Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory

2011/02/24 by Martha S. Feldman, Wanda J. Orlikowski · 5 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Management and Organizational Studies #Accounting and Organizational Management #Information Systems Theories and Implementation

paper · doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0612

openalex publication_date 2011/02/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This paper describes the emerging field of practice theory as it is practiced in relation to organizational phenomena. We identify three approaches—empirical, theoretical, and philosophical—that relate to the what, the how, and the why of using a practice lens. We discuss three principles of the theoretical approach to practice and offer examples of how practice theory has been used in the organizational literature and in our own research. We end with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that practice theory affords organizational scholarship.

Citations

• On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change
• Enacting the social
• Strategy as Practical Coping: A Heideggerian Perspective
• Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties
• The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations
• On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Discursive Perspective
• Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change
• A Practice Perspective on Technology-Mediated Network Relations: The Use of Internet-Based Self-Serve Technologies
• Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay
• Micro Strategy and Strategizing: Towards an Activity‐Based View

Cited by

• What Happens When Evaluation Goes Online? Exploring Apparatuses of Valuation in the Travel Sector
• Projectification of sustainable development: implications from a critical review
• 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
• Wanda Orlikowski [wikipedia]