A narrative approach to strategy-as-practice

Abstract

The strategy-as-practice project would benefit from greater consideration of narratological concerns. Narratorship, the formulation and performance of narratives, is an important strategy practice; narratives (stories) are key tools of strategists; and narratological perspectives generally may usefully inform strategy research, leading to less scientistic and more reflexive scholarship. Five specific ways in which attention to narratology can assist the strategy-as-practice agenda are considered: humanising strategy research, dealing with equivocality, accounting adequately for polyphony, understanding outcomes, and sensitivity to issues of power. While storytelling approaches have considerable strengths, they also have limitations, and are offered as a supplement to, not replacement of, existing perspectives.

Keywords::

• strategy-as-practice
• narrative
• story
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the insightful comments of Michael Humphreys, Michael Rowlinson, John Sillince, Chris Carter, and the anonymous reviewers, on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

^1. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Re-Framing Strategy,” 573

^2. Jarzabkowski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice”; Johnson, Langley, and Melin, “Guest Editors” “Introduction”; Whittington, “Strategy Practice.”

^3. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy-as-Practice?”; Thomas and Wilson, “The History of Strategic Management.”

^4. In keeping with Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Re-told,” Boje, “The Storytelling Organization,” Pentland, “Building Process Theory” and Brown, Stacey, and Nandhakumar, “Making Sense of Sensemaking,” we use the terms “narrative” and “story” interchangeably.

^5.Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 1.

^6.Poon and Thompson, “Convergence or Differentiation?”

^7. Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History,” 346.

^8. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice”; Laine and Vaara, “Struggling over Subjectivity”; La Ville and Mounoud, “How can Strategy be a Practice?” in Czarniwska and Gagliardi, “Narratives We Organize By”; O'Connor, “Storied Business”; Rouleau, “Micro-Practices of Strategic Sensemaking”; Samra-Fredericks, “Managerial Elites.”

^9.Schoemaker, “Scenario Planning”; van der Heijden, “Probablistic Planning.”

^10.Goodwin and Wright, “Enhancing Strategy Evaluation,” 2.

^11. Initially a development in philosophy associated with a focus on language, the “linguistic turn” now refers to a major trend across the humanities and social sciences to regard notional realities as constituted through linguistic means.

^12.Balogun and Johnson, “Organizational Restructuring”; Jarzabkowski and Sillince, “A Rhetoric-in-Context Approach”; Jarzabkowski and Paul Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice”; Laine and Vaara, “Struggling over Subjectivity”; Rouleau, “Micro-Practices of Strategic Sensemaking.”

^13. Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Re-told.”

^14. Brown, Humphreys, and Gurney, “Narrative, Identity and Change”; Shipp and Jansen, “Reinterpreting Time”; Sonenshein, “We're Changing.”

^15. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice,” 1172.

^16.Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Re-Framing Strategy,” 579; Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy-as-Practice?”; Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “S-A-P: Zapping the Field.”

^17.Ford and Ford, “The Role of Conversations,” 544.

^18.Alvesson and Karreman, “Taking the Linguistic Turn”; Deetz, “Describing Differences in Approaches”; Rhodes & Brown, “Narratives, Organizations, and Research.”

^19.Taylor and Van Every, The Emergent Organization; Fairhurst and Putnam, “Organizations as Discursive Constructions.”

^20. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice”; Spee and Jarzabkowski, “Strategic Planning.”

^21.Stutts and Barker, “The Use of Narrative Paradigm,” 213.

^22.Czarniawska, Fashion in Organizing, 13.

^23. Johnson and Bowman, “Strategy and Everyday Reality” Johnson, Melin, and Whittington, “Guest Editors' Introduction”; Whittington, “Strategy as Practice.”

^24.Fisher, “The Narrative Paradigm,” 347.

^25.Lieblich, Tuval-Maschiach, and Zilber, Narrative Research: Reading, 2; Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory.

^26.Brown, “Defining Stories in Organizations”; Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations.

^27.Boje, Narrative Methods; Georgakopoulou, Small Stories.

^28.Deuten and Rip, “Narrative Infrastructure.”

^29.Bormann, “Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision.”

^30.Cooren, “Translation and Articulation,” 181; Taylor and van Every, The Emergent Organization.

^31. Rhodes and Brown, “Narrative, Organizations and Research.”

^32.Fisher, “Narration”; Fisher, “Clarifying the Narrative Paradigm.”

^33. Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Retold,” 431.

^34.Scholes, “Language, Narrative and Anti-Narrative,” 205.

^35.Burke, “Definition of Man”; Ricoeur, Time and Narrative.

^36.Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction; Iser, Prospecting from Reader Response.

^37.Gabriel, “Turning Facts into Stories,” 857–8.

^38. Fisher, “Narration,” 2; Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing, 36.

^39. Fisher, “Clarifying the Narrative Paradigm,” 57. This approach enables us to incorporate and to leverage work on other linguistic forms, such as discourse and metaphor, as elements of our narratological project. In so doing we are, of course, arguing for a particular kind of narratological perspective, and other versions with other implications for strategy-as-practice may be devised.

^40. Johnson and Bowman, “Strategy and Everyday Reality”; Johnson, Melin, and Whittington, “Guest Editors' Introduction”; Whittington, “Strategy as Practice.”

^41. Whittington, “Strategy as Practice.”

^42. Jarzabkowski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice.”

^43. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice,” 1173–4.

^44.Schatzki, “On Organizations,” 1864.

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^46.Rasche and Chia, “Researching Strategy Practices.”

^47. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy as Practice?” 89; Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Re-Framing Strategy,” 579.

^48. La Ville and Mounoud, “How can Strategy.”

^49. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice.”

^50. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy as Practice?” 87.

^51. Ibid., 92.

^52.Chia, “Strategy-as-Practice.”

^53. Jarzabkowski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice.”

^54. Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Retold,” 432.

^55. Whittington, “Strategy as Practice,” 73.

^56.Patriotta, “Detective stories”; Rhodes and Brown, “Narrative, organizations and research.”

^57. Jarzabkowski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice,” 70.

^58. Fisher, “Narration,” 6.

^59. Currie, “Postmodern Narrative Theory,” 2.

^60.MacIntyre, After Virtue, 201.

^61.Ezzy, “Theorizing Narrative Identity.”

^62.White, “The Use of Narrativity,” 1.

^63.Mink, “Narrative Form”; Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing.

^64. Ibid., 36.

^65.Currie and Brown, “A Narratological Approach.”

^66.Robinson, “Personal narratives reconsidered,” 60.

^67.Martin, “Stories and Scripts,” 287.

^68. Patriotta, “Detective Stories”; Orr, “Sharing knowledge, celebrating identity.”

^69. Brown, 1998 “Narrative, Politics and Legitimacy”; Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 60–1.

^70.Mueller and Carter, “We are all Managers”; Kornberger, Carter, and Ross-Smith, “Changing Gender Domination.”

^71.Brown, “A Narrative Approach.”

^72.Cohler, “Personal Narrative,” 207; Shipp and Jansen, “Reinterpreting Time.”

^73.Baumeister, Identity.

^74.Brown, “Narcissism, Identity and Legitimacy.”

^75.Brown and Jones, “Doomed to Failure.”

^76.Steuer and Wood, “Storytellers.”

^77. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 416.

^78.Garfinkel, “Conditions of Successful Degradation”; Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethdology; Goffman, The Presentation of Self; Rosenfield et al., Impression Management in Organizations.

^79.Hazen, “Towards Polyphonic Organization”; Rhodes, Writing Organization.

^80. Boje, Narrative Methods, 9.

^81. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy as Practice?” 94.

^82.Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization”; Brown, “A Narrative Approach.”

^83. Hazen, “Towards Polyphonic Organization,” 22.

^84. Boje, “The Storytelling Organization”; Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization.”

^85.Law, “Organization, Narrative and Strategy,” 250.

^86.Parker, Organizational Culture and Identity.

^87. Brown, “A Narrative Approach,” 739.

^88.Bauman, Liquid Modernity.

^89. Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Retold,” 446.

^90.Buchanan and Dawson, Discourse and Audience, 680.

^91.Taylor, “The Other Side,” 324.

^92. Jarzabkwoski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice,” 70; Johnson and Bowman, “Strategy and Everyday Reality”; Johnson et al., “Micro Strategy and Strategizing”; Whittington, “Completing the Practice Turn.”

^93.Daft and Lengel, “Organizational Information Requirements.”

^94.Neill and Rose “Achieving Adaptive Ends,” 305.

^95. Mink, “Narrative Form,” 13.

^96. It is often argued that organizations are generally characterised by relatively few strategy stories, and that if strategising initially results in a proliferation of stories then these tend, over time, to reduce to a smaller number of consensually accepted accounts. However, we dispute this, and suggest instead that when researchers look more closely at participants' stories, they often find important discrepancies between them. For examples of this kind of forensic examination of individuals' stories, which reveals differences between them, see Brown, Stacey, and Nandhakumar, “Making Sense of Sensemaking” and Harrison, “Multiple Imaginings.” All too often researchers focus principally on the stories spun by one or a few senior executives and merely assume that these are widely supported.

^97.Soderburgh, “Sensegiving and Sensemaking in an Integration Process: A Narrative Approach to the Study of an International Acquisition,” in Czarniawska and Gagliardi, Narratives we Organize by.

^98. Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing, 36.

^99.Boje, “The Storytelling Organization”; Buchanan and Dawson, Discourse and Audience; Deetz, “Describing Differences in Approaches.”

^100. Brown, Stacey, and Nandhakumar, “Making Sense of Sensemaking,” 1039.

^101.Brown, “Politics, Symbolic Action.”

^102.Patriotta, “Detective Stories.”

^103.Brown and Humphreys, “Nostalgia and the Narrativisation.”

^104.Brown and Humphreys, “Epic and Tragic Tales”; Humphreys and Brown, “Narratives of Organizational Identity.”

^105.Brown, Gabriel, and Gherardi, “Storytelling and Change”; Sonenshein, “We're Changing.”

^106.La Ville and Mounoud, “How can Strategy” 104.

^107. Jarzabkowski and Spee, “Strategy-as-Practice,” 91; Kornberger and Carter, “Manufacturing Competition.”

^108.Thompson, “A Grounded Approach.”

^109.Ezzamel and Willmott, “Re-thinking Strategy”; Ng and De Cock, “Battle in the Boardroom.”

^110.Araujo and Easton, “Where is the Pattern?” 371.

^111.Dunford and Jones, “Narrative in Strategic Change,” 1208.

^112. from Febvre, L'Histoire Nouvelle;Bradley, The Presuppositions; Carr, Time, Narrative and History.

^113.Callinicos, Theories and Narrative, 92.

^114.Thompson, National Competitiveness.

^115. Patriotta, “Detective Stories,” 163.

^116.Brown, “Managing Understandings”; Steuer and Wood, “Storytellers”; Vaara, “On the Discursive Construction.”

^117. Ezzamel and Willmott, “Re-thinking Strategy”;. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy-as-Practice,” 93.

^118. La Ville and Mounoud, “How can Strategy” 102; Carter, Clegg, and Wahlin, “When Science Meets Strategic”; McKinlay et al., “Using Foucault.”

^119.Clegg, Frameworks of Power, 183.

^120. Buchanan and Dawson, Discourse and Audience; Ng and De Cock, “Battle in the Boardroom.”

^121.Mumby, “The Political Function,” 114.

^122. Brown, “A Narrative Approach,” 736.

^123.Gioia and Chittipeddi, “Sensemaking and Sensegiving,” 422.

^124. Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization.”

^125.Hearn, “Productivity and Patriotism.”

^126.Rowlinson and Hassard, “The Invention of Corporate Culture.”

^127.Beranek, “Founding Narratives”; Holtorf and Williams, “Landscapes and Memories,” 243–5.

^128.Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History, 137; Callinicos, Theories and Narrative.

^129.Brown, “Authoritative Sensemaking,” 109.

^130. Boje, Narrative Methods; Boje, “The Storytelling Organization”; Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations; Patriotta, “Detective Stories.”

^131.Maclean, Harvey, and Chia, “Sensemaking.”

^132. Gabriel, “Turning Facts into Stories”; Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations.

^133. Harrison, “Multiple Imaginings.”

^134. Brown, Stacey, and Nandhakumar, “Making Sense of Sensemaking.”

^135.Cobb, “Empowerment and Mediation.”

^136.Gold, “Learning and Storytelling.”

^137.Mitroff and Kilmann, “Stories Managers Tell.”

^138.Brown, Humphreys, and Gurney, “Narrative, Identity and Change.”

^139.Brown, “Narrative, Politics and Legitimacy.”

^140.Brown and Humphreys, “Organizational Identity and Place.”

^141.Humphreys and Brown, “Narratives of Organizational Identity.”

^142. Brown and Humphreys, “Epic and Tragic Tales.”

^143. Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization.”

^144.Martin et al., “The Uniqueness.”

^145.Myrsiades, “Corporate Stories”; Czarniawska, Narrating the Organization; Pemer and Nislund, “The Appropriated Language.”

^146.Humphreys, Ucbasaran, and Lockett, “Sensemaking and Sensegiving.”

^147. Czarniawska, Narrating the Organization.

^148.Brown, “Making Sense of Inquiry Sensemaking”; Brown, “Authoritative Sensemaking”; Brown, “Making Sense of the Collapse”; Brown and Jones, “Doomed to Failure”; Brown, Ainsworth, and Grant, “The Rhetoric of Institutional Change”; Whittle and Mueller, “Bankers in the Dock.”

^149.Brown and Lewis, “Identities, Discipline and Routines.”

^150. Brown and Humphreys, “Epic and Tragic Tales.”

^151.Colville, Brown, and Pye, “Simplexity.”

^152. Ibid.

^153. Mintzberg and Waters, “Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent.”

^154.Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice.”

^155. Deuten and Rip, “Narrative Infrastructure.”

^156.Robichaud et al., “The Metaconversation.”

^157.Spee and Jarzabkowski, “Strategic Planning.”

^158.Mueller et al., “Politics and Strategy Practice.”

^159.Foucault, A History of Sexuality.

^160.Albrow, Do Organizations have Feelings? 47.

^161.Rhodes and Brown, “Writing Responsibly,” 512; Geertz, Works and Lives.

^162. Rhodes and Brown, “Writing Responsibly.”

^163. Carter, Clegg, and Kornberger, “Strategy as Practice.”

^164. Buchanan and Dawson, “Discourse and Audience,” 678.

^165.Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 215.

^166.Lather, Getting Smart, 21.

^167.Fine et al., “Qualitative Research,” 128.

^168.Watson, “Shaping the Story.”

^169. Rasche and Chia, “Researching Strategy Practices,” 714.

^170.Humphreys, Brown, and Hatch, “Is Ethnography Jazz?” 7.

^171.Rosen “Scholars, Travellers, Thieves,” 2.

^172.Marshall and Rossman, Designing Qualitative Research, 68.

^173. Rashe and Chia, “Researching Strategy Practices.”

^174. Fenton and Langley, “Strategy as Practice.”

^175.Eisenhardt, “Better Stories,” 621.

^176.Rhodes and Brown, “Narratives, Organizations and Research,” 168.

^177.Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, “Organizations as Discursive Constructions,” 1248.

^178.Czarniawska, A Narrative Approach, 7.

^179.Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, 226.

^180.Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, 27.

^181.Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History,” 335.

^182.Mitroff and Kilmann, Methodological Approaches.

^183. Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations.

^184. Rhodes, Writing Organization.

^185.Pentland, “Building Process Theory.”

^186.Dyer and Wilkins, “Better Stories,” 613.

^187. Ng and de Cock, “Battle in the Boardroom,” 25.

^188.Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, 127; cf. Fisher, 1984, 1985.

^189.Burke, “On Symbols and Society.”

^190.Burke, Permanence and Change, 49.

^191. Brown, “Authoritative Sensemaking.”

^192. Barry and Elmes, “Strategy Retold,” 430.

^193.Kilduff and Mehra, “Postmodernism and Organizational Research,” 470.

^194. Schatzki, “On Organizations.”

^195.McKinley, “From Subjectivity to Objectivity,” 142.

^196.Kearney, On Stories, 148.

^197.Brown, “A Narrative Approach”; Gabriel, Storytelling in Organizations.

^198. Buchanan and Dawson, “Discourse and Audience”; Brown, Humphreys, and Gurney, “Narrative, Identity and Change.”

^199.Hjorth and Steyaert, Narrative and Discursive; Gartner, “Entrepreneurial Narrative.”

^200. Brown, “Narrative, Politics and Legitimacy”; Pentland and Feldman, “Narrative Networks.”

^201.Zald, “More Fragmentation?” 256.

^202. Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History,” 331.

^203. Hearn, “Productivity and Patriotism,” 27.

^204. Brown, Gabriel, and Gherardi, “Storytelling and Change,” 324.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew D. Brown

Andrew D. Brown is Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Bath. He has previously held faculty positions at the universities of Manchester, Nottingham, Cambridge and Warwick. His primary research interests centre on issues of identity, narrative and sensemaking, and his work has been published in journals including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies and Human Relations. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Group and Organization Management, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization, and is a Senior Editor of Organization Studies.

Edmund R. Thompson

Edmund R Thompson earned his PhD at the London School of Economics and is Chair in International Management at the University of Bath School of Management. He was previously a faculty member at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, the University of Hong Kong, and National University of Singapore. His research is in aspects of international strategy and cross-cultural management.