This paper argues that organizational communication research, and in particular a perspective that focuses on narrative, can contribute in important ways to understanding the practices of strategy. Narrative is believed to be critical to sensemaking in organizations, and multiple levels and forms of narrative are inherent to strategic practices. For example, narrative can be found in the micro-stories told by managers and others as they interact and go about their daily work, in the formalized techniques for strategy-making whether or not the techniques are explicitly story-based, in the accounts people give of their work as strategy practitioners, and in the artefacts produced by strategizing activity. After exploring applications of narrative approaches to strategy praxis, practices, practitioners and text, we review two concepts that might serve to integrate micro and macro levels of analysis. Overall, narrative is seen as a way of giving meaning to the practice that emerges from sensemaking activities, of constituting an overall sense of direction or purpose, of refocusing organizational identity, and of enabling and constraining the ongoing activities of actors.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.