerno.

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STRATEGY RESEARCH IN THE GERMAN CONTEXT: THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC, SOCIOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS Gu¨nther Ortmann and David Seidl ABSTRACT The present paper takes a look at the particularities of German strategy research over the last three decades. In contrast to much of the AngloSaxon research, which has focused on competition as a guiding concept in theorizing about strategy, German research has typically been concerned with more fundamental questions about the general relationship between organizations and their environments and, as a result, tended to be more conceptual than empirical. Researchers have been particularly influenced by the German sociological and philosophical traditions, specifically by the critical theory of Ju¨rgen Habermas and by the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Also, there are authors who draw on the economic tradition of the Austrian School in order to develop a competence-based theory of the firm. Another branch builds on Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory and Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction. As we will demonstrate, much of the research has been concerned with The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 353–387 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027015

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fundamental theoretical tensions: evolution vs. planning, selection vs. compensation, cognitive–instrumental rationality vs. moral–practical rationality, etc. We note that, as a consequence, much of German strategy research shows a particular interest in paradoxa and oxymora (such as ‘planned evolution’, ‘productive misunderstandings’ or ‘unfocused monitoring’). This paper will identify and explore important strands of German strategy research and discuss its particularities compared to mainstream strategy research in the United States.

1. INTRODUCTION While the historical development of strategic management can be traced back to the Old Testament and even beyond that (Bracker, 1980), its relation to business organizations originates in the second half of the 20th century (Mintzberg, 1990; Knights & Morgan, 1991; Knyphausen, 1995). After the Second World War, corporations – particularly in the United States – were confronted with a new situation: their originally stable and predictable environments started to become increasingly competitive and turbulent (Ansoff, 1969). This required a new approach to the management of organizations and as a result the passive administrators at the top turned into proactive strategists. As Knights and Morgan (1991) show, this development was driven very much by academic writers in the United States (e.g. Ansoff, 1965; Learned, Christensen, Andrews, & Guth, 1965; Andrews, 1971; Uyterhoeven, Ackerman, & Rosenblum, 1977; Hofer & Schendel, 1978) calling for strategic management as a response to the new environmental challenges. The legendary conference at the University of Pittsburg on ‘Business Policy and Planning: The State of the Art’ (Schendel & Hofer, 1979) marked the establishment of strategic management as a separate field in its own right. Against this background, strategic management – both as a particular field of practice and as an academic discipline – can be characterized as an originally North American phenomenon. Towards the end of the 1970s, strategic management started to spread also to other countries, including Germany (e.g. Hinterhuber, 1977; Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, 1977; Steinmann, 1981). Yet, the academic context in which the US research was received at that time was somewhat different from that in the United States. Three aspects appear particularly important in this respect: first, the structure of the academic system that is peculiar to German universities – the Lehrstuhl system, where each

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‘professor is a ‘‘department’’’ in his or her own right’ (Clark, 1983; Meister-Scheytt & Scott, 2009, p. 55). In practice, this meant that professors had to cover entire academic fields (e.g. organization studies, human resource management or accounting) both in research and teaching (Muller-Camen & Salzgeber, 2005). Typically, professors were called to prove their command of the entire field through their Habilitationsschrift (a lengthy post-doctoral thesis) prior to being appointed to a full professorship (Meister-Scheytt & Scott, 2009, p. 55). As a result of these peculiarities, the scope of research and respective theoretical frameworks of German professors generally tended to be broader than those of their American counterparts (for an overview see Gaugler & Ko¨hler, 2002). This was reflected in the tendency of German professors to publish predominantly books rather than isolated articles. These frameworks were often developed across generations of researchers who formed schools around eminent scholars (e.g. Edmund Heinen, Hans Ulrich, Werner Kirsch and Horst Steinmann). On the whole, management research in Germany at the time was characterized by more holistic approaches covering all aspects of management (e.g. Kirsch, 1973). Second, it has been pointed out (Galtung, 1979, 1981) that there are fundamental differences between the approach to social science in German academia (the ‘Teutonic intellectual style’) and that prevalent in other countries (including the United States): the ideal-type ‘Teutonic’ approach to research is conceptual rather than empirical and is aimed at grand rather than mid-range theories; also, theoretical developments tend to be ‘deduced’ from central principles (Knyphausen, 1995). In addition, Teutonic research is particularly concerned with ‘paradigm analysis’, that is ‘looking into the foundations of what one does, of exploring the limitations of one’s own intellectual enterprise’ (Galtung, 1981, p. 821). This particular intellectual style might be partly a result of, or at least supported by, the way in which the German Lehrstuhl system was traditionally understood – and still is at some universities: until recently university professors were typically expected to build their reputation by developing overarching conceptual frameworks that would guide the subsequent work of their (often quite large) entourage of research assistants. The assistants themselves – being largely dependent on their professor (Clark, 1983) – were typically be expected to develop these frameworks further or apply them to concrete issues or problems (as part of their PhD theses or post-doctoral research), until they qualified for being appointed to a chair in their turn, after which they could go on to develop their own conceptual frameworks (Muller-Camen & Salzgeber, 2005).

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Third, the reputation in the international academic community tended to be much less important to German management scholars than that in the national community (Muller-Camen & Salzgeber, 2005, p. 277) with promotions being based primarily on the evaluation of publications in German journals (Schlinghoff, 2001). This was supported by the particular university system according to which PhD theses and post-doctoral theses [Habilitationsschrift] were typically supervised and examined by the professors at the respective university (Muller-Camen & Salzgeber, 2005). Hence, while there was an intense debate on management issues among German researchers, until the middle of the 1990s, there is little evidence of any exchange of ideas between German academics and academics from other countries (Simon, 1993; Muller, 1999). There were, of course, some exceptions, where researchers actively sought to publish their work internationally (e.g. Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987); however, it received comparatively little attention by US researchers. Consequently, while German researchers tended to pick up on research published (in English) outside Germany, their own research received little international attention, not least because it was predominantly published in German. Against this background, the present paper aims to point out aspects that have been peculiar to German strategy research over the last three decades, and which distinguish it clearly from mainstream research in the United States. This study is in line with earlier work that examined the particularities of European strategy research (e.g. McGee & Thomas, 1986; Snow, 1986). However, so far the particularities of strategy research in Germany have not been systematically examined – with the notable exception of Knyphausen (1995), who touched on this question in his book on the state-of-the-art of strategy research in the mid-1990s. Given the circumstances in which German strategy research developed (including many aspects not covered here – e.g. the particularities of German management practice, described in Knyphausen, 1995), perhaps it is not surprising to find that, at least initially, there were some significant differences between Germany and the United States with relation to how strategy research was conducted. German strategy researchers were aware of strategy research in North America (Knyphausen, 1995, p. 263) but tended not to build on it directly. Instead, they often integrated it into their own theoretical frameworks. Since very little of that (German) research found its way back into US academia, Germany and the United States developed – at least initially – quite separate discourses. Certainly, over the last few years things have changed considerably in Germany: researchers are getting actively involved in the international discourse, the ‘Saxonic intellectual

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style’ (Galtung, 1981) is taking hold in Germany as well and the old Lehrstuhl system is beginning to get dismantled. As such, the differences between the two strategy discourses are becoming less prominent and the number of more mainstream US-style contributions by German researchers is increasing. Nevertheless, the differences are still visible in much of the current research. In order to identify the particular characteristics of German strategy research, we will take a closer look at the important streams of strategy research in Germany, as they developed over the last three decades. We will focus on those research endeavours that can be seen as substantial contributions to the strategy discourse. While our approach yields inevitably a somewhat rough selection, and certainly does not do justice to all noteworthy works in the field, it is nevertheless useful for identifying the aspects that characterize central streams of research activity. As we will show, the principal contributions to strategy research in Germany tend to cluster around particular theoretical perspectives, primarily, prominent sociological and philosophical theories. Of course, not all works fall into these clusters but such exceptions tend to constitute smaller, individual research projects. The rest of the paper is structured into seven sections. The next five sections will present important streams of strategy research in Germany, which have formed around five particular theoretical perspectives. We start with the two most prominent ones: the perspective associated with the Munich School of Strategic Management draws on the works of Ju¨rgen Habermas, while that of the Steinmann–Schreyo¨gg School grew out of the ideas of Niklas Luhmann. We will then present the three smaller and more recent streams of research, which draw on the Austrian School, Giddens’s structuration theory and Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, respectively. After that, we will point out the particularities of these streams of research, which differentiate them from North American mainstream research. We conclude with a brief section, in which we reflect on this paper’s main contribution to the existing body of research.

2. JU¨RGEN HABERMAS AND THE ‘MUNICH SCHOOL OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT’ Probably the most eminent proponent of strategy research in the German context is Werner Kirsch at the University of Munich, the leading figure of

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the so-called ‘Munich School of Strategic Management’, which has even published its own book series, comprising more than one hundred volumes. Kirsch, whose initial interests focused on organizational planning and change, became one of the founding members of the Strategic Management Society in the early 1980s. The main aim of his strategy research, which is typical of most German endeavours in this field, was to provide a holistic, conceptual–theoretical foundation of strategic management, rather than focus on specific aspects of strategy. After experimenting with a range of different theoretical perspectives (e.g. the perspectives of March & Simon, 1958; Lindblom, 1965; Etzioni, 1968), he started exploring the potential of Ju¨rgen Habermas’s (1984) theory of communication, which has since become the primary theoretical basis of the ‘Munich School’. Kirsch drew primarily on Habermas’s concept of the ‘lifeworld’ as the shared cognitive and communicative horizon of our everyday life, within whose scope we experience and interpret the world (for other German researchers who have experimented with Habermas’s theory in strategy research see, e.g. Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1990 or Wu¨thrich, 1991). While Habermas himself originally considered corporations as places dominated by systemic rationalities that have driven out the lifeworld, Kirsch and his school argued that Habermas’s view of corporations was exaggerated and simplistic (Kirsch, 1990; Kirsch & Knyphausen, 1993). Overall, the Munich School’s approach to strategy has four characteristic aspects, which we will present in more detail below: (1) the systematic differentiation between the internal and external perspective, (2) the integration of strategy as a separate element of the organizational lifeworld, (3) the conceptualization of the ‘ongoing process’ as the primary location of the genesis of strategies and (4) the exploration of alternative forms of rationality. Based on Habermas’s concept of the lifeworld, the Munich School differentiates systematically between two complementary approaches to strategic phenomena: the internal and the external perspective (Knyphausen 1988; Kirsch, 1991). Observing an organization from outside allows one to observe patterns of behaviour that constitute strategic manoeuvres (e.g. a company’s merger with another company or its entry into a new market), yet, whether these strategic manoeuvres are intended or not cannot be established from outside. In order to understand what really drives such actions, that is the real strategy, one needs to switch to the internal perspective and take part in the ‘lifeworld’ of an organization and its members. Only from within it is possible to capture the intentions that underlie specific actions. Whether or not these strategies lead to particular manoeuvres is another question.

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In order to relate the notion of strategy to the concept of the lifeworld, Kirsch (1991) developed the concept further, adding strategies (defined as programmatic orientations) to the original components: personality (the cognitive and psychological structures of individuals), institutional order (the system of norms and roles that are taken for granted), and culture (the reservoir of interpretative schemas). Strategies stand in a recursive relation to the other three elements: on the one hand, new strategies typically emerge from personality, institutional order and/or culture, as these three elements form the context for thinking and acting within the organization. On the other hand, new strategies, if effective, will be sedimented into the three other elements affecting and thus changing them (Kirsch, 1996). A further consequence of focusing on the lifeworld is that the decisionmaking process ceases to be regarded as the primary location of the strategy-formation process (Obring, 1992; Kirsch, 1996). More specifically, while episodes of decision-making might produce strategy formulations, that is strategy documents, these are not of primary interest. Instead, the focus is on the development and change of strategic orientation as an element of the lifeworld. This requires reflections about the underlying orientations of action; this would typically take place in the ongoing process of organizational activities, rather than in the abstract contexts of strategic decision episodes. Strategic decision processes are not treated as irrelevant, but their influence on strategy is regarded as more indirect: they can merely trigger reflections in the ongoing process but not determine the outcome. Strategy formation, in this sense, is more of a by-product of decision-making. Finally, the influence of Habermas can be seen clearly in the way that the concept of rationality is treated in the theory. In line with Habermas, Kirsch (1990, 1991, 1996) puts forward a communicative notion of rationality. According to this, rationality manifests itself in the way in which validity claims are raised and substantiated in communicative actions. Thereby, three different types of validity claims are distinguished: the claims of theoretical truth, of normative rightness, and of expressive truthfulness. While the first type of validity claim corresponds to a cognitive–instrumental form of rationality (i.e. the claim that propositions are correct or that teleological actions are effective), the other two correspond to moral–practical and aesthetic–expressive forms (i.e. the claim that the norms underlying one’s actions are right, and the claim that the opinions and wants expressed are authentic, respectively). According to Kirsch, different organizational lifeworlds exhibit different degrees of rationalization. Some lifeworlds are dominated by purely cognitive–instrumental rationality. Yet, the more

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progressive (in a Habermasian sense) the lifeworld, the greater the importance of other forms of rationality compared to the cognitive– instrumental one. In other words, it becomes legitimate to reflect on and discuss the various normative and aesthetic dimensions of different strategic orientations. In order to enable such communicative rationalities to come to bear, organizations have to allow enough space for ideal speech situations, which are free of attempts of dominating each other. Kirsch discusses the different components of his theory of strategy with regard to a more general interest in the evolution of organizations in their societal contexts and the possibilities of shaping that evolution. Thereby, organizations are conceptualized as being embedded into a wider, societal ‘ecology of ideas’ (Bateson, 1972), and emerging and developing in the mutual observations between the different actors within and around the organization (e.g. employees, competitors, suppliers, customers, consultants and academics). The mutual observations lead to an evolutionary dynamic that is beyond the direct control of any of the actors involved. In this sense, all actors, including the organization, are faced with a ‘radically open future’ (Kirsch, 1991; Seidl & van Aaken, 2008) in the sense that the world develops in ways that go beyond the presently given cognitive and communicative categories. In view of that, Kirsch (1991, 1996) argues that strategic management faces the dilemma of being supposed to plan into the future, while at the same time being at the mercy of evolutionary dynamics. This requires a concept of strategic management as ‘planned evolution’ (Kirsch, 1990, 1997), which combines evolutionary incrementalism with a more comprehensive long-term plan.

3. NIKLAS LUHMANN AND GERMAN STRATEGY RESEARCH Besides the body of scholarly works that have been drawing on Habermas, there is another strong research tradition in strategy that mobilized the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann (1973, 1995, [originally 1984], 2000). In contrast to the former, this strand of research is not the output of a single school but has sprung from a number of universities. One of the first to explore the potential of Luhmann’s work in strategy research was the school of Horst Steinmann and his disciple Georg Schreyo¨gg, who wanted to contribute to the development of a ‘general theory of strategic management’ (Schreyo¨gg, 1984, p. v). Drawing on the complexity approach

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of Luhmann (1973), before his ‘autopoietic turn’, Schreyo¨gg, and later Steinmann (Schreyo¨gg, 1984; Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1986a; Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987), conceptualized organizations as systems that operate on the basis of lower complexity than their environment. In other words, organizations react selectively to their environment. Against this background, the role of strategic management is conceptualized as one of selection; that is selecting from the multitude of possibilities that the environment presents. Selection typically takes the form of strategic planning, which is conceived as an ‘ambiguity-reducing selective process of filtering and processing information through which organizations are provided a clear and a workable scheme for taking action’ (Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987, p. 94). While selection is necessary for the organization to be able to operate at all – otherwise the organization would be paralyzed by complexity – it poses at the same time a potential threat, the so-called ‘selection risk’ (Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1986a, p. 747). Selection might obstruct the observation of and reaction to crucial events in the environment that could endanger the survival of the organization. As a consequence, the second role of strategic management is strategic control, as ‘a counterbalancing activity to strategic planning and the question of whether or not the strategic plans are still valid’ (Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987, p. 94). This concept of strategic control differs fundamentally from the conventional notion of strategic control as a secondary function involving simply checks on whether performance is in accordance with plans. Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann explain: Guaranteeing the survival of a system requires a continuous process of both selection and checking to see if this selection is going to work. The reason for this is simple: creating a greater clarity and order (selection) is merely a way of handling environmental ambiguity, and not a way of removing it. However well designed the handling mechanism, ambiguity continues to be a threat to the system. [y] To repeat: the problem of systems survival cannot be conceived merely as a problem of selection, as is often done in cognitive psychology (Weick, 1979), at the heart of the matter is the duality of selection and compensation. (Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987, p. 94)

The duality of selection (planning) and compensation (control) is a very delicate relationship as the two functions tend to contradict each other: while planning means a selective exclusion of possibilities (i.e. reduction in complexity), control means the re-inclusion of the excluded possibilities (i.e. increase in complexity). How organizations deal with this dilemma becomes a central question in strategic management. Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann explore different answers to this question – both conceptually (Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1986a) and empirically (Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1986b). In

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particular, they are interested in how the conflicting functions can be combined within the same organization without dissolving it or paralyzing it. One aspect of their work that has received particular attention is the question of how to survey the environment for potential signs that the strategic plans (selections) are no longer adequate. Steinmann and Schreyo¨gg (1986) point out the problem that one does not know and cannot know what to look for and where to look for it. This problem is a variant of the search paradox – the Menon paradox, named after the interlocutor of Plato in the famous Menon dialogue (the search for something new is inherently paradoxical, in the sense that one cannot know where to search for it, precisely because it is new). The act of scanning needs at least some focus and direction. One needs to but cannot know in which direction to scan. Moreover, concentrating in one particular direction of perception implies disregarding others. The narrower the focus of perception, the greater the danger of failing to see important signs. What befits such situations, argue Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann (1985), is what they term ‘unfocused contorl’. This is paradoxical because every observation is selective, that is to say, directed to or focused on something, at least to a certain degree. So, Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann’s request is similar to being urged to keep your eyes wide shut. ‘Unfocused monitoring’ is an oxymoron. Addressing this issue, Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann write: At first glance the idea of an unfocussed control mode seems paradoxical and impractical. How does one control if there is no defined control object? (Schreyo¨gg & Steinmann, 1987, pp. 97–98)

They argue that, in a strange way, in the case of unfocused control the typical logic of control is reversed. In other control activities, one has a definite point of reference (e.g. the implementation targets of a plan), according to which something unspecified (e.g. the current level of implementation) is evaluated. In the case of unfocused control, however, it is the unspecified (i.e. the potential threat to the survival of the organization) that is used as a point of reference for evaluating the specified, that is the strategic plan (Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg, 1986a, p. 750). This paradox, however, is resolved through time: unfocused control works on the basis of ‘wait and see’ (Steinmann & Schreyo¨gg 1986a, p. 750). In given moments, concrete signs of crisis might emerge that can be used as specific points of reference for evaluating a strategic plan. While Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann drew mainly on the early work of Luhmann, there were others who explored particularly Luhmann’s later work on autopoietic systems (1986, 1995, [originally 1984]). The first to do

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so was Dodo zu Knyphausen (1988) and Kirsch and Knyphausen (1991), who was also a member of the Munich School, and who tried to combine the perspectives of Luhmann and Habermas. Knyphausen (1988, 1991, 1992) starts out with the observation that at the heart of strategic management is the generation of novelty – new visions, new strategies and so on. Yet, a look at the literature in strategic management reveals that the generation of novelty is not adequately explained. Conventional approaches to strategy cannot capture the generation of novelty as it constitutes a paradox: if something is new, it is not derived from something that already exists (otherwise it wouldn’t be new), but if it is not derived from something that already exists, it cannot come into existence (otherwise it would have emerged from nothing). Knyphausen (1988) perceives Luhmann’s theory as a particularly suitable theoretical framework for strategic management as it can capture such paradoxes. Drawing on Luhmann, he argues that the paradox of the generation of novelty can be resolved theoretically by designing the theory in such a way that it allows switching between perspectives: the systems perspective, which treats the organization as a self-reproducing (autopoietic) system, and the action perspective, which highlights the communicative contributions of individual members (allopoietic). Knyphausen writes: The genesis of novelty is the result of a continuous back-and-forth between an inside and an outside perspective, a back-and-forth between the input of the subject (the individual) and the intersubjective communication in the context of a social system. (Knyphausen, 1992, p. 153, our translation)

In other words, in order to capture the central aspect of strategy, that is novelty and change, Knyphausen proposes a new theory that is based on an oscillation between a systems approach and an action approach. While Knyphausen did not develop his systems theoretical approach much further, later on Seidl and his colleagues (Hendry & Seidl, 2003; Seidl, 2005; Jarzabkowski & Seidl, 2008; MacIntosh, MacLean, & Seidl, 2010) picked up on this initial research question, that is the explanation of the generation of novelty. Although those later studies drew on Luhmann’s theory as well, they addressed the question slightly differently. Rather than proposing a theoretical approach that involves a continuous back-andforth between a systems perspective and an action perspective, they drew on Luhmann’s (1990, 1995) concept of episode as a way of resolving the paradox. An episode is a sequence of events structured in terms of its beginning and ending, for example, meetings or away-days. Such episodes allow organizations to routinely suspend their normal routine structures of

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discourse and communication, and in this way create the opportunity for reflexive strategic practice. Metaphorically speaking, episodes constitute temporary islands within the organization, which provide opportunities for stepping out of organizational routines and reflecting on them as if from outside. In this way, alternatives to the established strategic orientation become available, which can then be fed into the organizational processes and thus initiate strategic change. Taking the research question a step further, Seidl (2007) used a Luhmannian perspective to discuss the possibilities for introducing strategic novelty and change from outside the organization. Based on Luhmann’s concept of autopoietic communication systems, the author argues that the field of strategy should be conceptualized as being fragmented into a multitude of autonomous discourses, different companies, different consulting firms, different business schools and so on. As a consequence of this autonomy, no transfer of meaning between the different discourses is possible. This has significant implications for the way in which strategic management is perceived. In particular, it makes necessary a re-conceptualization of what we mean when we say that an organization ‘adopts’ a new strategy concept, such as TQM or core competences. Because of the incommensurability of the different strategy discourses, organizations cannot draw on general strategy concepts. Instead, any strategy concept that is used within a particular organization has to be understood as the organization’s own product. At most, strategy discourses might ‘perturb’ or ‘stimulate’ each other, but there cannot be any kind of direct input. Seidl writes in this respect: Strategy concepts developed and propagated in other discourses (e.g. in a consulting discourse or in a business school) can stimulate organizations to develop their own strategy concepts in response, but they can never enter the organization as such (Luhmann, 2000, 2005). Consequently, what appears as the adoption of a general strategy concept would have to be treated as an illusion based on the fact that organizations use the same labels, or sets of labels, for their own constructs. (Seidl, 2007, p. 206)

The transfer of such labels from one discourse to another is associated with a change of the meaning behind the labels. When introducing a new label from outside, the organization – usually inadvertently – re-interprets the meaning of the label according to its own communication logic, and in this way creates a new strategy concept. This phenomenon is described as ‘productive misunderstanding’ and constitutes ‘the way out of this paradox’ (Teubner, 2000, p. 408). In that respect, the original strategy concept is

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misunderstood but this misunderstanding is productive in the sense that it leads to the creation of something new.

4. THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL AND GERMAN STRATEGY RESEARCH German strategy research paid keen attention to the concepts of and debates about the resource-based/knowledge-based/competence-based view of strategic management. Some recent publications attest this in particular: At this point, we just want to mention two basic contributions of (Freiling, 2004; Freiling, Gersch, & Goeke, 2008), as well as the series Strategisches Kompetenzmanagement (‘strategic competence management’), which was launched in 2007 (first volume: Freiling & Gemu¨nden, 2007; second volume: Freiling, Rasche, & Wilkens, 2008b; third volume: Proff, Burmann, & Freiling, 2009) as part of the Gabler Edition Wissenschaft (the science imprint of the most important German publishing house for management and business administration). The most recent development is the attempt of Jo¨rg Freiling and colleagues to establish a competence-based theory of the firm, founded on market process theory, as developed by Mises (1949), Hayek (1978) and Kirzner (1973). In 1992, Jacobson already suggested that strategy research should be included in the framework of Austrian market process theory in order to account for change, uncertainty and disequilibrium. In a similar vein, Foss (1993, 1996; Foss & Ishikawa, 2007) built upon Austrian economics. Freiling et al. (2008) have written extensively about strategy research and a theory of the firm that is built on the philosophy of science and in particular on a Lakatosian framework. Their proposal is to transform the cornerstones of competence-based views of the firm into a hard core on the basis of Lakatos’s ideas (1970). These cornerstones, according to Freiling et al. (2008, p. 1147),1 are (1) an economic framing, with (2) economic agents ‘equipped with scarce and in many cases not perfectly mobile factors (Barney, 1991)’ (Freiling et al., 2008, p. 1147), (3) incomplete, asymmetric information, (4) learning that results in idiosyncratic capabilities, (5) organizational path dependencies (‘history matters’), (6) heterogeneous, unique bundles of factors created through specification processes in the sense of Penrose (1959) and (7) leeway for entrepreneurial action, in spite of a constraining business environment. In order to prove that their competence-based theory of the firm is

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compatible with Austrian economics and market process theory, Freiling et al. (2008, pp. 1148–1149) suggest the following six hard-core elements (HCEs):  HCE 1: Subjectivism (differences between economic agents in terms of knowledge, motivation, expectations and abilities/skills, which induce asymmetries or underlie the idiosyncratic nature of the firm)  HCE 2: radical uncertainty  HCE 3: methodological individualism (including an understanding of entrepreneurship in the sense of Mises (1949, p. 246): every member of a firm is/should be able to perform entrepreneurial functions – to be what is now called an ‘intrapreneur’)  HCE 4: ‘homo agens’ (economic agents as proactive players, permanently looking for new opportunities)  HCE 5: moderate voluntarism (agents have some, though restricted, impact on their environment)  HCE 6: time matters (historicity implies possible irreversibilities, pathdependencies, and lock-ins, as well as lock-outs, asset mass efficiencies and the like). The authors claim that these elements make it possible to avoid or overcome the tautology problem that the resource-based/competencebased view of strategic management entails (Priem & Butler, 2001). This problem is known to arise when the competitiveness of a firm is attributed to its idiosyncratic resources/competencies and at the same time these very resources/competencies are identified as the source of competitive advantages. Freiling et al. (2008, p. 1150) claim that they avoid this inherent tautology by concentrating on explaining an organization’s ‘striving for competitiveness’. For Freiling, competitiveness (2004, p. 33) consists of competences, that is the ability to prove oneself in market processes with customers and suppliers (vertical level) and to withstand the competitive forces of rivals in the market (horizontal level). In this way, they argue, one is able to overcome the opposition of the market-based view on the one hand and the resource-based view on the other. ‘Striving to avoid tautological reasoning [y] CbTF’s [Competence-based Theory of the Firm] epistemological aim is therefore the explanation of current and future firm competitiveness due to inhomogeneous availability of competences and resources.’ (Freiling et al., 2008, p. 1151) Significantly, here the authors define resources or competences without reference to competitive success and in this way avoid tautological reasoning: ‘In particular, it is not necessarily

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the case that the activation of competences guarantees success in the market process’ (ibid). In our view, this approach has certain remarkable characteristics: (1) It is a robust attempt to develop a theory of the firm based on a concept of entrepreneurship as strategic management that is characterized by alertness in making use of and paying attention to the resources and competences of the firm. (2) It emphasizes the dynamic character of these resources and competences. These are grasped as a potential modified/improved/enlarged by and through its actualization and other ways of organizational learning. (3) It claims that it adds a ‘missing chapter’ to market process theory, a chapter concerning intra-organizational process and locating the competence-based theory of the firm in management and organization theory. (4) Powell, Rahman and Starbuck (2010) explore the theme of competitive advantage in 19th and 20th century economics and the intellectual genealogies of the contemporary strategic management discourse. They distinguish three views of competitive advantage2: the industrial economics’ view focussing on market positions (Porter), the resourcebased view putting the emphasis on intangible resources (Penrose) and competences, and the evolutionary (Schumpeterian) view stressing entrepreneurial innovation. Freiling and colleagues make an attempt to combine the latter two of these views. The New Austrian Economics, they argue, ‘deals with trial and error processes resting upon entrepreneurship, knowledge and skills (such as alertness) as the cutting edge in competition’ (Freiling et al., 2008, p. 1155). The German authors add that their theory, however, ‘goes one step further and addresses the aligned interplay of skills by the competence construct’ (ibid). This conceptualization is in line with Jacobson (1992). In a way it entails a paradox: either the economic development and market processes are subject to evolution (i.e. to selection processes that are independent of or beyond the intentions, plans and designs of homo agens), or the rationality, competence, alertness of homo agens is decisive. In this respect, the attempt of Freiling et al. intends to overcome oppositions widely taken as insuperable. (5) It proposes that a fertile ambience provided by the firm is a decisive factor, which explains the existence and the nature of the firm. This, in our view, is the authors’ most important and most original message, as this factor transcends structures, routines and competences: the

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‘firm offers an ‘‘ambience’’, consisting of stability, reliability, and tight asset and resource couplings, nurturing competence building and leveraging’ (Freiling, 2004, p. 35). The ambience is effective because The firm as a stable institution ties entrepreneurial forces together and helps to overcome individual mental barriers. [y] Paths can be created or opened up by pooling ideas and other kinds of assets within the scope of the firm. (Freiling et al., 2008, p. 1158)

Issues such as tacit knowledge, mutual understanding, grammars of routines, intrinsic motivation and ‘social complexity’ (Barney, 1991) are also important in this context as they ‘explain why firms can be a preferred institutional mode’ (ibid, p. 37). Depending on a firm’s ambience, transferring knowledge may be either difficult or quite easy. The ‘stickiness’ of knowledge and the firm’s absorptive capacity (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) are functions of the firm’s ambience. Not only contracts but also such elements as tacit agreements, trust, and commitment are important, all of which transcend a narrow economic perspective. To introduce the concept of ambience into a competence-based theory of the firm means that sociological reasoning has to be included in economic and management theory. In that respect, the theory of Freiling et al. differs from that of Foss, who adheres to a more narrow economic perspective.

5. ANTHONY GIDDENS AND THE GERMAN STRATEGY RESEARCH In Germany, certain authors have tried to use Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory as a basis for a theory of strategic management, as Richard Whittington or Paula Jarzabkowski has done in the United Kingdom. Albrecht Becker (1996) examined strategic decision-making and the supposed rationality of strategic planning with reference to structuration theory. Ortmann and Zimmer (1996) dealt with what they called ‘recursive regulation’ – the strategic influence that big firms and their associations exert on legislation, politics, regulation bodies and their regulatory measures. The idea is that firms do not tend to look on passively while legislative bodies or regulation commissions structure (enable or restrict) their action fields but try to influence these bodies, or, in other words, try to ‘regulate’ these regulations. Recursive regulation is dealt with as an important, though often neglected part of strategic management. A reader edited by Ortmann and Sydow (2001) offers an overview of German contributions to strategic management that draw on structuration theory.

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Duschek (2001a) elaborates on Giddens’s concept of modalities in his discussion of ‘modalities of strategic management’. Other authors emphasize the strategic management of inter-firm networks (Duschek, Ortmann, & Sydow, 2001; Sydow 2001) and ‘cooperative core competencies’ (Duschek, 2001b). The concept of recursive regulations is developed in more depth by Zimmer (2001a, 2001b). Ortmann and Sydow (2001, pp. 421–447) suggest that structuration theory should be used as a kind of meta-theory so as to reduce to some degree the much lamented diversity of paradigms in organization and management theory. They maintain that structuration theory can potentially integrate well-known oppositions such as (1) action and structure, (2) strategy content and process, (3) the market-based vs. the resource-based view (4) resources and their services a` la Penrose (1959) and (5) signification and legitimation – what Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (1999) call the ‘cognitive’ and the ‘cultural’ school of strategic management, respectively. Basic concepts such as ‘reflexive monitoring of action’, ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘unrecognized conditions of action’ are considered to provide valuable elements to every analysis of strategic management. One further development of structuration theory is ‘strategy-as-practice’, which has been tackled by Richard Whittington and his colleagues (see, e.g. Whittington, 2010), Paula Jarzabkowski (2003) and others, and which will be the topic of the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Strategy-as-Practice (Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl, & Vaara, 2010, see also Jarzabkowski’s and Kaplan’s contribution in this volume). Strategy-as-practice has also attracted the attention of German structuration theorists (see, e.g. Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Rasche, 2008; Ortmann, 2010a, 2010b). Ortmann, however, has been somewhat critical of the concepts of action, praxis, and practices, which according to him need further elaboration. To that end, interactions can be regarded as gesture–response chains, as Ralph Stacey (2001) suggests: ‘Every gesture is a response to some previous gesture, which is a response to an even earlier one, thereby constructing history’ (Stacey, 2001, p. 79). To interact means to respond and receive a response, more to the point of strategic management, it means to respond to the challenges that rivals, customers, risks and opportunities pose. Manfred Moldaschl (2006), referring to Giddens’s distinction of rules and resources, argues vividly that concepts such as competence, capabilities and knowledge, all of which are said to be factors of competitive advantages, should not be used tautologically. He prefers a more rule-based (rather than competence-based) concept of institutional reflexivity to account for strategic innovations.

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Another complex analysed by means of structuration theory is (strategic) controlling and accounting. Becker (2003) focused on controlling and management accounting practices, distinguishing two aspects: reflexive monitoring and rationalization of organizational action. More precisely, he analysed controlling, accounting and devices such as the balanced scorecard in the three dimensions of the social, borrowed from Giddens: signification, domination and legitimation. In the most recent contribution, Ortmann (2010a) conceptualizes strategy formation as a specific kind of structuration. Strategies, in this view, are temporary, short-lived rules (and distributions of resources) with long-term reference. The reason they are short lived is that the life span of strategies is short, compared to that of other organizational rules. Rules determined by strategies concern the behaviour of the firm and its members with relation to the future and/or the environment. Rules are determined here as ‘generalizable procedures of praxis’ (Giddens, 1984, pp. 20–21). Strategy formation, then, is the structuring of present and future action in order to do justice to expected future events and/or to take into account the possible actions and manoeuvres of others – competitors, customers, co-operators, the state and other individual or corporate actors in the environment. In the light of the above, it is possible to overcome the opposition of structure and strategy. First, both, strategy and structure are now understood as kinds of structure. Second, instead of having to choose between either ‘strategy follows structure’ or its reverse, these supposedly exclusive alternatives are now considered to be linked in a recursive circle. Structures in the traditional meaning – long-lived organizational structures with short-term reference – not only follow but also are followed by strategies (see Fig. 1). strategy (set of rules and resources with strategic relevance; short-lived, temporary)

structure (set of rules and resources with operative relevance; long-lasting)

Fig. 1.

Strategy and Structure: Recursive Relationship.

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The insight that structures, in the traditional sense, not only follow but also determine or influence strategies – for example, determining information channels, conflicting interests, responsibilities, decision-making powers and the ‘micro-politics of strategy formulation’ (Narayanan & Fahey, 1982) – is not new.3 However, within structuration theory, it can become clarified, and therefore better comprehended, as a kind of recursive constitution of structures through strategies and vice versa. This approach overcomes the opposition of strategy and structure, as well as that of ‘planning vs. flexibility’, which are often identified as two diametrically different means for dealing with the uncertainty of the future. To achieve this, it introduces a comprehensive concept of responsiveness as a decisive competence of strategic management into the theory. Responsiveness, in this sense, includes (1) perceptive faculty, (2) sensitive reactions and (3) responsibility with respect to ‘the others’. Within organizations, responsiveness means to be prepared to listen to the ‘voice’ in the sense of Hirschman (1970) and to respond appropriately. Being responsive to the environment, on the other hand, may mean being open to advice and customer complaints, or willing to communicate (Freiling, 2005, p. 146). Responsiveness is necessary in strategic planning and involves what Ansoff (1984) called ‘flexible response’. Emphasizing the element of time in distinguishing strategy (short-lived, long-term reference) and structure (long-lasting, short-term reference) allows defining planning and flexibility not as exclusive alternatives but as (1) a matter of graduality and (2.) as complementary means of dealing with uncertainty.

6. JACQUES DERRIDA AND THE GERMAN STRATEGY RESEARCH Giddens’s concept of structuration is indebted to Jacques Derrida’s idea of diffe´rance. Although later on Giddens was very critical of Derrida (Giddens, 1987), he once postulated that ‘the theory of the structuration of social systems should be based upon [a] threefold connotation of diffe´rance’ (Giddens, 1979, pp. 45–46). In Giddens’s (1984) concept of structuration, however, Derrida’s thinking became invisible (though not ineffective). A central aspect of interest in the Derridian stream of strategy research is the concept of rules and their application, which are seen as instances of diffe´rance (Ortmann, 2003a). This is because rule – following is about iteration and iterability, and there is no such thing as pure iteration. There is always some kind of difference in the iteration. It follows that the

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application of rules, which is traditionally thought to derive from rules, is, in a sense, constitutive of the meaning of the rule, and it is subject to selfdeconstruction (Dupuy, 1994). To use Derrida’s term, the application of rules is a dangerous supple´ment (i.e. supplement and/or substitute). Application means to fulfil, supplement or substitute the rule. This implies that following rules entail necessarily deviating from those rules – though imperceptible in ‘normal’ cases. As Heraclitus put this paradox of iteration: ‘One cannot step into the same river twice.’ Diffe´rance means a differing and deferring force.4 What can be said about rules and their application in general also applies to strategies and their realization in practice as well. This is because strategies can be considered to be specific sets of rules and resources, namely, rules concerning the behaviour of firms and their members, with regard to the future and/or the environment. Ortmann and Salzman (2002) analysed the ‘emptiness, fullness and recursiveness of strategic management’ in terms of deconstruction, a` la Derrida. The central idea is that strategies are characterized by a certain necessary emptiness that has to be filled by and through translating them into action. Several German researchers have explored this stream, including, for instance, Khurana (2001) and Simon (2001) who were particularly concerned with strategic management consulting. Much of what is described above forms the background to Andreas Rasche’s (2008) ambitious attempt to deconstruct basic concepts of strategic management. His intention was not merely to deconstruct theoretical texts, but also to show strategic management in practice as being always in a process of deconstruction. Rasche, building on Pettigrew’s distinctions between strategy context, process and content, criticizes the conventional wisdom of strategy research and praxis and identifies three dominant logics – the ‘necessity of adaptation’ (strategy context), the ‘primacy of thinking’ (strategy process) and the ‘fullness of strategic rules and resources’ (strategy content). In doing so, he uncovers the underlying oppositions that reside within these dominant logics: environment–organization, formulation–implementation and rules/resources–application. Rasche maintains that the traditional way of dealing with these oppositions within strategy discourse and praxis obscures paradoxalities by privileging one pole in each pair, namely, the environment, strategy formulation and rules and resources, as opposed to ‘organization’, ‘implementation’ and ‘application’. More precisely, the paradox in this case is that the environment, regarded as independent of and even opposite to the organization, which is supposed to adapt to it, in fact depends on its being enacted by the very organization and its strategy. The implementation or realization of a strategy,

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which is traditionally regarded purely as a derivative of its formulation, in fact is constitutive to its meaning, ‘constitutive’ possibly in the sense of ‘deferring’/‘differing’, analogously to what has been said above about rules/ resources and their application. Dealing with these concepts as independent and just opposing, therefore, aims at impossibilities. It is widely thought that deconstruction is concerned mainly with texts, so it may come as a surprise that the practical implications of Rasche’s ideas lead to the concept of strategy-as-practice (see also Rasche & Chia, 2009). Nevertheless, it is not quite as surprising in view of his critique of the primacy of thinking and his emphasis on the role of strategy application. In particular, he recommends thinking about ‘communities of strategy formation’ as an object of strategy research – and, one might add, as an object of organizing or managing strategy formation.

7. COMMONALITIES IN THE CENTRAL STREAMS OF STRATEGY RESEARCH IN GERMANY In the preceding sections, we presented central streams of strategy research in Germany, as they have developed over the last few decades. While the cited works are quite different in terms of specific research questions, approach and line of reasoning, they share some general features, which we will discuss in this section. A first aspect that is also reflected in the structure of our paper is that the central streams draw heavily on grand theories and that they aim at developing more holistic conceptualizations of strategic management. The Munich School and the second research stream are based on two eminent German sociologists Habermas and Luhmann, who influenced significantly the general intellectual debate in Germany in the last decades of the 20th century. Similarly, the structurationist and the deconstructive streams presented here are based on Giddens and Derrida, who represent equally fundamental theoretical perspectives. A central contribution of each strand of research is, first of all, that strategic issues are framed within a particular theoretical perspective. This is obvious especially in the cases of Luhmann and Habermas, who were initially hardly noticed outside Germany. The same goes for Derrida who has not received hardly any attention in strategy research in the Anglo-Saxon world (apart from Clegg, Carter, & Kornberger, 2004). The case of Giddens is somewhat different. There were already scholars who had started experimenting with Giddens in strategy

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when he was picked up in the German strategy discourse (e.g. Whittington, 1990). Yet, the German research strands did not build directly on their work but started out afresh. Giddens was used directly serving as the starting point from which research questions sprang and theoretical results were derived. A somewhat special case is the stream of strategy research based on the Austrian School. In contrast to the other streams, the Austrian School was already quite prominent in US strategy research (Jacobson, 1992) before its ideas were taken up in Germany by Freiling and his colleagues. While they built directly on existing work in the field by researchers in the United States, the focus of their own work was on elaborating the basic theoretical concepts of the approach. A second aspect we should note is the interest in developing general theories of strategic management rather than focusing on more specific questions or aspects of strategy. This may reflect the influence of grand theories on the research streams discussed here. All the cited streams of strategy research stated that they aimed at developing a general theoretical foundation for strategic management. Although there are works outside these principal research streams that address more specific points, these are not central to the German strategy discourse. The thrust of the German strategy research is clearly conceptual–theoretical. It is worth mentioning that in all research streams, empirical studies, where existing, were of rather secondary importance, often merely illustrating the potential of the conceptual considerations. The aspects described so far reflect strongly Galtung’s (1979, 1981) characterization of the Teutonic intellectual style more generally, which we mentioned in the introduction. As Galtung (1981) wrote: It can be maintained that teutonic theory-formation is above all purely deductive. It is guided by the basic idea of Gedankennotwendigkeit: if one accepted the premises and certain rules of inference, then the conclusion follows. The goal is to arrive from a small number of premises at a high number of conclusions covering as vast an area of inquiry as possible. (Galtung, 1981)

What can be seen very clearly in this stream is the deductive mode of theorizing, which typically starts from a central concept or idea that leads to a pyramidal development of the theory. This deductive mode of theorizing is always the same but the central concepts are different: lifeworld (Munich School), selectivity of planning or system/environment (Steinman–Schreyo¨gg School), the paradox of novelty (Knyphausen, Seidl), the tautology problem of competence (Freiling), recursiveness in strategic management (research stream based on Giddens’s ideas), supplement and

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diffe´rance (Ortmann, Rasche). In line with that, strategy research tends to be driven by more fundamental questions about organizations rather than more narrow questions concerning market competition, which are driving much of the North American strategy research. This conceptual–theoretical approach in strategy is often combined with reflections on the underlying philosophy of science, echoing the general interest in ‘paradigm analysis’, which characterizes the Teutonic intellectual style as a whole (Galtung, 1981). In the case of Freiling and his colleagues, setting the theoretical approach within a Lakatosian framework is even an explicit aim of their research. Similar discussions on the philosophy of science can also be found in the other four streams covered in this paper. The Munich School, for example (e.g. Kirsch, 1996), reflects on the recursive relationship between strategy theory and strategy practice, and its theoretical underpinnings take the form of an evolutionary theory that co-evolves with the development of strategy praxis. The Steinmann– Schreyo¨gg School (Scherer, 1995) draws particularly on the philosophy of science that is associated with the so-called Erlangen School (Lorenzen, 1987). Similar reflections, even though less elaborate, can also be found in the other streams (e.g. Ortmann & Sydow, 2001; Seidl, 2007; Rasche, 2008). A further particularity of much of German strategy research concerns the concept of rationality. Knyphausen (1995, pp. 268–269) argues that differences in research style between Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world are partly the result of particular notions of rationality. While Anglo-Saxon research is dominated by notions of cognitive–instrumental rationality, alternative concepts of rationality are explicitly discussed in the German research community and shape its theoretical developments (e.g. Schreyo¨gg, 1984; Kirsch, 1991; Becker, 1996; Seidl & Aaken, 2008). German research explores a wide variety of different forms of rationality: moral–practical, aesthetic–expressive, occasional, narrative, evolutionary systemic, etc. This interest in alternative forms of rationality can be seen as a consequence of the general interest in fundamental concepts in theory development, which, as mentioned further up 7, is characteristic of the Teutonic intellectual style. A final aspect of the described streams of strategy research is the interest in dilemmas, paradoxes and oxymora. Of course, we don’t want to suggest that thinking in terms of paradoxes and making use of oxymora is exclusive to the German strategy discourse – there has been a long-standing interest in paradoxes in Anglo-Saxon research as well (see Smith & Berg, 1987; or Quinn & Cameron, 1988). What we want to suggest, however, is that

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German strategy researchers have a certain affinity for this type of thinking. In our description of the different research streams, we have already highlighted some of the principal paradoxes and oxymora. A first example is Kirsch’s concept of ‘planned evolution’, which tries to resolve the dilemma of having to plan into the future, while acknowledging that one cannot even conceptualize future developments. A second example is Schreyo¨gg and Steinmann’s concept of ‘unfocussed control’ which is almost an oxymoron. We compared this concept to the idea of having your eyes wide shut. In a sense, the concept of unfocused monitoring is meant to bridge the gap between alternative solutions to the problem of dealing with uncertainty, which are supposed to be mutually exclusive: either planning or flexibility. A third example is Knyphausen’s and Seidl’s concern with the paradox of newness, which is dealt with through an oscillation between a systems approach and an action approach, and loose coupling of episodes, respectively. Seidl (2007) looked closely at the paradox of the continuation of meaning between different systems or discourses, which is solved theoretically through the concept of ‘productive misunderstandings’. As Teubner – another Luhmann scholar – explains: ‘Between the discourses [or systems], the continuation of meaning is impossible and at the same time necessary. The way out of this paradox is productive misunderstanding’ (Teubner, 2000, p. 408). In the research stream represented by Freiling and his colleagues several paradoxes or oxymora are addressed. First of all, Freiling et al. (2008, p. 1160) propose ‘to take some steps back in order to move forward’ in theorizing strategy. By this, the authors, as mentioned above, mean that one should go back to market process theory and complement it with a competence-based view – which in turn can profit from the Austrian School. Market process theory takes research ‘back to the future’ of a competencebased theory of the firm, so to speak. In addition to that, Freiling and his colleagues are particularly interested in ways of reconciling the opposing concepts of market and organization with various concepts like intrapreneurship or virtual organizations that consist of networks of firms. In the case of the Giddensian research stream, there are multiple dilemmas that were already pointed out by Giddens himself, such as structure vs. action. The authors who follow this research stream maintain that structuration theory can be used to deal with many of the much lamented oppositions in strategy research, like content and process, marketvs. resource-based views and the like. In particular, they argue that to think of strategy formation as structuration may help resolve the opposition between strategy and structure. It is probably to be expected that in the

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Derridian research stream many paradoxes and dilemmas are discussed. The most far reaching is Rasche’s (2008) project of ‘deconstructing’ the dominant logics of strategy context, process, and content and its underlying oppositions, that is environments/organization, strategy, formulation/ implementation, rules and resources/application. Derrida’s message to strategy research is that it should accept its paradoxical foundation and challenge its deeply held assumptions, such as ‘the primacy of thinking’. The list of examples of paradoxes and oxymora discussed in the context of the central research streams could be extended considerably. Yet, our purpose was not to provide a conclusive list but merely to demonstrate that researchers in these streams have a particular affinity to thinking in terms of paradoxes and oxymora. At this point, it might be worth emphasizing some parallels between the tendencies in German research on business strategy, described further up, and the attempt of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz to develop a philosophy of strategy. Although Clausewitz wrote about strategy in a military context, his work (1984, originally published in 1832–1834) is generally considered of much broader relevance – particularly to business strategy (Ghyczy & Bassford, 2001). Like the authors mentioned earlier, Clausewitz too aimed at developing a general theory of (military) strategy rather than focusing on particular aspects. He had a holistic perspective, treating strategy in the wider context of politics and political aims, he drew on a range of different disciplines and – not surprisingly, being a contemporary of Hegel – had a dialectical approach to reality, taking a particular interest in antithetical tensions. Despite Clausewitz’s prominence, his ideas had hardly any impact on German business strategy, and were not taken up by the strategy researchers mentioned further up. Yet, the parallels noted here might be no mere coincidence. Instead, one could argue that Clausewitz and those strategy researchers share a common root, that is the particular ‘Teutonic’ intellectual style. So far we have pointed out the particularities of five important research streams in Germany over the last three decades. On the basis of these particularities, strategy research in Germany can be seen as quite distinct from mainstream research in the United States. In view of this, while other researchers like Snow (1986) and McGee and Thomas (1986) come to the conclusion that the European perspective on strategy is not very different from that in the United States, we would argue that the central streams of research in Germany differ significantly from their US counterparts. This is in line with Knyphausen’s (1995) earlier conclusion that German strategy research provides alternatives to mainstream strategy research in the

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United States. At the same time, however, one has to acknowledge that our review of the literature focused only on central streams of strategy research in Germany. As mentioned above, there are many other works outside the streams described here, which are much closer to the North American mainstream. Furthermore, there are researchers in North America who think along similar lines as the German strategy researchers presented in this paper, and who have also drawn on grand theories addressing fundamental questions (e.g. Hinings & Greenwood, 1988), aimed at developing fundamental approaches to strategy (e.g. Ansoff, 1965), reflected on the philosophy of science underlying their approach (e.g. Shrivastava, 1986), been concerned with the concept of rationality (e.g. Gilbert, 1992) and with paradoxes (e.g. Quinn & Cameron, 1988). Yet, we would argue that these aspects are typical of research in Germany, while they are the exception, rather than the rule in North America. We should note, however, that in the course of time, differences between German and Anglo-Saxon research become less prominent as the boundaries between different styles of research start to fade. German researchers increasingly collaborate with their Anglo-Saxon colleagues, and their publications now reach a more international readership. In addition to that, because of international movements towards new forms of accreditation, audit and evaluation, there is considerable pressure on the established German university system to change (Muller-Camen & Salzgeber, 2005). As a consequence, strategy research in Germany is becoming increasingly ‘Saxonic’ (Galtung, 1981) in style. At the same time, however, there appears to be also an opposite trend: the most obvious example of this is the recent rise of the so-called strategy-as-practice research tradition (Johnson, Melin, & Whittington, 2003; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Golsorkhi et al., 2010) in the UK and slowly in the United States as well (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2010), which shares many of the aspects that characterize the German research stream we have described here. Perhaps it is not surprising that many German strategy researchers are highly involved in the strategyas-practice community.

8. CONCLUSION The aim of this paper was to identify the particularities of German strategy research that distinguish it from US mainstream research, which has always been dominant in this field. For our purpose, we examined central streams

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of strategy research although, admittedly, we have not been able to include all strands of current German strategy research. In the process, we identified several aspects typical of the central streams: strategy researchers tend to draw on grand theories, and especially on the sociological and philosophical traditions associated with prominent figures such as Habermas, Luhmann or Giddens. Also, they develop more holistic approaches to strategy and are concerned with fundamental questions about organizations in their environments. The research itself is predominantly conceptual–theoretical, the theories are derived deductively from central principles or concepts, and the authors reflect the underlying philosophy of science. Furthermore, German researchers are concerned with forms of rationality that go beyond the classic cognitive–instrumental form and have a particular affinity to thinking in terms of paradoxes and oxymora. While these aspects can also be found in some North American research, in that case they tend to be the exception rather than the rule, whereas in German strategy research they play a central role. We explained these particularities on cultural grounds, especially the general intellectual style of German academia (which has been dubbed the ‘Teutonic’ intellectual style, Galtung, 1981), the structure of the German academic system (i.e. the Lehrstuhl system) and the limited exchange between German researchers and their colleagues from outside Germany. Nevertheless, we concluded that, in the light of increasing mobility among researchers on an international scale, increasing collaboration between researchers from Germany and their colleagues from other countries, institutional pressures on the German university system due to new forms of accreditation, audit and evaluation, and an increasing focus on publishing for an international readership, the distinctiveness of German strategy research is fading. It goes without saying that this increasing collaboration is desirable. Both sides, German strategy research and US mainstream research, can benefit: the former, from the more empirical, more rigorous and more down-to-earth orientation of US mainstream research, and the latter, from the strengths of ‘German’ or ‘Teutonic’ deductive thinking and its inclination towards a thoroughly conceptual foundation. Undeniably, however, international cooperation goes hand in hand with the international unification of methods and ways of thinking, writing and talking, which may threaten the diversity necessary for creativity in strategy research. Moreover, there is a discernible danger of losing touch with important philosophical or theoretical traditions other than the Anglo-Saxon ones. For instance, many of the German students of strategy we dealt with are, in one way or another, knowingly or not, committed to the phenomenological

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tradition which goes back to Edmund Husserl and his concept of ‘Lebenswelt’ (‘life-world’). This is because Habermas, as well as Luhmann, Giddens and Derrida themselves are, in some sense, committed to Husserl’s work. The approach labelled ‘strategy-as-practice’ in particular is based on a concept of practice which in part – for example, in the cases of Giddens and Bourdieu – goes back to Husserl but could be significantly elaborated through phenomenological thinking and pertinent concepts such as ‘relevance structures’, ‘being-in-the-world’ or ‘entwinement with others and things’ (see Sandberg & Dall’Alba, 2009; Ortmann, 2010a). Another example is the concept of ‘responsiveness’ noted above: it is present within the strategic management discourse (e.g. in Kirsch 1992 and in the ‘flexible response’, as expounded by Ansoff, 1984) but can benefit considerably from the insights of the German philosopher and phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels. His opus magnum, Antwortregister (1994), is about answering and responding (antworten) as an important dimension implied by human action – and by ‘passion’ in the sense of suffering or of being subject to what happens to one, for example, to strategists (Ortmann, 2010a). There is a considerable danger of forfeiting the richness and national diversity of European thinking in the course of what we referred to as international ‘unification’. (Needless to say, this applies to, say, French or Danish philosophical traditions as well, e.g. to Bergson’s approach to time or Michel de Certeau’s idea of ‘consumption as production of usages’,5 or to Kierkegaard’s concept of decision, respectively.) Given these entanglements of international collaboration it may be appropriate to end with another oxymoron: let’s live and work apart together!

NOTES 1. In what follows we deal mainly with this article which is the most recent one. See, however, already Freiling (2001, 2004, 2005), Sanchez and Freiling (2005), moreover Simon, Welling, and Freiling (2008). These contributions address, among others, issues such as competence-based management, marketing, co-location and internationalization. 2. Note that all the three views, as shown by Powell and colleagues, in some way or other go back to Austrian (Viennese) economists such as Carl Menger, Eugen Bo¨hm-Bawerk, Joseph A. Schumpeter, Ludwig Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek. 3. See, for example, Aharoni (1966), Bower (1970a, 1970b), Miles and Snow (1978), Gabele (1979), Hall and Saias (1980), Gaitanides (1985); for a comprehensive synopsis, see Schreyo¨gg (1984). 4. Another aspect of Derrida’s thinking that space does not allow us to deal with here, although it is highly relevant in our context, is his reflection on the paradoxality

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of decision-making, especially strategic decisions. Strictly speaking, this is a paradox of reasoning. When one is required to make a strategic decision, one needs to provide convincing or even compelling reasons, which are, however, usually missing. Moreover, one needs ‘reasons for reasons’, which leads to an infinite regress. For more details, see Ortmann (2003a, 2003b). 5. See de Certeau (1988). Ortmann (2003b, pp. 185–209) and Suominen and Mantere (2010) made use of this idea in order to conceptualize the practices of strategists and other actors as creative and possibly deviant ways of ‘consuming strategies’ (see also Whittington, 2003, p. 121). We consider this as a more fruitful conception, compared to the more deterministic concept of habitus in the sense of Bourdieu.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Werner Kirsch, Andreas Scherer and Tobias Scheytt for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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PART VI METHODOLOGIES

COLLABORATING TO DISCOVER THE PRACTICE OF STRATEGY AND ITS IMPACT Elena P. Antonacopoulou and Julia Balogun ABSTRACT This chapter argues that one of the fundamental challenges of the global character of strategy research is the growing need to foster collaborations between academic and business practitioners that can help build a better understanding of the practice of strategy and through these means deliver greater impact. This challenge strengthens existing calls for strategy research to refocus on understanding the practice of strategy with an attentiveness to micro-dynamics of strategizing, and requires us to expand the ways in which research practice is performed. Whilst this can apparently be achieved through better dialogue, building trusting relationships and valuing the contribution each party can make due to their differences, it in fact requires a questioning of our research assumptions and practice.

INTRODUCTION Like the rest of the management research, strategic management has been criticized for its lack of relevance to, and impact on, managerial practice The Globalization of Strategy Research Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 27, 391–410 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-3322/doi:10.1108/S0742-3322(2010)0000027016

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(Johnson, Melin & Whittington, 2003; Johnson, Langley, Melin & Whittington, 2007; Balogun, Huff & Johnson, 2003). Indeed there has been a growing chorus of academics within both the United States (see, e.g. Bartunek, 2007; Rynes, Bartunek, & Daft, 2001) and Europe (see, e.g. Antonacopoulou, 2009a, 2010a; Tranfield & Starkey, 1998) arguing for research that involves a greater level of academic/business practitioner collaboration to increase levels of relevance and impact. Impact is a word added relatively recently to the management research vocabulary, yet one that enjoys a growing interest from across a range of perspectives and contexts including international funding councils (RCUK, 2006, 2007) and accreditation bodies (AACSB, 2008), EU initiatives (TEEC, 2005) and the policy agenda by the governments of different countries (see La¨hteenma¨ki-Smith, Hyytinen, Kutinlahti, & Konttinene, 2006; Munn-Venn, 2006; Berr, 2007). As such, an interest in relevance and impact in management research has become a global concern for academics, management schools, research funding and accreditation bodies, policy council and committees and increasingly academic journals. This desire for relevance and impact hides within it many challenges to the ways academics traditionally think about their research practice, both in terms of how they do their research and its purpose beyond publication in top international journals. In addition, it challenges the value of the box ticking activities academics so often engage in to claim an interest in influencing managerial practice, such as publishing management text books and articles in practitioner friendly journals. Managers and academics operate off different knowledge bases; influencing practice requires something more than ‘translation’. The boundaries that exist between the two communities go beyond the syntactic and even the semantic. Their knowledge is embedded in different communities of practice and as such if one is to learn from the other, a more interactive working relationship is required. This chapter attempts to pick up the challenges contained within the notion of academic and business practitioner collaboration, or what some refer to as ‘co-production’ in management research (see Pettigrew, 2003), to deliver strategic management research of relevance and impact. It invites a fresh look at the importance of collaborative research between scholars and strategy practitioners if we are to drive strategy research towards delivering impact. The discussion unpacks the purpose of management research through the perspective of ‘practice-relevant scholarship’ (Antonacopoulou, 2010b, 2010c). Practice-relevant scholarship promotes the importance of academic/business connectivity through learning-driven collaborations and can provide a useful foundation for rebuilding the purposefulness of collaborative research. Applied to strategy research (Johnson, Balogun & Beech, 2010), practicerelevant scholarship first reflects a growing interest in the study of strategy

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as something people do and not just something organizations have (Johnson et al., 2003, 2007; Balogun, Jarzabkowski, & Siedl, 2007). Second, due to its focus on the work of strategy which in turn requires a closer working relationship with strategy practitioners, attention is drawn to the importance and modes of interaction between management scholars (academics), business practitioners and policy makers. Essentially, this interactive mode of engaging various stakeholder groups in the research process cannot be limited to the ‘production’ of knowledge. Instead, a learning orientation is more likely to provide scope for co-creating ideas in the course of the research interaction that have the potential to deliver impact through the influence of theory and managerial practice. Third, and consistent with the focus of this chapter, practice-relevant scholarship promotes a review of research practice. In the context of strategy research, it invites a re-consideration of both the approach to conducting strategy research and the modes of engaging practitioners not only as participants but as collaborators in the research process. This means that beyond existing calls in the strategy research for a practice orientation in strategy research and an attentiveness to micro-dynamics of strategizing (see Johnson et al., 2003, 2007, also Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2010), there is a need to expand the ways in which research practice is performed. On a practical level, this means that both strategy scholars and executives need to be prepared to engage in research collaborations that impact both the theory and managerial practice of strategy. By expanding research practice to account for impact through collaborative research, we provide a proactive response to the challenges the global orientation of strategy research create. The chapter begins with an overview of the rigour and relevance debate, how this has underpinned the emergent focus on co-production in management research and the issues it raises for developing more advanced forms of collaborative academic–business practitioner research. The chapter then considers some of the principles that need to underpin collaborative research as practice-relevant scholarship, and explores the challenges this raises for the global character of strategic management research.

RIGOUR AND RELEVANCE: MOVING BEYOND CO-PRODUCTION TO ADVANCE PRACTICE-RELEVANT SCHOLARSHIP There is general agreement that the character of knowledge production is changing akin to what Jasanoff (2004) drawing on Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons (2001) described as the co-evolutionary process between science

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and society. This orientation towards the new mode of knowledge production (a la Gibbons et al., 1994) is shaping research practices in a number of scientific fields (Nutley, Walter, & Davies, 2003; Landry, Amara, & Lamari, 2001). The notable changes in language with the introduction of notions like ‘co-production of knowledge’ (Pettigrew, 2003) in management research may also be attributable to this co-evolutionary orientation. However, co-production is typically presented as a ‘new’ mode of management research, and not just a language shift. Yet on closer examination, it may reveal that a range of ‘established’ and ‘long-standing’ management research initiatives – such as action research, learning networks and applied research – lie at the core of how collaborative management research is typically understood (Shani, Adler, Mohrman, Pasmore, & Stymne, 2008; Adler, Shani, & Styhre, 2004; Amabile et al., 2001). Thus, if we are to understand the implications that lie hidden within the notion of co-production, and this shift in orientation and language, we might do well to explore what other reasons can be offered for the momentum that surrounds the emphasis on co-production, and in particular the rigour-relevance debate. Some of the challenges and controversies surrounding management research are well articulated in what has come to be referred to as the ‘rigour and relevance’ debate (Rynes et al., 2001; Starkey & Madan, 2001; Huff, 2000). This debate which has captured the agenda of management scholars for many decades has re-emerged more forcefully than ever in the last few years. The vibrancy of the debate raises fundamentally important issues in relation to research practice. It has highlighted the need for management research to be more applicable to management practice and to be more reflective of the effects of research on life in organizations. It has also highlighted the tensions given the need for research to remain rigorous, yet supported by sophisticated methods for data collection and analysis. These issues are also reflective of the core problematic that underpins management research. Van de Ven and Johnson (2006) point to at least two aspects of this problematic: (1) the knowledge transfer problem that reflects the inability or unwillingness of management scholars to translate their insights for practitioners and (2) the epistemological and ontological distinctions between relevant and rigorous knowledge which are not fully understood. And to this could be added the difficulties of transferring learning across the tacit knowledge boundaries that exist between managerial and academic communities. These issues reveal that the rigour and relevance debate reflects diverse understandings about different communities and their identities which may explain why this debate has been characterized as an ‘existential crisis’ in management research (Gulati, 2007).

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Seen as a crisis (or not), the rigour and relevance debate reveals a powerful tension that is clearly motivating a reassessment of management research practice. It creates new space for imagination of what management scholarship could become if it accounted for both rigour and relevance. Some authors have captured these emerging images of management scholarship: Van de Ven (2007) talks of engaged scholarship, Bartunek (2007) of relational scholarship of integration (based on the principles of insider–outsider research approaches, Bartunek & Louis, 1996). These images of management scholarship promote the need for academics and business practitioners to jointly produce knowledge that can advance both management theory and practice. This can be achieved, it is argued, through mutual relationships founded on respect, trust and a genuine understanding by both parties of the value each has the potential to offer to the other. These images of management scholarship are also consistent with the underlying drive of co-production to emphasize the significance of building lasting relationships with the research users so that they can both contribute in shaping the research itself and can more actively engage in utilizing the ‘outcomes’. However, for these images of management scholarship to be realized, there is at minimum a need to explicate further what it means to be a researcher (what we refer to as a research practitioner) capable of engaging with business practitioners in a way that delivers relevant and impactful research and how might that be reflected in the performance of research practice. This is critical in defining research practitioners’ response to the co-evolutionary process between science and society by articulating more clearly what practice-relevant scholarship means in practice (Antonacopoulou, 2010b; Johnson et al., 2010). The motivation for seeking to advance scholarship that is ‘practicerelevant’ is that it draws attention to the nature of the research practice itself, and shows that for management scholars to move to different modes of engagement with business practitioners, it is necessary to re-examine research practice and not just the outputs of that practice. Inconsistencies in the way research practices are performed are unavoidably created as different social, economic, political and ethical forces shape the character of performance of research practice (Corvellec, 1997). For example, the pressures to publish in top international journals to be promoted versus the pressure to show impact on practice to win a research grant. Or, as increasingly in the UK, for example, there can be a pressure to do both rather than just the former. This places the research practitioners performing the research practice centre stage. It is their energy, vision,

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passion and personality as well as commitment in relation to the intentions, actions, values and assumptions, learning and knowing that they individually and collectively bring to their practice and the process of performing it. In essence, practitioners make their practice what it is, by virtue of what they do, and which is part of who they are. These choices reveal other than their personal qualities, the collective identity they seek to reflect based on their theoretical orientations and methodological predispositions. This intimate connection between the research practitioner and their practice is critical as questioning research practice also questions their identity and what it means to be an academic researcher (see Antonacopoulou, 2009a, 2009b). Practice-relevant scholarship is at one level consistent with the underlying principles driving co-production research. However, practice-relevant scholarship problematizes the notion of ‘co-production’ as it does not focus on knowledge production per se. Notions of ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ of knowledge promote a market orientation that treats knowledge as a ‘commodity’ to be manipulated at will. Moreover, distinctive roles between producers and consumers of knowledge, even if there is scope for co-production and co-consumption, reinforce political dynamics between competing expectations, frequently resulting in the loss of powerful ideas in the process of translation (see Shapiro, Kirkman, & Courtney, 2007). A practice orientation towards research acknowledges the significance of explicit and tacit knowledge that governs how practices are formed and become part of the institutional structures governing the way they are performed in different contexts (Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003; Antonacopoulou, 2007, 2008a). And thus, the challenges involved in changing these to produce a new type of practice. In other words, practice-relevant scholarship goes beyond co-production to challenge the means of knowledge production as well as how that knowledge is used. Therefore, practice-relevant scholarship centres on the structures that foster relationship building and the modes of research that are more likely to engage practitioners in collaborative research endeavours. However, this means that it also invites another look at the way we understand research itself (Antonacopoulou, 2009a; Antonacopoulou, 2010a). In the sections that follow we explore what the antecedents and consequences of impactful strategy research might be, but we discuss first how collaborative research founded on the principles of practice-relevant scholarship might be designed through consideration of the meaning of the term impact.

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COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE-RELEVANT SCHOLARSHIP Research Funding Councils and International Accreditation bodies (ESRC, 2008; AHRC, 2008; AACSB, 2008) promote the importance of accounting for the impact of research. It is unclear, however, what we mean when we refer to impact. Without a clear and mutually agreed definition, the danger is that impact can become everything and nothing. This concern is validated by the growing tendency to describe impact by focusing on the outcomes and outputs from research. The orientation towards more measurable indicators of impact reinforces the saying that ‘what gets measured gets done’. However, hard and tangible performance measures as is widely acknowledged in the performance management literature (Neely, 2005) are not always able to account for the value-adding contribution of research that is intangible and immeasurable yet ironically potentially most influential. For example, accounting for social, economic or political impacts (La¨hteenma¨ki-Smith et al., 2006; TEEC, 2005; AACSB, 2008) may be important but it does not explain fully the kinds of impact that individuals engaging in collaborative research may experience personally. It is these personal accounts of impact as part of the lived experience that engagement in research by managers entails that provides promising clues for what impact may mean. As would be the case with other value-laden concepts, impact already suffers from the great variety of expectations that different stakeholders in the research process place on it. First, impact is likely to be defined differently and in the terms of different stakeholders. Second, the same experience could reflect a whole variety of different impacts subject to how different users chose to engage with the research. As such, impact could be also conceptualized as a personal experience and a process of co-evolution between those collaborating in the research. Therefore, not only is there a likelihood that impact will mean different things to different people, but also that the experiences of impact are likely to be unique and could be hard to articulate, let alone fit into the broad categories of impact currently in the literature. Impact can, therefore, be both formal and informal, specific to people and circumstances and at the same time broad and encompassing of different social arrangements. Impact could be a cause, consequence and context of research and it may be an outcome, output and process at the same time. Mindful of these complexities surrounding the concept and the political drives behind this latest trend, Antonacopoulou (2009a) argues that when considering impact in relation to scholarship it could be a means of

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accounting for the ways management research makes a difference, a point that Mohrman (2001) also supports as a more general principle in management research. If we were to adopt a more holistic conceptualization of impact in relation to practice-relevant scholarship, then it would reflect research practices, Antonacopoulou (2009a, p. 428) argues, that would reflect impact in multiple ways as shown in Fig. 1. The definition of impact is shown as a triangle to symbolize the centrality of emergent change (as in mathematics-Delta) in the way impact needs to be both conceptualized and enacted. The triangle does not intend to suggest a hierarchy that privileges some aspects of impact over others. Instead, it illustrates the interrelationships between these different aspects of impact and the research practice they imply. Increasingly there is a push for research to be influential in the sense that it has a visible effect through improvements to managerial practice and/policy. For this to be the case, research needs to produce memorable and demonstrable benefits that those on the receiving end consider worthy of propagation and publicity, certainly within their immediate sphere, and that can be used to promote the findings to other practitioners, to create some level of take up and therefore influence. Yet for research to produce something that is memorable and influential, it first has to produce something practical, and of use, in the sense that business practitioners can integrate the learning into their

Fig. 1.

Impact and Scholarship. Source: Adapted from Antonacopoulou (2009a).

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managerial practice and use the knowledge gained to change what they do within their organization (or sphere of operation). However, the research also has to be of practical benefit to the research practitioner meeting, for example, their needs for research that is publishable in top academic journals. The criteria for findings to be practical also have implications for the research agenda: it needs to be actionable. A research agenda will only be actionable if the researchers and practitioners involved in the research can come up with a research agenda that is of mutual interest (Balogun et al., 2003). In other words, if a research agenda is developed that: a) from the practitioners point of view has the potential to offer, for example, insight on their strategic practices or some form of new knowledge on their organization, systems and processes and b) from the scholars perspective has the potential to offer data and theoretical insights that can be used to generate more traditional research outputs, such as journal articles, alongside the other more managerially and policy-related outputs. The requirement for shared knowledge to be actionable points to a more collaborative research relationship, and asks more than we traditionally ask of academics. If we seek to translate ideas into action, particularly in contexts we are not familiar with, we will only be able to provide an approximation of what it takes for ideas to work. As we point out in the Introduction, the boundaries that exist between academics, practitioners and policy makers go beyond the syntactic and the semantic, since their knowledge and know-how is embedded in context and practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown & Duguid, 2001). If we seek to influence management practice, then we need to ensure that management practice is implicated in the research so that it is possible for the knowledge co-created to be owned by the business practitioners as much as it is owned by the research practitioners. This level of ownership implies a shift beyond translation. It calls for embracing the power of association (Latour, 1986) in the connections that are fostered between partners in the co-creation of knowledge. The power of association is a foundation for building a familiarity that balances the engagement with experiences as an insider, with the confidence that this implies about understanding the intricate issues, alongside a capability to read the experiences as an outsider offering alternative interpretations. Such a level of engagement introduces learning as a critical foundation in the research collaboration. It encourages attention to investing in learning to collaborate (across boundaries) but it also emphasizes that the collaboration itself is a space where learning takes place. The last two of the impact criteria are therefore the most challenging. Enabling the co-creation of ideas by interacting more actively with business

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practitioners and policy makers will become a prerequisite since this creates the potential to transform research practice by bringing attention to alternative (managerial) perspectives early in the research cycle and not at the end of the research process as an after-thought as is typically the case. Instead, an orientation towards delivering impact provides scope for forming important collaborations with a whole host of partners (across geographical, scientific/professional and practice fields) with whom the research can be undertaken and aim to be a direct influence on. This, of course, is the principle underpinning the call for research collaborations between management scholars and business practitioners, since this could overcome the ongoing concern over relevance. By engaging in research as a mode of collaboration, academics and business practitioners as co-researchers can develop a closer understanding of the subject matter and are more likely to overcome the perennial problem of translation (Johnson et al., 2010; Shapiro et al., 2007). However, as Fig. 1 points out, the co-creation needs to be learning driven since ultimately the collaborative relationship will only work if it is to some extent transformational for all those involved. This is important to overcoming the divide between the managerial and academic communities of practice. Shared knowledge will drive actionable agenda of mutual interest and lead to practical outcomes, but a learning collaboration is needed to enable the acquisition of the shared knowledge.

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH PRACTICE For reasons such as those discussed above, Balogun et al. (2003) argue that the research principles and assumptions those researching strategic management typically follow require significant revision (see Table 1.). This work predates many of the more recent debates on relevance, rigour and impact. As a result, there is a lesser emphasis on the need for collaboration to deliver co-evolution of learning between management and research practitioners. Whilst Table 1 captures some of the implications for research practice that might arise out of more collaborative research arrangements, there is a lesser recognition that shared knowledge is required to drive actionable agenda of mutual interest and lead to practical outcomes, and that this requires a learning collaboration to enable the acquisition of the shared knowledge. What is hidden in, but not explicated from this table, therefore, is something more significant about the nature of research practice for the research practitioner that in turn links into issues identity. Thus, to fully

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Table 1.

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Revised Research Assumptions for Strategic Management Research.

Traditional Research Principles and Assumptions

New Research Principles and Assumptions

Researcher sets research question and negotiates arm’s length access.

Researcher sets research question with organizational collaborators as part of access agreement. Research question mirrors the parallel, but compatible, agendas of researcher and collaborators. Research participants are more involved in data collection. Thus, traditional methods are augmented by other methods, such as self-report. Participants can become collaborators in data collection, analysis and report. Researcher needs to encourage self-reflection by participants. Participants need to be coaches to enable deeper understanding by researchers.

Data is collected and owned by researcher, typically through participant observation, interviews and secondary sources. Relationship with research participants is typically detached to preserve researcher independence and prevent pollution of research site by researcher actions. Data is analyzed and written up by researcher with some end of project feedback provided in return for access.

Skills base for researcher consistent with that provided by traditional research training.

Analysis and writing may be a joint effort, or remain separate with different outputs for different audiences (e.g. academic versus practitioner). Feedback is often significant, of varying forms, and is often provided in progress. The aim is to offer an organization something in return for access in addition to research feedback. Multiple skills are required. Traditional research training is augmented by facilitation skills, team development skills and consultancy skills (e.g. interpersonal and political).

Source: Adapted from Balogun et al. (2003).

understand the implications for research practice of practice-relevant scholarship, we need to extend Table 1 into a consideration of the skills and practices required of researchers engaging in such scholarship. Johnson et al. (2010) go partway to addressing this issue by arguing for collaborative research endeavors exploring strategic management practice to be underpinned by a number of pillars of practice: – – – –

Researcher legitimacy Relationship building with trust Positive growth and actualization oriented Reflective practice

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We argue that these are pillars of professional research practice and are essential for transformational research collaborations. Researcher legitimacy requires the research practitioner to have the pragmatic legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), best illustrated in being able to offer something that is of interest to the management practitioner. This might include, for example, their knowledge of managerial practice in areas such as strategy formulation and strategic change, or executive development and workshop facilitation skills. In other words, there is an exchange relationship here not necessarily present in more traditional research approaches. The research practitioner ceases to be a neutral observer and instead can share his/her knowledge with the management practitioner during the research. Otherwise, why would the management practitioner engage in the collaborative research relationship? Relationship building with trust is required to facilitate a research relationship. Even in less-intensive data gathering methodologies, such as focus groups or interviews, where there is a desire for those researched to be completely open, researchers effectively have to prove themselves by honouring any commitments they make to confidentiality and anonymity. However, in more collaborative relationships, the trust factor requires the research practitioner to be willing to have difficult conversations as the need to share learning may result in the research practitioner having to share knowledge that is unwelcome and challenging for the management practitioners they are working with. This requires an awareness of organizational politics and high levels of intra-personal empathy and links to the third pillar of practice – positivegrowth and actualization orientated. The research has to be concerned with the development of the management practitioners and their organization. Ultimately, the researchers have to be interested in the practitioners and their organization for their own sake as well as for research outcomes: to care about managers and enjoy the time and commitment offered when working with practitioners (Calori, 2002, p. 878). As relationships develop, research practitioners must expect that the management practitioners with whom they are collaborating will want to use some of the time they spend with the researcher to reflect on and develop their own practice. The researcher must enter into such relationships recognizing and expecting this. However, there should be an element of mutual growth and learning. Whilst the learning will almost inevitably be around their personal practice and growth for the practitioners, the learning might be around generic practice, or theoretically informed insights about the phenomenon of study for the researcher. Connected to this, the research practitioner also needs to have a concern for the development of their own practice, to practise

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reflective practice. The research practitioner needs to seek to build knowledge that provides them with legitimacy, inter-personal skills that enable them to negotiate the political terrain of organizations and work on a developmental basis with management practitioners and means of reflection on their own practice and development. Central to such reflective practice is reflexive critique (Antonacopoulou, 2008b). Reflexive critique encourages a critique of existing ways of seeing, a critique of prevailing perspectives, a critique of arguments and propositions (verbal and written), a critique of common sense as common (it rarely is), a critique of received wisdom and dominant assumptions and a critique of personal biases and partialities based on personal interests. Reflexive critique is grounded in empirical praxis because it shifts the focus away from routinization and towards practising with a focus on repetition – rehearsing, reviewing and renewing in the process of improvization and imagination that are central to research practice. This would be especially so if we took research etymologically as a process of searching again and again, exploring issues as if it were for the first time. This orientation towards strategy research practice invites strategy researchers to think critically about the ways in which they are engaging in strategy research. The governing assumptions that have guided them so far in forming their research questions may prove inadequate in capturing the unfolding process of strategizing. This means that beyond thinking critically strategy researchers are called upon to also be reflexive about their actions. In other words, they need to rethink their tools and the ways they form their choices often by privileging particular methodological techniques (typically quantitative than qualitative). They also need to reconsider the very processes by which they are educated and socialized into particular modes of conducting strategy research practice. This means that it is not enough for us to take a critical look at the approaches by which strategy research is performed. We need to delve deeper to understand and attend to the very processes that enable strategy researchers to acquire the necessary research skills. Traditional research methods courses are likely to provide inadequate skills for development. This shift of focus to the frameworks and training processes that socialize strategy researchers also provides access to the mechanisms that develop the dominant identities that strategy researchers form over time, and subsequently direct their research. If we wish to expand the way strategists do research, then ultimately we are challenging deeply held identity issues to do with not just who strategy researchers are but how they do their work. It is these challenges that we turn to in our conclusions.

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In addition, whilst we are emphasizing the importance of building an intimate understanding of practice as situated and context specific, and of informing practice in context, this orientation does not deny the scope to distil key insights that can be shared for the benefit of others. The research practitioner needs to remain mindful of the need to connect findings to theory in a way that enables generalizations beyond the immediate context, to enable contribution to both academic research agenda and more general implications for managerial practice. This is consistent with the global character of strategy research and a means of ensuring that the research findings will be actionable and practical for both the research and business practitioners involved. This suggests that a practice-relevant orientation towards research practice must include a mindfulness for the identification of indicators of generalization that can support existing and future research collaborations.

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, we have made the case for a renewed approach to the way scholars engage with strategy research practice. We argue for the notion of practice-relevant scholarship as the foundations for a collaborative approach to strategy research that responds to the ongoing concerns about the relevance and impact of strategy research. The orientation towards collaboration that we promote is founded on learning as a cause, consequence and context of the research collaboration. Placed in the context of a practice-relevant orientation towards scholarship, the importance of learning in undertaking impactful strategy research opens up the scope to question, experiment and practise different ways of performing strategy research, thereby enabling the design of strategy research which can meet the multiple priorities of different research collaborators. This we see providing solid foundations based on mutual respect and trust among research collaborators as critical. It is not, however, our intent to suggest that all strategy research must follow the ideas, assumptions and pillars of practice we lay out here. Rather we are arguing for an expansion of dominant research practice. It would certainly be incorrect to suggest that research delivered under the old assumptions cannot deliver relevance and impact. Yet we do have evidence that such assumptions can lead to a researcher detachment that in turn generates research agendas mostly relevant to the academic world rather than the business world. It is this that has fuelled the rigour/relevance

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debate. In addition, it might be that if the sorts of calls that are now evident in, for example, the UK, for research to involve an explicit concern for impact at some level, become more common, then the new assumptions we propose here will in turn need to become more common. The orientation towards a learning-driven approach to performing strategy research captured in a practice-relevant research approach is not limited to simply a critical review of the dominant assumptions. Unquestionably, dominant research assumptions driven by a normal science model and including notions such as we must not pollute/interfere with the context, we must remain outside and objective and so on contribute towards distancing the strategy researcher from the practice of strategy. Yet these dominant assumptions are also part and parcel of the very processes by which strategy researchers are initiated in the profession. Thus, as we point out above, to expand the range of possible assumptions driving strategy research, and in turn are acceptable by the journals that publish research on strategic management, it is necessary to re-visit the means through which strategy researchers are socialized and acquire the elements of professionalism that underpin their research practice and the identity they hold as a research practitioner. Thus, we can see that if we are to expand the range of assumptions governing strategy research, and meet the increasing demands for research that is rigorous, relevant and impactful, we need to reconsider, as would any organization or institution on the brink of change, the systems, processes, procedures and means by which we recruit, train, develop, promote and reward strategy research practitioners, and therefore management researchers more generally. We propose the following principles for both research design and researcher development: 1. Research should be designed and conducted collaboratively in ways that the relationships formed are founded on a personal interest in the other partner’s agenda and a willingness to embrace this agenda as central to the collective benefits the research collaboration is intended to produce. 2. Since the strategy research that results from such collaborations will be deemed more relevant and impactful if it is actionable and practical, any research collaboration should include the production of findings of this nature as part of the research objectives and outputs. This requires an orientation towards capturing the actions and activities that strategy actors engage in the midst of their strategy work (Balogun et al., 2007; Jarzabkowski, 2005; Johnson et al., 2007; Whittington, 2006). However, it also requires the engagement with existing knowledge and theory

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around strategy work to enable wider impact and dissemination beyond the immediate setting (in, e.g. top international journals or practitioner development forums) through theoretical and managerial generalization. 3. The way strategy research is performed is intimately connected to the personality and idiosyncrasy of the research practitioners. Therefore, practice-relevant scholarship challenges the identities of the researchers as much as it challenges the identities of the strategy executives. As such, reflexive practice and critique are an essential component of the research process. This invites a systematic review and development of both research and strategy practice through an opportunity to feedback insights about the identity and assumptions that govern performance, without which challenge and change will not be possible. 4. Practice-relevant scholarship requires change in the way strategy researchers are trained, developed and socialized throughout their careers. Changing the systems, processes, procedures and means by which we recruit, train, develop, promote and reward strategy research practitioners extends beyond what happens in individual organizations, such as universities, and to the institutional level. Some levers, such as PhD training programmes and promotion criteria, are within the control of individual organizations and should be used to encourage and enable a greater diversity in research practice. Similarly selection criteria that encourage recruitment of individuals with a greater potential to engage in practice-relevant research can be put in place. Individually, organizations can also seek to promote both a stronger philosophical orientation towards understanding the nature of strategy as a social practice and practical methods and tools for capturing the way strategizing practice unfolds in the way it is performed by strategy practitioners. For example, methods that encourage distance between the researcher and the researched need to replaced with those that encourage and enable proximity (Johnson et al., 2007) and the capture and replaying of strategizing as it occurs, such as use of video. Individual organizations can also introduce mechanisms of reflective practice and enhance the legitimacy of those who research strategy through introducing mechanisms that facilitate collaboration with relevant stakeholder groups. Other levers at the more institutional level, such as the nature of research that gets published in top international journals, can only be influenced by individuals and their organizations. 5. Instilling a new orientation to strategy research practice as a means of enabling impact on the practice of strategy requires the provision of ongoing research practice development. Currently, reading for a PhD

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is seen as the route towards a research career. In reality, PhD training is only the first step on the ladder and it may continue to be the first step. Practice-relevant scholarship requires particular professional skills that younger, less organizationally experienced PhD candidates may not possess. This includes dealing with the politics that inevitably arise during any engagement, such as the pressure to modify conclusions to meet the agenda of the partner individuals/organizations. Experience is required to develop agreements and working arrangements that overcome this. Issues of morals and ethics that relate to the need to ‘relationship build with trust’ (see above) are part of this. Thus, practice-relevant scholarship for some will need to be a research path that develops as they develop professionally, What is needed are mechanisms for ongoing professional research development and reward structures that recognize this investment in learning and development of research capability as a sign of a commitment to delivering impact. We recognize that these points only lay a foundation for the kinds of issues that we need to consider as we seek to develop responses to current concerns. In addition, the principles we lay out above only address the research practitioner. There is also a need to engage in actions designed to increase the willingness of executives to engage collaboratively. However, our principles are in line with the Hatchuel, Starkey, Tempest, and Le Masson (2010) to rethink business schools. Clearly, research identities are not built in a vacuum; they emanate in the social structures that researchers get inducted and socialized into. Equally, practices cannot be divorced from the context in which they are performed. Both of these sets of issues correspond to the wider calls to which business schools are needing to respond to as higher education trends increasingly signal the need for universities in general, and not just business schools, to account more clearly for their impact. Unless returns from investment in research can be demonstrated, much research practice is hanging in the balance. Hence, our analysis provides a timely and proactive response to the kinds of issues management research, business schools and universities more broadly are mindful of and seeking to respond to.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The ideas in this chapter were developed over the course of many years of being immersed in undertaking a range of collaborative research projects

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dedicated towards advancing collaborative (international, interdisciplinary and interactive) modes of research. Some of these research collaborations were made possible thanks to the financial support received by the ESRC and EPSRC under grant numbers RES-334-25-0020, RES-331-25-0024 and RES-331-27-0006. We wish to thank all of our collaborators who have taught us so much about the importance of making a difference.

REFERENCES AACSB. (2008). Final report of the AACSB international ‘‘Impact of Research’’ task force. FL: AACSB. Adler, N., Shani, A. B., & Styhre, A. (Eds). (2004). Collaborative research in organizations: Foundations for learning, change, and theoretical development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. AHRC. (2008). AHRC economic impact reporting framework. Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/Policy/Documents/economic%20 impact%20framework%202008.pdf Amabile, T. M., Patterson, C., Mueller, J., Wojcik, T., Odomirok, P. W., Marsh, M., & Kramer, S. J. (2001). Academic–practitioner collaboration in management research: A case of cross-profession collaboration. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 418–431. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2007). Practice. In: S. Clegg & J. Bailey (Eds), International encyclopaedia of organization studies (pp. 1291–1298). London: Sage. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2008a). On the practise of practice: In-tensions and ex-tensions in the ongoing reconfiguration of practice. In: D. Barry & H. Hansen (Eds), Handbook of new approaches to organization studies (pp. 112–131). London: Sage. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2008b). Reflexive critique: An innovation in life long learning. In: C. Wankel & R. DeFillippi (Eds), A lifetime of management learning: University and corporate innovations in life long learning (pp. 59–89). New York: Information Age Publisher. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2009a). Impact and scholarship: Unlearning and practising to co-create actionable knowledge. Management Learning, 40, 421–430. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2009b). Strategizing as practising: Strategic learning as a source of connection. In: L. A. Costanzo & R. B. McKay (Eds), Handbook of research on strategy and foresight (pp. 375–398). London: Sage. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2010a). Advancing practice-relevant scholarship: Delivering impact. In: C. Cassell & W. J. Lee (Eds), Management research: Challenges and controversies. London: Routledge. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2010b). Global research: Transcending boundaries by learning to collaborate and learning from collaboration. In: C. Cassell & W. J. Lee (Eds), Management research: Challenges and controversies. London: Routledge. Antonacopoulou, E. P. (2010c). Beyond co-production: Practice-relevant scholarship as a foundation for delivering impact through powerful ideas. Public Money and Management, 10(4), 219–226. Balogun, J., Huff, A. S., & Johnson, P. (2003). Three responses to the methodological challenges of studying strategizing. Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 197–224.

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Balogun, J., Jarzabkowski, P., & Siedl, D. (2007). Strategizing: A practice perspective. Human Relation, 60(Special issue), 1. Bartunek, J. M. (2007). Academic–practitioner collaboration need not require joint or relevant research: Towards a relational scholarship of integration. Academy of Management Journal, 50(6), 1323–1333. Bartunek, J. M., & Louis, M. R. (1996). Insider/outsider team research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Berr. (2007). Measuring economic impacts of investment in the research base and innovation. Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Framework. Available at http:// www.bis.gov.uk/files/file39754.doc Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2001). Knowledge and organization: A social-practice perspective. Organization Science, 12(2), 198–213. Calori, R. (2002). Essai: Real time real space research; connecting action and reflection in organization studies. Organization Studies, 23(6), 877–878. Corvellec, H. (1997). Stories of achievements: Narrative features of organizational performance. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. ESRC. (2007/08). Economic impact reporting framework. Economic & Social Research Council. Availalbe at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/ESRC_ Economic_Impact_Reporting_Framework_2007-08_tcm6-29829.pdf Gibbons, M. C., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge. London: Sage. Gulati, R. (2007). Tent-poles, tribalism, and boundary-spanning: The rigor-relevance debate in management research. Academy of Management Journal, 50, 775–782. Hatchuel, A., Starkey, K., Tempest, S, & Le Masson, P. (2010). Strategy as innovative design: An emerging perspective. In: J. A. C. Baum & J. Lampel (Eds), The globalization of strategy research. Advances in strategic management (Vol. 27, pp. 3–28). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Huff, A. S. (2000). Changes in organizational knowledge production. Academy of Management Review, 25, 288–293. Jarzabkowski, P. (2005). Strategy as practice: An activity-based view. London: Sage. Jarzabkowski, P., & Kaplan, S. (2010). Taking ‘Strategy-as-practice’ across the Atlantic. In: J. A. C. Baum & J. Lampel (Eds), The globalization of strategy research. Advances in strategic management (Vol. 27, pp. 51–71). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Jasanoff, S. (Ed.) (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and social order. London: Routledge. Johnson, P., Balogun, J., & Beech, N. (2010). Researching strategists and their identity in practice: Building close-with relationships. In: G. Damon, R. Rouleau, D. Seidl, & E. Vaara (Eds), Cambridge handbook of strategy as practice. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, G., Langley, A., Melin, L., & Whittington, R. (2007). Strategy as practice: Research directions and resources. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, G., Melin, L., & Whittington, R. (2003). Micro strategy and strategizing: Towards an activity-based view? Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 3–22. La¨hteenma¨ki-Smith, K., Hyytinen, K., Kutinlahti, P., & Konttinene, J. (2006). Research with impact: Evaluation practices in public research organisations. VTT Tiedotteita – Research notes 2336, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland (ISBN 951-38-6784-6). Landry, R., Amara, N., & Lamari, M. (2001). Climbing the ladder of research utilization – Evidence of social science research. Science Communication, 22, 396–422.

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Latour, B. (1986). The powers of association. In: J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief (pp. 261–277). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. C. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mohrman, S. A. (2001). Seize the day: Organizational studies can and should make a difference. Human Relations, 54,1, 57–65. Munn-Venn, T. (2006). Lessons in public–private research collaboration: Improving interactions between individuals. 7th Annual Innovation Report, The Conference Board of Canada, Canada (ISBN 0-88763-731-0). Neely, A. D. (2005). Measuring business performance (2nd ed.). London: Economist Books. Nicolini, D., Gherardi, S., & Yanow, D. (Eds). (2003). Knowing in organizations: A practicebased approach. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Polity Press: Cambridge. Nutley, S., Walter, I., & Davies, H. (2003). From knowing to doing-a framework for understanding the evidence-into-practice agenda. Evaluation, 9, 125–148. Pettigrew, A. M. (2003). Co-producing knowledge and the challenges of international collaborative research. In: A. M. Pettigrew, R. Whittington, L. Melin, C. SanchezRunde, F. A. J. Van Den Bosch, W. Ruigrok & T. Nulmagami (Eds), Innovative forms of organizing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Research Councils Economic Impact Group. (2006). Increasing the economic impact of research councils. ‘‘The Warry Report,’’ July. Research Councils UK. (2007). Excellence with impact: Progress in implementing the recommendations of the Warry Report on the economic impact of the Research Councils. RCUK, Swindon. Rynes, S. L., Bartunek, J. M., & Daft, R. L. (2001). Across the great divide: Knowledge creation and transfer between practitioners and academics. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 340–355. Shani, A. B., Adler, N., Mohrman, S. A., Pasmore, W. A., & Stymne, B. (Eds). (2008). Handbook of collaborative management research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Shapiro, D. L., Kirkman, B. L., & Courtney, H. G. (2007). Perceived causes and solutions of the translation problem in management research. Academy of Management Journal, 50, 249–266. Starkey, K., & Madan, P. (2001). Bridging the relevance gap: Aligning stakeholders in the future of management research. British Journal of Management, 12, 3–26. Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610. TEEC. (2005). Analysis of ‘high impact’ research activities under community research framework programmes. European Commission Research Directorate-General, European Commission. Availalbe at http://ec.europa.eu/research/reports/2004/pdf/hira_en.pdf Tranfield, D., & Starkey, K. (1998). The nature, social organization and promotion of management research: Towards policy. British Journal of Management, 9(4), 341. Van de Ven, A. (2007). Engaged scholarship: A guide to organizational and social research. New York: Oxford University Press. Van de Ven, A. H., & Johnson, P. E. (2006). Knowledge for theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 31, 802–821. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634.

WHERE IS THE ‘I’? ONE SILENCE IN STRATEGY RESEARCH$ Dalvir Samra-Fredericks ABSTRACT I consider the significance of just one silence in strategy research – it revolves around the ‘I’ which brings in matters of biography, epistemology and reflexivity. While different epistemic communities have their investigative conventions or protocols and allied evaluative criteria which either silence or give voice to an ‘I’, developments in the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge suggest the need to account for two particular and intertwined aspects of reflexivity. The first rests on C. Wright Mills’ assertion that ‘craftsmanship is the centre of yourself’, and in this paper I share four snippets of autobiographical reflection outlining the crystallization of my interests and the sociological ‘eye’ which I bring to the study of strategic management. Second, the ways the established or taken-for-granted socio-politico-ethical orders routinely reproduce as legitimate (or not) particular ways of seeing-researching $

An earlier version of parts of this paper was presented at Stream 19 on Reflexivity in Organizational Research at 23rd EGOS Colloquium, 2007, Vienna, Austria. The paper’s title was ‘Me and my shadows and our dance of reflexivity’. The earlier version did not centralise the field of strategic management.

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and thus, particular I’s, is also woven into this account. My own intellectual ‘home’ of ethnomethodology is one where constitutive reflexivity is central and shows that the field of research interest – strategy work/strategizing – and our own practice of trying to understand this field are both a reflexive accomplishment.

INTRODUCTION All I want to emphasize is that what one brings out of a field study largely depends on what one brings to it. (Evans-Pritchard, 1937/1976, pp. 240–241)

This seemingly simple statement by Evans-Pritchard belies a complex issue. Reflection on our knowledges, assumptions, feelings and experiences which, in elusive ways, frame what we ‘see’ when in the field and when at the desk or facing a computer spewing out data/‘numbers’ is fraught with difficulties. Perhaps more so today for anthropologists and organizational ethnographers, the researcher-as-instrument brings these matters to the fore, especially if seeped in an interpretative approach (and a constructionist ontology). For those versed in what we can broadly characterise as quasipositivist/hypothetico-deductive, rationalist or quantitative-orientated methodologies, such aspects may seem irrelevant, especially if adhering to an objectivist epistemology and realist ontology. These different approaches are here simply deemed as particular kinds of knowing and forms of investigation. It may indeed be the case as Yanow and Schwartz-Shea (2006, p. xxii) contend that ‘to the extent that quantitative researchers hold positivist presuppositions, they may consider epistemological and ontological issues settled, even irrelevant’. Undoubtedly, each approach asks particular kinds of questions, framed by particular kinds of presuppositions in terms of onto-epistemology, and yields particular kinds of answers given its engagement with ‘the world’ and the sorts of data it generates. What is perhaps a cause for concern, however, is when only one kind of approach is deemed valid or capable of generating ‘truths’ (findings). A prevailing view is that American scholarship, including the strategic management (SM) field as Hambrick and Chen (2008) and Hoskisson, Hitt, Wan, and Yiu (1999) show, is skewered towards quasi-positivist informed and/or quantitative ‘inflected methodological hegemony’ (Yanow & Ybema, 2009, p. 53; see also Alvesson, 1996; Mahoney, 1993; and also Palmer, 2006, especially his sixth and seventh concerns). Hambrick and Chen (2008, p. 40) go so far as to add that ‘European social scientists y tend to take a more

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qualitative, inductive and philosophical approach than their American counterparts’. But are matters so easily and geographically settled? A more plausible rendition is that we are divided by particular intellectual traditions and the allied onto-epistemological presuppositions therein. The central issue here is that regardless of the methodological orientation or commitments, we cannot escape from the ‘fact’ that it is always a situated and particular ‘I’ who animates the methods, presuppositions and so on, in complex and often elusive ways, and who in doing so not only reflexively accomplishes the task – generating research findings – but also comes to legitimately take up membership of a particular epistemic community. Adhering to a stance that ‘craftsmanship is the centre of yourself ’ (C Wright Mills, 1959, p. 216) which Evans-Pritchard’s opening quote also points to – this paper brings in the ‘I’ who brings both something general in terms of an epistemic community’s ways of doing research (the methods, onto-epistemological presuppositions, and protocols revolving around ‘good’ practice and evaluative criteria, etc.1), and something particular to their scholarship given their biographical particulars which, taken together, shapes what they bring out. So, while we pursue different kinds of questions and answers – often in light of the backgrounded onto-epistemological assumptions and which, in turn, shapes and constitutes aspects of the world – a reflexive exercise is deemed a critical route but as we shall see, there is a silence on this within SM which means that the ‘I’ is silenced too.2 This paper provides an opportunity to indicate the importance of the ties between biography, epistemology and what a reflexive exercise enables. Indeed, to do so is to encompass five particular possibilities for social science (itself considered shortly as both a ‘social product and a process’; Riemer, 1977): (1) it reveals the researcher’s hand in the construction of findings and instigates self-examination and self-reflection which ‘can be of considerable value if combined with an understanding of the relation between what a particular theoretical and cultural position means in terms of what it makes possible to see and what it is blind to’ (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004, p. 242); (2) From doing so, it provides a means so that we can judge the basis for claims-making; (3) as well as provide a means by which an epistemic community can contextualise its intellectual practices and for ‘the beginning student’ to learn about the ‘actual ways of working’ (C Wright Mills, 1959, p. 215); (4) it can also account for and/or make visible the political–ethical facets of the academic labour process and (5) may even begin to illuminate the often hidden/elusive sources or possible sparks which lie behind what we gloss as ‘abduction’ – that imaginative leap – generating some insight or illuminating some aspect of the topic/field of study (see also Locke,

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Golden-Biddle, & Feldman, 2008). The overarching backdrop to this exercise, and in light of my particular onto-epistemological stance drawn from ethnomethodology (considered below), is that our ‘methods’, the rules and conventions we mobilise and the classifications we invoke and so on, enable us to describe/represent the world and to engage in an act of (re)producing the world with a particular ‘hue’ or emphasis as well as our own world of research practice and ourselves (see, for example, Van Maanen, 1995a, 1995b). Dependent on the kind of findings we generate and if they resonate with practitioners’ interests and goals and are taken up (which is one broad goal for some and meeting ‘relevance’ demands), they can have major material consequences and hence, there is the issue of our responsibilities too. Framed by developments in the philosophy and sociology of science (e.g. Flyvbjerg, 2001; Hammersley, 1995; Kuhn, 1970; Mulkay, 1991) and the sociology of knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1967), the motivation for writing this paper is outlined next under the subheading on ‘puzzles and struggles’. This is followed by a summary of the way the field of SM seems to have become infused with a quantitative/rationalist methodological hue through the active efforts of particular groups of American scholars. Indeed, SM is shown to be a ‘social product’ stabilized by particular ‘I’s’. Next, a selective review of the parameters of reflexivity and its import is outlined, taking us beyond methodological reflexivity to epistemic reflexivity. Further, the constitution of power effects (Knights & Morgan, 1991) is also woven into my autobiographical reflections in the subsequent section. I am a situated, culturally–politically–theoretically infused ‘I’ and I hope to indicate the ‘(re)source’ or sparks we characterise as ‘abduction’ from a ‘meshing’ of experiences, knowledges, feelings and so on. My four autobiographical snippets anchor the linkages between what I bring to a study and which include this hidden aspect as well as my formal intellectual resources, which then shape what I take out in the form of ‘findings’ or knowledge. There is too a delicate balancing ‘act’ underway given my attachments to ethnomethodology and especially when also immersed in its sub-branch, ‘conversation analysis’ (CA). The emphasis placed on adhering to what is visible in the field data (and which is recorded and transcribed) challenges and disciplines me to ensure that what I analyse and present is not an analyst’s imposition (see Llewellyn, 2008 for an insightful critique). However, as I have noted elsewhere (Samra-Fredericks, 1998, 2004a, 2004b), CA scholars have also acknowledged that we may begin with ‘a hunch’ or ‘intuition’ or where something just strikes us as an interesting puzzle – indeed, this seems to have been a pivotal component in Sacks’ (1992) scholarship as his transcribed

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lectures show. So, where does that spark or curious mind come from? Crucially, though, in CA, whatever the initial intuitive ‘spark’, it is always demonstrated and made visible in and through the transcribed data and begins with the members’ own interpretation often made visible in the next turn. However, engaging any further in the debates around this issue and the use of ethnographic materials would detract from this paper’s objective (see Samra-Fredericks, 2004a). The point to be made here is that bringing in the ‘I’ is not incompatible with those strict CA stipulations around warranting the analyses and that there are aspects of one’s biography which disposes us to ‘see’ in particular ways and, given the five points noted above, a reflexive exercise is an important part of our scholarship. What characterises us all is that ‘will to know’ (Cooper & Burrell, 1988, p. 100) and we all face our own specific puzzles and struggles.

A FIRST GLIMPSE AT MY PUZZLES AND A STRUGGLE As an outsider looking at the fields of SM and organizational behaviour in the mid-to-late 1980s, I was puzzled: what I had previously experienced as an organizational member in a private company and then, as a ‘student’ of human interaction in a social science/humanities faculty, bore no resemblance to what I was reading about in these two fields. The texts on strategyorganizing work were infused with a rational–‘technical’–abstract–narrow instrumental emphasis and in ways which bore little resemblance to the strategy work I had seen being done. Why did it all look so different to me? Parts of an answer will be outlined here but equally, I too was a puzzle to a number of colleagues, especially in the early days and this revolved around the question – why ‘‘waste’’ effort doing the sort of research I did? (Text in double quotation marks is what was said to me by others.) The kind of research I do is where I work shadow senior organizational members (directors, (vice-) presidents, CEOs, MDs and so on collectively termed managerial elites following Pettigrew (1992)) in companies ranging from 700 employees (manufacturing) to tens of thousands of employees in a FTSE100 company (technology/telecoms/service). I shadow various members of the senior management team over a range of spaces (including offices, meeting rooms, corridors and car parks) for up to 12-month periods. My observations are jotted down into field note books but importantly too – given my interests outlined shortly – I also video and audio record their interactional routines.

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I was, nevertheless, encouraged by well-meaning colleagues to ‘‘be more realistic’’ (i.e. what’s doable) and/or to ‘‘think of career progression’’ (even ‘‘market value’’ as one colleague stated) which would be secured from their kinds of fast research and even faster publications. The latter has become even more acute in the UK given that overarching shadow known as the Research Assessment Exercise. I did not and still do not have a neat or easy answer but a ‘feeling’ about what was and still is important and interesting to me. To convey the crystallization of this ‘feeling’, I have picked out just four snippets of autobiographical reflection in this paper. Overall, though, during the mid-1980s into the mid-1990s how I saw the ‘world’ and sought to research ‘it’ needed to be constantly defended and justified as valid. In doing the kind of research I did – starting in October 1986 – meant that I also experienced occasions where there was a trivialization of my focus and interests – ‘‘oh watch her, it’s all in the ‘wells’ and ‘buts’ y’know’’ – followed by laughter and banter after I had delivered a research seminar as part of my Ph.D. journey. In this particular seminar, I had summarised aspects of a 12-month ethnographic and ethnomethodological study of ‘strategists’ (a membership descriptor accomplished from their use of language, practices, embodied resources, tools and technology, etc.) at work and play. It was where, for example, the ability to deploy mitigating linguistic forms such as ‘well’ and ‘but’ and other ostensibly trivial resources were shown to enable some strategists to constitute ‘big’ phenomena to advantage and shape strategic direction (later published in Samra-Fredericks, 2003a). In the same month, I submitted my thesis – September 1995 – I also delivered a paper at the British Academy of Management titled ‘The experience of being a single case woman in a multi-case world’. Surprisingly (to me), it was initially sidelined into the feminist track although it dealt with methodological matters. I explained that it just so happened I was a woman and hence my use of this marker in the title. The paper was a response to my early research experiences where it seemed that undertaking ‘‘around five compare and contrast’’ case studies from conducting interviews with senior managers around their strategic change programmes was expected. Instead, I argued for detailed (ethnographic and ethnomethodological) studies which addressed different issues and ‘questions’ in light of different ontoepistemological bearings. These early experiences point to a struggle against the historically and culturally established boundaries of what is expected and deemed as legitimate approaches to research and which are, of course, met through our observance of norms and mobilisation of rules constituting particularized practices of ‘researching’. If we adhere to, or observe the conventions, then

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membership of epistemic communities is secured. If not, then, through the sorts of experiences I recount in this paper, a consolidation of a position I characterise as a ‘shadow’ was one outcome. As a ‘power effect’, my ‘I’ could be seen as being silenced even though I had, for example, during such seminars, made theoretical connections to relevant bodies of scholarship – from Chester Barnard (1938) to those in the SM field advocating ‘crafting’ or logical incrementalism (Mintzberg, 1987; Quinn, 1980) – I wanted to see just how this was done close-up. I also sought to take further the more general recognition of the importance of communication skills and acknowledgement of the centrality of talk within the orthodox field (Mintzberg, 1973; Kotter, 1982) onto demonstrating its reality constitutive role and in light of the ethnomethodological and conversation analytic traditions (Boden, 1990, 1994; Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). So, why the trivialization? Equally, why – I mused in 1986 at the start of my Ph.D. – had SM scholars not entered the field to observe close-up strategists’ naturally occurring talk-ininteraction constituting phenomena we term strategy or organization? In the field’s leading journal – Strategic Management Journal – Eisenhardt and Zbaracki (1992) and Pettigrew (1992) later urged scholars to enter the field and observe such work close-up.3 Setting out in late 1986 to work shadow senior organizational members across a range of companies for up to 12-month periods, the observations and the video and audio recordings of their interactional routines enabled a form of fine-grained analysis of their linguistic skills, forms of knowledge and modes of rationalities for (effectively) constituting phenomena we label as strategy, selves and organization. My intellectual ‘home’ is the sociological enterprise known as ethnomethodology, instigated by Harold Garfinkel (1967). Allied to this is the scholarship of Harvey Sacks (1992; Sacks et al., 1974) and Erving Goffman (1959, 1967). All three are American scholars and I again highlight their geographical locations since it is not a simple case that US research is dominated by ‘I’s’ and biographies infused with quasi-positivist/rationalist/quantitative-orientated methodologies (normal science), whereas those on this side of the Atlantic are fused with philosophical, interpretive ways of knowing. We are divided by disciplines and the allied, often backgrounded, onto-epistemological assumptions. Over the past two decades, I have privately reflected on my experiences of/in academia. Furthermore, given my intellectual infrastructure of ethnomethodology which seeks to explicate how members build descriptions or do account-making and thus construct social order or enact their world(s), I cannot help but turn that same understanding (theoretical–conceptual gaze)

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onto ‘my world’ too. As far back as 1977, Riemer (1977, p. 468) drew on C. Wright Mills’ (1959) work to make a number of suggestions for sociologists and I feel these suggestions are applicable today for us too – he urged his colleagues to reflect on: how they came to be, who they are, and how they fit into the larger scheme of things. They need to reflect upon themselves as a product of unique historical and biographical experiences. In this way, Mills argues, sociologists [& SM researchers] will be better able to understand their socio-historical context y to view themselves as a social product as well as an ongoing process.

Doing so, Wright Mills argued, was a vital component to advancing our scholarship and while we may critique or dispute aspects of Wright Mills’ scholarship and/or his onto-epistemological presuppositions, the ‘I’ as both a source of what we do and as a social product ‘holds true’ for me.

SM AS SOCIAL PRODUCT AND ONGOING PROCESS Hambrick and Chen’s (2008) contribution in AMR documented SM’s rise as a ‘new academic field’ and ‘admittance seeking social movements’. It is an instructive and relevant account since it offers a glimpse of the ways academia ‘works’ in terms of a sociology of knowledge and the ‘effects’ that accrue. Crucially, the authors show the importance of ‘ties’, networks (friendships in other words) and shared biographical particulars in terms of a Harvard connection amongst those scholars who came together at a Pittsburgh Conference in 1977 to establish a particular perspective for the field of SM. A significant number of the participants had a bond with the business policy group at Harvard with discussions at the conference revolving around ways to define the field of SM beyond case studies and in light of the ‘virtues of normal science, theory and generalizability’ (Hambrick & Chen, 2008, p. 44). As Hoskisson et al. (1999, p. 420) also observe, because the early case method did not seek to generalize the findings but sought to explore the nature of skills involved, ‘the field was not regarded as a scientific field worthy of academic study’. Many readers here will know that The Strategic Management Journal was subsequently launched in 1980 with one of the conference organizers, Schendel, as editor. Journals are one ostensibly ‘neutral’ device but when animated in particular ways by particular ‘I’s’ – and given their biographical particulars and methodological orientations – then they can also be reconceptualised as a mechanism of power if a more Foucauldian approach

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is applied (see Ezzamel & Willmott, 2010). In sum, what we had it seems was ‘a large group [who] shared a Harvard connection; they studied common materials, learned the same style of research and teaching and almost certainly maintained relatively close ties’ (Hambrick & Chen, 2008, p. 45). Another group in attendance brought a ‘different form of legitimacy’: they were all senior scholars in management, of which five were former AoM presidents and so the ‘emerging field of SM was endowed with significant social and reputational capital’ (Hambrick & Chen, 2008, p. 45). This is a significant point since we begin to see some of the key ‘conditions’ for the field’s constitution. These individuals’ mobilisation of ‘capital’ whilst undertaking practices such as ‘special’ conferences provides also for identities to be secured in ‘advantageous and politically useful’ ways as Ezzamel and Willmott (2010) indicate. The appointments of such scholars to journal boards and with ‘forums established for exchange’, a field adopting the conventions of normal science and a ‘call for theory-based quantitative research’ is deemed to have emerged. It even ‘cloak[ed] itself in the language and logic of the most prestigious of the social sciences – economics’ (Hambrick & Chen, 2008, p. 46). And as we know, it is a language which brings to life a particular onto-epistemological ‘base’. This is not necessarily a problem. What is a problem is the unacknowledged collectivity of ‘I’s’ who did this and a situation where the consequences that follow(ed) become disconnected from the agents. That the approach ‘chosen’ – and which still dominates – tends to erase the ‘I’s’ role in the production of research is an issue. When an approach is deemed both legitimate and dominant, it – perhaps inadvertently – squeezes out other approaches/voices too. Indeed, it remains to be seen if a shift from the ‘industrial organization economics’ and large secondary data sources and econometric analyses back to more ‘qualitative approaches’ (Hoskisson et al., 1999) such as case studies also brings in a balance where a constructionist ontology and interpretative epistemology (see next section) has an equal footing, and where an ‘I’ also becomes more visible. When bringing in the I’s we may also come to take greater responsibility for the theories we generate as well as engendering humility when presenting them to others/practitioners who will do something else with that knowledge – there are effects. In the same way, our reviews of fields of study such as the ‘evolution of strategic management’ (Herrmann, 2005) distorts matters when the academics-as-agents, their interests and motivations, as well as what it was about them – their biography – which crystallised into one way of doing research as opposed to any other is routinely lost. In addressing

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this silence, we would then meet one aspect of Johnson and Duberley’s (2003, p. 1290) epistemic reflexivity – that is, a consideration of the extent to which social constructions in-use have been democratically arrived at rather than the outcome of power play y and agreement rackets. y Here epistemic reflexivity is constructed as emancipatory since it sanctions the investigation and problematization of the taken-for-granted social constructions of reality which are located in the varying practices, interests and motives which constitute different communities’ sense-making.

Again, the point is not to displace one form of research[ing]-seeing, but to ‘see’ it as one kind crystallising from some very human efforts. The outline of the history and dominance of SM’s rationalist/quantitative orientated methodology and allied onto-epistemological presuppositions by both Hambrick and Chen (2008) and earlier by Hoskisson et al., (1999) begins to call attention to the particular ‘I’s’ who accomplished this – they had mobilised social and symbolic capital and utilised their friendship ties. They are themselves a social product as both Reimer and Wright Mills assert and enact their world accordingly. This could also be applied to other (sub)fields/traditions, including the recent emergence of the ‘strategy-aspractice’ community.4 And there are ‘power effects’ which crystallise over time and often in complex and unforeseen ways. Care, then, also needs to be taken in ensuring that we do not simply attribute sinister or self-interested motives to groups of individuals. That would be unfair. I was not there. But just like the practitioners we research and who must use words, embodied resources, methods or practices, objects, tools and technologies, etc. to constitute strategy, selves as viable ‘strategists’, and ‘organization’, so too do we. The social and political context is that which we interactionally observe and realise through mobilising social capital and using resources such as those noted here. Symon, Buehring, Johnson, and Cassell’s (2008) examination of the ‘contemporary academic labour process’ within the management discipline is instructive and relevant too since it highlighted the ways academics positioned qualitative research as ‘resistance’ to an institutionalisation imbued with ‘quantitative’ approaches. Delineating whether the ‘social constructions in use have been democratically arrived at rather than the outcome of power play’ is perhaps what is underway in such exercises. SM as a social process also suggests that Hoskisson et al.’s (1999, p. 447) metaphor of pendulum swings may well continue to characterise the field as groups of individuals mobilise resources and mechanisms to shape their own world of practice. So, while the ‘dominance’ of more quantitative-based methodological tools in the development of the field does not mean that these tools are applicable to all research questions [they refer

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here to RBV and issue of intangibles] y different methods have the potential to enrich our understanding of the problems and generate new insights regarding the issues.

What is important to remember, though, is the view that ‘there is no method by which universally valid knowledge can be produced because all knowledge reflects the sociohistorical context of its production’ (Hammesley, 1995, p. 14). This may be unsettling for some, empowering for others, or even a cause for vociferous denial by those following a ‘quest for certainty’ as Mahoney (1993) termed it. Mahoney (1993) offered an early ‘call’ to open up methodological conversations. Drawing on the philosophical work of Dewey and Kaplan and the methodological arguments advanced by the economist, McCloskey (1985), he argued that those who hide behind a ‘methodology [which] offer a rigorous, objective, prescriptive framework’ and which denies the metaphysical assumptions in their ‘quest for certainty is not a quest for wisdom’. So while we have witnessed critiques of the SM field’s ‘obsession with rigor in the choice of methodology’ leading to ‘too many of the results y [being] significant only in the statistical sense of the word’ (Mintzberg, 1979, p. 583; and more generally regarding management and organization studies (MOS), see Bennis & O’Toole, 2005; also Palmer, 2006), other questions and issues also have bubbled away in the background, erupting periodically. To what extent is there a silencing of alternative modes of knowing–researching may be debatable of course, but it is difficult not to assert more strongly that the ‘I’ and a reflexive account of what an ‘I’ brings to the field – then influencing what s/he brings out – is silenced. Other concerns, for example, about the ontology of strategy do also, of course, have a bearing on the argument here. This, for example, has periodically erupted with scholars such as Powell (2002, p. 876; see also Mir & Watson, 2000; Chia, 1996; Rasche & Chia, 2009) making the case for a pragmatist philosophy of strategy. He observed that ‘strategy research is burdened with an immense body of obfuscatory grammar – ‘intangible – invisible assets’, ‘causally – ambiguous causes,’ etc. – that, while conveying a kind of common-sense truth, obscures the fact that competitive advantage and performance are related definitionally, not functionally’. But if we reconceptualise this state of affairs (from an ethnomethodological perspective) as one where such members are mobilising the historically and culturally established classifications, ethnomethods, and tools, etc. that enable this community to make intelligible and stabilise epiphenomena which they deem they can ‘see’ through use of this use of language and other ‘methods’, then, we see world-making underway and membership being secured. A more critical analysis would attend to the issue of power too. Powell (2002, p. 878) calls for ‘philosophical foundations adapted to the messy, ill-behaved, complex art and science of strategy research and practice’.

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Philosophical justification for such a move may include a turn to ‘constructivist, philosophy of language, critical, existentialist and postmodern perspectives’. The latter perspective was outlined by Franklin (1998, p. 445) who sought to challenge a SM field influenced by economics and where scant attention is given to the difficulties of operationalizing abstract ideas and variables like ‘inflation’ or ‘demand’, or, in strategy work, ‘competition’. (Franklin, 1998, p. 445)

Importantly he added something new when he argues that through making onto-epistemological matters explicit and taking this issue into our classrooms would give ‘insights’ to managers about the ‘research and theory building process, where researchers’ ‘‘angles’’ have impacts on the process and outcomes of research’. While Franklin (1998, p. 445) does not elaborate on what is meant by ‘angles’ I infer it as meaning what the researcher brings to and thus brings out of a field of study. He adds that a post-modern approach would draw attention to the issue that ‘facts are value-laded and that their view of the world is only one of many possible ontologies’. Without that, ‘managers are forever ignorant’ (see also Samra-Fredericks, 2003b). Today, while it is unclear if we are in the midst of a ‘bonfire of certainties’ in relation to MOS’s and SM’s ‘ontological foundations, theoretical commitments, methodological conventions and ideological predilections’ (Reed, 2006, p. 43, and citing Law, 1994), Hardy and Clegg (1997, p. s14) assert that ‘better the paradigm ‘‘warriors’’’ who ‘engage, struggle, argue with each other, at times vigorously and incisively, than the self-contained Pfefferdigm’ since it is in the ‘struggle that we learn’. Later they add that ‘fragmentation’ of a field may ‘create[] a space for weaker voices (Hardy, 1994) who would otherwise be marginalized by institutionalization, centralization and concentration’ (Clegg & Hardy, 2006, pp. 429–30). That space for weaker voices is vital indeed! These authors also contend that reflexivity is central in this struggle and their 1997 article – ‘Relativity without relativism: reflexivity in post-paradigm organization studies’ – demonstrates through revisiting the Aston studies the dangers that ‘arise when research is carried out without regard to reflexivity’. Even those who may dismiss or be sceptical of interpretative and reflexive forms of social science cannot deny that their own exposure and consumption of particular kinds of knowledge and methods acquired across their apprenticeship/doctoral studies, and since, does frame/shape/ inform their scholarship. And, increasingly there are calls for ‘strategy theorists’ to ‘reflect’ on their (often unexamined) theoretical preferences and culturally acquired tendencies which predispose us towards particular forms of analysis and explanation. This is because the

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‘theoretical lens we have internalized y affects how we frame what we see and how we act as researchers’. (Rasche & Chia, 2009, p. 729: see also Rasche’s (2007) book where a similar challenge is extended)

Moreover, if our theories, research methods and the rules and conventions guiding epistemic communities do not ‘just’ describe the world, but also (re)produce it, then this is even more crucial. It may also be deemed an even more vital exercise when others’ voices (‘I’s’) are silenced. This silencing in Knights and Morgan’s (1991) terms would be one power effect and I will offer a glimpse of the ways the everyday constitution of ‘big’ power effects rest on the trivial, the small, the overlooked and the all-too-often, taken-forgranted, after this next section on reflexivity. So if the World is not already there, waiting for us to reflect it. It is the result of a complex process of a will to know which orders and organizes the world. y (Cooper & Burrell, 1988, p. 100)

then, we ‘see’ that both practitioners and academics/researchers are engaged in an ontological task.

REFLEXIVITY: LAYING OUT ITS PARAMETERS Each methodological orientation, whether broadly characterised as rationalist/quasi-positivist/quantitative or qualitative/interpretative, constitutes epistemic communities who have established ways to deal with matters of epistemology in terms of the varieties, grounds and validity of knowledge. But also what can be regarded as knowledge must derive from the ontological status accorded to phenomena, serving also to justify the knowledge claims about them – hence, their ‘inseparability’ (see Yanow & Ybema, 2009). When adopting ‘an objectivist view of epistemology’ then a presupposition of ‘theory neutral observational language’ also comes to define its community of scholars. This epistemic characteristic is often tied to a realist ontology in that a belief that an external world can be objectively accessed, deductively tested and so on (see Johnson & Duberley, 2003, p. 1282). Those who adopt a constructionist ontology take language use as one key resource where the interpretations/descriptions we produce – and arising from making particular distinctions – reflexively stabilise a social order or a particular ‘sense’ of the world (Chia, 1996; Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984). That we construct our world through language use and various allied practices does not, of course, mean that things/entities do not exist in a material world. They do. But, they can only be known to us through language and allied practices to which ethnomethodologists add, through use of ‘folk’ methods and common-sense reasoning procedures which furnish mutual intelligibility.

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In this light, the particular words/jargon, classifications, methods, tool and technology use, practices, etc. within different epistemic communities enable ways of seeing but also not seeing. The ethnomethodologist, Goodwin (1994), explicates in detail just how, for example, archaeologists and lawyers’ assemble their ‘professional vision’ from what they say, do and the objects they use. Importantly, then, ways of seeing are also ways of not seeing and I apply this ‘limitation’ to myself too. Clegg and Hardy (2006, p. 428; see also Smircich & Stubbart, 1985; Ezzamel & Willmott, 2010) also propose that ‘organizations achieve representation in particular terms, [and] they always do so as an effect of theoretical privileges afforded by certain ways of seeing, certain terms of discourse, and their conversational enactment. (Some ways of seeing are certainly more privileged within the academic communities)’. For my purposes here, some ways of seeing routinely delete the ‘hand/eye’ of an ‘I’ who embodies the ontoepistemological presuppositions built into those ‘theoretical privileges’. It is a problematic silence since ‘researchers in all sciences – natural, physical and human or social – interpret their data’ (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006, p. xi) so the researcher-as-instrument is always present. The need to take account of one’s interpretive bias (Bourdieu & Wacquqnt, 1992) has fuelled a questioning of ‘normal science’. Often inspired by the studies of science and technology (Ashmore, 1989; Mulkay, 1991; Woolgar, 1988), interest in reflexivity and social science methodology has gradually proliferated in MOS. Also fuelled by the linguistic turn and the crisis of representation and legitimation in the broader social sciences too (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004; Calas & Smircich, 1992, 2006; Chia, 1996; Hardy & Clegg, 1997; Hardy, Phillips, & Clegg, 2001; Johnson & Duberley, 2003), a ‘wave of objections to conventional epistemology and method’ (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004, p. 241) has been advanced by a diverse group of MOS scholars who I broadly categorise under the label of post-structuralists, post-modern, feminist (standpoint) and critical theorists. For example, feminist philosophers of science drew attention to the gendered nature of research selves (Harding, 1987, 1991) and what we produce (Calas & Smircich, 1992). A concern that when the ‘first person’ voice is deleted, a neutral or value-free stance also comes to be inadvertently conveyed is another feature of a critique regarding textual conventions. Across these diverse traditions is a move beyond a truth criterion where theory is ‘confirmed by empirical evidence reflecting of ‘objective reality out there – as the ultimate yardstick for science (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994)’ (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004, p. 271). For ethnomethodologists, however, the interest rests on examining members’ truths/facts-as-accomplished:

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it aims not to displace ‘objectivity with subjective experience’ but instead to investigate ‘how objectivity can originate in experience’ (Sharrock & Andersen, 1986). What is also central to this enterprise is endogenous reflexivity (see Heritage, 1984; also Lynch, 2000) where attention is paid to the sequential and methodical unfolding of actions and interactions for sense to be made. What has also become apparent is a growing move beyond ‘methodological reflexivity’ (Johnson & Duberley, 2003, p. 1284; see also Lynch, 2000) which can be simply another ‘tool’ attempting to eradicate ‘bias’ where the researcher considers the effects of their presence but continues to foster a belief that they deliver objective access to phenomena. Instead, there are calls for a critical evaluation of the meta-theoretical assumptions which ‘justify that methodology in the first place’ and which led Johnson and Duberley (2003) to propose epistemic reflexivity. In general terms, reflexivity requires us to ‘constantly assess[] the relationship between ‘knowledge’ and the ‘ways of doing knowledge’ (Calas & Smircich, 1992, p. 240). For Alvesson and Skoldberg (2004, p. 5), it means that ‘serious attention is paid to the ways different kinds of linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements are woven together in the process of knowledge development, during which empirical material is constructed, interpreted and written’. Yet, I am also aware that there may be anxiety around bringing in the ‘I’ since there are dangers too in selfindulgent musings in the guise of scholarship (see especially Lynch, 2000; also Atkinson, 1994). Critiques of forms of self-reflexivity within some quarters of ethnography prefaced with ‘self-’ or ‘auto-’ (Coffey, 1999) and egocentric confessionals and biographical tales can be problematic, but as Schwartz-Shea (2006, p. 103; see also Ellis & Bochner, 2003; and Humphreys, 2005; Van Maanen, 1988) contends, ‘as a general criterion, what reflexivity communicates is that researchers cannot expect to hide behind ‘‘third person’’, omniscient exposition’. Further, and recalling the broader second intertwined facet of reflexivity considered here, then we can also add Ezzamel and Willmott’s (2010) outline of a Foucauldian reflexive turn where the ‘question or problematic of how subjects are constituted as sovereign agents motivated by interests’ arises, also centralising the issue of power (and those bases of social and symbolic ‘capital’). Casting this net onto our own practice as well as adopting Johnson and Duberley’s (2003) notion of epistemic reflexivity would be an important task. Specifically, Johnson and Duberley (2003) – citing Pollner (1991) amongst others – define epistemic reflexivity as one where ‘systematic attempts are made to relate research outcomes to the knowledge-constraining

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and –constituting impact of the researcher’s own beliefs which derive from their own socio-historical location of ‘‘habitus’’’ (the latter being drawn from Bourdieu’s work). They add that epistemic reflexivity is also an effort to ‘eschew what is seen as postmodernism’s relativistic nihilism without creating positivism’s repressive discourses’ (Johnson & Duberley, 2003, p. 1289; see also Yanow & Ybema, 2009). It becomes apparent then that the parameters for reflexive scholarship are wide which Chia (1996) sums up in ways which also offer a link back to the prior sub-section in terms of SM as product. He contends that: Organization theories are academic products produced within the context of socially legitimated public institutions. They are, therefore, first and foremost socially ‘organized’ bodies of knowledge claims and, as such, are always effects of primary organizing processes. y Knowledge about organization is therefore circumscribed by the organizing codes determining the organization of knowledge itself. Such organizing codes are, however, underpinned by relatively unexamined ontological assumptions. y As a consequence, a dominant academic tradition is established and maintained which legitimizes and reinforces the epistemological priorities of mainstream organization theory. (Chia, 1996, p. 32; see also Hardy et al., 2001)

‘Metatheoretical’ approaches have highlighted the issue of perspective or positionality, also bringing in the central issue of an ‘I’ who animates the knowledges and assumptions. In SM consideration of an ‘I’ or acknowledgement of the researcher’s central role and what s/he brings to a study is rare as far as I am aware. Mintzberg (1979, p. 584), when arguing for ‘direct’ (close-up, in the field) research on what practitioners do, perhaps points to the creative and unique role of an ‘I’ when he emphasised that ‘data do not generate the theory – only researchers do that’. Also recovered from the annals of the Rhythms of Academic Lives (Frost & Taylor, 1996) is the SM scholar Anne Huff ’s observation that we need to also embrace the ‘personal’ life and the ‘tensions’ it brings since that should inform our research. I agree. Huff (1996, p. 429) adds that ‘we must – even if we choose quantitative, non-interpretive methods – assume that we need rich personal lives to understand the complications of our subject’. But we need to take this one step further and consider both how traditions silence that personal ‘I’ and that we are an ‘effect’ of culturally–historically established ‘orders’, granting legitimacy to some and not others. Accounts detailing just how our ‘rich personal lives’ enable us to see something different or new, or lend that ability to wrestle with the ‘complications of our subject’ are required for the five reasons indicated earlier and and will be specifically anchored through autobiographical reflections in the next sub-section.

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Half a century ago, C Wright Mills’ (1959) urged us to ‘learn to use [our] life experiences in [our] intellectual work: [and to] continually examine and interpret it. In this sense craftsmanship is the centre of yourself y ’ (Mills, 1959, pp. 196, 216). In what follows I pick out four snippets of autobiographical reflection: two are glimpses of a childhood, a third is from my first full-time job at 16 years of age and the fourth outlines why exposure to a particular intellectual heritage during my undergraduate degree as a mature student resonated with me. By that time my research interests and methodological orientation to understanding the ‘world’ had crystallized. But then I decided to do a MOS PhD and a glimpse of the puzzles and a struggle was provided in the opening to this paper. As part of this forthcoming exercise, the ways established or taken-for-granted sociopolitico-ethical orders – or institutions – were observed or not, and impinge and reproduce as legitimate or not, particular ways of seeing–researching and thus particular I’s is woven into this account. In sum, it articulates the emergence of my ‘shadow’ position.

LET ME SKETCH A SHADOW: HERE IS AN ‘I’ Aiming to avoid psychological reductionism and/or falling into a simple cause–effect notion, this is an account of personal sense-making through autobiographical reflection on the work I do. The crystallisation of a complex ‘mesh’ of biographical particulars and arrays of experiences, feelings, interests and capabilities, as well as those more formally acquired bodies of knowledge are resources which both dispose me towards and constitute specific ways of being-seeing-in-the-world: ‘there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball’ (Hanson, 1965, p. 7, quoted in Mahoney, 1993, p. 84). Watson (2007) sought to parse the notion of an ‘I’ further through mobilizing the concepts of one’s ‘personal self’/identity (who I am and where I come from – the autobiographical) and the ‘social category’/identity including that of ‘role’ (here, researcher, but elsewhere, the category of mother and so on). Other significant categories also criss-cross the ‘I’ in terms of gender, class and ethnicity which bring in other institutional or social structural facets and which influence what any ‘I’ can be. In ethnomethodology, identity is always a situated and sequential accomplishment of details (Rawls, 2008), and complicating matters further is that we are not a finished ‘entity’ but in the process of becoming (Chia, 1996).

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Snippet 1: Why Prefer a Shadow Existence? It is perhaps hard to understand, even today amongst some members of the UK Asian community – let alone the wider (academic) community – why, being the second daughter of immigrants from India, was fraught with difficulties around being visible. My birth had prompted my father to take two weeks off work to prevent this Asian ‘community’ from engaging in a mourning exercise with my mother since I was not a boy. Only when my first brother arrived were relatives in India told that there were two sisters in the background. For me, being visible was routinely curbed and shaped by the cultural–religious context I observed and thus reproduced. I have often wondered to what extent my upbringing within a very traditional Indian/ Punjabi home in the UK where, as a girl, I was not to be ‘seen and heard’, accounted for my ongoing preference for a shadow ‘position’ when in the field. It was also unsurprising to my sister and I that ‘seeing’ and movement in the world was especially curbed when nearing adolescence: For example, it was subtly instilled that my sister and I never make eye contact with boys/men. It was never stated but inferred that only ‘loose women’ and married women gazed freely. One incident, aged around 17 years of age, was particularly poignant: I had started work at 16, and walking down a street one lunchtime, I accidentally made eye contact with a man from the same village in India as my father. I hastily looked away and even now can recall the anxiety experienced – what if he was to tell my parents? (I was also meant to stay on-site at the workplace). It could be a matter of honour and I hoped he realised the ‘gaze’ was an accident on my part. The anxiety only dissipated after a couple of Sundays had passed since I deduced he had not mentioned it to my parents at the Sikh temple because my mother did not raise the matter with me. I wonder if this is why I now choose to watch – gaze upon – others so avidly when ‘in’ the field? I also know more formally today that any gaze is always filtered through the lens of language, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity. There are no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of the observer and the observed y. (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p. 24)

But I knew this then too – I knew this not as an intellectual body of knowledge but as an embodied culturally imbued form of knowing, hence, my worry. This man observed me from a particular position or ‘lens of y gender, social class, race and ethnicity’ and what he saw from such a position could easily be misconstrued by him. ‘Data’ he accessed was not ‘value-free’

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or separated from the theories he potentially invoked (i.e. what constitutes a good young woman) and to be potentially presented to others as a ‘truth’.

Snippet 2: Why This Fascination with Talk and Language-Use for World-Making? The ‘mother tongue’ of Punjabi was spoken at home in the early years. Imagine entering school at 5 years of age where everyone spoke English. I, like my siblings, had to acquire the English language quickly and needed to watch and listen closely if this other world was to become accessible and meaningful – of course, at the time, I just wanted to play and fit-in. Characterising this orientation against the now known vocabulary and conceptual schema of anthropology, I was ‘in’ the position of the ‘anthropological stranger’ – something I try and maintain when in the research field today. Numerous other memories of the cultural jolts experienced as a child trying to make meanings with and through others and thus make life/myself meaningful remain with me. Meaning-making was also to be done in ways which still enabled me to straggle two quite extreme social–cultural spheres and this, I suggest, forced a constant examination of one ‘world’ against the other and where nothing could be taken-for-granted. While Alvesson and Skoldberg (2004, p. 6) rightly recognize that it is difficult for researchers to ‘clarify the taken-for-granted assumptions and blind spots in their own social culture, research community and language’ when one has straggled two quite different ones, then, a constant questioning can become a ‘way of life’.

Snippet 3: Why the Fascination with the Talking and Doing of Strategy? It was never openly discussed, just assumed, that my siblings and I would all start work at 16 years of age: we all complied. I worked in the same company for 7 years in sales and marketing taking up various different roles and responsibilities. Perhaps surprising to those who know me and/or of my research, I started as a junior statistics clerk. In the early 1980s, with Margaret Thatcher in ‘power’ and the years of recession biting hard, the company underwent a series of major organizational restructurings as it sought to ‘respond’ to competition from the Far East and survive. There are many poignant moments from this time too and I pick out just one. While still a junior employee, I was asked to ‘cover’ for the extended absence of a

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secretary. The man whose cups-of-tea I would be making, whose mail I would be sorting and whose diary I would be ‘managing’ was a ‘turnaround’ specialist parachuted in from head office (if only I knew then what I know now! – I would certainly keep field notes and have my tape ‘on’ all the time, assuming, of course, that informed consent had been secured). What struck me at the time though was both his accent – ‘received pronunciation’ – and second, that all day long this senior manager just talked to various colleagues and read this and that and then talked about that too. Was that his work? It contrasted so starkly with my parents’ work which produced ‘something’ concrete and touchable (as a manual labourer and a shop-floor textile worker). Sitting at my desk, in a ‘space’ outside his office but with his door often open, also meant that I heard much of this talk and another striking feature was the way a particular story about an issue and tied events was told in different ways to different people: what was the ‘truth’ then? On my first morning as ‘secretary’, it had also been drilled into me that maintaining confidentiality was crucial and I took that very seriously. Today, I continue to take this issue of confidentiality very seriously with the companies – that is, the individuals – who grant me high-level access to observe and record all they do and say. I also take the issue of a ‘truth’ seriously too, only now my interest has shifted to exploring how truths are interactionally constituted by them and with what consequences (Samra-Fredericks, 1996, 2003a, 2005a). I learnt much later about Garfinkel’s (1967) ethnomethodology which proposes the study of ‘facts in flight’ and as situated accomplishments. I left this company aged 23. I had reached the ‘ceiling’ as a non-graduate. I kept in touch though and I saw that this ‘turnaround specialist’ and his senior colleagues did not manage to turn the company around: A massive programme of redundancies over a number of years was witnessed. What was once a thriving company employing thousands and dominating the local landscape dwindled to a few hundred. My sister, my brother-in-law and my youngest brother who all worked there left. Given this significant and consequential ‘outcome’ and combined with my own experiences of watching and listening to senior managers trying to avert failure close-up, my interest in the ways they did their work effectively (or not) arose. It has remained my interest only now I deploy the vocabulary of SM and settle on ‘shaping strategic direction’ (Samra-Fredericks, 2003a). I see SM as an extremely important field of study and practice given the immense material consequences that arose for others far removed from the ‘strategic apex’. Periodically we have seen similar reflection on its import, for example,

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following the Enron scandals (see, for example, Whittington et al., 2003). Much later too I read Mills’ advice that Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in doing so draw out their implications, show yourself how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. y Experience is so important as a source of original intellectual work. (C. Wright Mills, 1959, p. 217)

As we know it is not having the experience that is crucial but what we make of it. But also, could this be one ‘source’ of creativity, imaginative theorising or abduction? What I can say is that my early shadow position arising from being assigned to the membership category of female I sensemake as explaining my preferred ‘method’ of non-participant observation for accessing and generating empirical materials in the field. It is also a fact – as an accomplishment – that my sister’s and my childhood was different compared to our brothers. My fascination with the minutiae of worldmaking – the talking of the ‘wells’ and ‘buts’ which mitigate interactional collision – is, I contend, traceable to exposure to two languages/worlds alongside the realization that managers do not produce anything concrete, unlike my parents. So what do they produce? It was exposure to particular scholars and their ways of conceptualising our world-making efforts which provided the intellectual vocabularies (weight) for theorising and understanding what they produce as well as adding a different understanding to these sorts of early experiences.

Snippet 4: Serendipity and Finding My Intellectual Infrastructure/Home On leaving the company I had no choice but to attend my local university as a mature (aged 23) student. There, I was to acquire a philosophical and theoretically rich body of knowledge which substantiated just how significant ‘talk’/language use and an array of ‘folk’/ethnomethods were for constituting particular forms of world-making. However, particular overlapping bodies of scholarship ‘spoke to me’ more since they offered a theoretical and conceptual vocabulary which resonated with me. In this light, they too are ‘resources’ to be deployed to make sense. As Becker (1996) also asserted, concepts are not phenomena to be ‘operationalised’ as if they are ‘out-there’ but instead are to be used to ‘think with’. Central influences were Garfinkel’s (1967) sociological ‘ethno’-methodology where one presupposition is that it

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is because we have shared methods or reasoning procedures for mutual intelligibility that we are able to accomplish social order and inherently, selves and ‘organization’. Indexicality also acutely sensitises us to the context-of-use and the centrality of sequence and an endogenous reflexivity.5 From this form of thinking-seeing, what can come into analytical purview is the ways epistemic communities fashion ‘truths’ (Garfinkel’s own suggestion around explicating sociology in these terms did not endear him to sociologists of that time (see Turner, 1988 on this; also SamraFredericks & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2008)). Alongside Garfinkel’s offering, the scholarship of Harvey Sacks (1992, Sacks et al., 1974), founding CA and Erving Goffman (1959, 1967), the founder of the ‘interaction order’, resonated with me too. So, if I bring these kinds of biographical particulars and formalised bodies of knowledge acquired in a social sciences/humanities faculty to the field, what do I bring out? And, what did I ‘re-learn’ about my past when exposed to this body of work?

Attending to Details The contribution arising from Garfinkel, Goffman and Sacks’ scholarship for MOS has been touched on elsewhere (see Samra-Fredericks & BargielaChiappini, 2008). Here, I indicate something about how and why they resonated so strongly with me and the kinds of contributions to the SM field they make possible. From Goffman (1959) and his work on the ‘presentation of the self’, I re-see that my sister and I had been engaged in a very careful ‘presentation’ of a viable (reputable) ‘gendered self’ given the strictures of the cultural and religious context we observed and thus reproduced. Further, Goffman’s (1967) notion of ‘face’ management added to this understanding and, later, was also acutely shown to be vital for effective strategy work too (Samra-Fredericks, 2003a, 2010). When attending to particular ‘methods’ and common-sense reasoning procedures for accomplishing a gendered self, then, Garfinkel’s (1967) study of Agnes was instructive: Agnes was a transsexual who needed to closely watch the ‘other’ in order to be a viable gendered ‘self’ and gender was shown by Garfinkel to be a ‘produced institutional fact’. It is a seen-but-unnoticed phenomenon and required immense work (ethnomethods) and dense forms of ‘moral accountability’. If I take just one class of ethnomethods which are deemed to ‘provide documentary interpretations for conduct’ for members (in the ‘sense of

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reasons or accounts for why members are doing what they are’ SamraFredericks, 2004b, p. 127), then, avoiding eye contact between young Asian men and women when I was growing up takes on greater import. It is an ‘embodied resource’ (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000) mobilised through an array of subtle folk methods which ‘documented’ a complex historically and culturally established set of rules/protocols and (disciplinary) practices. Doing so, simultaneously enables on-the-spot evaluation of the way the honour of a family was being upheld (or not) by a female. Simply, ‘not to look’ stabilized my sister and I as honourable and dutiful daughters. We observed such small matters along with a mosaic of other equally ‘small things’ and reproduced a significant and consequential asymmetrical order. So, an ostensibly trivial ‘embodied resource’ – combined with others – ‘worked’ to instantiate something quite spectacular and ‘big’, that is, stabilising a particular social–cultural–religious order and situated identities (Rawls, 2008; see also Lynch, 2000, especially p. 34). Clearly it is not just one resource or ethnomethod but a combination: and if I turn to the hallmarks of Sacks’ (1992; Sacks et al., 1974) CA – turn taking and adjacency pairs – where attending to such phenomena allows us to examine the linkage between talk and social structure (Boden,1994; Molotch & Boden, 1985), then, when I look back, I am struck by the ways access to such a basic ‘method’ also assisted the reproduction of a hierarchical ‘system’ at ‘home’. As studies of courtroom talk-in-interaction have incisively demonstrated, access to the ‘question’ and the realisation of a particularized localised turn-taking system which invites/demands an answer constitutes membership categories (e.g. magistrate, attorneys and defendants) and settings (courtrooms). More generally, asking a question swiftly inserts the speaker into the flow of activities and constrains others into producing a response: Hence, maybe – just maybe – that was why it was ‘off-limits’ and so rarely utilised by ‘us-girls’. Again, we observed the conventions and reproduced a ‘system’. Decades later, fine-grained analysis of the observational and audio/video recordings of senior managers’ interactions also traced the way that ‘the question’ as one basic means for configuring a social architecture was skilfully vested from another, thereby depriving this ‘other’ of the means to configure a local reality to advantage (Samra-Fredericks, 2003a). Indeed, this other senior manager (like me at that time) was left wondering ‘how did that happen?’ in the space of a minute. My field notes had jotted down the serial use of questions while my audio-tape recordings, later, allowed repeated access to the interactional sequence to scrutinise the ways one speaker effectively positioned another through a chained series of questions

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in ways which deprived his colleague of a voice, albeit, momentarily. Seeing how this was accomplished was met through reproducing the detailed transcripts too. Given that this kind of chaining was repeatedly done over time by one speaker, it had significant material consequences since truths were fashioned. Attention to such details also rendered visible how power is exercised (Samra-Fredericks, 2005)6 and, in Knights and Morgan’s (1991) vocabulary of power effects, transformed such organizational members/ practitioners into subjects who secured their sense of purpose and reality from such engagements. The same process also applies to us.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS Adhering to a stance that ‘craftsmanship is the centre of yourself ’ (C Wright Mills, 1959, p. 216) which Evans-Pritchard’s opening quote also points to, I sought to bring in the ‘I’ who brings both something general in terms of an epistemic community’s ways of doing research (the methods, ontoepistemological presuppositions, and protocols revolving around ‘good’ practice and evaluative criteria, etc.) and something particular to their scholarship given their biographical particulars which, when taken together, then shapes what they bring out. My puzzle was and remains today, ‘how is that done’? (Lynch & Bogen, 1994, p. 93) with ‘that’ being strategy work. This enduring ethnomethodologically inspired puzzle brings to light our ethnomethods and reasoning procedures which provide for the ‘foundation’ (base) of social–political–moral order(s) (Samra-Fredericks & BargielaChiappini, 2008). They are the seen-but-unnoticed facets yielding interactional competence. These same aspects I had to acutely attend to while growing up. You did too. They may be more noticeable in light of biographical particulars such as being straggled across two different ‘worlds’. Agreeing with Anne Huff (1996), Frost and Taylor (1996, p. 419) suggest that ‘without the insights gained from our personal lives, our professional contribution to understanding and explanation of human behaviour in organizations are certain to be less valuable’. Others too have been influenced by experiences and events in their personal lives (e.g. Ashford, 1996; Clegg, 1996) with others expressing their frustration and resistance to ‘mainstream functionalist’ thinking, also shaping their scholarship (Alvesson, 1996, p. 112). When invited to recount the hidden work of ‘constructing theory in the [ethnographic] field’, Adler and Adler’s (2009) was just one of many where a contribution was forthcoming because of their personal experience of being parents. For C. Wright Mills (1959, pp. 220–221) too, a meshing of

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personal experience and engagement with a scholarly field (e.g., Veblen’s work) led to writing a book on labour organizations as a politically motivated task: then the book on the middle classes – a task primarily motivated by the desire to articulate my own experiences of New York City since 1945.

Craftsmanship as the centre of yourself takes us beyond being a ‘technician’ who Mills (1959, p. 233) adds is ‘perhaps too well trained, too precisely trained. Since one can be trained only in what is already known’. Indeed, as Frost and Taylor (1996, p. 58) also speculate: One wonders what we may have given up or lost as our fields and our disciplines have become more systematic and focussed in their training.

Notably too in a ‘celebration of DiMaggio and Powell’s 1983 paper’, Greenwood and Meyer (2008, p. 263) comment on how this subsequently influential paper came to be written and eventually published and conclude that ‘we might ask ourselves serious questions concerning the inherent conservatism and normalizing effect of our science system’. Hambrick and Chen (2008, p. 51) also go on to speculate what might have been had not the SM field ‘overwhelmingly adopted the large-scale empiricism y [and] largely abandoned y its interest in a deeply textured understanding of strategic decision processes’. Indeed, these are all matters asking, ‘What if other kinds of ‘‘I’s’’’ had prevailed?’ Clearly such matters are complex as I hope to have indicated here: Frost and Taylor’s (1996) concluding commentary not only urged us to find one’s voice but also acknowledged the ‘weight’ of a history (which we, nevertheless, ‘put-to-work’; Samra-Fredericks, 2003a) in terms of sticking to research which is safe, for example, in the United States because of a tenure ‘system’.7 For these authors, though, creativity is ‘at least partly determined by a strong and broad familiarity with the current literature in the field, by a weak commitment to established paradigms and ways of viewing research questions’ (Frost & Taylor, 1996, p. 487; see also Alvesson, 1996), and I would add one’s biographical particulars can be a vital resource too. I set out to raise the question – where is the I? – and through personal sensemaking through autobiographical reflection and its linkages to the work I do also brought in glimpses of the socio–politico–ethical orders observed/ experienced and which framed and shaped my scholarship. I suggest that when such aspects are combined with the intellectual traditions that resonate, then one source for that elusive undertaking we gloss as abduction – the imaginative and potentially contributory ‘leap’ – is perhaps traceable. Furthermore, consideration of such matters and in light of epistemic

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reflexivity: (1) reveals the researcher’s hand in the construction of findings; (2) means that we can also judge the basis for claims-making; (3) provides a means by which an epistemic community can contextualise its intellectual practices and for ‘the beginning student’ to learn about the ‘actual ways of working’ (C. Wright Mills, 1959, p. 215); (4) accounts for, and makes visible the political–ethical facets of the academic labour process and (5) and, to repeat, begins to trace or demystify a possible source for that human ‘sparking’ which lies behind what we gloss as abduction or creativity. As a beginning student, I would have welcomed autobiographical accounts also potentially ‘unpicking’ the knowledge generation processes. I welcomed reading Jane Dutton, Jean Bartunek and Connie Gersick’s (1996) account where they acknowledged that while a gendered ‘voice’ did ‘not come easily’ to them, their experience of being involved in a doctoral consortium at the 1992 AoM led them to examine what they had previously thought were ‘private and unique, and perhaps somewhat strange’ beliefs around the established norms about how to think about research. Other scholars in the field of sociology (Gubrium, 2009), ethnography (Puddephatt, Shaffir, & Kleinknecht, 2009), studies of science and technology (Mulkay, 1991) and political science (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006) have outlined their personal quests or puzzles and routes for finding answers after having been versed in hypo-deductive, quasi-positivist science and finding it wanting in light of the phenomena they sought to understand.8 SM as a field will always be a social product of a time and space, and we need to acknowledge that a field of study or tradition has become legitimately established in light of particular individuals’ efforts. As a ‘live’ interactional process, debate and ‘dialog’ forums are ‘product shaping’ events where each ‘side’ may challenge and push the other to contextualise their intellectual practices.9 I also hope that bringing in accounts of the ‘I’ and what we bring in terms of our personal experiences as well as making explicit those ‘usually unacknowledged pre-understandings [which] influence how we undertake management [organizational, strategy] research and thereby impact upon the claims advanced by its results’ (Johnson & Duberley, 2003, p. 1279; see also, Alvesson & Deetz, 2000; Chia, 1995, 1996; Linstead, 1994) becomes a part of this product shaping endeavour. The unique mix and meshing of such aspects (biographical particulars, intellectual traditions and field work) we cannot control or predict – thankfully – and so, what one then ‘brings out of a field of study’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1937/1976) has the capacity to surprise and generate a different understanding of the phenomena. For me, the ethnomethodological intellectual infrastructure was more than a scheme to mobilise for scholarship – it provided a basis for questioning and

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disrupting a taken-for-grantedness which advantaged some and not others. It was a ‘fact’ that, compared to my male siblings, I lived a quite different early life. In terms of the ongoing preference to watch and listen when in ‘the field’ and thus remain in the shadow as best I can, I reason that my childhood ‘made’ me a keen observer and that it suits me without getting into any essentialist notion of the self. In terms of the focal interest upon language use and talk-in interaction, there are many early experiences where sensitivity to and active engagement with such phenomena were called for in order to access other worlds and, for ‘it’ and myself, to become meaningful. In terms of the topic and field of study, both the early work experience mentioned above and another, some years later, led to a curiosity around managing strategic direction but always as a human endeavour. Further, when my ethnomethodological intellectual infrastructure is turned onto what I do – professionally – and our situatedness within a community of ‘academics’, then, as Garfinkel’s (1974, p. 16) seminal study of jurors showed, we are all sorting through what may be fact or fantasy or opinion alongside ‘what we’re entitled to say’. In other words, like Garfinkel’s jurors we are all dealing with and settling upon what is an ‘adequate account, adequate description and adequate evidence’. Bringing in the ‘I’ and breaking the silence and leaking one’s biographical particulars and reflexively accounting for the research done and knowledge generated is one important element. And remember, the research/theorising process is always necessarily precarious, incomplete and fragmented. We are not all-seeing gods which stand outside of what we observe so as to be able to devise a grand scheme of things y instead we are very much part of what we survey; hence the necessity to reflect on the shape, priorities, strategies, successes and failures of the very acts of researching and writing and to view these as themselves reflexive attempts at organization. (Chia, 1996, p. 54)

If our research methods and the rules and conventions and backgrounded onto-epistemological presuppositions guiding epistemic communities do not ‘just’ describe the world, but also (re)produce it, then it is a power which demands taking responsibility and that certainly requires (re)claiming the ‘I’.

NOTES 1. I do not attempt here to outline the stipulations or conventions and evaluative criteria the different methodological orientations engender; Nor do I engage in debates or rehearse the ‘paradigm wars’ in organization studies (see useful summaries in Yanow & Ybema, 2009, pp. 47–50; Bryman, 2008 – and the work of Burrell & Morgan (1979) on organizational analysis and sociological paradigms which infuses ongoing work). Clegg and Hardy (2006, pp. 429–430, and quoting Jackson & Carter, 1991) also consider the paradigm wars which broke out in the mid-1980s between a

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‘functionalist science’ (rationalist and quantitative) engaged in ‘intellectual imperialism, dominating organization studies both epistemologically and politically’ and alternatives rooted in the interpretive tradition, and often located outside of the United States. However, they add that it is in the ‘struggle between different approaches – from diversity and ambiguity of meaning – that we learn’. I agree. 2. Other silences set aside would be those revolving around issues of gender/ subjective identities, ecology/sustainability, equality, power and so on – see, for example, Alvesson and Willmott (1996, pp. 135–136) who propose a move beyond ‘strategy’ and its contribution to profit to that of a ‘social good’ and ‘ecological consequences’. In this paper, I also do not dwell on the craft of writing and thus explicate issues around the first-person voice and the researcher’s presence in the text. 3. Discovering the work of Child (1972) and Pettigrew (1973, 1985) much later also offered a possible theoretical connection to my work – only now I could add those black-boxed interactional ‘details’ to see, for example, just how organizational members’ stabilise a ‘decision’ to project a viable sense of organization into the future and so, enact environment’ (Smircich & Stubbart, 1985). 4. Langley (2007, p. 211) reflected on what the intellectual leaders of the strategy as practice (SaP) perspective and convenors of an EGOS stream in 2003 were up to in terms of an ‘archetypal and highly organized ‘translation process’’ as proposed by Latour (1987) and to which she was ‘enrolled’. Perhaps, with time, the analysis and model proposed by Hambrick and Chen (2008) on ‘admittance-seeking social movements’ could also be applied to this ‘movement’. Langley also echoes my own views when she says about her involvement: Apparently I have been doing it without knowing it for a long time. When I first heard about [SasP] y I was very interested y but did not really buy into the idea of developing this as a specific perspective y I do the research that I do; what it is called y [has] never really preoccupied me very much. Ever since my doctoral thesis days when no one was quite sure what discipline I should be classified under (Strategy? Organization theory? y) labelling and boundary-drawing have always seemed to be a bit of a distraction (p. 211).

5. Ethnomethodology has also informed Giddens (1984) in his theory of structuration as Boden (1990) details as well as influencing Karl Weick’s (1995:11) thinking. 6. This kind of analysis would contribute to those interested in the crafts (Mintzberg, 1987) of strategy-making/doing, as well as actually track the very human doing of ‘logical incrementalism’ (Quinn, 1980), or decisioning/judgement. 7. Frost and Taylor also note the choices around ‘playing the game’ and the need to publish or perish too (also noted explicitly by Yanow & Ybema (2009) and a ‘punitive disciplining’ and a ‘sense of not belonging’). Yanow and Ybema (2009) add that those ‘US scholars conducting interpretive research are more likely to find readership, and colleagues, on the other side of the ocean, where researchers are at least more or less versed in the terminology (‘ontology’ and ‘epistemology’) y even when they opposed interpretivist positions’. The authors go onto to cite European journals as receptive to such work and conferences such as Critical Management Studies providing valuable intellectual ‘space’. Other reasons for silences arise from a complex mesh of factors which are discernable from a recent exchange in the Journal of Organizational Behavior between Glick, Miller, and Cardinal (2007), Sitkin (2007),

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Rousseau (2007) and Pfeffer (2007). They highlight various problems for scholars in terms of careers and paradigm development/dominance – all crucial matters for the academy. Dealing with a US academic context and as a function of the field’s ‘weak paradigm’, a series of ‘disheartening consequences’ were offered by Glick et al. (2007) and suffered by organizational scientists ‘throughout the course of their careers’ (Rousseau (2007, p. 849). These have some bearing for the argument and issues raised here (Rousseau also notes that European business schools are adopting aspects of the ‘dysfunctional US model’ where promotion is awarded to those ‘simply lucky’ in the journal process – regarding tenure and publication record). Glick et al.’s (2007, pp. 829–830) ‘suggestions for aspiring scholars’ include an ‘assessment of dispositional tendencies’ – to cope with the stress. Further, one’s personal life and biographical particulars such as being married or having children become an issue too: ‘Being single may provide both time and the flexibility to work nights and weekends’ whereas, in contrast, ‘individuals with children and a desire to spend a great deal of time in their children’s development need not apply’. 8. One of the early founders of the sociology of science, Michael Mulkay (1991, p. xiv – with Gilbert, Ashmore and Pinch), when reflecting on himself as a ‘sociological pilgrim’ opened his prologue by noting how his approach to the sociological analysis of science changed, and had to change: he says, ‘it seems to me now that a critical feature of the first phase of my work on science in the early 1970s was that it operated within the intellectual terms of reference established by science itself’. Coming to terms with the ‘socially constructed character of my own knowledge-claims’, he says also required acknowledgement of the ‘restricted nature’ of his ‘analytical language’ and the ‘interpretative assumptions built into the linguistic repertoires and textual forms by means of which I constructed the results of my sociological endeavours’. He could not ‘describe or explain’ the social actions they were investigating – that is, how do scientists do science? Two points can be further emphasised here: the first is the reach into one’s way of doing/being from exposure to knowledge (research traditions), its taken-for-grantedness and the ways it can curb ‘seeing’; second the centrality of language use assisting such an outcome. 9. We can conceptualise – at a minimal level – efforts such as that in Journal of Management Inquiry where the editor’s introduction (Lounsbury & Hirsch, 2008, p. 265) pointed to a ‘disquiet in some circles about the dominance of abstract theorization and a movement toward a re-engagement with practice and practitioners’ before opening up a ‘dialog’ series of papers between Bower (2008) who elevated a practitioner focus with ‘process’ and the case based teaching tradition forged by Harvard; Grant (2008) who argued for economic theory in teaching and research; and the strategy-as-practice ‘school’ outlined by Jarzabkowski and Whittington (2008, p. 282) positioned as a possible bridge, that is, through bringing in the ‘messy realities of doing strategy’ with ‘a view to developing theory’ as well.

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