The Age of Strategy: Strategy, Organizations and Society

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank the editors – Steve Toms and John Wilson – of Business History for making this Special Issue possible. The authors of the articles are to be thanked for providing such thought-provoking articles; a special debt is owed to the reviewers, who provided constructive and challenging reviews. The special issue was edited from Newcastle University Business School, an environment that has proved fruitful and conducive for critical strategy research. Earlier versions of many of the articles that appear in this Special Issue were presented and commented on at the SOS ‘24 Hours on Strategy’ Summit, convened at Newcastle University Business School in September 2012.

Notes

^1.Carter et al., “S-A-P: Zapping the Field”; Carter et al., “Strategy as Practice?”

^2.Brown and Thompson, “A Narrative Approach”; Carter et al., “Re-framing strategy”; Carter et al., “When Science meets Strategic Realpolitik.”

^3. Carter et al., “ Introduction to Studying Strategy.”

^4.Knights and Morgan, “Strategic Discourse and Subjectivity”; Ezzamel and Willmott, “Strategy and Strategizing.”

^5.McKinlay et al., “Using Foucault to Make Strategy.”

^6. It is important to note a caveat: by advancing the argument that strategy is a relatively recent phenomenon is not to say that those in organizations in the past did not plan, think and talk about the future. Such a statement would be patently absurd. Of course, organizational actors would have obsessed about their organization and its future. What is new is the highly stylised set of concepts and techniques that have been institutionalised and frame the way in which organizations think about themselves and the problems they face. Supporting the consumption of strategy is a powerful consultancy industry, on hand with advice as to how organizations should strategise.

^7.Oakes et al., “Business Planning as Pedagogy.”

^8.Kornberger and Clegg, “Strategy as Performative Practice”; Ezzamel and Willmott, “Strategy as Discourse.”

^9.Kornberger, “Disciplining the Future,” 13.

^10.Kornberger and Carter, “Manufacturing Competition”

^11. Mackenzie, “An Engine, not a Camera.”

^12.Porter, “Competitive Advantage of Nations”; Carter et al., “Reframing Strategy.”

^13.Espeland and Sauder, “Rankings and Reactivity.”

^14.Rowlinson et al., “Accounting for Research Quality”; Willmott, “Journal List Fetishism.”

^15.Giddens, “The Consequences of Modernity.”

^16.Jeacle and Carter, “In TripAdvisor we Trust.”

^17.Carter et al., “When Science meets Strategic Realpolitick”; Ezzamel and Willmott, “Rethinking Strategy”; Hardy and Thomas, “Strategy, Discourse and Practice”; McCabe, “Strategy-as-Power”; Modell, “Strategy, Political Regulation”; Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, “The Role of Accounting Devices”; Whittle and Mueller, “The Politics of Strategic Ideas.”

^18. Kornberger, “On War”.

^19.Foucault, “On Governmentality”; McKinlay et al., “Governmentality, Power and Organization.”

^20.Miller and Rose, “Governing Economic Life”; Miller and O'Leary, “Accounting and the Construction.”

^21.Miller et al., “The New Accounting History.”

^22.Jeacle and Parker, “The “Problem” of the Office.”

^23.Kurunmaki and Miller, “Calculating Failure.”

^24.Thomas and Wilson, “Constructing the History.”

^25.Brown and Thompson, “A Narrative Approach.”

^26.Brown, “Politics, Symbolic Action”; Brown “Managing Understandings,” Brown et al., “The Rhetoric of Institutional Change”; Brown and Lewis. “Identities, Discipline and Routines”; Czarniawska, “Narrating the Organization”; Fenton and Langley, “The Narrative Turn”; Jarzbkowski and Sillince, “Rhetoric-in-Context.”

^27.Mueller et al., “Politics and Strategy Practice.”

^28.Paroutis et al., “Building Castles from Sand.”

^29.Carter and McKinlay, “Cultures of Strategy”

^30. Skaerbeck; Pollock and D'Adderio, “Give me a 2x2 Matrix.”

^31.Clegg et al., “Making Strategy Matter.”

^32. Aristotle, cited in Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter and Flyvbjerg “Phronetic Planning Research”; Selznick, A Humanist Science

^33.Clegg, “The Bounds of Rationality”; Clegg, “Power, History, Imagination.”

^34.Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter.

^35.Knights, “Writing Organizational Analysis.”

^36.Carter et al., “Strategy as Practice?”; Jarzabkowski and Spee., “Strategy-as-Practice.”

^37.Held et al., “The Hydra Headed Crisis.”

^38.Birt and Jay, “Bias against Understanding.”

^39.Burawoy, “For Public Sociology.”

^40.Clark and Rowlinson, “The Treatment of History.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Carter

Chris Carter is Professor of Strategy and Organization at Edinburgh University. He is currently researching strategy in the BBC. He has previously held chairs at the Universities of St Andrews and Newcastle. His PhD was from Aston University.