What makes activities strategic: Toward a new framework for strategy‐as‐practice research

Abstract

Research AbstractStrategy as practice is one of the most vibrant approaches to strategy research. Yet, there is significant ambiguity around what characterizes an activity as strategic and thus as falling into the domain of strategy as practice. In this article, we address this fundamental concern by differentiating four distinctive views of what qualifies activities as strategic: (1) activities that have important consequences, (2) activities that are labeled strategic, (3) activities carried out by strategists, and (4) activities that perform an important recurrent pattern. Each of these views is associated with different research questions resulting in different research insights. We discuss how the four views together form a new research framework that expands the notion of strategy and thereby the research domain of strategic management.Managerial SummaryStrategy as practice is an important approach to studying strategic management that focuses on strategic activities. However, there is significant ambiguity around what characterizes activities as strategic. In this article, we identify four different views on this question: (1) activities that have important consequences, (2) activities that are labeled strategic, (3) activities carried out by strategists, and (4) activities that perform an important recurrent pattern of activities. Each of these views is associated with different questions and thus with different types of insights. We suggest that the four views together form a research framework that reveals distinctive links between strategy as practice and other lines of strategy research and that expands our notion of strategy and thereby the domain of strategic management.