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12 - A narrative approach to Strategy as Practice: strategy making from texts and narratives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2012

By
Valérie-Inès de La Ville  and
Eléonore Mounoud
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
Rouen Business School
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Svenska Handelshögskolan, Helsinki
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Summary

The narrativizing of practices is a textual ‘way of operating’, having its own procedures and tactics. […] Shouldn't we recognize its scientific legitimacy by assuming that instead of being a remainder that cannot be, or has not yet been, eliminated from discourse, narrativity has a necessary function in it, and that a theory of narration is indissociable from a theory of practices, as its condition as well as its production. (de Certeau 1988: 78)

Introduction

The Strategy as Practice approach requires a close and detailed scrutiny of practitioners' activities. Such a micro-level approach enables us to depart from the conventional perspective and delve into the ‘internal life of the process’, to study in more details ‘individual’ rather than ‘organizational’ performance (Samra-Fredericks 2003). Moving attention away from macro-processes towards various aspects of the minutiae of strategy making has changed the discourse used by researchers to explain how strategy is conceived, explained and communicated (Whittington 2007). In practice, strategy is still essentially considered as micro-processes – i.e. the actual activities carried out by individuals within their organized contexts.

Although social practice theory tends to emphasize the tacit and informal dimensions of practices and praxis, Strategy as Practice research has focused much more on explicit practices, especially on operating procedures and standards (Jarzabkowski 2004, 2005), norms of appropriate strategic behaviour set by industry recipes (Spender 1989) and legitimizing discourses (Barry and Elmes 1997).

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Chapter
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Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 183 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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