Strategic Responses to Digital Disruption in Incumbent Firms – A Strategy-as-Practice Perspective

Figures & data

Table 1. Key conceptual components of the strategy-as-practice literature.

Key theoretical concepts	Meaning
IS strategy practices	Institutionalized routines and processes that drive strategic activities.^Citation21,Citation41
Strategy practitioners	Individual actors who shape and actualize IS strategy.^Citation21,Citation41
IS strategy praxis	The actual activity of creating and enacting an IS strategy.^Citation23,Citation41
Strategy siteCombinatory view	The social and relational space where IT-enabled practices are bundled together by activities practitioners by organizational members.^Citation21 (p. ^32)Treats processes and activities underlying strategy formation as closely related.^Citation20

Table 2. Overview of empirical data.

Data sources	Purpose	Outcome
Interviews	Obtain insight into the responses to disruptive digital transformation	Case 1, a total of 65 interviews including 22 follow-up interviews. Case 2, a total of 47 interviews, including 12 follow-up interviews. In total, 112 semi-structured interviews.
Written material	Gain insight into hotel chain policy, work practices and description of tasks.	Policy documents. Hotels’ own work flow charts of digital strategy.
Online observations	Follow changes over time through online observations.	Observations of activities in OTAs, digital platforms such as TripAdvisor and the hotel’s app and website.
Workplace observations	Obtain insight about work tasks, routines and processes related to digital transformation	70 hours of observation at individual hotels and hotel chains management head office.

Table 3. Overview of analytical process.

Steps	Tasks	Output
Overview and open coding Iterative analytical process Creating response categories	Create a timeline and identify crucial events Develop descriptive themes of the entire data material Removing similar and equal themes Link interview data with online and workplace observations Moving between the data and increasing our knowledge and understanding of the strategy-in-practice theory Chisel out the contextual conditions Summarizing the themes and uncover strategy-practices through key theoretical concepts: practices, practitioners and praxis (Whittington, 2000), the strategy site (Haung et al., 2014) and the combinatory view (Burgelman, 2018). Evaluating the eight codes and summarizing them into strategic responses. Connect codes and responses to illustrative quotes Detailed write-up about Case 1 and Case 2	About 30 themes describing digital disruptions, strategies, and practices 8 codes (digital disruptions, value creation, structure, organizing, strategy vs. practice, digital technologies, infrastructure, and knowledge)Contextualize the understanding of the strategic responses

Table 4. Theoretical concepts and illustrative quotes.

Key theoretical concepts	Meaning
IS strategy practices	Institutionalized routines and processes that drive strategic activities (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008; Huang et al., 2014)
Strategy practitioners	Individual actors who shape and actualize IS strategy (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008; Huang et al., 2014).
IS strategy praxis	The actual activity of creating and enacting an IS strategy. (Huang et al., 2014)
Strategy site	The social and relational space where IT-enabled practices are bundled together by activities practitioners by organizational members (Huang et al., 2014, p. 32)

Figure 1. Illustration of the responses to digital disruptions.

Figure 2. Summary of findings.

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