The strategic plan as a genre

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in developing a micro-level understanding of strategy practices, there are few studies focusing on the official textual expression of these practices in the form of strategic plans. Using a large corpus of strategic plans from public and third sector organizations, this article examines the particular features of the strategic plan genre of communication. This corpus is systematically compared with nine other corpora derived from the same general domain (business texts) or having similar expected characteristics. Our analysis combines linguistic analysis with an analysis of the moves characteristic of the genre. The article seeks to advance a genre-based view of strategy practices to study the professional and institutional practices of strategists. © SAGE Publications 2012.