"Strategy-as-practice"

Strategische Entscheidungen werden gemeinhin als besonders essentiell für den langfristigen Erfolg von Unternehmen und anderen Organisationen angesehen. Schon allein aus diesem Grund bieten alle Wirtschaftshochschulen Kurse an, in denen den Studenten der richtige Umgang mit strategischen Entscheidungen beigebracht wird. Außerdem haben auch verschiedenste Forschungsdisziplinen ein wissenschaftliches Interesse darin, Unternehmensstrategien zu beschreiben und zu erklären. In den letzten Jahren ist innerhalb der Organisationsstrategieforschung ein als „strategy-as-practice“ titulierter Ansatz immer bedeutender und populärer geworden. Dieser versucht vereinfacht gesprochen Unternehmensstrategien durch die Beschreibung und Beobachtung von Mikro-Aktivitäten zu erklären, bei denen routinierten Verhaltensweisen (Praktiken), die in der organisationalen Makro-Ebene (und damit über-individuell) verankert sind, von einzelnen Akteuren (Praktikern) in verschiedenen Situationen angewendet werden (Praxisepisoden). Dabei lassen sich eine Vielzahl von Charakteristiken dieses „neuen“ Ansatzen auch in diversen traditionellen Strategieschulen wie dem „Resource-based View“ oder dem „Process-based View“ erkennen. Wenn alte Ideen und Konzepte mit einem anderen Namen versehen und in weiterer Folge als "neu" und "innovativ" vermarktet werden, sprechen Soziologen häufig von Modeerscheinungen. Vergleichbar können solche Moden auch im Zusammenhang mit Organisationstheorien beobachtet werden. Darauf aufbauend ist das Ziel der vorliegende Arbeit ein Urteil darüber abzugeben, ob der „strategy-as-practice“ Ansatz nichts weiter als eine vorübergehende Modeerscheinung ist, oder als innovativer und vielversprechender neuer Ansatz betrachtet werden kann. Mit Hilfe einer Analyse von sowohl qualitativen als auch quantitativen Merkmalen von „strategy-as-practice“ und „management fashions“ zeigt die vorliegende Arbeit, dass „strategy-as-practice“ sehr wohl einige typische Charakteristiken von Managementmoden enthält. Die zwei wichtigsten sind dabei ein Mangel an Abgrenzung von bestehenden und etablierten Strategieschulen und darüber hinaus eine bisher vollständig Fehlende praktische Anwendbarkeit der Forschungsergebnisse. Aus diesen Gründen kommt der Autor der vorliegenden Arbeit zu dem Schluss, dass „strategy-as-practice“ in seiner jetzigen Ausgestaltungsform Gefahr läuft, seine Versprechen nicht zu halten und über kurz oder lang als vorübergehende Mode abgetan zu werden, wenn seine Vertreter nicht in der Lage sind, die in dieser Arbeit herausgearbeiteten Schwächen auszumärzen.Strategic decisions are commonly recognized as very important due to the fact that an appropriate strategy is in general set to be essential for the long term success of a company. Therefore all business schools offer courses where students learn to develop appropriate corporate strategies. Moreover, also scientific researchers are highly interested in describing and explaining organizational strategies. For that reason various strategy schools have been developed since the introduction of scientific management research. In recent years, a strategy school called “strategy-as-practice” has become increasingly popular. Generally speaking, strategy-as-practice tries to explain and research organizational strategy by focusing on micro-activities that are carried out by individual actors (practitioners) in various situations (episodes of praxis) by applying routinized forms of behavior (practices) that are situated in the macro-level (and therefore supra individual) of the organization. However, many characteristics of the new approach can be found in traditional strategy schools like the ressource-based view or the process-based view. Sociologists commonly speak of fashions if old ideas and concepts are entitled with a different name and marketed as ‘new’ and ‘innovative’. Those fashions can also be observed regarding management research. The aim of this thesis is to elaborate, whether strategy-as-practice can be conzeptualized as a management fashion or as an innovative and promising new approach. By combining quantitative and qualitative characteristics of strategy-as-practice and management fashions this thesis shows that strategy-as-practice contains some characteristics of management fashions. The two most important ones are a lack of differentiation from traditional approaches and the unanswered questions of their practical applicability. Therefore, the author assumes that if s-as-p advocates are not able to overcome the examined weaknesses, the new approach is in dangour of not delivering its promises and consequently will be recognized as a short lasting management research fashion in a few years

Metaorganizing collaborative innovation for action on Grand Challenges

Grand Challenges are complex issues that require collaborative innovation among heterogeneous actors who draw upon contradictory institutional logics. While existing literature shows how social enterprises and individual organizations reconcile tensions between economic and environmental logics, scholars know less about how and when a broad set of actors adopt practices and priorities that balance economic and environmental values. This article explores how three agricultural cooperatives act as metaorganizations and facilitate collaborative innovation and sustainable transitions to address grand challenges regarding land use. We find that the cooperatives stimulate awareness of environmental challenges and local experimentation, orchestrate collaborative solutions by enrolling and engaging a broad set of actors, and coordinate the diffusion of novel practices across the institutional field. We add new insights into producer cooperatives' role as metaorganizations in facilitating the creation, validation, and diffusion of practices that balance business and sustainability. Based on our findings, we argue that by metaorganizing, producer cooperatives can galvanize field-level shifts in institutional logics through framing, knowledge sharing, and knowledge brokering mechanisms.Peer reviewe

Early career researchers’ identity threats in the field : the shelter and shadow of collective support

Based on an autoethnographic study of early career researchers’ field research experiences, we show how individuals deal with moments of discrimination that present identity threats. This is accomplished through participating in the construction of a shared holding environment to provide emotional shelter and resources for resultant identity work. We show how they collectively develop anticipatory responses to future identity threats and inadvertently how this allows the effects of discrimination to be both unchallenged and amplified. We draw implications for identity work theory, adding to current understandings of identity threats, tensions, and challenges and the dynamics through which these are addressed, avoided, or worked around, as well as the shadow side of such activities. We also offer practical implications about the business schools’ role in nurturing early career researchers’ identity work.PostprintPeer reviewe

Corporate entrepreneurs and collaborative innovation in crisis:The case of the Covid-19 ventilator shortage

This teaching case focuses on corporate entrepreneurship and collaborative innovation during an unprecedented crisis – the shortage in mechanical ventilators when the Covid-19 pandemic began. Based on secondary data sources, the case outlines the challenges of designing and manufacturing mechanical ventilators and introduces four initiatives, consisting of organisations with often limited experience in medical device manufacturing that attempted to address the predicted shortage of ventilators. By comparing the approaches used in these initiatives, the case sensitises students to the challenges of pursuing opportunities outside a firm's established domain of expertise and how inter-organisational collaboration affects such attempts. Although the case centres on an unprecedented event, the insights it develops make it suitable for a range of innovation and entrepreneurship-related under- and post-graduates courses

Reviewing worker and producer cooperative contributions toward SDG8 in developing and developed economies

Considering the increased focus on sustainable development, cooperatives have attracted renewed interest as a viable organizational form that can help to address a range of socio-economic and environmental issues in regions underserved by traditional organizational forms and at a global scale. In this chapter, we review the contributions of worker and producer cooperatives toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG8) in both developing and developed economies. We outline how cooperative principles align with sustainable and inclusive economic growth and their potential to address social and environmental challenges. We offer illustrative examples of worker and producer cooperatives contributing to SDG8 by providing employment opportunities, improving work conditions, and fostering local economic development. We address and discuss criticisms and challenges cooperatives face, particularly those that emerge from contradictory economic and social goals. Finally, we emphasize a need for further research to better understand the potential of cooperatives, an organizational form that has received limited attention from international business scholars

Internationalization as a performative journey: a case of producer cooperatives

International Business has focused predominantly on multinational enterprises and neglected other types of economic actors, such as cooperatives, that play an important role in constituting global value chains. We argue that, considering their important contributions to the world’s economy, potential for promoting inclusive and sustainable growth, and contribution to addressing environmental sustainability challenges, cooperatives warrant IB scholars’ attention. In this paper, we focus on a neglected issue in the IB literature- the internationalization of cooperatives, in order to understand how they can manage their internationalization process successfully while maintaining their pro-social mission. To investigate this, we employed a longitudinal single qualitative case study approach to study the internationalization process of Zespri, a grower-owned producer cooperative and the world’s largest kiwifruit marketer with a presence in more than 50 countries. Using a performativity perspective, we show how performing internationalization involves a process of experimentation and contestation between diverse actors in the cooperative. Specifically, we conceptualise internationalization as a performative journey that is constituted by recursive cycles of theorizing, experimenting, contesting, and adjusting among organizational actors. We extend Trevino and Doh (2021) discourse-based view of internationalization by integrating insights from the performativity literature to emphasize not only the discursive but also the material aspects of performativity thus providing an in-depth understanding of the managerial activities and interactions that underpins the internationalization process