Abstract
Over the last two decades, Strategy as Practice (SAP) has developed from an embryonic, fringe perspective on strategy to a consolidated field of strategy research. The 2007 special issue of Human Relations on ‘Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective’ played a pivotal role in bringing this field to fruition. Reflecting on the broad SAP aim to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’, we employ a plant-based metaphor, to distinguish three phases in the development of SAP, each associated with different types of agenda work. In an initial Germination Phase, scholars did agenda-seeking work of establishing new concepts and differentiating SAP from other fields of strategy research. A Blossoming Phase of agenda-setting work followed, establishing a community of scholars and articles that identified as SAP, and establishing and defending the boundaries of the new field. As the field became established, it entered a Harvesting Phase, characterized by agenda-confirming work of using SAP lenses to explain core strategy and organization. Based on these reflections, and considering the many public critiques of SAP, we note that the field appears to be in transition to a new Propagating Phase that offers exciting potential to cross-pollinate within the SAP field and across other areas.
Introduction
In 2004, we published a call for papers for a special issue of Human Relations entitled ‘Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective’ aimed at taking stock of and promoting the embryonic stream of research studying how people do strategy work. Criticizing the neglect of human actors in existing strategy research, with its focus on firms and their markets, researchers started to examine the people involved in strategy work, the practices they were drawing on in this work and how they enacted these practices in their daily contexts. These various studies showed that the range of strategy actors extended well beyond the upper echelons and often included people at the periphery (e.g. Regnér, 2003) or even outside the organization (e.g. Vaara et al., 2004). It also revealed that those strategy actors employed many different practices that went well beyond those that are typically associated with strategy, including mundane, day-to-day practices such as storytelling (Barry and Elmes, 1997), the use of rhetoric (Samra-Fredericks, 2003) or calling up clients (Rouleau, 2005). It also showed that the same institutionalized strategic practices might be enacted very differently in different contexts or by different people (e.g. Oakes et al., 1998). With its multi-level focus on the people and social practices associated with strategy (Jarzabkowski, 2004; Whittington, 2006), Strategy as Practice (SAP) seemed to speak directly to the Human Relations’ mandate of studying ‘social relations in and around work – across the levels of immediate personal relationships, organizations and their processes, and wider political and economic systems’ (mission statement).
At the time, SAP was known only to a small circle of strategy scholars interested in developing an alternative to the prevailing economics-based strategy research that downplayed the role of human actors and agency. As we wrote in our Human Relations call for papers, there is: . . .a move to study strategizing from a practice perspective, on the basis that large-scale quantitative studies of firm assets, technologies and performance variables provide disembodied and asocial accounts that offer little theoretical or practical insight into the dilemmas of practitioners engaged in doing strategy . . .. This special issue calls for papers that can address these issues through a focus upon the everyday practices and activities involved in doing strategy. (EURAM Newsletter 4 – June 2004)
When we put together the articles for the special issue, the future of SAP was entirely uncertain. At the time, many people in the wider strategy community considered SAP a somewhat misguided and largely irrelevant stream of research that would eventually disappear. One senior strategy scholar, for example, notoriously likened the ambitions of early SAP research, with its focus on mundane day-to-day activities, to ‘observing individuals flipping hamburgers’ (see Mantere, 2005: 158). Some of those senior scholars, who had already made their careers and were possibly politically motivated, asserted that SAP had nothing new to offer, beyond, for example, early strategy process research. Others dismissed it as irrelevant to the dominant concerns of strategy research to explain performance (see the Jarzabkowski & Whittington 2008 Journal of Management Inquiry Dialog, 17.4). Junior scholars at the time were often warned of the risk of building their future careers on SAP research. Yet, the publication of the special issue marked a turning point in the development of this nascent perspective. As Kohtamäki and colleagues (2021: 5), in their recent review of the SAP field, noted: ‘the field took off around 2007, the year of the Human Relations special issue’. With about 500 articles (see Figure 1) published since the special issue, SAP has now become one of the most prominent and vibrant approaches in strategy research. In their assessment of the state of Organization and Management Theory, Lounsbury and Beckman (2015: 301) identified SAP as one of five most exciting developments in the field. They write: ‘In summary, seeded in Europe and transplanted to North America and elsewhere, Strategy-as-Practice scholarship is a very exciting development that highlights how broader theoretic movements can help motivate the creation of new organization and management theory.’
Number of SAP journal publications over the last two decades.
In this essay, we reflect on the development of SAP research over the last two decades. We first explain the institutionalization of SAP as a field, before distinguishing three phases of development. With reference to SAP’s pluralist ethos of ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’, we label these phases using a plant-based metaphor, identifying a Germination Phase, a Blossoming Phase and a Harvesting Phase. Based on these reflections, we discuss potential future developments of SAP, noting that the field appears to be in transition to a new phase, which we label the Propagating Phase.
Consolidation of SAP
The launch of SAP as an official research programme is often traced back (e.g. Johnson et al., 2003) to a research workshop in Brussels that was hosted by the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) 20 years ago. This workshop was attended by scholars from around the world who were studying the micro-level activity and practice of strategy. In line with the ‘practice turn’ in the social sciences in general (Nicolini, 2012; Schatzki et al., 2001) and in management studies in particular (Orlikowski, 1992, 2000; Orr, 1996), there was an increasing interest in understanding the actual doing of strategy. This ‘practice turn’, which has become an increasingly prominent research approach in many fields of social science research, coincided with persistent calls to pay more attention to the role of human beings in strategy (e.g. Bettis, 1991; Lowendahl and Revang, 1998). Over the years, different studies had emerged, largely independently of each other, that drew attention to strategy work as complex and effortful social activity (Barry and Elmes, 1997; Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991; Knights and Morgan, 1991; Oakes et al., 1998). Strategy researchers increasingly turned to these studies for inspiration. The interest in practice theorizing, with its focus on people’s everyday practices (e.g. Nicolini, 2012; Schatzki et al., 2001), its growth as a lens to explain social practice in other fields, such as the use of technology (e.g. Nicolini, 2011; Orlikowski, 1992) and the appeal for a more social approach to strategy came together in an opportune way; giving momentum to the emergence of scholars identifying themselves as interested in strategy as a social practice.
Overwhelmed by the apparent interest in this new approach to strategy, a series of regular workshops and conference subthemes were organized and a community website (www.sap-in.org) with an informal research network (‘Strategy as Practice International Network’) was set up. Eventually, standing working groups and interest groups were founded at the major international academic associations including European Group of Organization Studies (EGOS), the Academy of Management (AoM) and the Strategic Management Society (SMS). These fora contributed to the development of a recognized community of SAP scholars that acknowledged and built upon each other’s work.
This community of scholars was united by a general understanding of and interest in strategy ‘not [as] something that an organization has but something its members do’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007: 6, emphases in original). Yet, the conceptualizations of what they were studying varied, as reflected in the range of labels that were used to describe the approach, from ‘Activity Based View’ and ‘(Micro-)strategizing’ (Johnson et al., 2003) to ‘Strategy Activities and Practice’ and ‘Strategy Practice’ (which became official names of the SAP interest groups at the AoM and SMS, respectively) and ‘Strategy as Practice’ (a label that Whittington had already mooted as early as 1996). As these labels carry different meanings (see, for example, Tsoukas, 2010), they are an important part of the definitional work of an emerging field, carrying opportunities for inclusion or exclusion.
The labels did matter. As Langley (2015: 112) reflected on the field’s earlier development, SAP ‘means different things to different people. It is not clear that the body of knowledge – even as expressed in the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice – yet hangs together with any degree of coherence.’ Similarly, Rouleau (2013: 549) critiqued SAP as a body of knowledge, highlighting that SAP researchers do not even agree on what to consider as practice: ‘There are at least five different underlying views of practice. These have coexisted since the foundation of strategy-as-practice research.’ This type of struggle appears to be a key point in the development of scholarly fields. For example, Van de Ven (1999) noted the struggles over whether a few narrowly, and therefore clearly defined, paradigms should shape the development of the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) division of the Academy of Management, or whether it should be open to multiple paradigms. Similarly, this lack of agreement about the definition of SAP was initially seen as a major problem for the development of the field. Struggles ensued, as some advocated repeatedly for an aligned understanding of the field’s key concepts. Yet, others warned that this could have constraining effects, stifling the vibrancy and creativity of the community.
Over multiple discussions at conferences and in workshops, eventually a shared understanding emerged that this heterogeneity of views could work to the community’s advantage and that pluralism should be embraced. As Van Maanen previously advocated in OMT (Van de Ven, 1999), people adopted the slogan ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ to advance this ‘explicitly pluralistic ethos’ (Seidl et al., 2021: 484). Proponents argued that SAP should be understood as a lens with which to view strategy phenomena, rather than a narrow theory with a few key constructs, enabling multiple labels and associated streams of research to flourish. They hoped to generate an open research community, encouraging others to join and help develop the field. Yet, not everybody was happy with this conceptual openness. For example, Alvesson and Blom (2022) in a recent article described SAP as an example of hembig (an acronym for hegemonic, ambiguous, big concepts). They write, ‘In a sense, almost nothing of what is done in an organization is outside “strategy in practice” if “strategy” and “practice” are defined broadly enough – or not defined at all’ (Alvesson and Blom, 2022: 65).
Conceptual openness in defining the field resulted in a rapid growth of publications over the first 10 years and a steady stream of publications since. This was also recognized by Blom and Alvesson who, in their contribution to the Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice, acknowledged that the foundational SAP publications ‘have ignited (but also framed) an impressive research activity’ and that ‘much has been achieved’ (Blom and Alvesson, 2015: 409). Figure 1 shows the number of SAP articles published each year (the graph comprises all articles in English that, according to the Web of Science, include ‘strategy as practice’ or ‘strategy-as-practice’ in their title, abstract or keywords and/or are listed in the bibliography of the Strategy-as-Practice International Network as SAP articles). Over the years, eight special issues on SAP have been published in different journals, ranging from Human Relations (HR), the Journal of Management Studies (JMS) and the British Journal of Management (BJM), to the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) and Long Range Planning (LRP), to more specialized journals like Business History (BH) and the Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS). Without a doubt, SAP has become a mature field of research. However, the evolution process is never neutral nor linear. Each turning point in this process had important implications for what the field studies and its respective challenges and potentials.
Three phases in the development of SAP over the last two decades
We bring the SAP community aim to let a thousand flowers bloom to our identification of three phases of maturity in the SAP field: Germination, Blossoming and Harvesting. Each of these phases is characterized by a different type of work in developing the SAP agenda, which we describe as agenda-seeking, agenda-setting and agenda-confirming. While these phases are not clearly demarcated by a particular chronological turning point, we distinguish between them, qualitatively, according to the dominant type of agenda work being done in each phase. We characterize the Germination Phase, as predominantly agenda-seeking work, generating new concepts and terminology and defining them, to differentiate SAP from other fields of strategy research. This led into a Blossoming Phase, which we characterize as involving agenda-setting work; establishing a community of scholars and articles that identified as SAP by referencing and building upon each other, consolidating differentiation from other fields, and defending boundaries over what constitutes SAP work. Finally, we identified a Harvesting Phase, which is characterized by agenda-confirming work; scholars taking the SAP lenses for granted, rather than justifying or defending it, in studying and explaining core strategy and organization phenomena, and connecting with other fields. In Table 1, we summarize the core agenda work and associated articles that characterize each phase, and its implications for the growth of the field. While Figure 1 may show a consistent trajectory, throughout the phases in Table 1 key concepts came into being, were contested, evolved and some of them became taken for granted while others were discarded. We now explain these phases and their implications for field growth.
Three phases in the past development of SAP.
Germination (2001–2007/2008)
Germination (2001–2007/2008) can be defined as causing a seed to put forth shoots, beginning to grow or bring a plant into existence. In 2001, as a call went out for a special issue of Journal of Management Studies on ‘micro strategy and strategizing’, SAP was already a seed, as a couple of early articles had alluded to the notion (e.g. Hendry, 2000; Knights and Morgan, 1991; Whittington, 1996), and a few graduate students were using SAP concepts loosely within their PhDs at that time. Throughout the next six to seven years, SAP scholars engaged in agenda-seeking work. This work was about demarcating SAP from other strategy scholarship as well as developing and defining the field’s own terminology, concepts and objects of study. Critically, during this phase, two key concepts were developed; ‘micro strategy’ that focused on the minute details of strategy, and the ‘three Ps framework’ of practitioners, practices and practitioners. One of these – micro strategy – would become something of a burden, while the other progressively began to shape the field.
First, the special issue and editorial by Johnson et al. (2003: 3) developed and defined micro strategy as ‘micro-activities that, while often invisible to traditional strategy research, nevertheless can have significant consequences for organizations and those who work in them’. In line with this focus on the micro, Samra-Fredericks (2003), for example, studied how strategists employed their linguistic skills in strategy talk to engage others and thereby influence the strategy process, and Rouleau (2005) described how middle managers enact the organization’s strategy in their day-to-day interactions with external stakeholders. In establishing the term ‘micro strategy’, the editors of the special issue differentiated SAP from the resource-based view and strategy process research. This offered an important point of differentiation around which SAP studies could coalesce as they sought to establish their own research agenda, as the seven empirical, methodological and conceptual articles in the special issue demonstrated. Second, the practice language began to take shape, as Jarzabkowski (2004) established that social practices comprised an unacknowledged basis of existing strategy research across multiple levels, while Jarzabkowski (2005) and Whittington (2006) set out what came to be a core SAP meta-framework based on the ‘three Ps’ of practices, practitioners and praxis. Research flourished in each of these three Ps. For example, particular discursive, recursive and adaptive practices (e.g. Mantere, 2005; Rouleau, 2005; Vaara et al., 2004), specific types of practitioners identified by function or hierarchy (e.g. Paroutis and Pettigrew, 2007; Regnér, 2003) or streams of praxis such as top managers talk-in-interaction in strategy meetings (e.g. Samra-Fredericks, 2003). This framework sat in the background as a legitimating device for a raft of scholarship that, while it might foreground one of these three Ps, also obliquely referenced its entanglement with the other Ps. As Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) examined the conceptual integration of these three Ps in their Human Relations special issue, the framework was consolidated as the backbone of the SAP field going forward.
The implications of the Germination Phase for the SAP field were very rich. Many articles sprang up with different theoretical lenses, from structuration theory (Jarzabkowski, 2008; Rouleau, 2005), to sensemaking (Balogun and Johnson, 2004; Maitlis and Lawrence, 2003; Rouleau, 2005; Stensaker and Falkenberg, 2007), to information processing theory (Hodgkinson and Clarke, 2007), to Heideggerian approaches (Chia and MacKay, 2007), Luhmanian systems theory (Hendry and Seidl, 2003; Seidl, 2007) and evolutionary approaches (Salvato, 2003); methodological lenses from ethnography (Jarzabkowski, 2003), to discourse analysis (Laine and Vaara, 2007; Vaara et al., 2004) and ethno-methodology (Samra-Fredericks, 2003); and different objects of study, from the strategic role of middle managers (Balogun and Johnson, 2004) to the identity and subjectivity of different strategists (Beech and Johnson, 2005; Laine and Vaara, 2007; Mantere, 2005), to strategy workshops (Hodgkinson et al., 2006) and meetings (Hoon, 2007; Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008), to strategizing at the periphery (Regnér, 2003). Many such theories, methodologies and objects of study were either entirely new to, or very rare within, the traditional strategy field. The work of differentiating SAP was under way.
Yet this Germination Phase, characterized by agenda-seeking work, also drew to its natural close. Evidence that the field had gone beyond germination, with its attendant agenda-seeking work, came in the form of extensions and criticisms that moved beyond solely differentiating from other strategy fields, to identifying or proposing new boundaries for SAP research. For example, in the Human Relations special issue, Denis et al. (2007) pointed out the pluralism that characterizes many aspects of strategy work, while Chia and MacKay (2007) emphasized the importance of going beyond the micro-actions identified by Johnson et al. (2003), to study the flow of experience within which strategy is socially accomplished. At the same time, the seedlings of SAP had grown sufficiently that they were visible. The field began to attract criticism on the basis that it was a misinterpretation of existing process studies (e.g. Hodgkinson and Wright, 2006), and that it was not radical enough in differentiating from traditional strategy research (e.g. Carter et al., 2008). The field was no longer seeking an agenda, but rather, that agenda was being noticed and critiqued.
Blossoming (2008–2015/2016)
The publication of articles that began to critique SAP, marked a turning point. The SAP field moved into a Blossoming Phase, characterized by a mass of blooms, that is, articles. As Figure 1 shows, during this period, with a set of frameworks from which to grow, critiques to respond to and a growing group of scholars doing work they labelled as SAP, publications proliferated. The field now had sufficient roots to move to the agenda-setting work of establishing and defending boundaries over what constituted SAP work, much of it by bringing that work to fruition in key publications that built upon and referenced the initial articles and each other. Thus multiple articles began to build substantive SAP contributions to everything from strategic planning (e.g. Abdallah and Langley, 2014; Jarzabkowski and Balogun, 2009; Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011; Vaara et al., 2010), to detailed foci on the work of middle managers (e.g. Mantere, 2008; Rouleau and Balogun, 2011; Teulier and Rouleau, 2013), and their participation in strategy making (Balogun et al., 2011; Mantere and Vaara, 2008) as well as resistance to it (Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008; McCabe, 2010) to the strategic role of front-line managers (Balogun et al., 2015), consultants (Nordqvist and Melin, 2008) and regulators (Jarzabkowski et al., 2009). From detailed emotional dynamics (Liu and Maitlis, 2014) and power differentials (Dick and Collings, 2014; Mueller et al., 2013; Whittle et al., 2014) to the temporal and spatial dimensions of strategy work (Hydle, 2015; Kaplan and Orlikowski, 2013), to the strategic role of strategy texts (Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011; Vaara et al., 2010), tools (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan, 2015; Kaplan, 2011) and other materials (Jarzabkowski et al., 2013; Werle and Seidl, 2015), it was evident that the SAP field was blooming.
In part, this blooming was facilitated by the agenda-setting work of some key special issues that directed the SAP focus into important new avenues of research. For example, Balogun et al. (2014) brought together a special issue that examined how sociomateriality, sensemaking and power shaped strategy making. Their editorial legitimated several different discursive lenses for studying SAP phenomena, from narrative to conversational to critical discourse analysis, and linked them to other key approaches. The articles in the special issue expanded the field; for example, providing a more nuanced understanding of how emotions (Liu and Maitlis, 2014), displayed and discursively expressed during strategic conversations, influenced the strategies pursued within an organization. Importantly, this special issue also began to explicitly incorporate power dynamics (e.g. Hardy and Thomas, 2014), an issue that had been critiqued as markedly absent from SAP research (Carter et al., 2008; McCabe, 2010; Mueller et al., 2013). At the same time, Dameron et al. (2015) focused on materiality, an increasingly important theme for the broader practice turn in management studies (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Pinch, 2013; Leonardi and Barley, 2010; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008). Their special issue, comprising six empirical articles, broadened the SAP focus to encompass the interplay between human bodies, strategy tools (Belmondo and Sargis-Roussel, 2015; Paroutis et al., 2015) and other material and spatial arrangements (Demir, 2015; Jarzabkowski et al., 2015; Werle and Seidl, 2015) in strategy making.
Importantly, during this phase of blooming, review articles were developed that summarized the corpus of articles included in the SAP field, but also their weaknesses in developing the SAP agenda. For example, Jarzabkowski and Spee (2009) noted that much SAP work focused upon the micro and meso levels of analysis inside organizations, rather than taking up the more radical challenge of studying actors outside organizations, or the extra-organizational implications of SAP work. Similarly, Golsorkhi et al. (2010: 13; see also Suddaby et al., 2013) stressed the need to explore the impact of the larger societal context on local strategy making: Whether we call it institutionalization, legitimation, naturalization, or normalization, there is a great deal of work still to be done to explain how widely-held assumptions about appropriate strategizing methods influence what is actually done in organizations, and how these activities, then, reproduce or at times transform prevailing understandings and practices.
Vaara and Whittington (2012), in turn, critically reviewed gaps in SAP scholarship, from the institutional dimensions of strategizing, to insufficient focus upon agency, materiality and strategy emergence. These agenda-setting pieces did important political work, enabling field participants to critically assess their own work and attract others who could address some of the gaps.
Such critical reflection enabled some of the early buds to be re-examined, cultivated or removed, to encourage more robust growth. For example, work began to focus upon a fourth P, considering strategy as a profession (Whittington et al., 2011). At the same time, the term micro strategy from 2003, initially raised as problematic by Chia and MacKay (2007), was further critiqued by Seidl and Whittington (2014: 1408), who highlighted that the focus on micro activities associated with the term carried the danger of ‘micro-isolationism’. They wrote: ‘Fascination with the detailed understanding of local praxis can produce what we term “micro-isolationism”, whereby a local empirical instance is interpreted wholly in terms of what is evidently present, cut off from the larger phenomena that make it possible.’ Increasingly, the agenda-seeking definitional work done in the Germination Phase was being refined through agenda-setting work. This work would, eventually, recast micro as an inappropriate term that constrained the scope of the SAP agenda, even as scholars acknowledged its convenience as a non-theoretical word for those less versed in practice theorization (see Nicolini, 2016).
This Blossoming Phase began to draw to a close as the proliferation of articles, and the focus on practices, led to efforts to appropriate the term by those outside the field (e.g. Bromiley and Rau, 2016). SAP scholars, while beginning to turn a critical eye on their own scholarship, rapidly dismiss these attempts. Lacking a comprehensive grasp of the core meta-frameworks of the SAP agenda and the considerable body of work that it had spawned (Jarzabkowski et al., 2016a, 2016b), these efforts at appropriation failed to gain traction. Such confidence in identifying the type of work that lay within the SAP domain marked a turning point as the field shifted from blossoming to harvesting.
Harvesting (2015/2016–2020/2021)
In the Harvesting Phase, SAP scholars were able to gather the fruits of their increasingly mature field. This phase was characterized by agenda-confirming work. Rather than explaining, developing or justifying SAP concepts and approaches, scholars drew on prior SAP work to contribute to specific phenomena and connect with existing theories. This phase showed two key developments: a taken-for-granted use of SAP concepts to address questions in strategy and organization scholarship, and collaborations between SAP scholars and those in adjacent theoretical areas.
First, the corpus of articles drawing upon or referencing the SAP field continued to proliferate. However, these articles no longer engaged in extensive explanations of what SAP was, or why they took the practice turn. Rather, the term strategizing, the focus on people doing strategy work, their practices and the flow of strategy making were taken-for-granted analytic objects of study. In this Harvesting Phase, scholars examined phenomena, not because they were SAP-oriented, but because a SAP lens could shed light upon them. Importantly, these articles also began to address some of the critiques raised from the agenda-setting work of the Blossoming Phase. For example, increasingly studies went beyond the organization, drawing upon the power of a practice approach to explain large-scale phenomena (Nicolini, 2016), to examine the competitive dynamics of an entire global industry (Jarzabkowski and Bednarek, 2018), cross-sector collaboration (Deken et al., 2018; Seidl and Werle, 2018) and strategizing in extra-organizational, non-market contexts (Sorsa and Vaara, 2020). Studies also began examining the evolution of the strategy profession (Whittington, 2019) and the emergence of Open Strategy as a new approach to strategy work (Hautz et al., 2017; Seidl et al., 2019). Additionally, issues of agency and strategy emergence were increasingly addressed, such as how people, including those not usually studied as strategic actors (Pettit and Crossan, 2020), and their practices become strategic (e.g. Gond et al., 2018; Hengst et al., 2020; Mantere and Whittington, 2020). At the same time, SAP scholars re-visited old questions, such as the relationship between strategy and structure, strategy and design thinking, strategy formulation and planned and emergent strategy, bringing new and dynamic insights through the application of a practice lens (e.g. Jarzabkowski et al., 2019; Knight et al., 2020; Mirabeau et al., 2018; Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2017). The concepts of the SAP field were clearly ripe for use in examining multiple different issues.
Second, people began to build from agenda-setting pieces that emerged during the Blossoming Phase and pointed towards potential areas of collaboration for SAP scholars, such as information systems (Whittington, 2014), and dynamic capabilities (Regnér, 2015; for an early precursor, see Regnér, 2008). This heralded an emerging maturity that contrasted with earlier phases, when SAP scholars were keen to differentiate in order to promote the distinctive nature of the practice approach in their agenda-seeking and setting work. Growing confidence in SAP as merit worthy in its own right enabled key SAP scholars to move from differentiating to consider collaborating with like-minded scholars in other fields (e.g. Feldman et al., 2019; Lounsbury et al., 2021).
Notably, a 2018 special issue of the Strategic Management Journal focused upon the dialogues and intersections between strategy process and practice. While agenda-seeking work during the Germination Phase had differentiated SAP from strategy process (e.g. Whittington, 2006), there had been various efforts at dialogue (e.g. Jarzabkowski et al., 2017; Langley, 2007; Tsoukas, 2010) that acknowledged a ‘family’ similarity between the two (Whittington, 2007). This special issue took a combinatory approach to emphasize SAP’s distinctiveness and yet complementarity to strategy process research (Burgelman et al., 2018). Many of the resultant 13 articles addressed critiques of the SAP field from the Blossoming Phase. For example, both Jarzabkowski and Bednarek (2018) and Kouamé and Langley (2018) specifically addressed the call by Seidl and Whittington (2014) to examine how the ‘macro’ flow of strategy making is instantiated within the ‘micro’ strategizing practices of actors. Similarly, building from Vaara and Whittington (2012), some articles examined the agency of key actors (e.g. Ma and Seidl, 2018; Wenzel and Koch, 2018), strategy emergence (e.g. Dalpiaz and Di Stefano, 2018; Mirabeau et al., 2018) and materiality (e.g. Knight et al., 2018). Others, as emphasized by Jarzabkowski and Spee (2009), moved beyond the organization to inter-organizational phenomena (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Bednarek, 2018; Seidl and Werle, 2018).
Thus, during this Harvesting Phase, articles in the SAP field steadily confirmed and developed the agenda that had been set, including addressing some critiques of that field. At the same time, SAP scholarship had arrived at a point of confidence within which differentiation from other fields became less important. Instead, SAP could be applied as a lens to study wider questions in strategy and organization theory. Nonetheless, further work to address the existing critiques remain, even as new ones have arisen.
Where is SAP heading? The contours of an emerging new phase of development
As 2021 has drawn to a close, we can make out the contours of an emerging new phase, that we term the ‘Propagating Phase’. Building from the root stock of the SAP field, this future Propagating Phase is essential for spreading SAP ideas and engaging in cross-pollination that will enable the field to continue to thrive. We now examine three critiques, published in 2021, and reflect on their implications for the future development of the SAP field.
A review article by Kohtamäki et al. (2021) finds that the SAP field has developed into six distinct clusters of research around themes of praxis, sensemaking, discourse, sociomateriality, institutional and process theory. Articles in these clusters are strongly integrated in drawing upon each other, but less integrated across communities, indicating the formation of sub-communities with the SAP field. While these sub-communities have been important in developing coherent streams of SAP research, consistent with the many flowers arising from the Blossoming Phase, the authors note that they also present dangers of fragmentation. They therefore propose areas that are ripe for further propagation between communities, emphasizing the potential for cross-pollination between micro and macro; sociomaterial and discourse; critical and mainstream; and practice and process perspectives to further develop the SAP field.
A critique by MacKay et al. (2021) provides potential avenues to further propagate the SAP field and address some of its oversights. The authors expand on their (Chia and MacKay, 2007) earlier critique of the term ‘micro’, which was the basis for differentiation from traditional strategy research during the Germination Phase of SAP research. This term became a legacy constraint upon the field (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Bednarek, 2018; Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009; Kouamé and Langley, 2018; Seidl and Whittington, 2014). In an effort to dissolve the false distinction between micro and macro, MacKay et al. (2021) propose a process philosophical approach to strategy emergence that also bridges between strategy process and SAP research (e.g. Whittington, 2006, 2007). Adopting the phrase ‘strategy-in-practices’, they explain how strategy is immanent and emerges within socio-culturally propagated practices that cohere into a pattern of action that we as scholars recognize as strategy.
An agenda-expanding article by Jarzabkowski et al. (2021) addresses a different legacy issue. This legacy arises from early SAP efforts to speak to traditional strategy work through reference to existing performance and process definitions of what types of activities are strategically ‘consequential’ (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Seidl, 2008; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Johnson et al., 2003). As the authors show, this narrow framing of consequentiality, while important for establishing legitimacy as a branch of strategy research during the germination and growth phases of SAP, also constrained the power of a practice perspective to find patterns of strategic action that are often unobserved and neglected in traditional strategy research. Yet an initial premise of the SAP agenda was to find strategy, even within the taken-for-granted everyday activities of actors who are not typically considered ‘strategists’ (e.g. Jarzabkowski and Bednarek, 2018; Pettit and Crossan, 2020). Limiting the scope of SAP study to those activities already defined as strategic prevents SAP scholars from developing the truly novel findings that will enable the field to grow. To embrace the radical agenda of a SAP perspective, Jarzabkowski et al. (2021) empower SAP scholars to define mundane, everyday practices as strategic and to explain their consequentiality both in situ and for strategy theory.
These three articles arising at the end of two decades of SAP research have commonalities in pointing the way forward for propagation of the field. While acknowledging the enormous work done, they emphasize the need to both establish more robust points of differentiation that are grounded in the radical agenda of practice theory (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021; MacKay et al., 2021), while also ensuring cross-pollination among the sub-communities that have arisen (Kohtamäki et al., 2021). We now reflect on the implications of these articles for the future agenda of SAP.
First, we consider the notion of differentiation and cross-pollination with the SAP field. Kohtamäki et al.’s (2021) finding of sub-communities within the SAP field is an inevitable consequence of allowing a thousand flowers to bloom. In finding groups to speak to, SAP scholars have, perhaps unwittingly, formed communities, each with their own concepts and interests. One possible evolution is that each of these communities might develop more distinct boundaries, similar to fields like institutional theory, in which each community does different types of work (e.g. Lawrence et al., 2011; Leibel et al., 2018; Zietsma et al., 2017). The benefit of stronger boundaries is that each of these sub-communities will build a set of core concepts and scholars, so growing into a distinct subfield.
The caveat is that each sub-community, in defining their boundaries, may, to continue our farming analogy, engage in strip-farming. While the owners of any particular plot, and its crop of articles, will be easily identified, this differentiation may also lose some of the benefits of being part of a wider field. Although clarity over core concepts facilitates cumulative knowledge development, strong conceptual boundaries can also constrain novelty and diversity in research (Cunha and Putnam, 2019; Seidl et al., 2021). As Schad et al. (2019) note, it is necessary to set free some centrifugal forces in theoretical fields, to compensate for the overly cohesive effects of the existing centripetal forces. Such ‘setting free’ constitutes a ‘spur [to] exploration and creativity, challenging, spanning, and extending its boundaries’ (Schad et al., 2019: 108).
In order for a differentiated SAP field to embrace potential extension of boundaries, we advocate two key avenues: thematic differentiation with the field, and cross-pollination outside the field. First, scholars might differentiate along thematic lines, such as the underlying practice theory approaches they draw on (e.g. Bourdieu, 1990; Schatzki, 2002) or by the phenomena studied, such as open strategy (Seidl et al., 2019), or materiality (Dameron et al., 2015). By differentiating explicitly along clear thematic lines, including those identified by Kohtamäki et al. (2021), scholars within the different communities could both benefit from establishing strong definitions but also have clear reasons for connecting with others; such as using a discourse theoretical approach (Balogun et al., 2014) to examine the phenomena of open strategy (Hautz et al., 2017), or a multi-modal approach (LeBaron et al., 2018) to examine bodies and materials in strategy making (e.g. Knight et al., 2018; Wenzel and Koch, 2018). Paradoxically, as theories of organization have shown (e.g. Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967), clear points of differentiation can be the grounds for equally clear points of integration (Bednarek et al., 2021). The differentiated sub-communities found by Kohtamäki et al. (2021), and others that may emerge, could be the grounds for future propagation, as scholars reach across communities to explore new SAP phenomena. The theoretical apparatus from such communities may provide the means for scholars to study strategy as it emerges (MacKay et al., 2021) within actors and activities not typically defined as strategic (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021). Beyond our suggestions here, for example, we note that recent conference tracks have begun to look at the relationships between SAP and other phenomena, such as grand challenges (EGOS, 2019). The field is ripe for existing and emerging scholars to develop those themes and facilitate clear differentiation between and integration across them, both within SAP and, leading to our next point, outside SAP.
Second, we advocate for cross-pollination outside the field. Here, the most obvious points of contact are those other areas of research that are already akin to SAP, because they also draw upon practice theories. For example, Routine Dynamics is a large and vibrant research community that emerged around the same time as SAP, taking a practice theory approach to organizational routines (Feldman et al., 2021). Conceptualizing organizational routines as particular types of practices, Routine Dynamics scholars have generated important insights about routines as effortful and emergent accomplishments (Feldman and Pentland, 2003). Focusing particularly on the inner dynamics of routines, they have revealed how routines are performed, transformed and interrelated with other routines to generate group-level or organization-level outcomes (Birnholtz et al., 2007; Feldman, 2000). Cross-pollination between SAP and Routine Dynamics opens fascinating new phenomena to be studied as potential sites of strategy (e.g. Seidl et al., 2021). For example, SAP might learn from Routine Dynamics how the dynamic enactment of mundane operational routines could inadvertently shape the direction of the organization (e.g. Rerup and Feldman, 2011); a topic that has been on the SAP agenda from the beginning, but which scholars have struggled to explain (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021; MacKay et al., 2021). Routine Dynamics research might also help SAP researchers in better capturing the non-discursive aspects of strategy work. While the seminal SAP articles have highlighted the importance of both ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’ (Seidl and Whittington, 2014), most work still treats strategy as a discursive phenomenon (Balogun et al., 2015; Hendry, 2000), with only a few studies accounting for its non-discursive aspects (see Dameron et al., 2015).
Another area of relevance for cross-pollination with SAP is the growing Entrepreneurship-as-Practice (EAP) movement (Thompson et al., forthcoming). EAP has flourished in recent years as scholars have generated important insights about how entrepreneuring practices originate, are performed, gain traction and lead to the formation of new organizations and value creation (Champenois et al., 2020; Teague et al., 2021). Cross-pollinating with EAP could open several interesting areas of research for SAP scholars. For example, SAP scholarship is still seeking ways to explain how ‘things’ become strategic, beyond those that are already designated as strategy by managers in organizations (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021; MacKay et al., 2021). A few studies have shown how ideas and products emerging at the periphery of organizations are retrospectively reconstructed as an organization’s strategy (e.g. Gond et al., 2018; Regnér, 2003). However, we still lack theoretical explanations of how and why some ideas and activities originate and gain momentum to become part of an organization’s strategy, and indeed, how people recognize or act upon potential new ideas in order to make them strategic (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021). Such phenomena are at the heart of EAP studies, providing rich grounds for SAP scholars to learn from collaboration and cross-pollination. In addition to considering entrepreneurial ventures as ‘extreme’ examples of emergent strategy, on which SAP needs greater insight (MacKay et al., 2021; Vaara and Whittington, 2012), EAP also provides opportunities to identify and follow novel practices inside established firms, tracing them from emergence or ideation to their fruition as ‘value-yielding’ activities that are labelled ‘strategy’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021).
Beyond these adjacent fields, there are fields of strategy research that have only barely, if at all, begun to acknowledge practice theory, and that might benefit from cross-pollination with SAP. An obvious area of cross-pollination is the large field of Upper Echelons research, which focuses on the role of people at the top of the organization (Hambrick, 2007). Researchers in this field have generated many important insights on how the characteristics of upper echelons managers and the composition of their teams shape strategic decision making (Carpenter et al., 2004). For SAP researchers, engaging with this field of research opens several interesting research opportunities. For example, while SAP scholarship has historically focused on the distributed nature of strategy work, Upper Echelons research puts the spotlight on the people at the top of the organization, claiming it as a topic of research in its own right (although possibly overestimating their strategic impact). The SAP lens can offer a fruitful new conceptualization of upper echelon managers as ‘carriers of practices’ (Whittington, 2006: 625) rather than just as individuals with particular characteristics (see, for example, recent work adopting a Bourdieusian practice perspective to study top managers; Van Aaken et al., 2022). SAP researchers, with their competence in capturing and analysing interpersonal relations, are also in a particularly good position to illuminate the social, rather than psychological, dynamics within top management teams and their composition (e.g. Ma and Seidl, 2018; Ma et al., 2015), providing an important new area for Upper Echelons research.
Corporate governance is another example of an adjacent field that SAP could fruitfully cross-pollinate. Corporate governance research is centrally concerned with the systems and processes through which organizations are directed and controlled (Wright et al., 2013). The focus is on assessing the extent to which various governance mechanisms, such as boards, reporting requirements or incentive systems, help to keep managers’ self-interest in check (Shleifer and Vishny, 1997), compensate for their incompetence (Hendry, 2002), ensure access to critical resources (Hillman et al., 2000) or resolve conflicts of interest between stakeholder groups (Amis et al., 2020). For SAP researchers, this opens fruitful new avenues of study. While existing SAP research has already been concerned with many governance mechanisms as part of their study of strategy work, corporate governance research provides a new angle by offering alternative, normative points of reference. With its strength in capturing the actions and interactions surrounding governance mechanisms, such as strategy committees (Hoon, 2007), or financial reporting (Denis et al., 2006; Fauré and Rouleau, 2011), SAP research can make an important contribution to understanding the effects of different corporate governance mechanisms. Such research would also resonate with the increasing interest of corporate governance scholars to focus more on the behavioural than just structural aspects of corporate governance (Van Ees et al., 2009). Furthermore, with its interest in the distributed nature of strategy work, SAP research is in a particularly strong position to expose various informal and implicit governance mechanism, whereas corporate governance research to date has focused on the formal and explicit ones. An example of the kind of insights such work might offer is Whittington and Yakis-Douglas’ (2020: 3) explanation of how ‘unmanaged forms of openness’, such as unintended information leaks, together with the normative pressure of globally networked professionals, help control powerful organizations.
Together, these are some tentative reflections on how SAP research could evolve in the future as the Propagation Phase unfolds. As with the growth of the field to date, the specific directions will emerge from the interests of the scholars involved. Yet, we believe that all the identified directions bear great potential in allowing the field to continue to thrive.
Conclusion
On the 20th anniversary of SAP scholarship, we have reviewed the development of this field of research. We identified three phases in this development, which are associated with different types of agenda seeking, setting and confirming work. This work, in which the 2007 SAP special issue of Human Relations played an important role, has helped SAP to develop into a vibrant research community. To conclude, as central actors in the development of this field, at least during its earlier phases, we reflect briefly upon its growth.
Retrospectively, the development of SAP might seem natural, logical and linear, starting tentatively and then building momentum. However, no field is without its detractors, and neither is a field apolitical or neutral in its development. The development of most branches of science is not owing simply to the quality of the scientific material produced. Rather, it is also necessary to engage other scholars, recruit receptive audiences and make a space within which concepts can gain traction. So it is with the development of SAP. For example, the Blossoming Phase, within which scholars actively defined their concepts, established boundaries and differentiated from other avenues of strategy research, is an important phase in developing a field. Such boundaries establish a space within which scholars can develop a niche to advance their own agendas, both in terms of the quality of the work being done, and also as a space of support for their efforts and respite from attack. Developing such spaces need not negate the quality of the work done, even if the development of the space serves multiple purposes in providing some protection during efforts to advance a field. As we have tried to show, the development of SAP has not been free of conflict and tension. At times it could have taken very different turns, and the establishment of community, differentiation, boundaries and ‘safe spaces’ undoubtedly supported its growth.
Of course, as parties within the field, we also acknowledge that our review is authored from inside the field. Inside voices, even where they raise criticism, as ours have, separately, at different points in the field development, do so with an understanding of that field. Such understanding is implicitly political, since our own interests and beliefs are, necessarily, part of our authoring. To some extent, this is a bind of many review articles in various fields. Even as review articles aim to evaluate, provoke and critique, they tend to do so with a view to extending a field, or taking it in a particular direction favoured by the authors, rather than terminating it. In doing the work to develop a review, authors are often invested in, or become entrained to the field they are reviewing. We therefore lay no claims of a neutral reflection on the field. Nonetheless, we are pleased, as we reflect, that the loose ‘aim’ to let a thousand flowers bloom does indeed seem to have generated pluralism, which we hope will continue to provide fertile grounds for future development.
This pluralism is important. SAP is now, again, at a critical juncture. Like other mature fields of research (Barney et al., 2011), SAP needs to find new grounds on which to continue to thrive. There are indications that SAP is already in the transition to a new phase, the Propagation Phase. We note that, as it does, the objects of interest in SAP scholarship may and should transform. We have sketched out some promising directions for SAP scholarship to go. However, in the spirit of pluralism, and given that we are now only a few of many central actors in this field, we cannot predict in which way it will or should go. Rather, we hope that scholars interested in SAP will be as stimulated, prolific and passionate over the next two decades, as we have been over the past two.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank the Editor-in-Chief Mark Learmonth and the three anonymous reviewers for their support in getting this manuscript ready for publication. We also acknowledge the helpful input of Richard Whittington, Violetta Splitter, Tania Weinfurtner, Theresa Langenmayr and Benjamin Grossman-Hensel.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
