Relating microprocesses to macro‐outcomes in qualitative strategy process and practice research

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saouré Kouamé ◽  
Ann Langley
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 839-864
Author(s):  
Virpi Sorsa ◽  
Eero Vaara

This study examines how pluralistic organizations confronting fundamental differences in values can proceed with strategic change. By drawing on a longitudinal case analysis of strategic change in a Nordic city organization, we show how the proponents and challengers play a “rhetorical game” in which they simultaneously promote their own value-based interests and ideas and seek ways to enable change. In particular, we identify a pattern in which the discussion moved from initial contestation through gradual convergence to increasing agreement. In addition, we elaborate on four rhetorical practices used in this rhetorical game: voicing own arguments, appropriation of others’ arguments, consensus argumentation, and collective we argumentation. By so doing, our study contributes to research on strategic change in pluralistic organizations by offering a nuanced account of the use of rhetoric when moving from contestation to convergence and partial agreement. Furthermore, by detailing specific types of rhetorical practices that play a crucial role in strategy making, our study advances research on the role of rhetoric in strategy process and practice research more generally.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haridimos Tsoukas

Strategy-as-practice research has usefully built on earlier strategy process research by taking into account the social embeddedness of strategy making. While such an approach has generated valuable insights, it has curiously left unexplored the moral dimension of practice. In this article, we show how the potential of strategy-as-practice research may be more fully realized if the moral dimension of practice is conceptualized through virtue ethics (especially MacIntyre’s version). Specifically, we first reconceptualize, through virtue ethics, the three main concepts of strategy-as-practice—practice, praxis, and practitioners—underscoring the inherently moral constitution of actions undertaken in strategy-related work. Moreover, we suggest that strategic management is viewed as a particular kind of practice (what we call “competitive institutional practice”), charged with “values articulation work” and “balancing work.” While the former articulates a good purpose for the organization, the latter seeks to care for both excellence and success through balancing “capabilities development work” with “differentiation work.” Illustrations are provided to support this argument, and several suggestions for further research are offered.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1575-1586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Whittington

This Essai argues for the distinctive position of Strategy-as-Practice research outside the immediate family of Strategy Process. Strategy-as-Practice's fascination with the phenomenon of strategy itself takes it beyond traditional Process perspectives. Relying on the `sociological eye', Strategy-as-Practice treats strategy like any other practice in society, capable of being studied from many different angles. Under the four themes of praxis, practices, practitioners and the profession of strategy as an institutional field, the Essai demonstrates the potential range of research topics, performance notions and methodologies within Strategy-as-Practice. It concludes by proposing five implications of the sociological eye for the conduct of Strategy-as-Practice research, highlighting particularly social connections and relationships, embeddedness, irony, problematized notions of performance and a respect for continuity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 503-524
Author(s):  
Robert A. Burgelman ◽  
Steven W. Floyd ◽  
Tomi Laamanen ◽  
Saku Mantere ◽  
Eero Vaara ◽  
...  

Strategy process research has yielded a richer understanding of the emergence of strategies from throughout the organization and over extended periods of time; strategy-as-practice research has helped us understand the range of actors involved in strategy and the tools they draw on in their strategy work. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage research that combines insights from these two traditions. First, the chapter offers brief overviews of process and practice research. Then, the chapter reviews the most recent work from 2018 onward. Most of the text, however, goes to discussing future research that combines process and practice perspectives and that focuses on four themes: temporality and spatiality, actors and agency, cognition and emotionality, and language and meaning. These themes are woven together by two “red threads”—strategy digitalization and strategy inclusion—that we expect will have significant impact on strategy formation.


Author(s):  
Benoît Verdon ◽  
Catherine Chabert ◽  
Catherine Azoulay ◽  
Michèle Emmanuelli ◽  
Françoise Neau ◽  
...  

After many years of clinical practice, research and the teaching of projective tests, Shentoub and her colleagues (Debray, Brelet, Chabert & al.) put forward an original and rigorous method of analysis and interpretation of the TAT protocols in terms of psychoanalysis and clinical psychopathology. They developed the TAT process theory in order to understand how the subject builds a narrative. Our article will emphasize the source of the analytical approach developed by V. Shentoub in the 1950s to current research; the necessity of marking the boundary between the manifest and latent content in the cards; the procedure for analyzing the narrative, supported by an analysis sheet for understanding the stories' structure and identifying the defense mechanisms; and how developing hypotheses about how the mental functions are organized, as well as their potential psychopathological characteristics; and the formulation of a diagnosis in psychodynamic terms. In conjunction with the analysis and interpretation of the Rorschach test, this approach allows us to develop an overview of the subject's mental functioning, taking into account both the psychopathological elements that may threaten the subject and the potential for a therapeutic process. We will illustrate this by comparing neurotic, borderline, and psychotic personalities.


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