Feminist Perspectives on Doing Strategy-as-Practice Research

Abstract

In this chapter, we draw attention to the dynamics of gender in strategy making and argue that the field of strategy-as-practice (SAP) would benefit from a theoretically advanced, feminist understanding of what gender is and how it plays into strategy work. We invite SAP scholars to draw on feminist theory, in its different forms, to think differently and to challenge and advance knowledge about strategy and strategizing. We argue that a thoughtful engagement with feminist theorizing helps SAP to revitalize its radical agenda and to fulfil its promise in reinvigorating strategy research by advancing knowledge that is both practically relevant as well as societally and ecologically significant. To demonstrate the epistemic and ethico-political potential of feminist theorizing, we outline different feminist approaches for developing SAP scholarship. We focus on feminist phenomenology and feminist new materialisms and offer an empirical illustration of what it means to draw from these approaches in SAP research. While the former highlights lived bodily experience in strategizing, the latter questions human-centeredness as an onto-epistemological assumption and puts forth a radically different vision of the world.