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4 - The ‘practice turn’ in strategy research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

Robert C. H. Chia
Affiliation:
Strathclyde Business School
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Summary

The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices… It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism…, tend to guarantee the ‘correctness’ of practices and their constancy over time.

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, p.54

We argued in the last chapter that the uncertainties and complexities of life as are experienced by strategic actors are not containable in the way that economic theory and strategy design theory suppose. Even with ceteris paribus conditions in place, the choice sets, judgements and outcomes presented as being logical for the individual rational human agent or collective are riven with empirical exceptions, unseen ecological influences and communally felt limitations. Any theoretical understanding entails recognition of how we repress, discount or ignore elements of experience in order to attain, sustain or restore a sense of coherence. The distinctions we made between strong and weak individualism, between technē and phronesis, and between purposeful and purposive action push us towards recognizing that acting strategically is as much an instinctual, habitual and unthought response to experience as it is a deliberate, planned effort. In understanding economic activities such as trade and entities such as markets and prices, therefore, we ought to recognize them as socially organized, complex and open-ended institutional facts. Within such an environment, strategic action is not about an observer gathering information concerning an external environment in order to manage resources so as to occupy an advantageous position (a niche market, a rare capability, a competitive opportunity) but about attaining and sustaining a set of organized relationships nested within wider systems in order to experience the possibility of doing things differently and, potentially, better.

Type
Chapter
Information
Strategy without Design
The Silent Efficacy of Indirect Action
, pp. 112 - 132
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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