The practice of shared inquiry: how actors manage for strategy emergence

ABSTRACT

This paper problematizes the applicability of traditional top-down strategic planning in a continuously changing media industry and builds a practice-theoretical perspective for analyzing strategy emergence. Through a qualitative analysis of 22 interviews, with media professionals and consultants of a German-based print magazine company, we identify a jointly enacted practice that we call “shared inquiry”. This practice includes recursive and adaptive strategizing actions towards (1) searching and learning (actions of employees), (2) facilitating and questioning (actions of managers), and (3) guiding and reflecting (actions of consultants). We demonstrate how these actions form a mechanism through which media managers create the conditions to cope with continuous change and how they manage in order to achieve strategy emergence both locally and on an organization-wide level. Ultimately, we show how strategic actions can be mapped in a continuum that supports “responsive coping”.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic media management
• strategy-as-practice
• strategy formation
• process-theory
• emergent strategy
• responsive coping

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (http://www.hssaatio.fi/en/).

Notes on contributors

Sven-Ove Horst

Sven-Ove Horst is Senior Assistant Professor for Media and Creative Industries at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has held previous positions at Bauhaus-University Weimar and Aalto University School of Business. His research centers on strategic media management, media entrepreneurship, and organization theory, and has been published in for example the International Journal on Media Management, the Journal of Media Business Studies, and the Journal of Media Management and Entrepreneurship, for which he also serves as associate editor. He generally likes exploring emergent phenomena, such as strategy, identity work, and entrepreneurial branding during times of digitization. He enjoys speaking at conferences and is interested in connecting theory with practice through leadership development workshops, networking activities, and consulting.

Rita Järventie-Thesleff

Rita Järventie-Thesleff is a Professor of Practice and the CEMS Academic Director at Aalto University, Finland. Prior to joining the academia, Järventie-Thesleff worked as a business executive in the forest industry. Recently, she has studied the strategic challenges that the digital technology and the emerging participatory media culture bring about for organizations within media industry. Her work has been published in journals such as Organization Studies, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Ethnography and Journal of Media Business Studies.

Sabine Baumann

Dr. Sabine Baumann is Professor for Business Administration in the Department of Management, Information, Technology at Jade University in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Before rejoining academia she worked for Bertelsmann, Germany’s largest media conglomerate, in various positions including director of the Content Management Competence Center. Her current research interests lie in digital business models and applications of digital technologies. Her research has been published in journals such as International Journal on Media Business Studies, Journal of Media Innovations, International Business and Economics Review, and Journal of Business Economics.