Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice

Third edition of this state-of-the-art overview of the Strategy as Practice approach in strategy research, with new authors and chapters.

Damon Golsorkhi (Edited by), Linda Rouleau (Edited by), David Seidl (Edited by), Eero Vaara (Edited by)

9781009216074, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 January 2025

828 pages
25 x 17.5 x 5 cm, 1.59 kg

‘The third edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice is an intellectual delight. It reflects both the deep roots of the SAP approach within philosophical and theoretical traditions and its fantastic ongoing regeneration, integrating cutting-edge developments in theory, methodology, and topic areas. It also balances theoretical depth and practical relevance. Reading it makes an insightful scholarly adventure that illuminates strategy, practice, and organizing more broadly.’ Tammar Zilber, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Now in its third edition, this Handbook is essential for students and researchers in Strategic Management and Organizational Theory and Behaviour. The Strategy as Practice approach moves away from the disembodied and asocial study of firm assets, technologies and practices, towards the study of strategizing as an activity. Strategy is understood as something people do rather than something a firm has. This perspective explores how strategizing contributes to an organizations' daily operations at all levels. Through detailed empirical studies of the everyday activities and practice of people engaged in strategizing, the Handbook investigates who strategists are, what strategists do, how they do it, and what the consequences of their actions are. Featuring new authors and additional or fundamentally updated and revised chapters, this edition provides a state-of-the-art overview of recent reflections and works in this rapidly growing stream of strategic management, whilst also presenting a research agenda for the next decade.

Introduction: What is Strategy as Practice?
Part I. Ontological and Epistemological Questions: 1. Epistemological alternatives for researching Strategy as Practice: building and dwelling worldviews
2. How is strategy made? A Heideggerian onto-epistemological framework for studying Strategy as Practice
3. Constructivist paradigms and their relevance for Strategy as Practice research
4. The ongoing challenge of developing cumulative knowledge about Strategy as Practice
5. Practical relevance of practice-theoretical research on strategy
Part II. Theoretical Resources: Social Theory: 6. Structuration theory: Giddens and beyond
7. An activity theory approach to Strategy as Practice
8. A Bourdieusian perspective on strategizing
9. A Wittgensteinian perspective on strategizing
10. A Foucauldian perspective on strategic practice: strategy as the art of (un)folding
11. A narrativity approach to Strategy as Practice: Strategy-making from texts and narratives
12. Actor-network theory and Strategy as Practice
13. A dramaturgical framework for Strategy as Practice
14. Schatzki's practice theory and Strategy as Practice
15. An economies-of-worth perspective on Strategy as Practice: Dealing with strategic pluralism through legitimation, localization, and materialization
16. Strategy as a performative practice: a self-referential, knowledge-based perspective
Part III. Theoretical Resources: Organization and Management Theories: 17. An institutional perspective on Strategy as Practice
18. Identity work as a strategic practice
19. Sensemaking in Strategy as Practice: from a phenomenon towards a theory?
20. Routine dynamics and connections to Strategy as Practice
21. The communicative constitution of strategy-making: exploring fleeting moments of strategy
22. A social-symbolic work perspective on Strategy as Practice: the objects of strategy work
23. Relating Strategy as Practice to the resource-based view, capabilities perspectives and micro-foundations approaches
24. Analytical frames for studying power in Strategy as Practice and beyond
25. Strategy as Practice and the critical eye
Part IV. Methodological Resources: 26. Using ethnography in Strategy as Practice research
27. Action research as an impactful approach to study Strategy as Practice
28. Studying strategizing through biographical interviews or narratives of practices
29. Using photographic methods in Strategy as Practice research
30. A critical discursive approach to Strategy as Practice research
31. Studying Strategy as Practice through historical methods
32. Quantitative methods in Strategy as Practice research
Part V. Substantive Topic Areas: 33. Strategic planning as practice
34. Meetings and workshops as strategy practices
35. The role of materiality in the practice of strategy revisited
36. Participation in strategy work
37. Open strategy as a new form of strategizing
38. The role of emotions in strategizing
39. Temporality in Strategy as Practice
40. Multimodality in Strategy as Practice research
41. The role of play in strategizing
42. Feminist perspectives on doing Strategy as Practice research
43. At the interface of extreme contexts and Strategy as Practice.

Subject Areas: Business strategy [KJC]