Hard to disagree, mostly

Abstract

It’s hard to disagree with most of Carter, Clegg and Kornberger’s review of strategy as practice. Even in the rather particular pieces Carter et al. choose to cite, strategy as practice researchers have made similar points already. Their claimed ‘revision’ of the strategy as practice approach is liable to confuse, therefore. Though there is certainly no special ‘orthodoxy’ to represent, we think it worthwhile clarifying where it is easy to agree with Carter et al.’s position and where the two of us, at least, definitely do not agree. We start by outlining what it is about strategy as practice broadly that makes Carter et al.’s position a less radical departure than they might think. Moving towards the detail, we then show where strategy as practice researchers have anticipated Carter et al.’s arguments already, both in the pieces they cite and elsewhere. Turning towards our points of disagreement, we try to nail these briefly, before concluding with an expression of support for what is novel in Carter et al.’s piece. Strategy as practice attempts a fundamental inversion of dominant conceptions of strategy. Whereas strategy has traditionally been seen as something an organization has – for example, a diversification strategy or an internationalization strategy – for strategy as practice researchers, strategy is something that people do. Strategy is a kind of work, not just a property of organizations. This reconception of strategy immediately opens up aspects of strategy that the academic discipline – both content and process wings – has so far been reluctant to address. Strategy as practice particularly focuses on the praxis, practices and practitioners of strategy (Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Praxis refers to the sheer labour of strategy, the flow of activities such as meeting, talking, calculating, form-filling and presenting through which strategy gets made. Practices involve the various routines, discourses, concepts and technologies through which this strategy labour is made possible – not just obvious ones such as strategy reviews and off-sites, but also those embedded in academic and consulting tools (Porterian analysis, hypothesis testing, etc.) and in more material technologies and artefacts (PowerPoints, flip-charts, etc.). Finally, strategy’s practitioners are defined widely, to include both those directly involved in making strategy – most prominently managers and consultants – and those STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 6(1): 101–106 DOI: 10.1177/1476127007087155 Copyright ©2008 Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://so.sagepub.com

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