Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T13:40:27.850Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Making strategy: meta-theoretical insights from Heideggerian phenomenology

from Part I - Ontological and Epistemological Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2015

By
Haridimos Tsoukas
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Haridimos Tsoukas
Affiliation:
University of Cyprus
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
Grenoble School of Management
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Svenska Handelshögskolan, Helsinki
Get access

Summary

My purpose in this chapter is to lay out an onto-epistemological framework for strategy as practice by drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology. The need for such a framework comes from the recent proliferation of strategy-as-practice studies and the concomitant advancement of relevant knowledge claims, which do not necessarily share the same understanding of ‘strategy’ or ‘practice’. Bringing clarity to what strategy as practice can achieve, how it relates to similar perspectives and how it can be further advanced will help dissolve ambiguities, spot contradictions and integrate various theoretical lenses. Heideggerian phenomenology is highly relevant for such a task, as it foregrounds the notion of practice and the modes of human involvement in practice. Since strategy relates to intentionality and the use of tools and artefacts, especially language, how intentions and language are implicated in the making of strategy is of critical importance. By way of example, consider the following three vignettes.

  1. (1)The contrasting accounts of Honda's spectacular success in capturing two-thirds of the motorcycle industry in the United States, in the early 1960s, are well known. Pascale's (1984) account, drawn from interviews with the Honda executives who were in charge of the US project at the time, shows the largely improvisational nature of Honda's responses to unexpected problems and unfolding events on the ground, as the company made the effort to enter the US market. One of the Honda executives remarked: ‘In truth, we had no strategy other than the idea of seeing if we could sell something in the United States. It was a new frontier, a new challenge, and it fit the “success against all odds” culture that Mr Honda had cultivated’ (Pascale 1984: 54). By contrast, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study of the same phenomenon accounted for Honda's success in terms of microeconomic concepts, such as ‘low cost producer’ and ‘economies of scale’ (BCG 1975). While, for Pascale, Honda's success was accountable in terms of the unique processes through which the particular Honda executives experimented, adapted and learned, for the authors of the BCG report, Honda's success was an illustration of the microeconomic strategy model. Whereas both accounts point at patterns of action over time, they explain those patterns differently. Adaptationists highlight the absence of well-defined, elaborately articulated plans and intentions, whereas microeconomists allude to the advantages firms enjoy by pursuing the precepts of the strategy model.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 58 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allard-Poesi, F. (2010), ‘A Foucauldian perspective on strategic practice: strategy as the art of (un)folding’, in Golsorkhi, D., Rouleau, L., Seidl, D., and Vaara, E. (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice: 168–82. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barry, D., and Elmes, M. (1997), ‘Strategy retold: toward a narrative view of strategic discourse’, Academy of Management Review, 22/2: 429–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benner, P. (1994), ‘The role of articulation in understanding practice and experience as sources of knowledge in clinical nursing’, in Tully, J. (ed.), Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism: 136–55. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benner, P., Hooper-Kyriakidis, P., and Stannard, D. (1999), Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care. Philadelphia: Saunders.Google Scholar
Boston Consulting Group (1975), Strategy Alternatives for the British Motorcycle Industry. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Chia, R., and Holt, R. (2006), ‘Strategy as practical coping: a Heideggerian perspective’, Organization Studies, 27/5: 635–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chia, R., and Holt, R. (2009), Strategy without Design: The Silent Efficacy of Indirect Action. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chia, R., and MacKay, B. (2007), ‘Post-processual challenges for the emerging strategy-as-practice perspective: discovering strategy in the logic of practice’, Human Relations, 60/1: 217–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, S., and Yanow, D. (1996), ‘Culture and organizational learning’, in Cohen, M., and Sproull, L. (eds.), Organizational Learning: 430–59. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Denis, J.-L., Langley, A., and Rouleau, L. (2007), ‘Strategizing in pluralistic contexts: rethinking theoretical frames’, Human Relations, 60/1: 179–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreyfus, H. (1985), ‘Holism and hermeneutics’, in Hollinger, R. (ed.), Hermeneutics and Praxis: 227–47. University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. (1991a), Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. (1991b), ‘Reflection on the workshop on “the self”’, Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 16/1: 27–31.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. (2000), ‘Responses’, in Wrathall, M., and Malpas, J. (eds.), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus: 313–49. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ezzamel, M., and Willmott, H. (2008), ‘Strategy as discourse in a global retailer: a supplement to rationalist and interpretive accounts’, Organization Studies, 29/2: 191–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garud, R., Gehman, J., and Kumaraswamy, A. (2011), ‘Complexity arrangements for sustained innovation: lessons from 3M Corporation’, Organization Studies, 32/6: 737–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gawande, A. (2002), Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Gomez, M.-L. (2010), ‘A Bourdieusian perspective on strategizing’, in Golsorkhi, D., Rouleau, L., Seidl, D., and Vaara, E. (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice: 141–54. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goold, M. (1992), ‘Design, learning and planning: a further observation on the design school debate’, Strategic Management Journal, 13/2: 169–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, C., Lawrence, T. B., and Grant, D. (2005), ‘Discourse and collaboration: the role of conversations and collective identity’, Academy of Management Review, 30/1: 58–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harré, R., and Gillett, G. (1994), The Discursive Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (1962), Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hendry, J., and Seidl, D. (2003), ‘The structure and significance of strategic episodes: social systems theory and the routine practices of strategic change’, Journal of Management Studies, 40/1: 175–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heracleous, L., and Jacobs, C. D. (2012), Crafting Strategy: Embodied Metaphors in Practice. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodgkinson, G. P., and Wright, G. (2002), ‘Confronting strategic inertia in a top management team: learning from failure’, Organization Studies, 23/6: 949–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huy, Q. N. (2012), ‘Emotions in strategic organization: opportunities for impactful research’, Strategic Organization, 10/3: 240–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarzabkowski, P., Balogun, J., and Seidl, D. (2007), ‘Strategizing: the challenges of a practice perspective’, Human Relations, 60/1: 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarzabkowski, P., and Wilson, D. C. (2002), ‘Top teams and strategy in a UK university’, Journal of Management Studies, 39/3: 355–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, G., Melin, L., and Whittington, R. (2003), ‘Guest editors’ introduction: micro strategy and strategizing: towards an activity-based view’, Journal of Management Studies, 40/1: 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, S. (2011), ‘Strategy and PowerPoint: an inquiry into the epistemic culture and machinery of strategy making’, Organization Science, 22/2: 320–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, S., and Orlikowski, W. J. (2013), ‘Temporal work in strategy making’, Organization Science, 24/4: 965–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knights, D., and Morgan, G. (1991), ‘Corporate strategy, organizations, and subjectivity: a critique’, Organization Studies, 12/2: 251–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kogut, B., and Zander, U. (1996), ‘What firms do? Coordination, identity, and learning’, Organization Science, 7/5: 502–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Küpers, W., Mantere, S., and Statler, M. (2013), ‘Strategy as storytelling: a phenomenological collaboration’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 22/1: 83–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laine, P.-M., and Vaara, E. (2007), ‘Struggling over subjectivity: a discursive analysis of strategic development in an engineering group’, Human Relations, 60/1: 29–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1978 [1968]), The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langley, A. (2007), ‘Process thinking in strategic organization’, Strategic Organization, 5/3: 271–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. (1985), After Virtue,. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Maitlis, S., and Lawrence, T. B. (2003), ‘Orchestral manoeuvres in the dark: understanding failure in organizational strategizing’, Journal of Management Studies, 40/1: 109–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mantere, S. (2010), ‘A Wittgensteinian perspective on strategizing’, in Golsorkhi, D., Rouleau, L., Seidl, D., and Vaara, E. (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice: 155–67. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mantere, S. (2013), ‘What is organizational strategy? A language-based view’, Journal of Management Studies, 50/8: 1408–26.Google Scholar
Mantere, S., and Vaara, E. (2008), ‘On the problem of participation in strategy: a critical discursive perspective’, Organization Science, 19/2: 341–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintzberg, H. (1987), ‘Crafting strategy’, Harvard Business Review, 65/4: 66–75.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, H. (1990), ‘The design school: reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management’, Strategic Management Journal, 11/3: 171–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintzberg, H. (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, H. (2007), Tracking Strategies: Toward a General Theory. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, H., and McHugh, A. (1985), ‘Strategy formation in an adhocracy’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 30/2: 160–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintzberg, H., and Waters, J. A. (1982), ‘Tracking strategy in an entrepreneurial firm’, Academy of Management Journal, 25/3: 465–99.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, H., and Waters, J. A. (1985), ‘Of strategies, deliberate and emergent’, Strategic Management Journal, 6/3: 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (2007), ‘Sociomaterial practices: exploring technology at work’, Organization Studies, 28/9: 1435–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orr, J. E. (1996), Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.Google Scholar
Pascale, R. T. (1984), ‘Perspectives on strategy: the real story behind Honda's success’, California Management Review, 26/3: 47–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettigrew, A. M. (1992), ‘The character and significance of process strategy research’, Strategic Management Journal, 13/S2: 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, M. (1962), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M., and Prosch, H. (1975), Meaning. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Porac, J. F., Thomas, H., and Baden-Fuller, C. (1989), ‘Competitive groups as cognitive communities: the case of Scottish knitwear manufacturers’, Journal of Management Studies, 26/4: 397–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasche, A., and Chia, R. (2009), ‘Researching strategy practices: a genealogical social theory perspective’, Organization Studies, 30/7: 713–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reckwitz, A. (2002), ‘Toward a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5/2: 243–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regnér, P. (2003), ‘Strategy creation in the periphery: inductive versus deductive strategy making’, Journal of Management Studies, 40/1: 57–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouleau, L. (2005), ‘Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret and sell change every day’, Journal of Management Studies, 42/7: 1413–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rouse, M. (2000), ‘Coping and its contrasts’, in Wrathall, M., and Malpas, J. (eds.), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus: 7–28. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ryle, G. (1963), The Concept of Mind. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003), ‘Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction’, Journal of Management Studies, 40/1: 141–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandberg, J., and Tsoukas, H. (2011), ‘Grasping the logic of practice: theorizing through practical rationality’, Academy of Management Review, 36/2: 338–60.Google Scholar
Sawyer, K. (2007), Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2000), ‘Coping with others with folk psychology’, in Wrathall, M., and Malpas, J. (eds.), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus: 29–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2005), ‘The sites of organizations’, Organization Studies, 26/3: 465–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidl, D. (2007), ‘General strategy concepts and the ecology of strategy discourses: a systemic-discursive perspective’, Organization Studies, 28/2: 197–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shotter, J., and Katz, A. M. (1996), ‘Articulating a practice from within the practice itself: establishing formative dialogues by the use of a “social poetics”’, Concepts and Transformation, 1/2–3: 213–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sillince, J., Jarzabkowski, P., and Shaw, D. (2012), ‘Shaping strategic action through the rhetorical construction and exploitation of ambiguity’, Organization Science, 23/3: 630–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spinosa, C., Flores, F., and Dreyfus, H. (1997), Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1985a), Philosophical Papers, vol. I, Human Agency and Language. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (1985b), Philosophical Papers, vol. II, Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (1991), ‘The dialogical self’, in Hiley, D., Bohman, J., and Shusterman, R. (eds.), The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture: 304–14, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1993), ‘Engaged agency and background in Heidegger’, in Guignon, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger: 317–36. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1995), Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tsoukas, H. (2009), ‘A dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge in organizations’, Organization Science, 20/6: 941–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsoukas, H. (2011), ‘How should we understand tacit knowledge? A phenomenological view’, in Easterby-Smith, M., and Lyles, M. A. (eds.), Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, : 453–76. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tsoukas, H., and Knudsen, C. (2002), ‘The conduct of strategy research’, in Pettigrew, A. M., Thomas, H., and Whittington, R. (eds.), Handbook of Strategy and Management: 411–35. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Vaara, E., Kleymann, B., and Seristö, H. (2004), ‘Strategies as discursive constructions: the case of airline alliances’, Journal of Management Studies, 41/1: 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van de Ven, A. H., and Poole, M. S. (2005), ‘Alternative approaches for studying organizational change’, Organization Studies, 26/9: 1377–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wakefield, J., and Dreyfus, H. (1991), ‘Intentionality and the phenomenology of action’, in Lepore, E., and van Gulick, R. (eds.), John Searle and His Critics: 259–70. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Weick, K. E. (1995), Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Weick, K. E. (2001), ‘Substitutes for strategy’, in Making Sense of the Organization: 345–60. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Whittington, R. (2006), ‘Completing the practice turn in strategy research’, Organization Studies, 27/5: 613–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittington, R. (2007), ‘Strategy practice and strategy process: family differences and the sociological eye’, Organization Studies, 28/10: 1575–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1979), On Certainty, ed. Anscombe, G. E. M., and von Wright, G. H.Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1980a), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, ed. von Wright, G. H., and Nyman, H.University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1980b), Culture and Value, ed. von Wright, G. H., and Nyman, H.University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wright, R. P., Paroutis, S., and Blettner, D. P. (2013), ‘How useful are the strategic tools we teach in business schools?’, Journal of Management Studies, 50/1: 92–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yanow, D. (2015), ‘After mastery: insights from practice theorizing’, in Garud, R., Simpson, B., Langley, A., and Tsoukas, H. (eds.), The Emergence of Novelty in Organizations: ch. 11. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yanow, D., and Tsoukas, H. (2009), ‘What is reflection-in-action? A phenomenological account’, Journal of Management Studies, 46/8: 1339–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×