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9 - A Bourdieusian perspective on strategizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2012

By
Marie-Léandre Gomez
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 firm is not a homogeneous entity that can be treated as a rational subject – the ‘entrepreneur’ or the ‘management’ – oriented towards a single, unified objective. It is determined (or guided) in its ‘choice’ not only by its position in the structure of the field of production, but also by its internal structure which, as a product of all its earlier history, still orients its present […] Its strategies are determined through innumerable decisions, small and large, ordinary and extraordinary, which are, in every case, the product of the relationship between, on the one hand, interests and dispositions associated with positions in relations of force within the firm and, on the other, capacities to make those interests or dispositions count, capacities which also depend on the weight of the different agents concerned in the structure, and hence on the volume and structure of their capital. (Bourdieu 2005, p. 69)

Introduction

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was one of the most influential thinkers in the social sciences (Calhoun 2003). In particular, his work on practice represents a major contribution to the field. It has been used by Brown and Duguid (2001) and Lave and Wenger (1991) to define communities of practice; by Chia and MacKay (2007), Jarzabkowski (2005) and Whittington (2002) to position strategy as a practice; and by Cook and Brown (1999) and Nicolini et al. (2003) to build dynamic links between knowing and practice.

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Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 141 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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