Emergence of a firm’s strategy is of central concern to both Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) scholars. While SP scholars view strategy emergence as a long-term macro conditioning process, SAP advocates concentrate on the episodic micro ‘doing’ of strategy actors in formal strategy planning settings. Neither perspective explains satisfactorily how process and practice relate in strategy emergence to produce tangible organizational outcomes. The conundrum of reconciling the macro/ micro distinction implied in process and practice stems from a shared Substantialist metaphysical commitment that attributes strategy emergence to substantive entities. In this article, we draw on Process metaphysics and the practice-turn in social philosophy and theory to propose a Strategy- in-Practices (SIP) perspective. SIP emphasizes how the multitude of coping actions taken at the ‘coal-face’ of an organization congeal inadvertently over time into an organizational modus operandi that provides the basis for strategizing. Strategy, therefore, inheres within socio-culturally propagated predispositions that provide the patterned consistency that makes the inadvertent emergence of a coherent strategy possible. By demonstrating how strategy is immanent in socio-culturally propagated practices, the SIP perspective overcomes the troublesome micro/ macro distinction implied in SP and SAP research. It also advances our understanding of how strategy emergence impacts organizational outcomes.

The emergence of strategic foresight from scenarios has constantly puzzled theorists. Whilst practitioners and scholars of scenario planning contend that scenarios generate strategic foresight by both stretching a manager's mental model by exposing them to a wide range of equally plausible futures, and triggering and accelerating processes of organisational learning, the true nature of this link between strategic foresight and organizational learning remains vague and undertheorized. Our paper tackles this puzzle by explicitly focussing on how strategic foresight emerges from the organizational learning process that unfolds during scenario planning. We undertook a 24-month long longitudinal study capturing both 'actions' and 'reflections' of a leading Scotch whisky manufacturer during their scenario planning exercises. Surprisingly, and perhaps counterintuitively, our findings unearth the role of 'unlearning' rather than 'learning' as a key mechanism that leads to the emergence of strategic foresight within the scenario planning process. Further reflection on the 'unlearning process' reveals that unlearning involves a 'letting go' or relaxing of deeply held assumptions and this in turn inadvertently leads to strategic foresight. Overall, by developing and introducing 'unlearning' as a key mechanism for the generation of strategic foresight, our paper aims to improve the effectiveness of scenario planning interventions as practiced.

Among all the innovation strategies that seek to impact developing economies, Grassroots Innovation remains the least explored. With critics of Bottom of the Pyramid literature articulating the need for considering the poor as producers, a better understanding of the grassroots phenomenon may help companies to understand and integrate the Grassroots Innovation strategy into their business models and thereby allowing the poor to become producers of products and solutions. This study examines the dimensions and trends, which make Grassroots Innovations unique, as well as factors which govern and influence them. The study is based on in-depth case studies which were gathered during field work with the National Innovation Foundation in India. The data illustrates how factors like education, age, occupation and sector influence the triggers and the outcomes of Grassroots Innovations. It also demonstrates how individuals, institutions and firms could collaborate to commercialize these products and solutions.

This chapter addresses the dynamics in interorganizational relations. We probe the value networks so prevalent within contemporary manufacturing to put forward that their basic cooperation/competition duality manifests itself in practical terms as capability, appropriation, and governance paradoxes. We conducted a longitudinal ethnographic study aimed at capturing the process by which interorganizational collaboration in manufacturing value networks is enacted. Our study finds that interorganizational relations are 'nested' in that a relationship plays out over an interpersonal network where the interorganizational relationships are a framework for action, while simultaneously interpersonal interactions affect how the interorganizational relationships take shape and evolve. Furthermore we found that interorganizational dynamics essentially is a stratified process. Solving particular and concrete problems at the surface level with regard to specific collaboration issues between organizations simultaneously shapes truces with regard to the underlying capability, appropriation and governance paradoxes.

No abstract