Shaping a Developing Field: Strategy as Practice
Strategizing: the Challenges of a Practice Perspective
This special issue of Human Relations edited by Julia Balogun of Lancaster’s Centre for Strategic Management with Paula Jarzabkowski (Aston Business School) and David Seidl (University of Zurich) was published in 2007.
The introduction to this special issue explains the focus in the strategy as practice field on the work of strategy within organizations. The label “practice” refers to this focus rather than to an attachment to a particular practice ontology, or an interest in merely informing the work of the strategic practitioner. The field does have a strong interest in linking to the concerns and interests of strategic practitioners, but is also firmly committed to the delivery of sound empirical and theoretical contributions. The introduction argues that a coherent approach may be facilitated by using an overarching conceptual framework of praxis, practices and practitioners. This framework is used to explain the key challenges underlying the strategy-as-practice agenda and how they may be examined empirically.
(Also see Balogun, Jarzabkowski and Seidl, Strategy as Practice Perspective in Mark Jenkins, Veronique Ambrosini, Nardine Collier (Eds), Advanced Strategic Management, second edition, 2007, Palgrave Macmillan)
