Strategy as Practice: Research Directions and Resources

by Gerry Johnson , Ann Langley , Leif Melin , Richard Whittington

• ISBN13: 9780521681568
• ISBN10: 0521681561
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Research in strategy has shifted significantly towards strategy as something organizations have, rather than strategy as something that managers do. The activities of the people who actually manage and develop organizational strategy have become marginalized. Strategy as Practice argues the reverse: that research on strategy needs to take seriously what strategists do and the effects of what they do.Written by a distinguished team of researchers and educators, the book sets out a research agenda, provides guidelines on theoretical perspectives and alternative methodologies for research on practice as well as commentaries on published illustrative papers that exemplify the practice perspective. Strategy as Practice will be essential reading for doctoral students, researchers and academics who wish to understand or undertake research in this important field of management research.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introducing the Strategy as Practice perspective

Practical theories

Doing research on doing strategy

Introduction to the Papers

Technology as an occasion for structuring: evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments

Making fast strategic decisions in high-velocity environments

In search of rationality: the purposes behind the use of formal analysis in organizations

Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation

Business planning as pedagogy: language and control in a changing institutional field

Strategizing as lived experience and strategists' everyday efforts to shape strategic direction

Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking

From metaphor to practice in the crafting of strategy

Reflections

References

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