Accounting for the Multiple Meanings of Performativity

In his posthumous book How to Do Things with Words, John L. Austin defined a performative utterance as one ‘in which to say something is to do something; or in which by saying or in saying something we are doing something’ (Reference AustinAustin 1962: 12, emphasis in original). Austin highlighted that instances of speech can count as social acts, one typical example being ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow’ (Reference AustinAustin 1962: 5). While originating from the field of linguistics, the notion of performativity embarked on a long journey spanning distinct disciplines (Reference DenisDenis 2006; Reference LoxleyLoxley 2007), leading to its adoption in organization and management studies (for a complete review, see Reference Gond, Cabantous, Harding and LearmonthGond et al. 2016), as exemplified by the publication of different special issues dedicated to this theme, for example, in Long Range Planning (Reference Cabantous, Gond and Wright2018), M@n@gement (Reference Carton and Mouricou2017), Organization Studies (Reference Bowden, Gond, Nyberg and Wright2021), or reviews (Reference Cabantous, Gond and LiarteCabantous and Gond 2019; Reference Gond, Cabantous, Mir, Willmott and GreenwoodGond and Cabantous 2015; Reference Gond, Carton, Neesham, Reihlen and SchoenebornGond and Carton 2022; Reference Gond, Cabantous, Harding and LearmonthGond et al. 2016).

Among the eight meanings of performativity identified by Reference Gond, Cabantous, Harding and LearmonthGond et al. (2016), five usages correspond to straightforward borrowing from foundational perspectives on performativity (see Table 16.1). The historical usage of performativity, as introduced in the opening of this section – doing things with words – focuses on the key role of language and speech acts in the constitution of organizational or strategy phenomena. Of particular interest is the emphasis placed on the force of speech acts through the analysis of repetition and parallelism in discourse – its poetic function (Reference Fleming, Lempert, Enfield, Kockelman and SidnellFleming and Lempert 2014) – visible in the discourses of strategists, as exemplified by the keynotes given by the late Steve Jobs (Reference Garud, Gehman and TharchenGarud, Gehman and Tharchen 2018). The search for efficiency perspective adopts an anti-performative stance by calling for resisting the search for efficiency-driven academic knowledge production in postmodern societies. This perspective echoes SAP research that aims to broaden the scope of strategy studies (Reference Vaara and WhittingtonVaara and Whittington 2012) and explains performance beyond the set of variables that at best can give only a partial explanation of performance (Reference Jarzabkowski and SpeeJarzabkowski and Spee 2009). For example, such a perspective allowed Reference Guérard, Langley and SeidlGuérard, Langley and Seidl (2013) to reconsider the role of performance in strategy research.

Next, performativity as constituting the self focuses on the constitution and (re)production of gendered managerial roles and identities in the workplace. It offers the potential for a better understanding of the strategy practitioner, one of the three areas of research of SAP (Reference WhittingtonWhittington 2006). Mobilizing Butler’s conception of performativity, Reference VarghaVargha (2018) shows how strategies must not only be inscribed into technologies and tools but also embodied by organizational actors.

Then, performativity as bringing theory into being is the most mobilized perspective in organization and management studies that offers the most potential to SAP research by focusing on how (folk) theories and expert forms of knowledge co-construct organizational phenomena, including the practice of strategy (Reference Jarzabkowski, Balogun and SeidlJarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl 2007; Reference Johnson, Melin and WhittingtonJohnson, Melin and Whittington 2003; Reference Whittington and CailluetWhittington and Cailluet 2008). Examples of strategy performativity work include research conducted on the construction of strategy frameworks (Reference BartunekBartunek 2020; Reference CartonCarton 2020). The last foundational perspective on performativity relates to socio-materiality mattering. It focuses on the constitution of boundaries between social and material entities through practices and organizations. Given the prior emphasis of strategy-as-practice on socio-materiality to better understand the role played by materiality in strategy work (Reference Dameron, Lê and LeBaronDameron, Lê and LeBaron 2015), such a perspective offers potentially interesting contributions. For example, Reference van den Ende and van Marrewijkvan den Ende and van Marrewijk (2018) show how rituals can improve the strategic potential of workshops, ‘away days’, and business dinners by conceptualizing them as phenomena whose effects are strategic rather than merely symbolic or representational.

The three other perspectives on performativity identified by Reference Gond, Cabantous, Harding and LearmonthGond et al. (2016) correspond to organizational scholars’ creative reappropriation of performativity. Approaching performativity as constitutive communication involves focusing on how organizations and organizational phenomena are constituted and (re)produced through communicative events and artefacts. Such a perspective seems to be particularly fertile in the context of attempts to place strategy discourses in their socio-material context (Reference Balogun, Jacobs, Jarzabkowski, Mantere and VaaraBalogun et al. 2014). For example, Reference Bourgoin, Bencherki and FarajBourgoin, Bencherki and Faraj (2020) mobilize this perspective to study how consultants perform their authority. Then, the perspective that aims at enacting routines makes the distinction between the ostensive (defined as representations) and performative (expressed in practice) aspects of organizational routines. It echoes prior calls for linking routine dynamics with the strategy-as-practice agenda, for instance, by studying the consequentiality of materiality for strategizing, not explicitly discussed in SAP scholarship (Reference Seidl, Grossmann-Hensel, Jarzabkowski, Feldman, Pentland, D’Adderio, Dittrich, Rerup and SeidlSeidl, Grossmann-Hensel and Jarzabkowski 2021: 493). Reference GlaserGlaser (2017) offers an example of such linkage through his study of how artefacts can be designed to intentionally influence routine dynamics. Finally, performativity as making critical theory influential calls for moving beyond the anti-performative stance of critical management studies and making the critical theory more influential through the use of language and engagement with practitioners. Reference Carter, Clegg and KornbergerCarter, Clegg and Kornberger (2008; Reference Carter, Clegg and Kornberger2010) call for the adoption of a performativity stance to question strategy concepts and SAP scholarship itself. This perspective allows Reference Roscoe and ChillasRoscoe and Chillas (2014) to question the current world of strategy by deconstructing the mechanisms through which theories perform a ‘market for love’ within the online dating industry.

Strategy as a Self-Referential Knowledge-Based Practice

Approaching performativity as bringing theory into being (Reference Gond, Cabantous, Harding and LearmonthGond et al. 2016) after the works of Barry Barnes and Michel Callon enables us to conceptualize strategy as a knowledge-based, self-referential practice shaping organizational life. The notion that knowledge and practice co-constitute one another and facilitate social life is core to the Edinburgh tradition of social studies of science (Reference BarnesBarnes 1983; Reference Barnes1988; Reference Barnes, Bloor and HenryBarnes, Bloor and Henry 1996; Reference MacKenzieMacKenzie 1981) and is consistent with both practice (Reference Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina and von SavignySchatzki, Knorr-Cetina and von Savigny 2001) and activity-based theories (Reference JarzabkowskiJarzabkowski 2005) that informed early conceptualizations of strategy-as-practice.

However, adopting a Barnesian take on performativity as a knowledge-based set of practices extends SAP analysis by emphasizing the centrality of self-validating recursive processes or feedback loops – an element that Barry Barnes referred to as ‘bootstrapped inductions’ (Reference BarnesBarnes 1983) – by which strategy discourse and knowledge become instituted in social life based on their self-referential and potentially self-validating nature (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuMacKenzie 2007). According to Reference BarnesBarnes (1983), ‘it is not possible to identify speech-acts and their referents as independent sets of phenomena’ when trying to account for the knowledge of a given community: the ‘knowledge of the community is to some extent self-referring; it necessarily includes “a self-referential component”’ (p. 524).

Importantly, in Barnes’s view, self-referentiality and related processes such as Reference MertonMerton’s (1948) ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ have lost their pathological connotations; rather, they ‘constitute the basis of routine social interactions’ (Reference BarnesBarnes 1983: 538), and society itself should be regarded as ‘a sublime, monumental self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Reference BarnesBarnes 1988). To make this point, Barnes uses the converse of Reference MertonMerton’s (1948) example of a bank’s bankruptcy and focuses on the foundation of a bank. He argues that what makes possible the creation of a bank in the first place is ‘an initial flow of deposits [that] makes the bank a safer one, able to attract more deposits’ (p. 538). Then, ‘a chain of bootstrapped inferences makes possible the secure establishment of an institution, the bank, as a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy’ (p. 539). Following this logic, ‘the products of the inferences are cycled back via a feedback loop to become distinctive inputs to the inductive processes themselves’ (p. 534).

According to this view, strategy is self-referential because it is based on a previously agreed-upon set of concepts. A strategic discourse embeds an infinite regression that is never fully explored. Critically, to fully explain any strategy, teasing out all the roots of the language would make the creation of new statements or actions based on the strategy impossible or at the very least impractical (Reference BarnesBarnes 1983). Instead, all knowledge includes implicit, but effective, ‘gagging clauses’: actors accept that there are concepts and notions in the knowledge discourse that are taken for granted; that are not challenged or even questioned. This willingness to be silent about part of the knowledge enables the continuity of the knowledge discourse.

This partial silencing of the discourse also has organizational implications. One of the conditions necessary for an organization to be able to create and maintain a stable and effective strategy is to aim to establish the boundaries of the ‘discussed knowledge’. For example, elements such as commitment to shareholder wealth maximization are typically kept out of the discussion, thereby subjugating emerging strategy to this element.

This process, termed ‘bracketing out’ some of the knowledge, is a necessary condition for the cognitive-social loop that is at the root of performativity. As organizations present a redacted version of the knowledge, they aim, in effect (but perhaps inadvertently), to establish a regime of truth and action. In turn, the ‘unspoken’ part is regarded as an objective and undisputable representation of the organizational reality: Actors are expected to act in compliance with the content of the unspoken part to make strategic action possible. Notably, this is not a statement about the intention behind the organizational strategy.

Taking seriously the fact that strategy is a self-referential knowledge-based practice leads to considering strategy as a body of expert knowledge that is potentially reinforced and validated by the feedback loops resulting from actions taken based on this knowledge. Barry Barnes clarifies such a mechanism in an interview he gave in 2010:

Accordingly, the social existence and maintenance of strategy discourse and knowledge are conditional on the presence of strategy carriers, which could be human (e.g., executives, strategy consultants, financial analysts, or, more generically, ‘practitioners’) and non-human (e.g., matrices, management control systems, algorithms, or, more generically, ‘tools’) that self-sustained such discourse and knowledge in recursive, self-referential, self-validating, and therefore indeed self-constituting ways. The feedback loops of self-referentiality become the glue that fluidly holds together the practice, praxis and practitioners forming the core component of the SAP framework (Reference JarzabkowskiJarzabkowski 2003; Reference WhittingtonWhittington 2006), and, as we argue in this chapter, they should become the centre of SAP’s attention and could be unpacked by investigating various components sustaining strategy as a performative practice.

Conventionalizing: Embedding Actors in Strategy, Enabling Strategic Authority, and Authorizing Corporate Strategy

Conventionalization ‘explains how theory equips practitioners’ (Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond 2011: 579) and therefore how strategy as theory – and more generally ‘the discourse of strategy’ (Reference HendryHendry 2000) – becomes involved in the construction of ‘conventions’ (Reference ThévenotThévenot 2001; after Reference LewisLewis 1969) that operate as social norms supporting actors’ strategic decisions and actions (Reference HendryHendry 2000; Reference Seidl and WhittingtonSeidl and Whittington 2014). From a Barnesian perspective, this process reflects the building of stable ‘chains of bootstrapped inductions’, which make a given discourse about strategy plausible and influential across situations due to its self-referential and potentially self-validating properties, which provide ‘strategic’ entities with a capacity to shape organizational orders. This occurs due to selective focus on certain elements of the knowledge that brackets other parts of the discourse, enabling the selected elements to gain prominence.

Conventionalization involves embedding cognitively actors within expert strategy discourse and knowledge. Business schools play a central role in this process (Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond 2011; Reference MuniesaMuniesa 2018). Concepts such as Michael Porter’s ‘five forces’ or the famous SWOT mode of analysing strategic problems are taken-for-granted knowledge for MBA students globally, shaping their identity and know-how. Inevitably, other strategy theories have been ‘bracketed out’ and were marginalized as part of this process, as generations of graduates embedded in such theories perform and self-validate fresh strategic knowledge once they reach the upper echelons of their firms. A longitudinal analysis of the changes in business curricula and corporate strategies of large US corporations between 1985 and 2015 found that the rise of agency theory in business education changed students’ views about diversification so that ‘CEOs who earned an MBA before the 1970s actively pursued diversification whereas the next cohort of CEOs, who had been exposed to agency-theoretic logic in financial economics, refrained from it’ (Reference Jung and ShinJung and Shin 2019: 337). This case shows that conventionalizing self-reinforcing feedback loops can be a long-term endeavour – as was also the case of the attempt at integrating ‘Bayesian ways of thinking’ into management (Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond 2015).

Conventionalization, however, can generate bootstrapped inductions more immediately by operating in situ in the classroom and producing a ‘sense of the performative’.

Conventionalization thus resources future strategists and managers in ways that will provide to their ‘strategic’ discourse a capacity to shape actions. As a result, within organizations, multiple approaches to strategy discourse and knowledge, grounded in different traditions and taught to different generations of managers, may compete to shape actors’ practices and constitute what will ultimately be turned into social reality for actors. Reference Paroutis and HeracleousParoutis and Heracleous’s (2013) analysis of how distinct ‘first-order strategy discourses’ – defined as ‘what strategists themselves mean by the term ‘strategy’ (p. 935) – compete to shape the process of strategic practice institutional adoption, suggests that through strategists’ discourse about strategy, various theoretical perspectives in strategy are mobilized, shaping the strategy ultimately adopted within the organizations. Among these strategy discourses, the one that manages to ‘bracket out’ other bodies of knowledge may impose itself by acquiring a self-referential status.

Central to the embodiment of a given strategy within organizations is therefore its capacity to become authoritative for actors, notably by the carriers of strategy authority, a process that also points to conventionalization. Reference Vásquez, Bencherki, Cooren and SergiVásquez et al. (2018) show how strategic language and strategic outcomes can help secure funding and consolidate strategy through an inclusive approach and then a process of reiteration, which both enable some forms of collective authoring of the strategy that provide the strategy with its ultimate influence in the organizational process, shaping the outcome. What becomes self-referentially defined as the authorized strategy discourse has bracketed alternative discourses.

A complementary perspective connecting such authorizing processes to the broader field of strategy is Reference LigonieLigonie’s (2018) analysis of how an ‘iconic figure’ of the strategy field – Michael Porter – could be used to shape a corporation’s strategy. Focusing on the implementation of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy at a gambling company (GamblingCo), Reference LigonieLigonie (2018) found that Michael Porter’s concept of ‘creating shared value’ could be used to reshape the CSR strategy, while the name of Porter himself enabled the authorization of such a strategic deployment.

Thus, conventionalization supports self-referentiality in the situated context of discussing the credibility of a strategic move at an organization. However, conventionalization also reinforces itself by comforting the acceptance of Michael Porter’s authority in the ‘organizational field’ of strategy (Reference Whittington, Jarzabkowski, Mayer, Mounoud, Nahapiet and RouleauWhittington et al. 2003) while self-validating Porter’s concept, as the more organizations adopt ‘creating shared value’, the more credibility and empirical verisimilitude it obtains in the eyes of strategy practitioners.

As such, the authority of the discourse of strategy resonates with and capitalizes on the broader social level acceptance of strategy as something of importance. Reference JacobsJacobs’s (2010) strategy textbook reminds us that the terms strategy and strategic have such connotations.

Relying on this intuition, Reference Gond, Cabantous and KrikorianGond, Cabantous and Krikorian (2018) show that the strategic space within an organization can be ‘hijacked’ by managers and executives promoting less prominent concepts, as was CSR twenty years ago, to facilitate their acceptance. Reference Gond, Cabantous and KrikorianGond, Cabantous and Krikorian (2018) coined the term ‘strategifying’ – in contrast with the notion of ‘strategizing’ – to account for the activities consisting of ‘making things strategic’ rather than ‘making strategic things’, notably shifting the boundaries of what is regarded as strategy within organization – hence reconsidering what was ‘bracketed out’ of strategy. Such a process can be interpreted as bridging the social dynamics of strategy discourse and knowledge conventionalization to the intraorganizational ‘authorizing’ specific strategy.

The mechanism of strategy conventionalization suggests exploring further how competing societal discourses eventually focused, for instance, on commercial growth. On the one hand, the discourse and knowledge of strategy have been competing with views of the role executives derived from financial economics, and in particular, agency theory, across organizational sites such as business schools (Reference Fourcade and KhuranaFourcade and Khurana 2013), executive suites (Reference Jung and ShinJung and Shin 2019), or the everyday strategizing of middle managers interacting with each other (Reference PallïPallï 2018). On the other hand, alternative concepts, and related strategic expertise in the domains of CSR, sustainability or ESG have gained currency in the climate crisis context (Reference Gond, Cabantous and KrikorianGond, Cabantous and Krikorian 2018). Multiple instances of conventionalization therefore interact, some derived from scientific evidence about the climate crisis and others from folk theories of strategy resisting the recognition of the performativity of scientific knowledge (see Reference Bowden, Gond, Nyberg and WrightBowden et al. 2021).

Although conventionalization can explain how actors become embedded in specific strategic discourses and expert knowledge and how this enhances their authority and the strength of the strategy they are embodying or carrying through, some material conditions are needed to transform strategy into performative practice, which is captured by engineering.

Engineering: Mobilizing Strategy Tools and Assemblages and Plugging Them into Socio-Technical Infrastructures

Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond (2011) define the engineering mechanism as ‘the process whereby tools incorporating [a] theory’s assumptions are developed’ (p. 579). As strategy theories are embedded within socio-material elements, these socio-material elements contribute to performing the theory. In this way, they construct the strategy’s self-referentiality from local strategizing to larger social phenomena over time (Reference Seidl and WhittingtonSeidl and Whittington 2014) by moving across scales, from in situ settings that rely on strategy tools and frameworks (e.g., PowerPoint consulting presentations, BCG matrix), to the construction of the organizations’ strategies within strategy workshops and through implementation, to be embedded in broader procedures and processes that form parts of information technology systems and management control and ‘infrastructures’.

Engineering contributes to bringing strategy into being by first relying on a limited number of interconnected actors, artefacts and practices that operate in situ. Interconnected entities form strategy’s first ‘assemblages’, a term coming from Reference Deleuze and GuattariDeleuze and Guattari (1988), which refers to the action of matching or fitting together a set of components, or ‘in connection with’ (Reference GherardiGherardi 2016). Given the capacity of the assemblages of acting and giving meaning to action (Reference GherardiGherardi 2016), they contribute to a first attempt at performing reality within local strategy settings, as their interplay shapes the dynamics of the strategizing process (Reference Werle and SeidlWerle and Seidl 2015). In the case of the Blue Ocean Strategy theory, engineering first occurred during Centurion sessions, strategy workshops that were held during the first of the 1990s among employees of the company Philips for its centennial. During these sessions, between 30 and 70 employees from different layers of Philips’s hierarchy were using strategy tools provided by consultants to represent Philips against its competitors within its different markets (Reference CartonCarton 2020; Reference Carton2021: 79–87). Engineering occurs through the ‘experimentation’ of new theories that have the potential to challenge existing practices (Reference Marti and GondMarti and Gond 2018; Reference Marti and Gond2019) and may involve a continuous redefinition of the relationship between human and non-human entities (Reference d’Adderio, Glaser and Pollockd’Adderio, Glaser and Pollock 2019; Reference Garud and GehmanGarud and Gehman 2019). In the case of Philips, the initial idea of ‘breaking with the competition’ was brought in by the late Professor C. K. Prahalad, who was then heading the consulting work (Reference FreedmanFreedman 1996).

As the illustration shows, different components from the assemblages, such as strategy tools, play an important role in constituting a self-referring system of knowledge. Strategy tools are neither neutral nor objective, as their choice or use within strategy processes is the result of the material and conceptual affordance of the tools themselves and of their use by the strategy actors (Reference Jarzabkowski and KaplanJarzabkowski and Kaplan 2015). Taking the case of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant used to rank companies within markets, Reference Pollock and d’AdderioPollock and d’Adderio (2012) show, for example, how this strategy tool acts as it gives a name to a market (and thus creates markets), circumscribes its perimeters, and decides to include or exclude companies from the market based on several variables. In so doing, this strategy tool also takes part in silencing potential newcomers and overlooks disruptive strategies within these markets.

Strategy presentations, epitomized by the ubiquitous PowerPoint deck of slides, constitute another example of strategy devices used in situ for strategy work to constitute strategy as a performative practice. As Reference Bourgoin and MuniesaBourgoin and Muniesa (2016) show, they contribute to bringing theories into being through their representations of reality that have the power to generate effects in a complex setting. It is not only through the content of strategy analyses that strategy is performed but also based on how PowerPoint production and use shape these ideas (Reference KaplanKaplan 2011). On a similar note, Reference Knight, Paroutis and HeracleousKnight, Paroutis and Heracleous (2018) found that it is the visual mechanisms used to create the PowerPoint slides that create strategic visibility through the conversations they stimulate to then reflect strategic resonance among strategy practitioners.

Then, as strategy gains power and reaches ‘generic performativity’ (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuMacKenzie 2007) – i.e., strategy participants make use of its language, of the frameworks and tools – it leaves in situ location to reach organizations. For that purpose, strategies rearrange their assemblages and enrol new components to enlarge the scope of performativity (Reference CartonCarton 2020). Indeed, assemblages are not permanent and change as they co-produce theories and are intertwined with them (Reference Callon, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuCallon 2007). At this stage, the idea of ‘breaking with the competition’ went out of the Centurion project operating within Philips to be implemented in other consulting projects or through class teaching at INSEAD (Reference CartonCarton 2021: 79–87).

As performativity unfolds, actors face different ‘anomalies’ that constitute feedback loops and reinforce and validate the self-referring system of strategy discourse and knowledge over time (Reference Marti and GondMarti and Gond 2019). The new assemblages are confronted with new realities, which encourages adjustments (Reference CartonCarton 2020). Indeed, SAP research shows that the constellation of material artefacts that enact strategy can lead to shifts in strategy (Reference Werle and SeidlWerle and Seidl 2015). The case of the Blue Ocean Strategy led to renaming the theory around value innovation, defined as the simultaneous pursuit of radically superior value for buyers and lower costs for companies (Reference CartonCarton 2021: 79–87).

At this stage, strategy knowledge is performed during strategy workshops, where the emphasis is placed on practical craft activities (Reference Whittington, Molloy, Mayer and SmithWhittington et al. 2006), on discourses rather than analyses, and on shaping the intended strategy of the upper echelons rather than realizing concrete strategies for middle managers (Reference Hodgkinson, Whittington, Johnson and SchwarzHodgkinson et al. 2006). Strategy knowledge is also performed during strategy implementation, which has been conceptualized as a particular type of strategy work, manifested in the activities, actors and tools through which actors execute a strategy (Reference Friesl, Stensaker and ColmanFriesl, Stensaker and Colman 2021). In particular, Reference Volkoff, Strong and ElmesVolkoff, Strong and Elmes (2007) describe how strategy implementation is embedded within information systems that both constrain and facilitate organizational change. Indeed, throughout the implementation process, strategies enact and shape organizations that shape strategies in turn, reinforcing the self-referential construction of strategy knowledge (Reference d’Adderio and Pollockd’Adderio and Pollock 2014).

During the last phase of strategy performativity, once the strategy has reached the level of ‘effective performativity’ (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuMacKenzie 2007) – when the strategy impacts the market – it reaches the strategy ‘infrastructure’ that surrounds the organization. In the case of the Blue Ocean Strategy, the idea of value innovation conquered governments, entrepreneurship, and even social innovation and is labelled Blue Ocean Strategy, defined as the creation and capture of uncontested market space, thereby making competition irrelevant (Reference CartonCarton 2021: 79–87).

Anomalies convince actors to shift their practices (Reference Marti and GondMarti and Gond 2018), enabling Barnesian performativity (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuMacKenzie 2007) – companies behave the way the strategy indicates they should behave. New assemblages spread the strategy around (Reference CartonCarton 2020). For that purpose, the most common strategy components are information systems that act as devices that reinforce and validate the self-referring nature of strategy. Focusing on the customer relationship management (CRM) technology of a large bank, Reference VarghaVargha (2018) shows that the assumptions behind the bank’s strategy were inscribed into the CRM software to produce the world that the strategy had taken as given. Similarly, in the trading industry, Reference Beunza and StarkBeunza and Stark (2004) describe how infrastructures and buildings play a specific role, as they show that trading strategies are shaped by specific socio-spatial and socio-technical configurations of trading rooms. These forms of engineering constitute self-reinforcing mechanisms to strengthen the strategy performativity. In sum, rephrasing Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond (2011), from local strategizing to larger social phenomena, ‘this engineering process plays a crucial role in making [strategy] in organizations because it ensures the (re)production of a context favorable to [strategy-making]’ (p. 580).

Commodifying: Agencing and Vascularizing Strategy Markets, Massifying Strategy

Commodifying, the third mechanism enabling strategy as a performative practice (Figure 16.1), concerns the sale of strategy as a commodity to managers and organizations in search of strategic thinking (Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond 2011). As in the case of rational choice theory (Reference Cabantous and GondCabantous and Gond 2011), strategy commodification capitalizes on the prior mechanisms, as strategy is in the minds of strategy practitioners thanks to conventionalization, and market building involves active ‘engineering’ of tools to be sold by consultants. Throughout the history of strategy (Reference McKennaMcKenna 2006), consultants have played a crucial role in commodifying, as they have shaped the strategy field through the importation of strategy tools, by spreading management thinking throughout the world, for example, through their key role in exporting to Europe the M-form after World War II (Reference DjelicDjelic 2001; Reference Whittington and MayerWhittington and Mayer 2003), or through their influence towards corporate elites (Reference KiechelKiechel 2010). The constitution of strategy as a field of practice and of an expert body of strategy knowledge (academic and non-academic) are largely concomitant and interrelated (Reference WhittingtonWhittington 2019).

This development is consistent with the Barnesian and Callonian take on performativity that depicts ‘theory performativity’ and ‘market-making’ as largely connected, co-occurring processes (Reference CallonCallon 2021; Reference MacKenzie and MilloMacKenzie and Millo 2003; Reference Roscoe and ChillasRoscoe and Chillas 2014). Performativity research insists on the central role of calculative practices derived from theories and models in the process of market building (Reference CallonCallon 2021; Reference Callon and MuniesaCallon and Muniesa 2005; Reference FourcadeFourcade 2007). This argument found its best illustration in Reference MacKenzie and MilloMacKenzie and Millo’s (2003) analysis of the central role played by option pricing theory in the construction of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, as ‘the markets changed in ways that made its assumptions more accurate and because the theory was used in arbitrage’ (p. 107), notably because of its progressive embedding in various market devices used by traders.

Concerning the constitution of bootstrapped induction loops sustaining performative practice, consultants, gurus and other experts feed market actors with new knowledge about strategy, strategy best practices and other mantras, usually focused on the search for performance (Reference AbrahamsonAbrahamson 1991; Reference KiechelKiechel 2010). These bodies of knowledge can lead to experimentation with such theories (Reference CartonCarton 2020) and, potentially, the generation of effects visible to other market actors, which may shift collective practices (Reference Marti and GondMarti and Gond 2018) and be reflected in the wider adoption of given strategies across business firms (e.g., cost-leadership strategy, dediversification, lean management).

The notions of ‘agencement’ – which redefines economic actors as ‘made up of human bodies but also prostheses, tools, equipment, technical devices, algorithms, etc.’ (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuHardie and MacKenzie 2007) – and of ‘agencing’ practices – which point to the actual doings that sustain the smooth encounters of market supply and demand (Reference Cochoy, Trompette and AraujoCochoy, Trompette and Araujo 2016) – are useful to explain how markets for strategy consulting tools and services are built in ways that enhance strategy as a performative practice. According to Reference CallonCallon (2021), theorization is ‘at the heart of the dynamics and the politics of market agencements’ (p. 425). The construction of market agencements – and therefore the practice of market agencing – relies on a work of theorization, which usually involves experts of a domain, but not only, as ‘theorizing work must develop beyond the circle of recognized experts, and those who do this work must not hesitate to engage in experimental activity; in doing so, theory moves from technical engineering to technical and political engineering’ (Reference CallonCallon 2021: 390).

Research on strategy consultants regards these actors as knowledge translators (Reference Heusinkveld and VisscherHeusinkveld and Visscher 2012; Reference Mosonyi, Empson and GondMosonyi, Empson and Gond 2020; Reference Sturdy, Clark, Fincham and HandleySturdy et al. 2009), suggesting that the agencing of strategy markets involves the mobilization of knowledge. For example, consultants simplify the language and meanings of strategy thinking to meet the specific needs and characteristics of clients. Reference Crucini and KippingCrucini and Kipping (2001) show that consultants contribute to an increasing homogenization of management practices through the translation of various labels into a terminology that makes business sense and can be easily grasped by practitioners. Similarly, Reference Wæraas and SataøenWæraas and Sataøen (2014) found that concepts such as ‘reputational management’ are performed similarly across distinct settings. As knowledge translators, consultants also play a key role in commodification (Reference Heusinkveld and BendersHeusinkveld and Benders 2005), despite the struggles they face when commodifying (e.g., inconsistency of new theories with old practices, employees’ resistance) (Reference Heusinkveld and BendersHeusinkveld and Benders 2005).

Strategy commodification itself involves socio-technical engineering (Reference CallonCallon 2021), as strategy consultants are not only market builders but also tool builders (Reference BourgoinBourgoin 2015; Reference Gond and BrèsGond and Brès 2020; Reference Wright, Paroutis and BlettnerWright, Paroutis and Blettner 2013). Reference Cabantous, Gond and Johnson-CramerCabantous, Gond and Johnson-Cramer (2010) show how the design of specific material device embedding theories is involved in commodification, focusing on the niche consultancy market of decision analysts who advise executives by relying on tools (e.g., decision trees) that are consistent with the axioms of rational choice theory.

Constructing and maintaining stable market arrangements, however, is necessarily an unfinished business, as it requires repeated cycles of identification of market concerns, theorization, experimentation and subsequent political and socio-technical engineering (Reference CallonCallon 2021). As business actors are confronted with new challenges that overflow the established frames of prior strategies, strategy consultants and gurus and, to a lesser extent, academics, need to provide new theorizations that can expand market boundaries (Reference Brès and GondBrès and Gond 2014) or hold market actors together and keep the excitement and interests of strategy market participants (e.g., procurement services, corporate clients, junior consultants).

Maintaining vivid market arrangements also involves the ‘vascularization’ of markets (Reference CallonCallon 2021). Such vascularization operates by circulating new best practices across various market sites and connecting and combining multiple tools and practices to serve different segments of the consultancy market in ways that update market theorizations. In the case of the market for CSR strategy consultancy in Quebec, Reference Gond and BrèsGond and Brès (2020) found that distinct types of consultancy firms contribute to vascularization by resourcing market-making in distinct ways, relying on various types of knowledge that support market development.

Through agencing and vascularization, strategy commodification continues to extend the boundaries of the markets for strategy consultancy tools and services, ultimately explaining the ‘massification’ of strategy (Reference WhittingtonWhittington 2015). Indeed, market expansion dynamics support strategy conventionalization and engineering, so that strategy as performative practice continues to expand across organizational sites and remains an on-going and continuous journey (Reference Garud and GehmanGarud and Gehman 2019; Reference Garud, Gehman and TharchenGarud, Gehman and Tharchen 2018). Reference WhittingtonWhittington (2015) hints at the symptoms of this ‘massification of strategy’ by first acknowledging the multiplication of material artefacts of strategy, such as flipcharts, laptops and whiteboards, and then explaining that these artefacts and devices have become objects of mass production all around the world and of mass participation at all levels of organizations. As a result, strategic practices have been standardized and are being developed to ‘open up’ the strategy (see also Reference WhittingtonWhittington 2019).

Our argument here is that such an expansion of strategy markets is the result of the underlying mechanisms of strategy conventionalization, engineering and commodification, which sustain and are recursively reinforced by self-referential, self-validating practices of strategy. To rephrase Reference BarnesBarnes’s (1988) insight, and after Reference Whittington, Jarzabkowski, Mayer, Mounoud, Nahapiet and RouleauWhittington et al. (2003), we think that ‘taking the field of strategy seriously’ involves paying more attention to strategy as a performative practice and the construction of loops of bootstrapped inductions that underlie it, resulting in seeing strategy itself as ‘a sublime, monumental self-fulfilling prophecy’.

Performing Strategy-as-Practice

The strategy as a performative practice framework can support studies of how strategy is performed through the distributed practices of actors across situational, organizational, and social and market sites. It can contribute to explaining intriguing yet undertheorized strategic phenomena connecting situations to broader market dynamics, such as the influence of CEO strategy presentations on stock prices (Reference Whittington, Yakis-Douglas and AhnWhittington, Yakis-Douglas and Ahn 2016), which is a case in point of strategy discursive practice sustained by collective bootstrapped inductions.

Although our account of the mechanisms in this chapter focuses on the constitutive nature of strategic discourse and knowledge, bringing strategy theory into being is unlikely to be a smooth process. First, multiple theories and understandings of what a given strategy should be are competing within organizations (Reference d’Adderio and Pollockd’Adderio and Pollock 2014; Reference VarghaVargha 2018), while strategy as an expert body of knowledge itself competes with alternative theories (e.g., financial economics). Future studies can document and theorize with more depth the ‘performativity struggles’ (Reference Callon, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuCallon 2007; Reference d’Adderio and Pollockd’Adderio and Pollock 2014) inherent to strategy design and implementation – on the sides of expert strategists (e.g., consultants’ struggles to provide a client with a valuable strategy) as well as within organizations (e.g., competing local strategic discourses performed by middle managers from distinct business units). In so doing, scholars could investigate how a core condition underlying the constitution of a self-referential strategic discourse is shaped, namely, the capacity of conventions, tools and market forces to focus actors on a given strategy by bracketing out other sources of influence.

Second, even though Reference BarnesBarnes (1983; Reference Barnes1988) has refocused sociologists’ attention on self-fulfilling prophecies as a generative social mechanism – an assumption underlying our theorization of conventionalization, engineering and commodification – the potentially dysfunctional or destructive nature of bootstrapped induction should not be sidelined. A sister research perspective would then consist of investigating how strategy performativity is undermined in practice through the undoing of the three proposed mechanisms. Concepts such as ‘counterperformativity’ (Reference MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuMacKenzie 2007) can help to capture such occurrences.

Empirically, our framework calls for following strategic theories, discourse and expert bodies of knowledge across multiple sites to document and analyse the boundary conditions of the mechanisms we conceptualized. As Reference LatourLatour (1996) in Aramis or the Love of Technology famously gave agency and a voice to a technical entity (a would-be train project, seeking to enrol engineers and politicians to realize the plans), SAP scholars could document the organizational life and death of various organizational strategies from the perspective of strategy itself, mobilizing the concept of strategy as a performative practice while providing strategy discourse with more material agency, in line with the analysis of Reference PallïPallï (2018). Moving beyond the mainstream strategy focus on CEOs, boardrooms and AGMs and consistent with the SAP tradition of studying strategy in a distributed manner across all organizational ranks (Reference Rouleau and BalogunRouleau and Balogun 2011), studies of strategy as performative practices could mobilize the resources of global team-based ethnography (Reference Jarzabkowski, Bednarek and CabantousJarzabkowski, Bednarek and Cabantous 2015) to follow strategy-in-the-making at multinational organizations and geographically distant organizational settings.

Methodologically, considering strategy as a performative practice involves a high level of reflexivity about the field of inquiry that can trigger new ways of thinking about strategy. This critical reflexivity can be a useful resource to reconsider topics that have sometimes been sidelined in SAP studies, such as the analysis of the relationship between strategy and performance. Through the framework of strategy as a performative practice, such a question would be revisited as an analysis investigating the boundary conditions (Reference Marti and GondMarti and Gond 2018) of the self-validating and self-reinforcing nature of some types of strategic knowledge.

Approaching SAP with a ‘performativity mindset’ (Reference Cabantous and SergiCabantous and Sergi 2018; Reference Gond, Carton, Neesham, Reihlen and SchoenebornGond and Carton 2022) also invites refocusing attention on the role of scholars as co-performing strategy bodies of knowledge. As researchers, teachers, consultants or observers of strategic life, SAP scholars, such as mainstream strategy academics (Reference BartunekBartunek 2020), contribute to bringing into being and reshaping the organizational field of strategy they have once called to be ‘taken seriously’ (Reference Whittington, Jarzabkowski, Mayer, Mounoud, Nahapiet and RouleauWhittington et al. 2003). With more than twenty years of record and a solid set of contributions (Reference Jarzabkowski, Seidl and BalogunJarzabkowski, Seidl and Balogun 2022; Reference Kohtamäki, Whittington, Vaara and RabetinoKohtamäki et al. 2022), the SAP field could start exploring critically and empirically the performativity of its own scholarship more serenely. Prior performativity scholarship and the strategy mechanisms provide useful resources to support such an agenda.

Strategizing Performativity

As SAP scholars can learn from performativity studies, performativity scholarship can be enriched by its wider mobilization in the context of strategy-making. While the idea that strategy and its practice can advance analyses of performativity has rarely been considered, prior scholarship suggests that framing discourse and knowledge as strategic can enhance their capacity to transform organizations and should warn us that strategizing may be a condition for the construction of self-reinforcing loops sustaining organizational performance. By diversifying and combining various approaches to performativity to investigate in a fine-grained way the dynamics of strategy-making (Reference Kornberger and CleggKornberger and Clegg 2011; Reference LigonieLigonie 2018; Reference PallïPallï 2018; Reference VarghaVargha 2018), performativity studies of strategy have shown the value of cross-fertilizing distinct takes on performativity. Several insights from such works could be usefully applied to domains other than strategy-making.

More importantly, focusing on strategizing activities invites us to reconsider ‘strategic’ actors’ agency in performativity-building and can enrich current analyses of the micropolitics surrounding the construction of a hospitable environment for performativity to work (Reference Cabantous, Gond and Johnson-CramerCabantous, Gond and Johnson-Cramer 2010; Reference Guala, MacKenzie, Muniesa and SiuGuala 2007). Prior research, for instance, has started exploring how performativity and justification dynamics interact to reshape a given strategy, suggesting that ‘justification work’ (see Gond et al. 2023) sustains the pragmatic shifts of corporate strategy (Reference Ottosson and GalisOttoson and Galis 2011). The notion of ‘performativity work’ proposed by Reference Beunza and FerraroBeunza and Ferraro (2019) to make explicit ‘the work of the performateur’ (p. 516) can help further investigate such strategizing work. Performativity work is defined as ‘the necessary institutional work to enable translation and the subsequent adoption of a performative device’ (Reference Beunza and FerraroBeunza and Ferraro 2019: 535). This work can consist of designing the assemblages that will make a specific body of strategic knowledge performative in practice. For instance, in the aforementioned case of CEO strategy presentations (Reference Whittington, Yakis-Douglas and AhnWhittington, Yakis-Douglas and Ahn 2016), as in the context of CEO presentations at AGMs, much ‘strategic’ backstage work is usually realized beforehand so that the strategy discourse or knowledge produces the expected effects in the minds of analysts and on stock prices. Such work, which corresponds to the ‘strategizing’ of strategy performativity itself, deserves closer scrutiny. Future studies could explore how backstage strategizing (e.g., investor relation experts or consultants designing a new tool to help a CEO strategize) and frontstage performativity (e.g., CEO acting in situ during calls with financial analysts or in the room during an AGM) relate to each other and can be orchestrated ‘strategically’, and insights and methods of SAP scholarship can help deliver such an agenda.