Strategy-in-Practices: A process philosophical approach to understanding strategy emergence and organizational outcomes

Emergence of a firm's strategy is of central concern to both Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) scholars. While SP scholars view strategy emergence as a long-termmacroconditioning process, SAP advocates concentrate on the episodicmicro'doing' of strategy actors in formal strategy planning settings. Neither perspective explains satisfactorily how process and practice relate in strategy emergence to produce tangible organizational outcomes. The conundrum of reconciling themacro/microdistinction implied in process and practice stems from a sharedSubstantialistmetaphysical commitment that attributes strategy emergence to substantive entities. In this article, we draw onProcessmetaphysics and the practice-turn in social philosophy and theory to propose a Strategy-in-Practices (SIP) perspective. SIP emphasizes how the multitude of coping actions taken at the 'coal-face' of an organization congeal inadvertently over time into an organizationalmodus operandithat provides the basis for strategizing. Strategy, therefore,inhereswithin socio-culturally propagated predispositions that provide the patterned consistency that makes the inadvertent emergence of a coherent strategy possible. By demonstrating how strategy isimmanentin socio-culturally propagated practices, the SIP perspective overcomes the troublesomemicro/macrodistinction implied in SP and SAP research. It also advances our understanding of how strategy emergence impacts organizational outcomes.

Automated summary

The emergence of a firm's strategy is a central concern for both Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) scholars. However, neither perspective satisfactorily explains how process and practice relate in strategy emergence to produce tangible organizational outcomes. The Strategy-in-Practices (SIP) perspective emphasizes how coping actions taken at the 'coal-face' of an organization inadvertently congeal over time to provide the basis for strategizing. This perspective overcomes the troublesome micro/macro distinction implied in SP and SAP research and advances our understanding of how strategy emergence impacts organizational outcomes.