It’s Practice. But is it Strategy? Reinvigorating strategy-as-practice by rethinking consequentiality

Abstract

In this essay we revisit the radical agenda proposed by strategy-as-practice scholars to study strategy as it emerges within people’s practices. We show that, while much progress has been made, there is still a dominant focus on articulated strategies, which has implications for what is seen as strategic. We anchor our argument in the notion of consequentiality – a guiding yet, ironically, constraining principle of the strategy-as-practice agenda. Our paper proposes a deeper understanding of the notion of strategy as ‘consequential’ in terms of both what is important to a wider range of actors and also following the consequences of these actors’ practices through the patterns of action that they construct. In doing so, we offer a conceptual and an empirical approach to reinvigorating the strategy-as-practice agenda by inviting scholars to take a more active role in field sites, in deciding and explaining what practices are strategic.