Communication and Strategy Work: How corporate magazines shape strategy

Abstract

While research has become increasingly receptive to the construction of strategy in dedicated forms of strategy communication – such as managerial speeches or strategic plans - little work has looked at how strategy is constructed in more broadly focused communicative media, such as corporate magazines. By analysing over 500 magazine issues from six different firms, this article reveals three fundamental mechanisms by which corporate magazines shape strategy: (i) familiarization – or shaping strategy by connecting it to the everyday; (ii) confirmation – or shaping strategy by aligning it with standing norms and expectations; and (iii) regeneration – or shaping strategy by advancing it through ongoing cycles of creation and destruction. In doing so, this article makes three specific contributions. First, by highlighting how corporate magazines construct strategy through a reconciliation of different narrations, narrators, and narrative contexts, it extends earlier research’s emphasis on senior leadership with insights into the more collective sensemaking processes underlying strategy development. Second, by unveiling how corporate magazines often draw on affective expressions that humanize strategy within organizational life, it enriches our predominantly rational take on strategy-making with a more pronounced understanding of the role of emotions. Finally, by showing how corporate magazines progressively tie an organization’s strategy to ongoing developments and occurrences, it expands earlier work’s emphasis on grand and singular strategy communication with a reappreciation of the small and iterative – demonstrating how firms’ successful conception of tomorrow is often based on their developing understanding of today.