CALL FOR PAPERS
Strategizing in Practice: The challenges of exploring relationships between and among individuals and organization(s)
Sub theme 5, 23rd EGOS Colloquium, Vienna, July 5-7, 2007
Standing Working Group 6: Strategizing - Activity and Practice
Conveners: Patrick Regnér, Linda Rouleau, Ann Langley
Abstracts submission (800 words) due January 15, 2007
A practice perspective on strategizing focuses on the day-to-day activities and practices of strategizing and addresses questions such as: who the strategists are, what strategists do, how they do it, what influences the work of strategizing, and what are the consequences of strategizing activity? This perspective is characterized by the fact that strategic activity is initiated and championed not only by top managers but also at numerous other levels of the firm, as well as influenced by external actors such as consultants, regulators and shareholders. Such a perspective is looking for a better understanding of how managers use a wide range of tools, artifacts and social resources when they are making sense of strategy and strategic change through their daily activities.
We are keen to engage participants in panel discussions of key strategizing and practice topics, have whole group sessions to discuss papers that contribute to key issues in the field, and provide more personal feedback for developmental papers. At the same time, we would like to take as many participants as possible. We will therefore run the sub-theme sessions as a mix of:
- an introductory and concluding panel session with key presenters and discussants, such as Yrjo Engestrom, Ann Langley, Leif Melin, and Richard Whittington;
- 3 x standard paper sessions of 3 papers for those papers that are either very well developed or that raise topical issues for discussion
- 2 x interactive round table paper sessions of up to 4 tables, with 3 papers per table, to provide small group feedback and discussion on other papers, with a particular aim of helping participants to develop their ideas and contributions to the strategizing activity and practice field.
We hope this will provide a combination of lively discussion, advancement of the field, and attention to and support for each others' work.
More specifically, the strategy-as-practice perspective aims to better understand the skills and activities that managers on different organizational levels deploy when they are performing their role as strategists. As a perspective centered on the study of daily practices, this view is looking for a better understanding of how the micro-outcomes of strategizing is either influenced or constrained by wider contexts of strategic change located at the firm, industry or society level. This Standing Working Group is, thus, looking for papers that can address these types of issues through theoretical, methodological and detailed empirical studies of activities and circumstances under which managers are strategizing in practice. This includes socially dynamic descriptions and explanations of how practices, routines and capabilities influence strategy making, outcome and competitive advantage.
One of the major challenges related to the comprehension of strategizing concerns our capacity to understand how managers practically construct the links between their more individual micro daily activities and the more collective macro structures of their organizations and their environment. This year, in keeping with the main theme of the conference, the 'Strategizing: Activity and Practice' Standing Working Group will be looking for papers that explore the relationship between and among individuals and organizations. We seek theoretical and methodological papers as well as empirical studies that can provide useful insights in order to better understand this crucial relationship in terms of strategy. Innovative papers that attempts to grasp tensions and paradoxes of this relationship will be encouraged. Papers that address these themes are welcome but the themes are not exclusive, and any papers that address the principles of the Standing Working Group (Strategizing: Activity and Practice) will be considered (see www.egosnet.org/groups/rgroupstrategizing.shtml, or www.strategy-as-practice.org for details on the type of work that our community is interested in). We would like to take as many participants as possible and at the same time provide a variety of ways of discussing strategy as practice.
About the conveners:
1. Patrick Regnér is Associate Professor at the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research is focused on strategy development and dynamics with a particular focus on the origins of strategy and exploration/exploitation tradeoffs. He is particularly interested in the micro mechanisms through which macro competitive positions are built up, developed and changed over time.
3. Linda Rouleau is Associate Professor, management department - HEC Montreal. Her research focuses on the social character of strategy formation and on the transformation of control and identity of middle managers in the context of organizational restructuring.
4. Ann Langley is Professor of strategic management at HEC Montréal. Her research deals with strategic decision making, innovation, leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organizations and notably in the health care sector.