Call for papers:
STRATEGY AS PRACTICE: NEW THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
EURAM 2006, Oslo
May 17-20, 2006
PLEASE NOTE EXTENDED DEADLINE for submission of full papers: February 1st,
2006
Convenors: DAVID SEIDL, ROBERT CHIA and DONALD MACLEAN
INCLUDING A PANEL SESSION with GERRY JOHNSON, JOHN HENDRY and others
on The Potential and Future of Strategy-As-Practice
Under the label Strategy as Practice, researchers lately have been
calling for a re-conceptualisation of strategy as a social activity:
strategy is not something an organisation has but something that its
members do. This implies on the one hand a focus on the myriad micro-
activities and interactions in and around the organisation that make up
strategy in practice. On the other hand, however, these micro-phenomena
have to be seen in their wider social context: actors in their situations
are not acting in isolation but are drawing upon the regular, socially
defined modes of acting that arise from the plurality of social
institutions to which they belong. In this sense the strategy-as-practice
approach tries to establish explicit links between micro and macro
perspectives. (See the strategy-as-practice website at
www.strategy-as-
practice.org for more information on this approach and a bibliography of
relevant papers in this area).
There are many strands of theory that might allow for the development of
new perspectives on strategy as social activity. Amongst them are the
different versions of the Theory of Social Practices (Bourdieu, Giddens,
deCerteau, Foucault etc), Activity Theory, Action Theory, Actor Network
Theory, Systems Theory , Complexity Theory, Conventionalist Theory,
Discourse Theory and many more. Over the last few years, researchers have
started to make use of these theoretical approaches in strategy research.
This body of experimental work is naturally characterised by a degree of
confusion relating to unarticulated differences in the use of key terms
and ideas for example terms like strategic
practice, context, organisation and outcome can all mean different
things in different approaches. This track seeks to examine the conceptual
apparatus of the various social theories that deal with the human actor in
social context and explore how far, and what ways, strategy-as-practice
research might be informed by them.
As an important means of moving the strategy-as-practice agenda forward,
we aim to delve deeper into the different theories, explore the different
concepts in use and compare their role and value in explaining strategy as
social practice. This may in turn lead to the emergence of a distinctive
theoretical platform on which to conduct further research, or to debates
informed by a richer appreciation of conceptual and methodological
diversity operating in the field.
In this track we thus call for papers that explore particular theoretical
perspectives on strategy as social activity. In particular we expect those
papers to set out how the different approaches conceptualise the strategic
actor and strategic action; how they treat the interaction between actors;
how they account for agency; what role the human body plays in strategic
activity; how they theorise the outcome of strategic action including
phenomena such as meaning and performance; how they address the micro-
macro problem; how they account for stability and change; how they explain
the emergence of novelty or similar issues. Based on such an analysis we
would hope that the papers are able to make explicit the strengths and
weaknesses of the different theoretical perspectives. In addition to that
we are particularly interested in papers that critique work to date,
attempt comparisons between different theoretical perspectives on strategy
as practice and signal helpful developments in that regard.
Please visit the EURAM website for further information on submission
procedures http://web.bi.no/euram2006/default.htm.