Journal Articles

Select SAGE journal articles are available to give you more insight into chapter topics. These are also an ideal resource to help support your literature reviews, dissertations and assignments.

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The role of emotions in strategy is discussed by Quy Nguyen Huy in the 2012 journal article ‘Emotions in strategic organization: Opportunities for impactful research’, where he explains how individual-level emotions can explain collective, organization-level outcomes, which represent the central interest of strategy research: firm-level processes and performance.

Quy Nguyen Huy (2012) ‘Emotions in strategic organization: Opportunities for impactful research’, Strategic Organization, 10(2): 240–247

There is a Special Collection of papers published in the journal, Strategic Organization, as a Virtual Special Issue: SO! Strategy Process and Practice Collection, which is well worth browsing to extend your knowledge of the strategy as practice approach. The collection includes a contribution from Chris Carter, Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger (2007). This paper sparked a debate: for the response see Jarzabkowski, P. and R. Whittington’s 2008 paper; and for the rejoinder read C. Carter, S. Clegg and M. Kornberger’s 2007 article.

Reference: Chris Carter, Stewart Clegg and Martin Kornberger (2007), ‘Strategy as Practice?’ Strategic Organization, 6(1): 83-100

Reference: Jarzabkowski, P. and R. Whittington. 2008 'Hard to disagree, mostly', Strategic Organization, 6.1: 101-06

Reference: C. Carter, S. Clegg and M. Kornberger, 2007, S-A-P zapping the field, Strategic Organization, 6(1): 107-112

Martin Kornberger and Stewart Clegg wrote a paper about the performativity approach, connecting it to the strategy as practice perspective. One of the things that is interesting about the paper is the way it shows that strategy discourses has spread from the commercial sphere to applications as diffuse as developing strategies for cities.

Reference: Kornberger, M. and Clegg, S. R. (2011) ‘Strategy as Performative Practice: The Case Study of Sydney 2030’, Strategic Organization, 9: 136-162.

Earo Vaara, Virpi Sorsa and Pekka Pälli also address strategy in the city. In doing so they identify distinctive discursive features of the strategy genre that have important implications for the textual agency of strategic plans, their performative effects, impact on power relations and ideological implications.

Reference: Earo Vaara,  Virpi Sorsa and Pekka Pälli (2010) ‘On the force potential of strategy texts: a critical discourse analysis of a strategic plan and its power effects in a city organization’, Organization 17(6): 685-702

The importance of the emergence of a concern with narrative for strategy analysis has been discussed by Christopher Fenton and Ann Langley. Overall, narrative is seen as a way of giving meaning to the practice that emerges from micro-sensemaking activities, of constituting an overall sense of direction or purpose, of refocusing organizational identity, and of enabling and constraining the ongoing activities of actors.

Reference: Christopher Fenton and Ann Langley, (2011), ‘Strategy as Practice and the Narrative Turn’, Organization Studies, 32(9): 1171-1196

In Jarzabkowski, P. and Seidl, D’s paper, you will find an analysis of how strategy meetings either stabilize existing strategic orientations or propose variations that cumulatively generate change in these.

Reference: Jarzabkowski, P. and Seidl, D. (2008) ‘The role of meetings in the social practice of strategy’, Organization Studies, 29(11): 1391-1426

Laine and Vaara report research using a S-as-P methodology.

Reference: Laine and Vaara (2007) ‘Struggling over subjectivity: A discursive analysis of strategic development in an engineering group’, Human Relations, 60(1): 29-58

The discussion of strategy and its leaders and champions is informed by this Saku Mantere’s journal article.

Reference: Saku Mantere’s (2005) Strategic Practices as Enablers and Disablers of Championing Activity, Strategic Organization, 3: 157-284