Open Strategy, both as a set of processes and practices, and as an emerging academic field, “promises increased transparency and inclusion regarding strategic issues, engaging both internal and external stakeholders” (Hautz et al., 2017: 298; see also Whittington et al., 2011). Open contexts, by involving greater transparency and inclusiveness, strongly impact the way multiple stakeholders make sense of strategy or, in other words, negotiate, disseminate, or even contest the issues at play in strategic change. The diversity that openness brings to the strategic table – a diversity of people (inclusion) but also of information and of perspectives (transparency) – offers organizations more possibilities to help them to make sense of their complex environment (Seidl & Werle, 2018). To uphold the dual promise of inclusion and transparency, Open Strategy would therefore benefit from sensemaking research’s attention to the detailed practices through which people form a shared understanding.

We did not anticipate the first edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice to be followed by a new version this soon. In the five years since the first edition was published, however, the field of practice-based strategy research has moved on considerably. New theoretical perspectives have been advanced, alternative methodologies have been suggested and new topics have been explored. In reaction to these developments, we have put this second edition together. We have included twenty new chapters and have substantially revised and updated all the original ones. In addition, the overall structure of the handbook has been changed: We have added Part III, covering organization and management theory perspectives on strategy as practice (SAP), such as the institutional perspective, alternative strategy perspectives, the routine dynamics perspective, the identity theory perspective, the communicative constitution of organizations perspective, the power perspective and the critical perspective. We have also added Part V, on substantive topic areas in strategy as practice research, which includes chapters on strategic planning, strategy meetings, the role of materiality in strategy, the strategic role of middle managers, participation in strategy and the role of emotions in strategy. Moreover, we decided to drop the original Part IV, on exemplary empirical research, as we felt that it was no longer possible to provide a representative overview of the wide variety of empirical studies conducted in the area of strategy as practice. Since the respective empirical chapters are still of great value to practice-based researchers, however, we have made them freely available on the website of Cambridge University Press: to access the papers, please visit www.cambridge.org/golsorkhi.

Working on this second edition has been a wonderful journey, as we have had the opportunity to learn new things and get to know new people. This book project has been an important way for us to participate in the development of the SAP agenda, and we are especially happy about the dialogue that has been established with those who have not usually been considered to be part of the SAP community. All this has required a great deal of effort from the authors. We are grateful to the authors of the previous edition, who without hesitation agreed to revise and update their chapters, and to the new ones, for so generously accepting the challenge to join us in this great adventure.

Despite efforts to develop innovative and new research methods for studying strategizing, most strategy-as-practice research has been based on longitudinal case studies drawing on interviews, observations and documents (Vaara and Whittington 2012). While these methods provide a complex set of historical and contextual data that are obviously necessary for understanding practices, they tend to concentrate on the organizational level, thus leaving unclear the way managers and others draw on their explicit and tacit knowledge when they are strategizing. Nonetheless, the essence of strategist agency cannot be separated from strategists’ life experience and their social, professional and/or managerial identity (Tengblad 2012). Therefore, there is a need to develop interest in methods offering the possibility to better understand who strategists are and how they define themselves, how they make sense of the strategy and how they position themselves within their organization and external networks.

Biographical methods constitute a set of pertinent narrative methods of inquiry for carrying out in-depth studies of strategizing practices (Fenton and Langley 2011). With the aim of understanding the subjective essence of a person's life or part of that life, biographical research focuses on individuals, who are asked to narrate their experiences and provide their own accounts of the significant change they have gone through over time (Goodley et al. 2004). To better understand the practices and skills individuals use when they are strategizing, biographical methods constitute a relevant methodological option offering multiple variants (biography, life story, autobiography, life history and so on) that can be used in complementary ways with ethnographic, participative and visual qualitative methods of inquiry (Merrill and West 2009).

This chapter proposes to study strategizing by collecting data through a specific kind of biographical method, namely narratives of practices. Narratives of practices are specific life stories that focus on work experience and professional trajectories (Bertaux 1981). As with any biographical method, narratives of practices, or work life stories, allow the researcher to dig into the ‘life-world’ of strategists, whether they are managers or not, in order to capture the taken-for-granted streams of routines, events, interactions and knowledge that constitute their practices (Küpers, Mantere and Statler 2013). For example, Gerstrøm (2013) draws on a variant of this method in her doctoral thesis to study how managers defend, protect and adapt their identity when dealing with financial crisis.

Strategy as practice as a research approach

Since early 2000 strategy as practice (SAP) has emerged as a distinctive approach for studying strategic management, strategic decision-making, strategizing, strategy-making and strategy work (Whittington 1996; Johnson, Melin and Whittington 2003; Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl 2007). In recent years SAP research has confirmed its vitality and fulfilled its promise by being more lively than ever (Golsorkhi et al. 2010; Vaara and Whittington 2012; Balogun et al. 2014; Seidl and Whittington 2014). This second edition of the handbook confirms the strong enthusiasm for the generation of new ideas about the way practitioners are doing their strategy work. Strategy-as-practice research focuses on the micro-level social activities, processes and practices that characterize organizational strategy and strategizing. This provides not only an organizational perspective into strategic decision-making but also a strategic angle for examining the process of organizing, and thereby serves as a useful research programme and social movement for connecting contemporary strategic management research with practice-oriented organizational studies.

Strategy as practice can be regarded as an alternative to the mainstream strategy research via its attempt to shift attention away from a ‘mere’ focus on the effects of strategies on performance alone to a more comprehensive, in-depth analysis of what actually takes place in strategy formulation, planning and implementation and other activities that deal with the thinking and doing of strategy. In other words, SAP research is interested in the ‘black box’ of strategy work that once led the research agenda in strategic management research (Mintzberg 1973; Mintzberg and Waters 1985; Pettigrew 1973), but has thereafter been replaced by other issues, not least because of the increasing dominance of the micro-economic approach and a methodological preoccupation with statistical analysis. Because of its micro-level focus, studies following the strategy-as-practice agenda tend to draw on theories and apply methods that differ from the common practices of strategy scholars. In this way, SAP research can contribute to the evolution of strategic management as a discipline and body of knowledge with new theories and methodological choices.

Advancing research on middle managers, strategy and strategic change is particularly important given the fast-changing strategic contexts in which many organizations operate. Unlike top managers, who are recognised as having formal strategic roles, middle managers’ strategizing actions are often informal, occurring across many different organizational subunits throughout the strategy process (Balogun and Johnson 2004). Given that they cannot rely exclusively on formal authority, middle managers need to draw on a diverse set of resources and skills to influence the development of the firm's competitive advantage (Lechner, Frankenberger and Floyd 2010; Huy 2011; Rouleau and Balogun 2011). This raises an interesting question: what do middle managers do in their strategy work and how do they do it? This question speaks directly to the research agenda of the strategy-as-practice perspective (Jarzabkowksi, Balogun and Seidl 2007; Vaara and Whittington 2012). By looking at middle managers’ strategy work (Whittington 2006) – or, put differently, at their ‘practices’ or their ‘situated’ formal and informal strategic activities – strategy-as-practice researchers studying middle managers are opening the black box of their strategic roles (Mantere 2008). They are consequently providing a better understanding of what kinds of resources and skills it takes to enact these roles.

Since the papers written by Balogun and Johnson (2004; 2005) on middle managers and strategic change, strategy-as-practice research on middle managers has burgeoned (see, for example, Besson and Mahieu 2011; Thomas, Sargent and Hardy 2011; Beck and Plowman 2009; Nielsen 2009; Hoon 2007). This chapter reviews this growing body of research and suggests directions for its future development. The review shows existing research to provide important insights into the multiple ways middle managers draw on their skills in doing their strategy work. This chapter argues that there remain five main challenges that should be addressed in order to develop the full potential of SAP research on middle managers. First, there is a need for more theoretical depth in drawing on social practice theories for studying middle managers’ strategy work. Second, the methodologies used might be more innovative. Third, the lack of coherence and consistency in describing middle manager practices impedes the development of cumulative middle manager strategy-as-practice research. Fourth, research has failed to examine how middle manager practices are embodied and materially mediated. Fifth, middle manager SAP researchers have not put sufficient emphasis on developing critical reflection and discussing the practical relevance of their findings.

Strategy as Practice as a research approach

In recent years, Strategy as Practice has emerged as a distinctive approach for studying strategic management, organizational decision-making and managerial work (Whittington 1996; Johnson et al. 2003; Jarzabkowski et al. 2007). It focuses on the micro-level social activities, processes and practices that characterize organizational strategy and strategizing. This provides not only an organizational perspective into strategy but also a strategic angle for examining the process of organizing, and thereby serves as a useful research programme and social movement for connecting contemporary strategic management research with practice-oriented organizational studies.

Strategy as Practice can be regarded as an alternative to the mainstream strategy research via its attempt to shift attention away from merely a focus on the effects of strategies on performance alone to a more comprehensive, in-depth analysis of what actually takes place in strategic planning, strategy implementation and other activities that deal with strategy. In other words, Strategy as Practice research is interested in the ‘black box’ of strategy work that once led the research agenda in strategic management research (Mintzberg 1973; Mintzberg and Waters 1985; Pettigrew 1973), but has thereafter been replaced by other issues, not least because of the increasing dominance of the micro-economic approach and a methodological preoccupation with statistical analysis. Because of its micro-level focus, studies following the Strategy as Practice agenda tend to draw on theories and apply methods that differ from the common practices of strategy scholars.