The emerging stream of Strategy as Practice research ‘has grown rapidly’ in just a few years (Jarzabkowski et al. 2007 p. 5), with the response that ‘has been nothing short of impressive’ (Chia 2004, p. 29). As such, the development of Strategy as Practice provides an intriguing glimpse into how knowledge-creating professions constitute themselves and maintain organization and power through networks of texts such as journal articles, books and websites (e.g. www.strategy-as-practice.org) that frame and focus topics of interest. In this chapter, we focus attention on how Strategy as Practice is constructing opportunities for contribution through the genre of journal articles, the location of crucial public discourse among researchers (Winsor 1993; Yearley 1981; Zuckermann 1987). We first present our analyses of how empirically based Strategy as Practice articles construct contribution to the field of organizational studies. Then, we map these constructions onto an extant framework of contribution (Locke and Golden-Biddle 1997) to disclose opportunities for contribution that have been pursued as well as those which have been neglected.

How Strategy as Practice research constructs opportunities for contribution

How do ‘Strategy as Practice’ researchers relate the academic and field-based worlds to develop theoretically relevant insights regarded as a contribution by academic readers? To address this question, we drew on a recent listing and review of published or in press articles in the Strategy as Practice field (Jarzabkowski and Spee forthcoming). From this list, we selected all empirical work published in peer reviewed journals. This resulted in a sample of twenty-six articles.