9/25/2023
Implementing
Strategies & Strategy
as practices
Solmaz Filiz Karabag
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A model of the elements of strategic management
Strategic
capabilities
The
environment
Expectations
and
Purposes
Strategic
Choices
Organizing
Corporate
level
strategies
Business
level
strategies
Development
directions and
methods Tech
inno,
Bus Mod inno
Org In
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Strategic
Position
Strategy into
Action
Processes
and
Practices
Change
9/25/2023
Learning
outcomes
•
What is meant by the strategy as practice? And overall concept
•
Questions that are answered by strategy as practice research
•
Arenas of strategy/practicing strategy
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• Strategic management is an applied discipline, and using theories
developed for stable environments and context might be irrelevant in the
increasingly high-velocity business environment.
Capability building 
Speed in resource
reconfiguration
Low
• Knowledge intensity
Capability building
Earlier RB and
competences
Environmental Velocity
High
High
Capability building
Knowledge-based
resources and
competencies
Jarzabkowsk, 2003
Positioning
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Strategic tools for such environment
Low
• Knowledge intensity
Value Chain
Boston Consultant Growth
Matrix
Experiences curve
5 Forces, PESTs etc
Porter’s strategic forces
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Strategic as practices
Doing of strategy
The construction of this strategic flow and activities
are consequential for the firm through the actions
and interaction of multiple actors and the practices
that they draw upon (Jarzabkowski, 2025)
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Environmental Velocity
High
Cycle time reduction
Market disruption analysis
Dynamic capabilities:
Speed
Value chain: speed of
transfer
Simple rules: fast decisions
Fast enter & exit
Simple rules: trigger
systems
Dynamic strategy and
practices
High
Dynamic capabilities:
Learning
Value/supply chain
management
Knowledge management
Core competencies
Jarzabkowsk, 2003
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Strategy as practices
(theoretical foundation)
Strategy as practices as does
not require a new theories
per se, but to draw upon a
range of existing theories to
explore strategy problems. It
tries to develop novel
methods and focuses on the
micro foundations of doing
strategy
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Strategy as practice (the question tries to answer)
Strategy as practices as a field is characterized less by what
theory is adopted than what the problem is explained.
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What is strategy
Who are
strategists?
What do they?
Why do they?
What kinds of
tools and tactics
do they use?
How do they
influence the
strategies?
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Strategy as practice
defines strategy
As
a socially accomplished activity constructed
through the actions, interactions, and
negotiations of multiple actors and the
situated practices that they draw upon.
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Strategy as practice
focuses on
Not all activities are strategic activities
• Activities that draw on strategic
practices. Important activities such as
strategic planning, annual reviews,
strategic workshops and analysis
• Activities might be considered strategic
to the extent that it is consequential for
strategic outcomes, directions, survival
and competitive advantages.
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Strategy as practice
Who are strategists?
• Wider scope of strategy actors all levels
of the organization.
• Traditional board room demographics (need
to study the actual identities, experiences,
and competencies).
• Outside organization (None-executives
directors, consultants, gurus, and clients)
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Strategic as Practices
Framework
• Practitioners (senior managers, board members,
consultants, innovators, and others ) draw on
more or less institutionalized strategy.
• Practices (routines, tools, or discourses at
organizational and extra-organizational levels) in
idiosyncratic and creative ways
• Praxis or practices (specific activities such as
meetings, retreats, conversations, talk,
interactions and behaviors) to generate what is
then conceived as a strategy
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Strategic as Practices Framework
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• Whittington, 2006
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What do strategists/practitioners do?
Making phone calls and having meetings (Mintzberg, 1973
What strategists do is connected to who strategies are and the
situations in which they act (Jarzabkowski, 2005).
They talk, sell their ideas, use resources, display emotions and
motivations, actively speed up the action, employ inaction, and
engage in short and long-term tactics.
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What kinds of tools and tactics do they use?
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Some of the arenas for SaP
POWER POINT
PRESENTATIONS
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SPEECH & DISCOURSE
MEMOS, MEETING NOTES
AND COMPANY
DOCUMENTS
MEETINGS
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Power point presentations as a tool to control
the strategic focus
• Enables participants to notice specific semiotic
objects that are or are not depicted as they
engage in conversations
• Focuses strategies on what is most relevant to
top managers or clients as they engage in followup actions
• High risk
• Moderate risk
• Low/no risk
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Discursive practices, Bodily movements and
Conception of the strategy
•
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Wenzel, M., & Koch, J. (2018). Strategy as staged performance: A critical discursive perspective on keynote speeches as a genre of strategic
communication. Strategic Management Journal, 39(3), 639-663.
9/25/2023
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh7ftCRQerA&t=1s
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Memos, meeting notes, e-mails & company
documents
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Meetings
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Different functions of meetings described in
e.g.
the literature
• Synchronization
e.g.
• Sense-making
• Critical reflection
• Generation and development of
new ideas
e.g.
• Setting and advancing an
agenda
• Bargaining
• Formation of alliances and
building support
Coordination
Function
Cognitive
Function
Symbolic
Function
Political
Function
Dittrich et al., 2021
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• Pooling and distribution of information
• Distribution and monitoring of tasks
Social
Function
e.g.
• Legitimation/validation of established order
• Ritual
• Status and status change
e.g.
• Establishing relationships and networks
• Team building
• Development of organizational identity
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What makes a meeting strategic
Meetings that are
explicitly labeled strategic
Meetings that serve as
sites of strategic work
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Initiation practices:
Practices of setting up meetings (Jarzabkowski & Seidl, 2008)
Setting
the
agenda
Shaping
power
dynamics
Setting
the
sitting
places
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Meetings that are
consequential
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Initiation practices:
Meeting Conduct Practices I (Different combinations used in shaping strategy,
Wodak et al. 2021)
Bonding
Encouraging
Directing
Re-committing
Modulating/
Regulating
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Initiation practices:
Meeting Conduct
Practices I:
Discursive
practices for
developing a
collective view of
strategy (Kwon et
al. 2014)
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Re-defining
Simplifying
Equalizing
Legitimating/ authorizing
Reconciling / Reestablishing
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Conduct practices II
Turn-taking practices (Jarzabkowski &
Seidl, 2008)
different effects on stability and
chang of strategic orientations
• Free discussion
• Restricted discussion
• Restricted free discussion
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Termination practices
Linking to other
meetings
• Rescheduling
• Setting up working group
• Voting
• ….
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How strategic issues travel across meetings
Path 1: Leading to positive selection
Path 2: Leading to de-selection
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Relation to pre-meeting talk
Hoon (2007): Committee meetings
--Informal conversations outside
formal meetings create alignment
around strategic issues and
provide opportunities for making
pre-arraignments for the formal
meetings.
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McNulty & Pettigrew (1999).
Board Meeting– Pre-meeting talk
enables board meetings to
increase the chance of acceptance
of their proposals
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Organizational Hierarchy (Asmuss & Oshima,
2012) & Meetings
Hierarchical position shapes
possibilities of contributing to
developing a strategic plan.
People in superior positions: New
proposals and the right to make
proposals tend to be accepted
People in subordinate positions:
Need to negotiate the right to
make proposals
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Meeting (sum up)
Different combinations of meeting
practices across different meetings are
required for the development of new
strategic ideas
Combination of practices determines
whether new ideas are developed to
the stage of challenging existing
strategic orientations or whether the
status quo is preserved.
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9/25/2023
Strategy as Cognition
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Cognitive psychology is
important to understanding strategy
• The field of cognitive psychology can help to gain
a deeper understanding of the process by which
strategy is formed.
• Strategists develop their knowledge
structures/thinking processes mainly through
direct experience.
• Direct experience shapes what they know, which
in turn shapes what they do, thereby shaping
their subsequent experience.
• The cognitive school of thought gives rise to two
different viewpoints:
• The processing/structuring of knowledge is an
effort to produce an objective picture of the
world. Therefore, cognition re-creates the world.
• Cognition is a subjective process; strategy is an
interpretation of the world. Therefore, cognition
creates the world.
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9/25/2023
Cognitive psychology is
important to understanding strategy
• The field of cognitive psychology can help to gain
a deeper understanding of the process by which
strategy is formed.
• Strategists develop their knowledge
structures/thinking processes mainly through
direct experience.
• Direct experience shapes what they know, which
in turn shapes what they do, thereby shaping
their subsequent experience.
• The cognitive school of thought gives rise to two
different viewpoints:
• The processing/structuring of knowledge is an
effort to produce an objective picture of the
world. Therefore, cognition re-creates the world.
• Cognition is a subjective process; strategy is an
interpretation of the world. Therefore, cognition
creates the world.
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Cognition as
information
processing
• An organization is a collective system for
processing information.
• Strategic cognition can, therefore, be seen as
information processing.
• Cognition can be influenced by the effects of
working in an organization.
• As information gets processed at various levels, it
is repeatedly subject to distortion.
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9/25/2023
Cognition as
mapping
• An essential prerequisite for strategic
cognition is the existence of mental
structures – also referred to as mental
models, frames, or maps – to organize
knowledge.
• Mental models help strategists navigate
the environment in which they operate.
Their impact on behavior/organizational
action can be profound.
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Cognition as concept attainment
• Strategic cognition involves not only using
mental maps/models, but also creating
them.
• The creation of cognitive maps can, in a
sense, be viewed as strategy formation.
• Since strategy is a concept, strategymaking can be considered concept
attainment.
• Insight and intuition are key elements of
the above mental processes.
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9/25/2023
Cognition as construction
• This view looks at strategy as interpretation, based
on cognition as construction.
• The picture of the external world that is perceived
by the mind, interacts with cognition, and is then
shaped and interpreted by it. In other words, the
mind constructs its world.
• Management insight hinges on the ability to use
multiple lenses/alternate views of the world.
• Such use of multiple perspectives should be
balanced with focus, to aid decisiveness and
effective management.
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Strategy as Attention
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9/25/2023
Information vs. attention
• What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the
attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates
a poverty of attention.
• Herbert Simon, economist and Nobel Prize recipient
• We live in an Attention Economy. One of the most acute
problems today is the volume of information that needs to be
dealt with and the resulting attention deficit.
• Attention is a scarce resource. It has important implications for
business, especially for its strategy and structure. Therefore,
corporate leaders should help their organizations
manage/focus attention.
• Managers confront attention deficit, partly because
information has become less expensive over the years.
• The volume of information has also multiplied enormously and
is more than can ever be fully absorbed.
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More than information overload
• Information overload and the speed and
complexity of business, increase the importance of
attention management.
• In the attention economy, every business faces
two basic problems:
• How to get and hold attention (of
consumers, stockholders, potential
employees, etc.).
• How to allocate its attention (in the face of
multiple options).
• An effective starting point for addressing these
questions is the strategy and structure of the firm
– not only because they are so important, but
because they are, essentially, vehicles for focusing
organizational attention.
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9/25/2023
Attention and
strategy: is there a
difference?
•
•
•
•
•
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Attending to structure
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•
Organisation structure is a powerful vehicle for focusing attention
on a particular aspect of the business – both internally, as well as
externally.
•
Organisational structure sends a message that some issues are
more important than others.
•
To focus attention on processes/activities by which work gets done,
structure should be based on process management, rather than on
lines of business or functional distinctions.
•
Structure harnesses the power of titles, performance
evaluation/compensation systems, communication lines, informal
social networks, etc. to channel attention towards a formally
structured objective.
Attention is a vital resource, and the key
to developing effective
strategy/structures.
Making the right key decisions is
fundamentally a matter of attention
management.
Attention is always a precursor of action:
It is the bridge between awareness and
action.
If an issue does not receive attention, it
will not be resolved.
Strategy and structure are only mental
constructs/tools that
help to focus the attention of executives,
managers, employees
on particular aspects, rather than others.
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Pay attention. It pays
• Attention is a valuable lens for
viewing strategy and structure. While
attention alone does not determine
success or failure, it is the right place
to start, and a perspective worth
monitoring consistently.
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Strategy as
Objectivity
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The perils of objectivity and detachment
Many management frameworks emphasise
objectivity and intellectual detachment.
Managerial objectivity is the power to stand
outside of a situation, to map it onto a logical
framework and initiate the action it suggests.
However, attempts to use of such frameworks
unquestioningly, or to apply them very rationally,
can be counter-productive.
The assumptions implicit in using these
frameworks – that the cause-effect relationships
described by the frameworks are context-free, and
that these techniques can be used by managers in
other organisations to achieve similar results, in a
very rational manner – are flawed.
The critical question is whether managers
can/should be so very rational at all times,
especially during periods of radical change.
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When should managers
be rational?
• There are two reasons why the answer to the above question is
negative – one intellectual, the other social.
• The intellectual problem is that business realities do not exist
independently of their observers.
Economies/markets/organisations/strategies are constructed
rather than natural objects.
• Thus, objectivity is never absolute – it is always relative to some
frame of reference developed from the past.
• Real change means that the frames themselves have to be altered.
A rigid objectivity freezes this process, preventing an examination
of the more tacit assumptions underlying the framework.
• The social reason is that too much objectivity leads to senior
management seeing themselves as outside the change process,
diagnosing the condition of those within it.
• Successful change initiatives demand that everyone in the
organisation is seen and felt to share a common fate.
• Suggestions that the change process is entirely objective/rational
introduces a distance between the managers and the managed.
This creates cynicism among the workers, and increases their
resistance to being changed.
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The danger of selfsealing beliefs
• Management frameworks often lead managers
to ignore information that is inconsistent with
the basic assumptions of these frameworks.
• Ignoring information that is inconsistent with
the frameworks leads to ‘sealing’ the
framework – managers keep using the
framework even when they are failing.
• To be effective, managers must treat
frameworks as tools that may be useful for
some purposes, but inadequate for others.
• Judging whether a framework is fit for the
purpose that managers have in mind is an act
of judgement. It is not in the framework itself.
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Senior management are not cooks,
they are ingredients
• A change effort can only be successful if people
genuinely feel that the future is up to them to
invent, not someone else’s plan that they are merely
implementing.
• To create such a sense of empowerment, senior
management should behave in a way that expresses
open, egalitarian values.
• Change cannot be managed, it can only be led. For
fundamental organisational change, senior
managers have to be part of the change process.
• Senior managers are powerful role models – they
should lead by modelling the new behaviour that
they expect from their people.
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9/25/2023
Strategic
Thinking as
‘Seeing’
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If strategies are visions, then ‘seeing’
plays a role in strategic thinking.
But there are different kinds of ‘seeing’.
Seeing ahead/seeing behind
•
Strategic thinking means seeing ahead. However,
because any good vision of the future has to be
rooted in an understanding of the past, strategic
thinking is also seeing behind.
Seeing above/seeing below
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•
Strategic thinking is seeing above – it is the ability
to step back and take a bird’s eye view of the
situation.
•
Strategic seeing is also the ability to see below –
to recognise that day-to-day action/situation on the
ground can be messy and complicated.
•
There is no big picture ready for the seeing.
Rather, the strategist has to work hard to construct
his/her own.
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• Seeing beside/seeing beyond
• Strategic thinking calls for
creativity/lateral thinking – the ability
to see what others cannot see. This is
called seeing beside.
• Creative ideas have to be placed in
context. Therefore, strategic thinkers
have to see beyond – they have to
construct the future/invent a world
that would not otherwise be.
• Seeing it through
• Finally, strategic thinking is the ability
to get things done – to ‘see it
through’.
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• Strategic thinking as seeing
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New Values, Morality and Strategic Ethics
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New Values, Morality and Strategic
Ethics strategy?
The concept of ethics and morals applies to
corporations just as it applies to individuals/humans.
Wrong actions by companies can not only prove
expensive, but also cause long-term damage.
Further, the nature of the planning and
implementation process in companies makes it
difficult to change course mid-way.
The changing perceptions of what is considered
ethical or unethical makes the process complex as
well.
Such concerns make the idea of an ‘ethical strategy’
relevant.
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9/25/2023
Is there a moral responsibility?
Firms do not function in a vacuum. They function in the
context of a social environment, which imposes on them
certain moral demands and responsibilities.
A company is a collection of human and social groupings.
General expectations regarding acceptable conduct of
others underpins such groupings.
Values such as loyalty, credibility, diligence, cooperation,
moral conduct, etc. are manifest in organisations, or at
least, expected.
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Structures of ethical reasoning
The moral aspects of managerial logic are based
on ‘instrumentality’ and ‘cooperation’.
Business firms are highly instrumental social
constructs – they are free to undertake
organised, goal-oriented action, as long as it is
within the purview of the law.
Rationality, efficiency, hard work, loyalty and
trustworthiness are other dominant structures
of moral norms in economic action.
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Predicting changes in
value patterns
• Moral values change over time.
• Some moral values change slowly, over
centuries; others change more quickly,
needing just decades.
• Catastrophic events such as war,
epidemic diseases, etc. may cause
moral values to change abruptly.
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We expect in the near future:
• Morality is an aspect of culture – different cultures have
different moral systems. Therefore, the dynamics of cultural
change are a pointer to changes in moral values.
• Two social and cultural changes can be anticipated, which
could lead to ethical problems (of strategic concern for
corporates) in the future:
• The effect of rapid technological development
• Digital techniques/practices may lead to infringement
of the personal integrity of anyone in contact with the
modern corporation.
• The increasingly fast pace of action leaves little time for
reflection and weakens the moral basis of business
practices.
• The cultural effects of environmental changes
• Awareness of environmental issues – such as pollution,
environmental ethics, and the effect of wrong practices
on future generations – has given rise to a new
category of moral and ethical concerns.
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Companies as value creators
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Ethical strategy for the future?
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9/25/2023
In this week
- lecture on Strategic Management in Start-Ups
Business Transformation II
on Sept 27
- Seminar 4: SWEx's Strategic Transformation
process and practices
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