Enlarging the Strategy-as-Practice Research Agenda: Towards Taller and Flatter Ontologies

2014/07/16 by David Seidl, Richard Whittington · 5 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Accounting and Organizational Management #Innovation and Knowledge Management #Management and Organizational Studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/0170840614541886

openalex publication_date 2014/07/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Taking perspectives from papers published previously in Organization Studies, we argue for progress in strategy-as-practice research through more effective linking of ‘local’ strategizing activity with ‘larger’ social phenomena. We introduce a range of theoretical approaches capable of incorporating larger-scale phenomena and countering what we term ‘micro-isolationism’, the tendency to explain local activities in their own terms. Organizing the theories according to how far they lean towards either tall or flat ontologies, we outline their respective strengths and weaknesses. Against this background, we develop three broad guidelines that can help protect against empirical micro-isolationism and thereby extend the scope of strategy-as-practice research.

Citations

• A narrative approach to strategy-as-practice
• From the Editors Beyond Contextualization: Using Context Theories to Narrow the Micro-Macro Gap in Management Research
• On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Discursive Perspective
• Strategizing in pluralistic contexts: Rethinking theoretical frames
• Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective
• Micro Strategy and Strategizing: Towards an Activity‐Based View

Cited by

• Organization Theory and Ontological Claims: Working out tensions in CCO scholarship and organization studies
• Practicing Impact and Impacting Practice? Creating Impact Through Practice-Based Scholarship
• “Stuck in the middle of what?”: the pursuit of academic careers by mothers and non-mothers in higher education institutions in occupied Palestine
• The Social Practice of Coevolving Strategy and Structure to Realize Mandated Radical Change
• It’s Practice. But is it Strategy? Reinvigorating strategy-as-practice by rethinking consequentiality

Related

• Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective
• Micro Strategy and Strategizing: Towards an Activity‐Based View
• It’s Practice. But is it Strategy? Reinvigorating strategy-as-practice by rethinking consequentiality
• Strategizing in pluralistic contexts: Rethinking theoretical frames
• On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Discursive Perspective