Strategic management defines itself as the art, or science, of governing an organization with the aim of implementing intentions. In this way, strategic management presents itself as an exercise of will that includes the capacity to influence, to fold or have folded, the actions of other organizational members. This concept, which is dominant in strategic management, deserves to be further qualified, however. Following the example of other management practices, strategic management can be seen as a social practice (Whittington 2002), involving rules and working standards that serve to restrict the actions of the subject-strategist and limit the field of possible action (Schatzki 2001). It contains vocabulary, discourses and meanings that, at least partially, define the list of problems and possible solutions envisaged by the strategist (Vaara 2010). It relies on material artefacts (pictures, maps, spreadsheets, etc.) that help managers to carry on their everyday activities (Jarzabowski, Spee and Smets 2013).

Departing from a conception of strategy as something organizations have or do not have, the strategy-as-practice approach views strategy as an activity that individuals accomplish as they interact in both a physical and social context (Whittington 2002; Rouleau 2005). As a social practice, strategizing is animated by the dialectic tension between the singularity of the here and now of all activity and the generality and recurrence of the routines, norms, rules, techniques and tools on which all practice relies; between the uniqueness of the activity in the situation, that which we call the practice or praxis, and the repetition of the sociocultural artefacts, usually called practices, by which the strategic activity is actually realized (see Whittington 2002: 4; Jarzabowski and Spee 2009). This dialectical conception of strategy draws attention to the enabling – as well as potentially constraining – aspects of all social practices (see Giddens 1993).

As currently developed, however, SAP research continues to retain the idea of the strategist as a deliberate, competent and sometimes all-powerful bricoleur (Allard-Poesi 2006). This stream of research continues to assume that, despite an apparent similarity among ‘pre-packaged’ strategic practices, managers are still able to recreate practices and adapt them to their particular demands and specific context (see Jarzabowksi 2003; Vaara and Whittington 2012): ‘[Practices] do not impose rigid constraints, but instead enable iteration and adaptation’ (Jarzabowski and Spee 2009: 14).