Strategy, Discourse and Practice: The Intensification of Power

Abstract

We adopt a Foucauldian approach to discourse to show how power relations shape the constitution of strategy. By exploring two particular discourses associated with the strategy of a global telecommunications company, our study shows how the power effects of discourses are intensified through particular discursive and material practices, leading to the production of objects and subjects that are clearly aligned with the strategy. In this way, our study contributes to understanding: the mechanisms whereby discourse bears down on strategy through intensification practices; different forms of resistance; and the way in which strategy objects and subjects reproduce (or undermine) discourse.

Letting go of Managing? Struggles over Managerial Roles in Collaborative Governance

“…To manage the data I produced an event history database showing when and where the data was collected, what activity and who participated, and my notions of initial analytical curiosity (Hardy & Thomas, 2014). During the initial coding I noted a recurring empirical concern regarding managers' roles and decided to undertake a systematic analysis.…”

Institutional maintenance work and power preservation in business exchanges: Insights from industrial supplier workshops

“…This analysis thus expands our understanding of the subtle 'cognitive anchoring work' associated with the projective agency of stipulating, directing and appealing within the context of three strategic agenda-setting issues -strategic planning, operations and market intelligence decision-making -and how these may be used how they may be used for legitimation or relegitimation of institutionalized roles and expectations. Finally, the study builds on extant studies regarding power intensification (Hardy & Thomas, 2014), demonstrating how an institutional industrial workshop work increases supplier docility and utility with the discourses of projective compliance and an affiliated way of knowing and a system of knowledge, without necessarily being seen to be disciplinarian in the instituting and normalizing of distinct in-group market rules. This adds to Knights & Willmott (1989) work on the role of power as subjectification through the intensification of voluntary technologies-of-the-self -that is, with self-examination and 'calculative' assessments via the maintenance of 'the rules of engagement' for enhancing business planning, operations and market decision-making practice.…”

“…In maintenance work, our study shows that Retail Co not only enforced its views or desires onto suppliers ('hard power'), but it also highlights the role of 'soft power'. Critical to this 'soft power' had been power intensification (Hardy & Thomas, 2014) to increase supplier docility and utility with the epideictic discourses of projective compliance and an affiliated way of knowing and a system of knowledge, without necessarily being seen to be disciplinarian in the instituting and normalizing of distinct in-group market rules. To understand this institutional work, we find that Knights & Willmott's (1989) notion of the voluntary technologies of the self at play-that is, with self-examination and 'calculative' assessments via the maintenance of 'the rules of engagement' for enhancing business planning, operations and market decision-making practice.…”

Strategy and virtue: Developing strategy-as-practice through virtue ethics

“…How is a strong orientation to success shaped by extra-organizational practices, including discursive resources, power structures, and available tools (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan, 2015;Whittington, 2006;Hardy and Thomas, 2014;Vaara, 2010;Wright et al, 2013;Moore and Beadle, 2006:378-380 advantage? What self-commitments do senior managers make to induce core practitioners to depart from, or not yield to, the temptation of, self-interested behavior?…”