Linda Rouleau suggests that biographical research provides a set of narrative methods of inquiry for carrying out in-depth studies of strategizing practices. Amongst the diverse forms that biographical methods can take, she suggests that biographical interviews or narratives of practices, that is, focusing on work experience and professional trajectories, provide privileged access to the subjective accounts of what managers and others ‘do’. Rouleau provides an overview of how biographical methods have been used in strategy as practice research in an attempt at gaining an in-depth look into the world of practitioners who are strategizing. She also puts forth illustrative data extracted from a previous study based on narratives of practices, which examined how middle managers deal with the restructuring of their organization. Finally, she explains how biographical methods, in general, and biographical interviews or narratives of practices, in particular, can be used to gain access to explicit and tacit knowledge, and how the depth of the relationship between narrator and researcher is central to a thorough understanding of strategizing practices.

Robert Chia and Andreas Rasche elaborate on the challenges of capturing the actual doing of strategy, which requires researchers to adopt a new worldview. They argue that the traditional ways of studying strategy work have led to an explanatory rupture between research accounts of strategy practice and the practice itself, which is intimately linked to the adoption of a set of epistemological premises that they term the building worldview. This view is characterized by two basic assumptions: (1) individuals are treated as discretely bounded entities; and (2) there is a clear split between the mental and physical realm; cognition and mental representation of the world necessarily precede any meaningful action. Accordingly, strategic action is explained through recourse to the intention of actors. They contrast this with what they refer to as dwelling world-view, which allows getting close to the actual doing of strategy because it does away with the assumption that identities and personal characteristics pre-exist social practice. Within this view, vocial practices are given primacy over individual agency and intention. Thus, strategic actions are explained not on the basis of individual intentions but as the product of particular, historically situated practices. Chia and Rasche discuss the epistemological consequences of these two worldviews showing how research findings depend on the chosen worldview.

This case study of gender in advertising through the lens of two campaigns – one by Virgin Atlantic and one by Bud Light – examines these brands’ alignment with modern gender perceptions and the subsequent consumer responses. It considers how advertising mirrors or moulds society’s gender norms and how companies navigate this spectrum. Beginning with Virgin Atlantic’s ‘See the World Differently’ campaign and updated gender-identity policy in 2022, this example indicates the campaign’s success in its positive reception. Conversely, Bud Light’s collaboration with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney for the ‘Easy Carry Contest’ faced a polarised reception. While aiming to resonate with a younger, more inclusive demographic, the backlash from conservative corners illustrated the risks involved when a brand ventures into socially charged territories without thorough consideration of its diverse customer base.

The comparison between Virgin Atlantic’s holistic approach to embedding inclusivity into their brand ethos contrasts with Bud Light’s reactive stance, highlighting the importance of proactive engagement with social issues in brand strategy.

Leonhard Dobusch, Julia Hautz and Thomas Ortner introduce the emerging topic of Open Strategy. As they highlight, we can observe an increasing trend towards more inclusive and transparent strategizing. From a practice perspective, this trend can be described as a shift in the practices of strategy-making. The authors describe the different practices of inclusiveness and transparency and show how they relate to each other. They then identify and review distinctive themes of strategy as practice research on Open Strategy. This includes the role of technologies and materiality in enabling openness, the discursive practices and processes underpinning openness, the temporal dynamics of open processes, the difference between controlled and uncontrolled forms of openness and the dialectic relationship between openness and closure.

Jane Lê and Paul Spee set an agenda for the growing body of research exploring the role of materiality in strategy research. In their overview of existing work, they differentiate four different approaches to materiality: the communication approach; the technology approach; the sensemaking approach; and the positivist approach. They explain the assumptions inherent in each approach and how these assumptions affect the way we understand and study strategizing. They conclude with an outline of different avenues for future research on materiality in strategizing.

Eric Knight and Matthias Wenzel examine the multimodality of strategizing. Drawing parallels to research in other domains of organization studies, they show that the enactment of strategic practices involves, amongst others, discursive modes (i.e., written or oral texts such as speech acts, emails, documents or newspaper articles), bodily modes (i.e., bodily movements such as gestures, gazes, nodding or pointing) and material modes (i.e., objects and artefacts such as tables, chairs, rooms or tools). As the concept of multimodality signals, these different modes are typically interrelated. That is, one typically finds a constellation of different modes involved in strategy work. The authors review existing strategy as practice research in terms of how they have conceptualized and captured the multimodality of strategy work. They distinguish three different conceptualizations, which they label ‘multimodality as representation’ (treating different modes as reflected in each other), ‘multimodality as co-creation’ (treating different modes as recursively shaping each other) and ‘multimodality as intertwinement’ (treating different modes as amalgamated). They discuss how each view of multimodality allows for different types of insights to be gained on the doing of strategy.

Danielle Zandee explores everything SAP researchers always wanted to know about action-research methods but were afraid to consider in their own work. The author argues and demonstrates how action research by joining practitioners in their real-time strategic efforts can be fruitful for developing innovative insights and impactful research. In turbulent times and unsettling settings, action research appears to be a risky but highly promising road for advancing strategy as practice. The author describes the main characteristics and modalities of action research and summarizes how action research has been discussed and applied in strategy as practice. To help strategy as practice researchers to engage with practitioners in their research, this contribution puts forth a framework providing a set of core questions for developing relevant and rigorous research designs and conducting issue-driven inquiry whilst staying connected with SAP research interests and requirements. Overall, the proposed action research framework provides SAP researchers with an ambitious agenda to study and impact strategic practice close to where it happens in the daily work of strategists. Yet, Danielle Zandee also recognizes that while action research can be extremely rewarding in terms of the subjective and reflexive research experience, it is typically very time-consuming and complex. Finally, some guidance on how to gradually adopt action research as methodology within the SAP domain, is provided.

Carola Wolf and Paula Jarzabkowski focus on activity theory as an approach for studying strategy as practice. The origins of activity theory can be found in Lev Vygotsky’s seminal work, but it has been developed and used in a variety of ways, including foundational work in strategy as practice. Wolf and Jarzabkowski offer an overview of activity theory and propose an organizing framework for understanding how activity theory has been used in strategy as practice research: activity-in-practice, activity as part of practice, or activity-as-practice. They next explain the key theoretical elements of activity theory, which leads them to focus on how activity can be conceptualized as a product of activity systems, including the actors, the community that the actors interact with and the symbolic and material tools that mediate between actors, their community and their pursuit of activity. In this discussion, they not only highlight existing contributions but explain how future research could go much further using an activity theory approach.

Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger focus on one of the most important but still understudied dimension in strategy as practice: power. They investigate how power theories can inform the study of strategy as practice, and vice versa. Understanding strategy as the ‘art of creating power’, the study of the ways in which power and strategy interact and how one leads to the other should be a central concern for scholars of strategy. Whilst providing an overview of the key writings that have emerged at the interface between power and strategy, the authors also attempt to point towards several possible future lines of inquiry. Their contribution is structured following a rather simple heuristic device (strategy as noun, strategizing as verb, strategic as adjective) which emphasizes the different agents, mechanisms and effects that can guide the analysis of power and strategy.

The chapter articulates the transition from consistent brand image projection to engaging consumer landmarks through advocacy and identity affiliation, spotlighting the integral role of brand equity. In exploring the different interpretations of brand symbols across varied consumer groups, it acknowledges the challenges brands face in maintaining relevance and authenticity in an increasingly complex digital landscape. This underscores the necessity for brands to evolve as landmarks within the cultural landscape, guiding consumer engagement and fostering community and belonging, while avoiding the pitfalls of perceived intrusiveness.

Valérie-Inès de La Ville and Eléonore Mounoud outline a narrative approach to strategy as practice. They draw on the work of Paul Riceour and Michel de Certeau to elucidate the various narrative practices that constitute an inherent part of strategy and strategizing. This involves the production of texts in strategy formulation, but also the consumption of texts in the ‘implementation’ of strategies. They offer a model that focuses on the writing and reading of texts and narratives as ongoing activities in organizations. This view allows one to understand the crucial role of strategy texts and ongoing interpretations in strategizing – and thus challenges the conventional view that focuses on formal strategies without considering the ways in which they are ‘talked into being’.

Whittle and Mueller offer a dramaturgical perspective on strategy as practice. This approach has its roots in Erving Goffman’s seminal work, and this contribution provides a sorely needed reflection of how the key ideas and concepts of this theoretical perspective can be used to advance our understand of important issues and questions in strategy as practice research. They include disruptive events, front region, dramatic realization, idealization, audience segregation, misrepresentation, back region, teams, team secrets, discrepant roles and defensive practices. However, Whittle and Mueller also encourage scholars to not only use specific ideas or concepts in Goffman’s work but to engage in more comprehensive analyses applying this approach to develop a fuller understanding of strategizing processes. They conclude by identifying avenues for future studies going beyond previous work using dramaturgical lenses in strategy as practice research.

Ann Cunliffe proposes some key considerations and a stimulating reflection on the connection between ethnography and the study of practice. She argues that ethnography is particularly suited forstrategy as practice research because of its focus on the rich description of the micro-practices of organizational life. Based on relevant ethnographic studies that are illustrative and may be of interest for strategy as practice researchers, she explains how it is possible to better understand new or unanticipated processes and practices that are at the core of strategy-making. Nevertheless, she urges strategy as practice researchers to embrace more deeply a subjectivist or intersubjective view when adopting an ethnographic methodology in order to offer new insights into the relational and reflexive nature of strategizing as an emergent and lived experience. Yet, doing so raises a number of important questions: What philosophical assumptions underpin the ethnographer’s work? How do these influence the methods used, the form of analysis and the theorizing? How does the researcher position her/himself in the research? How does an ethnographer write a convincing research account?

Chapter Three examines the regional development effects of foreign direct investment in the integrated peripheries of the automotive industry by analyzing supplier linkages between foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms. It develops the spatial concept of integrated peripheries in core-based transnational production networks to explain the rapid growth of the automotive industry in Europe’s peripheral regions. Conceptually, it draws on the dynamic notion of uneven development in contemporary capitalism. Namely, it draws on the concept of spatiotemporal fix and on the global production networks concept of strategic coupling to investigate the mode of articulation of integrated peripheries into transnational macroregional production networks. Empirically, it analyzes the quantity and quality of supplier linkages in the automotive industry of Slovakia. The empirical analysis uncovered weak and dependent supplier linkages between foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms, which limits the potential for technology transfer and undermines potentially positive long-term regional development effects of large foreign direct investment by automotive industry corporations.