IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04593583.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

I, strategist

Author

Listed:
  • A. D. Wright

    (Audencia Business School)

Abstract

An autoethnography is offered of a head of an academic department and middle manager writing a strategic plan he did not believe was necessary or would have any beneficial effects on colleagues within the department. The notion of the reluctant strategist is offered. What strategy work do such actors undertake? Reluctant strategists write strategic plans as defensive texts. Defensive texts, I explain, are authored and structured to repel deeper engagement and questioning; to ensure that they are successful, they act through presenting their content as authoritatively assured. Strategy work in organizations is advanced as an affective accomplishment. In writing strategic plans, strategists are sensorially affected by their relational encounters, moving them to act. This personal account of strategy work shows that strategists are not just senior managers, middle managers or strategy consultants; they are affected actors who can be confused, sceptical, full of doubt and who can resist.

Suggested Citation

  • A. D. Wright, 2024. "I, strategist," Post-Print hal-04593583, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04593583
    DOI: 10.1177/13505076221122835
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04593583
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04593583/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/13505076221122835?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eero Vaara & Richard Whittington, 2012. "Strategy as practice : Taking Social Practices Seriously," Post-Print hal-02276672, HAL.
    2. Henry Mintzberg & James A. Waters, 1985. "Of strategies, deliberate and emergent," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 257-272, July.
    3. R. Whittington & Ludovic Cailluet & B. Yakis-Douglas, 2011. "Opening Strategy: Evolution of a Precarious Profession," Post-Print halshs-00738389, HAL.
    4. Eero Vaara & Richard Whittington, 2012. "Strategy as practice : Taking Social Practices Seriously," Post-Print hal-02312709, HAL.
    5. Julia Balogun & Claus Jacobs & Paula Jarzabkowski & Saku Mantere & Eero Vaara, 2014. "Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 175-201, March.
    6. Graeme Currie & Stephen J. Procter, 2005. "The Antecedents of Middle Managers’ Strategic Contribution: The Case of a Professional Bureaucracy," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(7), pages 1325-1356, November.
    7. Michel Anteby, 2013. "PERSPECTIVE —Relaxing the Taboo on Telling Our Own Stories: Upholding Professional Distance and Personal Involvement," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 1277-1290, August.
    8. Linda Rouleau, 2005. "Micro‐Practices of Strategic Sensemaking and Sensegiving: How Middle Managers Interpret and Sell Change Every Day," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(7), pages 1413-1441, November.
    9. Chahrazad Abdallah & Ann Langley, 2014. "The Double Edge of Ambiguity in Strategic Planning," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 235-264, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shameen Prashantham & Mark P. Healey, 2022. "Strategy as Practice Research: Reflections on its Rationale, Approach, and Contributions," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(8), pages 1-17, December.
    2. Eero Vaara & Juha-Antti Lamberg, 2016. "Taking historical embeddedness seriously : Three historical approaches to advance strategy process and practice research," Post-Print hal-02276732, HAL.
    3. Kari Jalonen & Henri A. Schildt & Eero Vaara, 2018. "Strategic concepts as micro‐level tools in strategic sensemaking," Post-Print hal-02312245, HAL.
    4. Maria Lusiani & Ann Langley, 2013. "Professionals as strategists? Channelling and organizing distributed strategizing," Working Papers 32, Venice School of Management - Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    5. Linden, Erik, 2021. "Pandemics and environmental shocks: What aviation managers should learn from COVID-19 for long-term planning," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Leonardo Lemos da Silveira Santos & César Tureta & Bruno Felix, 2021. "A Qualitative Method Proposal for the Study of Strategy as Practice," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 25(2), pages 190353-1903.
    7. Schuler, Benedikt Alexander & Orr, Kevin & Hughes, Jeffrey, 2023. "My colleagues (do not) think the same: Middle managers’ shared and separate realities in strategy implementation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    8. Kohtamäki, Marko & Rabetino, Rodrigo & Einola, Suvi & Parida, Vinit & Patel, Pankaj, 2021. "Unfolding the digital servitization path from products to product-service-software systems: Practicing change through intentional narratives," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 379-392.
    9. Elbasha, Tamim & Avetisyan, Emma, 2018. "A framework to study strategizing activities at the field level: The example of CSR rating agencies," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 38-46.
    10. Phillips, Paul & Moutinho, Luiz, 2014. "Critical review of strategic planning research in hospitality and tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 96-120.
    11. Poul Houman Andersen & Lars Esbjerg, 2020. "Weaving a strategy for a base‐of‐the‐pyramid market: The case of Grundfos LIFELINK," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 3687-3701, December.
    12. Jarzabkowski, Paula & Paul Spee, Andreas & Smets, Michael, 2013. "Material artifacts: Practices for doing strategy with ‘stuff’," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 41-54.
    13. Lionel Garreau & Raphaël Maucuer, 2015. "The mise-en-sens tactics of civil society organizations to influence strategy," Post-Print hal-01787991, HAL.
    14. Butler, Nick, 2018. "Fantasies of strategy: Žižek, discourse and enjoyment," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 79-88.
    15. Eero Vaara & Laura Fritsch, 2022. "Strategy as language and communication: Theoretical and methodological advances and avenues for the future in strategy process and practice research," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(6), pages 1170-1181, June.
    16. Kari Jalonen & Henri Schildt & Eero Vaara, 2018. "Strategic concepts as micro‐level tools in strategic sensemaking," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(10), pages 2794-2826, October.
    17. Kohtamäki, Marko & Heimonen, Jesse & Sjödin, David & Heikkilä, Vili, 2020. "Strategic agility in innovation: Unpacking the interaction between entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity by using practice theory," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 12-25.
    18. Englund, Hans & Gerdin, Jonas & Burns, John, 2020. "A structuration theory perspective on the interplay between strategy and accounting: Unpacking social continuity and transformation," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    19. Ping Deng & Andrew Delios & Mike W. Peng, 2020. "A geographic relational perspective on the internationalization of emerging market firms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(1), pages 50-71, February.
    20. Ericson, Mona, 2014. "On the dynamics of fluidity and open-endedness of strategy process toward a strategy-as-practicing conceptualization," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 1-15.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04593583. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.