Planting Relational Mode of Thinking in Strategy as Practice: Carry with Context into Field as Social Space

Abstract

This paper argues that Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research needs to overcome visible substances such as context and deep into invisible strategic field. The relational mode of thinking in SAP avoids the tendency to reify strategic context as given entities, “constructed as macro or micro factors and shut away into black box, focusing instead on how context are actively enrolled as social force in sustaining strategic struggle”. Specifically, this paper argues for a shift in thinking about field as social space rather than as context, and examines the function of capital and its role in producing identities and finally examines the strategic position and symbolic struggle of strategic actors. The major contribution of what must rightly be called the structuralist revolution consists in having applied to the social world the relational mode of thinking which is that of modern mathematics and physics, and which identifies the real not with substances but with relations