STRATEGY PRACTICES – WHAT THEY ARE (NOT)

REFLECTIONS ON THE STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE RESEARCH AGENDA

Christoph Hellmann, M.A.

Chair for Strategic Management
European Business School, Germany
Schloss Reichartshausen am Rhein
65375 Oestrich-Winkel
Phone: + 49-211-1577199
E-Mail: c.hellmann@ish.de

Dipl.-Kfm. Andreas Rasche

Department of Organization and Logistics
Helmut Schmidt University, University of the Federal Armed Forces
Holstenhofweg 85
22043 Hamburg, Germany
Phone: + 49-40-6541 2973
Fax: + 49-40-6541-3767
E-Mail: arasche@hsu-hh.de

This paper represents work-in-progress. Please do not cite without permission.

Christoph Hellmann is currently writing his PhD thesis on Strategy-as-Practice at the Chair for
Strategic Management at EUROPEAN BUSINESS SCHOOL, Germany. Furthermore, he also works
as a management consultant for different companies in Germany. Academically, he focuses on the
philosophy of science, general sociological theory and their application to issues of strategic
management.

Andreas Rasche is currently working at the Chair for Business Administration at the Helmut Schmidt
University, Hamburg, Germany and is finishing his PhD in strategic management at EUROPEAN
BUSINESS SCHOOL, Germany where he is also teaching business ethics. His research interests
include the institutionalization of ethics initiatives in multinational corporations, reflections about the
theory of strategic management, as well as the relation between the sociology of practice to strategy
and ethics.
Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

STRATEGY PRACTICES – WHAT THEY ARE (NOT)

REFLECTIONS ON THE STRATEGY-AS-PRACTICE RESEARCH AGENDA

This paper provides an overview of definitions of the term ‘social practice’ and its

relation to the Strategy-as-Practice research community. Based on the work of

Bourdieu, Giddens, Latour, and de Certeau, we outline and discuss a variety of

notions of the concept of ‘social practice’ to show differences and commonalities. We

relate these insights to the literature on Strategy-as-Practice to illustrate that a

theoretical discussion of the term ‘strategy practice’ can uncover issues that have

remained unexplored so far. We thereby identify opportunities for future research by

highlighting those aspects of strategy practices that have not attracted much

attention within our community. In fact, we propose to (a) differentiate stronger

between strategic activity and strategy-as-practice, (b) to put a stronger focus on the

role of objects (e.g., computers) within strategy practices, (c) to not neglect the fact

that strategy practices account for both, stability and change, (d) to explore the way

strategists share, discuss, and develop strategy practices in so-called communities of

strategy formation and (e) to start a debate about what constitutes an appropriate

unit of analysis that acts as a ground for empirical investigations.

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

Introduction – Context and Motivation

Referring to last year’s discussions at EGOS and BAM, we feel that the Strategy-as-
Practice field suffers from the absence of a more detailed discussion of the term
‘practice’. From our perspective, this is unfortunate since the field loses focus and
attracts scholarly work, which – although interesting and relevant to strategy research
in general – sometimes is not overly concerned with researching strategy as a social
practice. We believe that the underdeveloped focus on strategy practices is partly
due to an insufficient reflection on the term ‘practice’ and its sociological
interpretation. Thus, the objective of this paper is to highlight different approaches
within the sociological discourse relating to ‘practices’ and to highlight possible
implications in order to stimulate future discussions. We do not suggest that
everybody needs to follow one definition of ‘practice’ and neither do we claim that the
notion of practice discussed by us is the ‘right’ one. Even contrary, we feel that a
diversity of perspectives is valuable because it stimulates discussions and hence
theory-development. Nonetheless, we (a) need to reflect on the focus (viz. practice)
of our field to distinguish practice-based reasoning from other forms of studying
strategy and (b) need to be able to realize the different understandings scholars
attach to the term ‘practice’ to better appreciate their contributions.

To discuss and reflect upon the use of the term ‘practice’ within our community, we
have structured the paper in three parts. In the first part of the paper, we offer general
definitions of the terms ‘practice’, ‘activity’ and ‘praxis’ and show how they are
interrelated. Because these distinctions help us to define what a practice is (and what
it is not), we then introduce a general definition of the term ‘practice’. This definition
acts as an anchor for our discussions throughout this paper. Although this fairly
general definition unites different theoretical notions, sociological scholars also
highlight quite different parts of this definition within their work. To carve out these
differing views, we provide a sociological robust discussion of the concept of practice
as used in theories that perceive practices as the locus of the social. By drawing on
the work of Bourdieu, Giddens, Latour, and de Certeau we stress how different
practice approaches treat aspects of practices (e.g., the role of objects or ‘the agent’)
quite differently.

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The second part of the paper discusses implications of these different theoretical
views for the Strategy-as-Practice community. The different theories allow us to
identify so far underappreciated aspects of strategy practices. In particular, we
highlight five issues: First, a theoretical discussion of ‘practice theories’ demonstrates
that there needs to be a stronger distinction between strategic activity and strategy
practices. Second, following Latour (2005), we emphasize that the practice turn also
incorporates a ‘turn to things’ (Preda, 1999) stressing the importance of materiality.
We will argue that discussing Strategy-as-Practice necessarily involves considering
the role of artifacts. Third, based on works of Latour (1986) and Giddens (1979), we
emphasize that strategy practices account for both, stability and change and discuss
some practical implications of this insights. Fourth, we highlight the need to research
the way strategists share and develop strategy practices. We propose to integrate the
notion of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave/Wenger 1991, Brown/Duguid 1991) arriving
at what we would call ‘communities of strategy formation’. Finally, the fifth issue
discusses whether we already possess an adequate unit of analysis that can guide
empirical investigations.

The third part of the paper discusses how we deal with the variety of understandings
regarding the term ‘strategy practices’. As already indicated, this paper focuses on
theories of practice that are just one possible alternative for conducting research
within the Strategy-as-Practice field. We discuss how we should deal with a diversity
of opinions and argue for the adoption of Gallison’s (1999, 1997) idea of ‘trading
zones’ between scholars with different perspectives. We feel that to understand our
community as a ‘trading zone’, in which scholars from diverse backgrounds that apply
different methodological approaches and possess distinct metatheoretical
assumptions collaborate, can foster creativity and cross-fertilization.

In sum, the in-depth discussion of the nature of practices in general and strategy
practices in particular can help our community (a) to stay focused, (b) to better
differentiate itself from traditional strategy research, and (c) to identify opportunities
for conceptual and empirical research. Again, we want to stress that we are not
arguing to ‘close’ the field to incorporate a narrow set of theories, but to take our
initial concern – to explore strategy as a social practice – more seriously.

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

Social Practices – What’s in a Name?

Following Kuhn (1996), research fields benefit from giving paradigmatic reference to
certain theories and authors that provide model solutions and model problems.
Although there is always danger that these paradigmatic references become a
‘normal science straightjacket’ (Bettis 1991), they also provide order, enable the
evaluation of research results, and allow for communication within a research
community (Burrell/Morgan 1979). So where should we look for paradigmatic
references when we research Strategy-as-Practice?

We propose to look for references in the realm of so-called ‘practice theories’. Even
though, Reckwitz (2002: 244) and Rouse (2001: 190) note that it remains largely
unclear why the label ‘practice theory’ is justified to embrace a diverse set of authors,
a variety of scholars have at least used the label ‘practice’ within their theorizing. If
practices are important to strategic management, we should not hesitate to look at
different authors and their perspectives on practices. To understand the various
contributions of authors who have highlighted the concept of social practices, there is
need to introduce some terminology. In the following, we discuss and define the
terms ‘activity’, ‘praxis’, and ‘practice’.

A Framework to Distinguish and Understand Activity, Praxis and Practice

Schatzki’s almost ‘classical’ proposition that practices are a “[…] temporally unfolding
and spatially dispersed nexus of doing and sayings” (Schatzki, 1996: 89) that could
more specifically also be understood as “[…] arrays of human activity centrally
organized around shared practical understanding.” (Schatzki 2001: 2) locates
practices within the thematic domain of ‘what human beings are doing’. Describing
and explaining ‘what human beings are doing’ has overtime been grounded in
different theoretical approaches emphasizing different aspects (e.g. free will, norms,
objective structures, communication) and has coined different terms (e.g. activity,
action, behavior). To provide an uncomplicated point of entry to this matter, we would
propose that ‘what human beings are doing’ is at the outset nothing more than a
perceivable change of state (e.g. a bodily movement, a speech act but also thinking
as a measurable change of the brain’s electric state) to an outside observer. This
perceivable change of state might be labeled activity. The whole of all human

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activities is commonly termed praxis. So as long as we stick to describing praxis in

the sense of disconnected, punctual activities, we limit ourselves to a description of
bodily movements. However, as Schatzki’s proposition suggests, praxis does not
only consist of punctual, disconnected activities; individual activities are condensed
through repetition into regular patterns that are not only individually but also
collectively routinized. These ‘regular patterns of activities’ are what is usually called
a practice (Hörning, 2001). In this sense, practice theory helps us to understand how
seemingly disconnected activities form practices but draws on a ‘specialized mode of
explication’ being different from that useful to theorize activities.

To fully grasp the difference between ‘activity and ‘practice’ and their modes of
explication, we need to take a closer look at the relation between both terms. A good
point of departure to approach this discussion are Cranach’s (1980) three
perspectives from which praxis – and thus also activity and practice – could be
investigated:

• a manifest perspective relating to bodily movements and artifacts,

• a subjective perspective relating to mental contents (e.g. know-how and know-

that knowledge, preferences, values, internalized norms) of the one carrying
out a bodily movement and

• an objective perspective relating to culturally shared contents (e.g. culturally

shared explicit and implicit knowledge) allowing to attribute meaning to an
observed bodily movement.

If we try to relate these dimensions to our understanding of an activity and to that of a

practice, it can be seen that theorizing activities needs to make solely use of the
manifest perspective as activities are punctual in time and space. As soon as we start
theorizing patterns within the manifest perspective, we need a different set of
vocabulary when aiming at a description and explanation for the occurrence and
inner coherence of those patterned activities. Again, historically, there have been
different approaches towards this end emphasizing either the objective or subjective
perspective respectively. In our view, the peculiarity of the practice approach is now
that the three perspectives are coalesced and utilized simultaneously in order to
theorize those patterns. Figure one and two depict the difference:

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

objective objective

Activity Practice

manifest manifest
Praxis Praxis

subjective subjective

time time

Fig. 1 – Theorizing activities by relating Fig. 2 – Theorizing practices by relating

to the manifest perspective to the manifest, objective and
subjective perspective and their relation

In Figure 1, describing and explaining a punctual activity within praxis refers only to
the manifest perspective answering the question ‘what is visible’, e.g. how did the
actor move her body or what artifacts did she use. In Figure 2 however, a series of
activities is seen as a coherent one labeled ‘practice’. Now, we employ
simultaneously elements of the objective perspective (e.g. social structure), the
subjective perspective (e.g. individual preferences) and their interaction (e.g how
does social structure influence individual preferences) to describe and explain the
coherence of activities describable in manifest terms. Thereby, the focus of the
analysis is extended to include not only the question ‘what is visible’ but also ‘why did
it became visible’ and ‘why is it visible across several actors scattered across time
and space’, i.e. ‘why is what human beings are doing patterned and why do we
recognize it as such’. Of course, Figure 2 lends itself for different and perhaps far-
fetched interpretations; the only point we would like to take forward is that a
description of practices involves an explicit attunement to all three perspectives.

Taken together the three perspectives and their relationship allow for a conceptual
framing of a practice definition. A practice may be understood as a

“[…] routinized type of behaviour which consists of several

elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities,
forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background
knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of
emotion and motivational knowledge.” (Reckwitz, 2002: 249)

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

In this definition of practice, “forms of bodily activities” and “‘things’ and their use” are
part of the manifest perspective whereas “mental activities”, “understanding, know-
how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” can all be located within the
subjective perspective. The objective perspective gets relevant when assuming that
the instantiation of these elements is not only individually but also collectively
routinized. Despite this seemingly trivial conceptualization of ‘a practice’, it can be the
point of departure for a more in-depth discussion (Schatzki, 1996, 2001; Reckwitz
2002; Hörning 2001). As indicated in the introductory section, scholars that define
‘social practices’ usually put a focus on specific aspects that refer to the list of issues
highlighted in Reckwitz’ definition. In what follows, we discuss four different scholars
(i.e. Bourdieu, Giddens, de Certeau, Latour) and demonstrate how these scholars
have highlighted issues that are listed in Reckwitz’ definition of a ‘practice.’

Bourdieu – Practices as the Result of Embodied Structures

Bourdieu offers an account on how the elements in Reckwitz’ definition may be

intertwined or, stated otherwise, how the three perspectives we identified earlier may
be linked. For Bourdieu, the subjective perspective is characterized by the ‘habitus’, a
system of incorporated dispositions structuring schemes of perceiving, thinking and
acting available to the actor while operating beyond her consciousness and thus
beyond her deliberate control (Bourdieu, 1979: 169; 1992: 100, 144;
Bourdieu/Wacquant, 1996: 154). These dispositions and schemes are built qua
socialization (Bourdieu, 1985: 69; Bourdieu/Wacquant, 1996: 173). Thus, the habitus
is an ‘opus operatum’, i.e. a structure being structured, as it gets determined by those
objective structures surrounding the actor and makes it appear as if the actor
followed explicit rules or a rational calculus (Bourdieu, 1979: 165, 2001: 176).

However, as a system of dispositions the habitus also demarcates the insuperable

scope of an actor’s activities: One the one hand, the habitus might be interpreted as
practical knowledge allowing the actor to attribute meaning to a given situation, on
the other, it provides her with schemes of applicable activities. This does not mean
that the habitus determines activities in a mechanistic fashion as the habitus itself is
evolving and the characteristics of the situation in which it is applied may vary.
Nevertheless, looking at the habitus as the primary influence on activities and praxis,
the habitus functions as a ‘modus operandi’, i.e. a structure revealing a structuring
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effect as the habitus leads to a praxis that is both the result of and the basis for
objective structures. Hence, the objective and the subjective perspective are
inextricably linked: The subjective perspective ‘applies’ practices as routine forms of
thinking and acting representing and recreating the fabric of objective structures.
Theorizing practices thus needs to start at the manifest side as they can not be
‘directly’ accessed and calls for a historical reconstruction of the structures that
structured the habitus.

Giddens – Practices as Regularized Types of Acts

Giddens (1976: 75) defines practices in their most general sense as “regularized
types of acts.” For Giddens (1979: 56) social practices are important because they
represent a mode of connection between action theory and structural analysis.
Although Giddens remains notably silent regarding the nature of ‘social practices’, he
emphasizes their institutionalized nature; practices exist as the regularized activity of
agents that bring about relations of interdependence between individuals and groups
(Giddens 1979: 66). In this sense, a social practice is a routinized type of behavior of
individuals and/or groups. Similar to the definition given by Reckwitz, Giddens (1979:
56-57) assumes that agents have a certain background knowledge (practical
consciousness) in the form of an understanding of the world. This knowledge remains
tacit – and thus cannot be discursively formulated –, yet is constantly applied in the
enactment of practices. The fact that practices are enacted points to their situated
nature (Giddens 1979: 56). In fact, social practices always exist as a specific
contextualized phenomenon in time-space. Practices are constantly enacted in the
courses of conduct of agents and do not exist ‘beyond’ time-space in an objective
manner (see also Feldman/Pentland 2003).

Giddens’s conception of practices highlights two aspects that are quite important to
Strategy-as-Practice scholars. First, practices are routinized, stable, and
institutionalized features of social systems that persist across time and space. Actors
draw upon these institutionalized features in their conduct. Second, practices are
always situated. Although there is a routinized part to them, actors also change and
adapt practices within their course of action. Practices are reproduced and thus
constantly enacted according to the situation at hand. Giddens (1979: 54) says it
precisely: “All social practices are situated activities […]” (emphasis in the original)
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

For Giddens (1979), this contextualization of practices is inevitable since he draws

his analysis upon Derrida’s (2002, 1995) notion of différance. The concept of
différance proposes that meaning – and thus the meaning of practices – is never
‘given’ but relentlessly remerges in space and time.

De Certeau – The Variability Inherent in Practice

For de Certeau (1994: 474) an everyday practice is the “investigation of ways in

which users operate” or, in a more general sense, “’ways of operating’ or doing
things” (1984: xi). According to his argumentation, an investigation of practices is
necessary to somehow articulate everyday life and not obscure the background of
social activity any longer. Similar to Giddens, de Certeau does not put much
emphasize on the subject, that is the author of a practice, but concentrates on how
schemata of action (that, of course, are authored by subjects) are used (1984: xi).
This is reflected in Reckwitz’ (2002: 249) definition of practices, because he suggests
that practices partly consist of mental activities that are put into use by actors.

Accordingly, he sees practices as a way of thinking that is invested in a way of acting,

both of which cannot be dissociated from an art of using (1984: xv). For de Certeau,
this ‘art of using’ is different from the everyday notion of ‘consumption’ as it exhibits a
creativity that consumers apply in an unforeseeable fashion to achieve their own
ends within the social space that confronts them with forces beyond their immediate
control (1988: 21). This art of creative usage is then equated to the well-known notion
of tactics as opposed to the one of strategies. It is important to note that the inherent
creativity of these tactics is not the result of an ‘intellectual synthesis’ but in fact flows
from a kind of practical intelligence, i.e. metis (1988: 25). Thus, de Certeau stresses
variability and heterogeneity as characteristic features of practices which opposes
him to Bourdieu: According to de Certeau, the singularity of practices would lead to
failure of the social science’s scientific apparatus not being able to capture and
generalize their diversity (1988: 127). In his view, Bourdieu’s attempt to make
practice solely dependent on the generation and reproduction of the habitus speaks
of this failure as Bourdieu’s attempt to theorize practice leads to a ‘dogmatism’ in
which, boldly speaking, practices as something received do not exhibit any form of
motion (1988: 123-129). De Certeau’s conception requires scholars to engage in a

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‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) of practices that are not meaningful per se but gain
meaning only in the process of application.

Latour – The Turn Towards Things

Latour (2001) suggests that a complicated human society can not solely be build
around mere human face-to-face interaction as this would require a constant
monitoring of all interactions by all members of the society at all times. As this is
obviously not the case, Latour claims that attempting to explain the relatively
orderliness of societies necessitates the introduction of socialized non-humans into
the argument; any interaction extending in time and space has been shared with
something non-human (Latour, 2001: 248). Consequently, as non-humans are able
to participate and influence activities and social practices, any definition of these
terms needs to express a methodological symmetry between humans and non-
humans. This reflects the part of Reckwitz’ (2002: 249) definition that suggests that
social practices consist of “‘things’ and their use”.

This has three implications: First, “any thing that does modify a state of affairs by
making a difference is an actor.” (Latour, 2005: 71) requiring to extend “the word
actor – or actant – to non-humans, non-individual entities“ (Latour, 1996: 369,
emphasis in the original) and to speak of interobjectivity instead of intersubjectivity
(Latour, 2001). Second, activity and practices are not limited to an individual entity
but are the result of actants relating to each other in a network-like fashion (Latour
1998: 40). Third, Latour’s postulated methodological symmetry between humans and
non-humans in the enactment of practices requires focusing on skills and implicit
knowledge incorporated in humans and non-humans alike. Accordingly, practices are
constituted by the complimentary and reciprocal set of knowledge and skills inherent
in actants. This also means that practices from Latour’s point of view are necessarily
bound to a given context and hence open to variation (Preda, 2000: 285).

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Theorizing ‘Practice’ – Implications for Strategy-as-Practice

The heterogeneity of theoretical approaches within the practice domain should not be
understood as a cacophony threatening the field’s validity and internal coherence but
as an opportunity to reveal implications for Strategy-as-Practice oriented research.
Our remarks on the different conceptualizations of the term practice demonstrate that
a monism regarding the definition of ‘practice’ is unachievable. Of course, there is a
certain – yet fairly general – common ground as Reckwitz’ (2002) definition shows.
To show that the diverse theory perspectives offer important insights to the Strategy-
as-Practice community, we relate the issues that were discussed in the preceding
section to research on strategy practices.

Strategic Activity or Strategy-as-Practice?

When reflecting on the differences between activity, praxis, and practice, we would
like to highlight the difference between strategic activity (reference to acivity) and
Strategy-as-Practice (reference to social practices). This distinction, of course, makes
less sense from an actor’s perspective: The pressure to act is always given. For the
observer however, this labeling does make a difference as it signals the mode of
explication that is used. Choosing ‘activity’ as a label increases the amount of
phenomena that may be described and analyzed empirically as all practices consist
of activities, yet not all activities are necessarily part of practices. From the
perspective of a researcher, it is not reasonable to assume that all activities are
equally important. Thus, it makes sense to focus on patterns within the ongoing
stream of activities (viz. ‘practices’). The distinction between strategic activity and
strategy practices is important when defining the object of inquiry for empirical
investigations.

Related to this discussion is also another debate – i.e. the one regarding whether
one is analyzing something as ‘strategic’ (e.g. strategic practice) vis-à-vis ‘strategy-
as…’ (e.g. strategy-as-practice). Assuming that one chooses ‘practice’ as the object
of inquiry, labeling this ‘practice’ as strategic requires substantiating the
‘strategicness’ as opposed to let’s say an ‘accountingness’. The following example
will elucidate this point: Given that one analyzes an away-day, under the auspices of
‘strategic’ one would now be forced to give reason why this away-day qualifies for

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being labeled specifically ‘strategic’ where in fact, not all away-days are probably
strategic in nature. Using ‘strategy as…’ does not imply that the ‘practice’ (or
whatever follows after the ‘as…’) under scrutiny is exclusively strategic. Although this
difference is admittedly minor and elaborating this point may be perceived as
quibbling we feel that one would loose degrees of freedom when using ‘strategic’ as
opposed to ‘strategy as…’.

The Turn Towards Things – Latour’s Legacy

The general definition of a social practice by Reckwitz given in the preceding section
highlights an aspect that is often neglected by the Strategy-as-Practice community:
the role of objects. Reckwitz (2003: 250) identifies social practices also according to
their ability to handle objects. From our perspective, the Strategy-as-Practice
research agenda can profit from a stronger focus on the role of objects within
strategy practices.

Authors that are traditionally associated with ‘practice theory’ (i.e. Giddens, Bourdieu,
de Certeau), do not particularly stress the role of objects. We owe much of the
emphasis on objects to Bruno Latour’s (2005) notion of Actor Network Theory. Latour
highlights that human and non-human actors should be analyzed by means of the
same vocabulary as there is no ‘outside’ to the web of relations between ‘actants’
(Latour, 1996: 372). This means, that scholars should study in which way human and
non-human ‘actants’ co-create strategy practices. For instance, the strategy practice
‘resource allocation’ – that can be a repeated pattern of activity (Jarzabkowski, 2003)
– includes not only strategists but also computers (to prepare presentations),
telephones (to communicate), and books (that contain examples, formula or
standards) among others. This does not only mean considering practices as effects
of processes of heterogeneous interaction among actants. Furthermore, scholars
need to research the effects of a removal of certain actors. Strategy practices change
over time and it is interesting to see how a removal of actors leads to a rearticulation
of the practice.

However, as Wieser (2004) remarks practices do not necessarily need to be

understood solely as the result of a co-creation between actants but may also be
seen as the result of human actors utilizing artifacts in an active fashion. Being

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grounded in reading Hörning (2001), this view suggests that only the active process
of using artifacts actualizes the artifacts’ ability to act and their meaning within a
certain context. Furthermore, as the active process of using is only possible to be
accomplished by human actors it follows that there is in fact an ontological
asymmetry between human and non-human actors in the creation of practices. This
ontological asymmetry does also lead to a slight shift in the analysis of practices,
which should now reflect how human actors are stimulated, i.e. impeded and
reassured, in their active enactment of practices mediated and not co-created by
artifacts. Thus, the actors’ implicit knowledge and its heterogeneous application is
pronounced from a methodological point of view (Wieser, 2004: 99). Of course, one
might also come to this conclusion by a reading of de Certeau.

Strategy Practices – Ostensive and Performative Aspects

Especially the discussion of Giddens’s and de Certeau’s treatment of the term ‘social
practice’ demonstrates that strategy practices are nothing given. Yet, all too often
Strategy-as-Practice scholars are solely concerned with uncovering practices as a
source for stability in organizations. The call for research often includes identifying
practices and uncovering how they are used (Whittington 2004). The emphasis
seems to be on the stability of practices, whereas the need to study the ways
practices change and provide stability falls off the agenda. We believe that there is
need to extend the definition of strategy practices to embody a new ontology. When
understanding practices as institutionalized features of social life, there is growing
empirical evidence that practices are repetitive and account for change, but are not
fixed and static (Feldman/Pentland, 2003: 100). A conceptualization of strategy as
practice needs to give reference to both, change and stability (Jarzabkowski 2004).

Latour’s (1986: 272) language best expresses how stability and change are related in
strategy practices by distinguishing between an ostensive and performative definition
of the social link. Ostensive aspects refer to those properties of practices that exist in
principle and thus account for stability, while performative aspects reflect scholars’
inability to come up with a perfect list of what practices are in principle because they
are fully defined in actu. We propose to conceptualize strategy practices as
consisting of ostensive and performative aspects. Latour’s distinction is valuable
since the performative dimension underscores that practices – when understood as a
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pattern of activity – are fully defined with regard to their performance in praxis only.
By contrast, the ostensive aspect of practices allows us to explore what a practice is.
Ostensive aspects, as Feldman/Pentland (2003: 101) remark, are often codified as
standard operating procedures or exist as taken-for-granted norms.

What are the consequences of the ostensive/performative distinction? First, scholars

have to be aware that research on practices is based on a paradox. One the one
hand, every practice has endless variations because every performance of the
practice in praxis is different. On the other hand, every practice can be identified
(e.g., as a codified statement), recognized, and summarized by practitioners (see for
example Aaltonen, 2003). Second, the distinction between ostensive and
performative aspects informs future research. Scholars interested in studying the way
ostensive aspects influence the performative dimension of practices ask in which way
practices act as a template for behavior. How do strategists use existing notions of
practices as ready-made justifications for their actions? When studying how
ostensive aspects influence performative ones, scholars are primarily concerned with
the ways strategists are guided by and refer to the ‘visible’ aspects of practices (i.e.
their codifications). By contrast, scholars exploring how performative aspects
influence ostensive ones study how strategy practices are enacted as well as
modified and in which way modifications are recognized and incorporated as
ostensive. Those researchers should also address how and whether the ostensive
aspects of strategy practices are maintained over time.

‘Communities of Strategy Formation’ – Reflecting on and Sharing Practices

If strategy practices are nothing we can fully discover in an ‘objective’ way because
their nature is constantly redefined in the course of application, there is need to know
more about the way strategists develop their practices in praxis. How do strategists
reflect on their practices? From our perspective, this question has not yet gained
much attention in the community, since most of the time we are focused on
identifying practices or the ‘loci’ where they are conducted yet neglect that strategists
also gather to develop and improve currently existing practices. Practices are not
merely conducted but also discussed and developed. To address this problem, we
propose to integrate the notion of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave/Wenger, 1991: 98).

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

Communities of practice represent ‘loci’ where practices are shared, elaborated,

advanced, and eventually modified.

According to Wenger (2004: 1) communities of practice are the social fabric of

knowledge. Here, we focus on knowledge about strategy. Communities are groups of
people who share a passion for a practice and who interact regularly to learn how to
do it better; they refer to informal social structures whose members are bound to
what they do together “from engaging in lunchtime discussions to solving difficult
problems – and by what they have learned in these activities.” (Peltonen/Lämsä,
2004: 253) The informal character underscores the self-organized nature of
communities of practice. Although communities can be ‘cultivated’ (Wenger et al.,
2002) and supported in their work, their informal character makes us think of a world
that is messy and constantly evolving, where professionals’ work can be
characterized as situated learning. Communities of practice are composed of people
who interact on a regular basis around a common set of issues, interests, or needs.
Participation in these communities is about sharing experience, pooling resources,
representing interests, and building relationships.

To gain a better understanding of communities of practice, we look at its constituting

elements. Wenger (2004: 3-4) and Wenger et al. (2002: 27-40) identify three
structural elements of a community of practice: domain, practice, and community.
The domain creates a common ground and identity for a community. When
discussing communities of practice with regard to strategy, this domain is, of course,
strategy. In strategy, and in most other generic fields (e.g., innovation management),
the domain is likely to be clustered. Accordingly, there is not ‘the one’ community that
is concerned with strategy making, but a variety of communities addressing different
strategy practices. The domain guides the questions practitioners ask while being in
the community. The term practice denotes “a set of socially defined ways of doing
things in a specific domain” (Wenger et al., 2002: 38) and thus overlaps with the
notion of strategy practice discussed so far. The practice that is shared by members
of a community refers to patterns of behavior necessary for doing strategy (e.g., with
regard to a strategic concept) reflected by the stories, cases, and documents that
practitioners possess. The last structural element, community, reflects the need for
members to interact regularly on issues important to their domain. A community, as
Wenger et al. (2002: 34) remark, is not just a website or a database. It is a group of
people who interact, learn, build relationships, and develop their knowledge about the
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

domain in general and the practice in particular. Interaction does not necessarily
means face-to-face conversations, although according to Wenger et al. (2002: 34)
direct conversations are necessary to sustain the community over time, but can also
be based on teleconferences or regular document sharing.

The interpretation of domain, practice, and community with regard to the work of
strategizing demonstrates that communities of strategy formation represent loci
where strategists reflect, advance, and learn about their practice – however not
necessarily ‘conduct’ this practice. In other words, whereas the practice is usually
performed in the everyday praxis of the strategist, a community enables practitioners
to share experiences and extend their ideas about this practice. Take the example of
a strategy concept, say the Balanced Scorecard, that represents a shared practice.
While most practitioners, who are either directly or indirectly concerned with the
practice ‘Balanced Scorecard’, do their work regarding implementation of the concept
in their department, a community is the place that allows these people to share
experience, learn from each other, eventually modify the concept, fill it with new
meaning, and try to forget about outdated interpretations. Communities ‘host’
discussions about practices, give them shape, and continually recreate their
belonging knowledge. Communities, as Peltonen/Lämsä (2004: 255) remark, retain
knowledge in living ways and understand learning as a task of improvising around
practices in praxis.

The Unit of Analysis – ‘Strategy Practices-in-Use’?

To research strategy as a social practice it is of importance to find an adequate unit

of analysis. For empirical observations to come about Strategy-as-Practice scholars
need to know what they define as their unit of analysis. Jarzabkowski (2004: 544)
notes that an adequate unit of analysis has to span multiple levels of context (i.e.
macro context referring to institutional forces, micro-context referring to within-firm
investigation, and actor cognition) and has to illuminate stable (ostensive) and non-
stable (performative) aspects. She frames practices-in-use as an adequate unit of
analysis that reflects these characteristics. Generally speaking, we welcome her
suggestion to apply practices-in-use as a unit of analysis. Referring to our discussion
above, practices-in-use refer much to de Certeau’s (1984) understanding of a social
practice and link activity (i.e. the events or work of strategy) and the explicit parts of
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

practices (i.e. their institutional ‘traces’). Yet, from our perspective, to study strategy
practices solely as practices-in-use overemphasizes the role of conduct. To explain
this issue, we look at Giddens’s (1984) distinction between ‘institutional analysis’ and
an ‘analysis of strategic conduct’.

Giddens (1984: 288) distinguishes between two types of research possible within
structuration theory, ‘institutional analysis’ and ‘analysis of strategic conduct’. In
institutional analysis, he suggests to concentrate on the reproduction of structural
properties in social systems. Considering that for Giddens (1984: 377) structural
properties are institutionalized features of social systems that stretch across time and
space, institutional analysis is about investigating institutions as frequently
reproduced structured features of social life. The analysis of strategic conduct
focuses on the modes in which actors draw upon structural properties and is thus
concerned with “the contextually situated activities of definite groups of actors.”
(Giddens 1984: 288) An analysis of strategic conduct concentrates upon how actors
reflexively monitor what they do and how they draw upon institutionalized features in
the constitution of interaction. The distinction of both forms of analysis reflects
Giddens’s perspective that practices are routinized forms of activity yet always
situated (and thus enacted) in time-space (see discussion in section two). Although
structuration theory assumes that there is no clear-cut line between these levels of
analysis as both refer to the duality of structure, Giddens’s distinction helps to clarify
some issues regarding an appropriate unit of analysis.

When researching strategy practices as routinized forms of behavior one looks at

institutionalized features of social systems. That is why Giddens (1979: 65) regards
the practices that are constitutive of social systems as institutions. This is not to say
that institutional analysis investigates how people make sense of these practices, but
that it treats practices as institutionalized aspects of social systems. By contrast, an
analysis of strategic conduct explores the modes in which strategists draw upon
these practices. So, talking about an analysis of strategic conduct implies to explore
how people make sense, apply, modify, extend, and eventually replace strategy
practices, while institutional analysis is concerned with identifying, describing and
explaining practices themselves. For Giddens, the main difference concerns the
treatment of institutionalized properties. Whereas institutional analysis problematizes
the very existence of institutions and asks whether they exist at all, the analysis of
strategic conduct treats institutionalized properties as methodologically ‘given’ by
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

emphasizing the role of actors’ discursive and practical consciousness in making

sense of institutions. To treat institutions as methodologically ‘given’ does not imply
that they are not reproduced through human agency. It is to focus analysis on the
role of definite groups of actors that draw upon these institutions. In Jarzabkowski’s
(2004) terminology, an analysis of strategic conduct refers to practices-in-use while
institutional analysis refers to the more ‘explicit’ parts of practices (2004: 545).

Based on these remarks we like to add to Jarzabkowski’s (2004) suggestion to study

strategy practices-in-use that one cannot plainly separate ‘strategy practices’ from
‘strategy practices-in-use’; this distinction is merely of analytical nature. Giddens
(1984: 288) also remarks that his distinction is just a difference of emphasis. One
cannot clearly distinguish both kinds of analysis as an investigation of practices per
se is hardly possible without looking at the modes of use of these practices. Scholars
may find it difficult to separate practices as institutionalized aspects of social systems
from the way people enact them. Empirically, one can hardly observe the time-space
presence of practices inseparable from their instantiations in the modes in which
actors draw upon them. This is not to say that a researcher cannot concentrate
her/his analysis on either part of the analysis (see also our remarks on the ‘ostensive’
and ‘performative’ dimension of practices below), but that to define the unit of
analysis as ‘practices-in-use’ may overemphasize the role of agency.

Strategy-as-Practice and the Philosophy of Science

“The problem with SAP [Strategy-
as-Practice] is that there is no
consensus on the definition of our
operational terms.”

Taken from the Strategy-as-

Practice Online Discussion Forum

Our discussion of a ‘practice-theoretical’ conception of strategy practices brings

about the question whether we need an agreed upon definition of terms. As
discussed throughout this paper, (a) there are varying definitions of the term ‘social
practice’ within practice theory itself and (b) there are also other theories that can be
used to conceptualize ‘social practices’. Theories of practice are just one possible
way to approach the Strategy-as-Practice research agenda. Systems theory
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

(Hendry/Seidl, 2003), discourse theory (Mantere/Vaara, 2004), deconstruction

(Rasche, 2005), and sensemaking approaches (Stensaker/Falkenberg/Gronhaug,
2003) have been used to frame strategy as a practice. Then, do we need one agreed
upon set of definitions? Our answer to this question is ambiguous: ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
Yes, we need an agreed upon definition of terms. But also, no, not everybody needs
to understand these terms in the same way. This points to a tension: we need to
collaborate despite conflicting interpretations of key terms; scholars need to maintain
their distinctness but also have to coordinate their work. Can we achieve cooperation
and coordination despite differing assumptions regarding one of our key terms (i.e.
‘strategy practice’)?

Galison (1999, 1997) observes that advocates of distinctive schools of thought are
able to cooperate when they develop a trading zone. Trading zones are spaces that
scientists create to facilitate cooperation around specific problems. For Galison
(1997: 46), such zones coordinate ‘locally’ even where broader meanings (e.g., about
interpretations of key terms) clash. In the local context of a research problem, despite
differences in classifying this problem and/or having different standards of assessing
the nature of the problem, groups of scientists can work in partnership. As Gallison
(1997: 803) writes:

“I intend the term ‘trading zone’ to be taken seriously, as a

social, material, and intellectual mortar binding together the
disunified traditions of experimenting, theorizing, and instrument
building.”

The global understanding each side has of the term ‘strategy practice’ may be
different (and may stay different). Yet, this does not prohibit the coordination of efforts
with regard to specific local research problems. In other words, although there are a
variety of notions of ‘strategy practices’ (within theories of practice and also with
regard to other theories), there still is the possibility to coordinate scholarly inquiry
regarding certain research problems that occur on the Strategy-as-Practice research
agenda.

To achieve this coordination between varying global understandings of key terms and
common research problems researchers agree on an interlanguage (Galison, 1997:
49-51, 835). Interlanguages connect the differing ‘global’ understandings that
scholars have about certain terms (e.g., strategy practices) with common ‘local’
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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

research problems (e.g., research on strategy meetings). Scholars recognize the

term ‘strategy practice’ as intermediate between them within the context of a
particular research problem, yet have different understandings of this term.
Nevertheless, the fact that they share a passion for strategy practices enables them
to coordinate their work regarding the research problem. In this sense, ‘strategy
practices’ are an umbrella-concept that remains deliberately underspecified but
because it is underspecified links scholars. Interlanguages enable collaboration:

“’Collaboration’ is a term helpful insofar as it indicates different

individuals or groups aiming at certain shared goals, but we can
and have gone further toward a specification of how the
coordination takes place. Indeed, far from melting into a
homogenous entity, the different groups often maintain their
distinctness […].” (Galison, 1997: 805-806)

The common interlanguage helps to coordinate research efforts and to assign

specific tasks to scholars whose theory perspectives can explain dissimilar issues of
the local research problem. So, from our perspective, we need a general set of terms
(e.g., strategy practices, strategy praxis, strategy practitioners) to have a common
identity and a rough shared understanding of phenomena, yet we do not need to
agree on a specific definition of these terms. These terms gain meaning with regard
to ‘local’ research problems only, when specific requirements become more obvious
(Weaver/Gioa, 1994).

Conclusions
To conclude, our reflections on the Strategy-as-Practice research agenda
demonstrate that there are still unanswered questions regarding the methodological
and conceptual status of the field. Without doubt, one could raise various other
issues here. Pye (2005), for instance, argues that the field has not yet considered the
rich linkages between the practices of organizing and strategizing. Our main
message is that an unquestioned answer regarding how we define our key terms can
be more dangerous than unanswered questions on the level of the unit of analysis
(i.e. strategy practices); if not in the short, then at least in the long run.

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

We believe that our community needs to work more on its underlying terminology. To
enhance understanding between Strategy-as-Practice scholars, we need more
discussions of our key terms. We suspect that such discussions will help us to
identify research problems that are unique to our community and distinguish us from
other ongoing research within the broader field of strategic management. The most
dangerous thing, from our perspective, would be to ‘rush into’ a premature
convergence of key assumptions and methodologies. Dafter/Buenger (1990) and
others have rightly remarked that the rituals of ‘normal science’ have ensnared
‘mainstream’ strategy research. Following Chia (2004), we believe that Strategy-as-
Practice provides a much-needed forum to debate those beliefs and assumptions
that often remain unquestioned within the currently predominant institutional and
resource-based traditions.

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Hellmann, Rasche Strategy Practices – What They Are (Not)

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