STRUCTURING STRATEGY: PRACTITIONERS, STRATEGIC AGENCY AND

TEMPORALITY

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the reflexive agency of strategists as it is produced through tensions

between their temporal orientations of the past, present and future. Through interviews with

senior strategists in large international firms, we set out a critical realist framing to illustrate

how temporality is not solely a question of sensemaking, but also has real structural

conditions as well as consequences such as those associated with occupational backgrounds

and organizational structures. The paper seeks to build on the strategy as practice literature by

developing an approach to understanding agency that can recognize both realist and

interpretivist traditions of time in the practices of strategists. In particular, we show how the

inter-relationships between the real and narrative times produce tensions which afford

strategists opportunities for action.

KEY WORDS

Agency, strategy, structure, occupational background, critical realism.

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INTRODUCTION

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) has become a central perspective in strategy research by attending

to actors’ daily activities and practices (Golsorkhi et al. 2010, Jarzabkowski et al. 2007).

Strategic agency is a core concept here and yet we still know little of how this plays out in

context (Mantere and Vaara 2008, Johnson et al. 2010). In particular, recent studies have

called for further analysis of the constraints on social practices in the context of broad

societal structures such as “technology regimes, forms of capitalism, institutions, gender

structures or dominant cultures” (Seidl and Whittington 2014: 2). Some work has engaged

with structural assemblages such as professions, organizations and cultures (Whittington et

al. 2011), but also, crucially, with how social structures intersect with agency through

reflexivity, agentic dispositions and agents’ ‘internal conversations’ (Delbridge and Edwards

2013, Herepath 2014). In this respect, the project of theorising the relationship between

agents and the structural forms which enable and constrain strategising is far from complete

(Herepath 2014, Jarzabkowski and Paul Spee 2009, Vaara and Whittington 2012).

At a high level, the processual and dynamic nature of strategy has been a constant, if

sometimes implicit, theme in theorizing strategy (Vesa and Franck 2013, Kaplan and

Orlikowski 2013, Herepath 2014). Concerning the past, the historically situated and path

dependent nature of strategy has informed both behavioral (Levinthal 1997) and resource

based studies (Barney 1991). Regarding the future, accurate forecasts have been a perennial

concern to studies of competitive advantage (Peteraf 1993), since strategy inherently

concerns reconfiguring the resources of the present to meet the requirements of what ‘should

be’ (Vesa and Franck 2013). As for the present, strategy practitioners’ positions within

organizations are frequently precarious and open, requiring their continuous work and

reflection (Hendry and Seidl 2003).

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 Whilst much of the literature alludes to the importance of these different temporal

dimensions of strategizing (Johnson et al., 2010), tensions arising at their intersection have

only recently come to the fore. In particular, Kaplan & Orlikwoski (2013) offer a

sensemaking perspective on temporality and strategy to demonstrate the consequences of

negotiated interpretations of the past, present and future in shaping the degree and direction

of change. We aim to complement such an approach by adopting a ‘tall ontology’ perspective

on structure, strategy and time. In particular, we interpret interviews with strategy

practitioners to explore how local strategizing activity may reflect tensions embedded within

‘larger’ social phenomena. To help answer these questions, we use Emirbayer and Mische’s

(1998: 963) definition of agency as a “temporally embedded process of social engagement”

(Emirbayer and Mische 1998: 962) whereby actors’ iterative, practical-evaluative and

projective agencies both engage with, and transform, agents’ relationships to structures.

Theoretically, we point to the tensions that exist between different temporal orientations as

offering actors opportunities for agency or choice. In pursuing this approach, we take up but

extend a research direction hinted at for the strategic management literature more than a

decade ago in this journal to use critical realism to augment interpretivist approaches to

strategy – a direction we suggest that remains unfulfilled (Mir and Watson 2000, Mir and

Watson 2001, Kwan and Tsang 2001; see also Kwan 1999).

We first examine the literature on time, agency and strategy, arguing that the powerful

insights offered by interpretivist analyses are not necessarily at odds with a sensitive, critical

realist analysis of an objective acknowledgement of time, or what we call ‘real time’. We

then review the contribution that Emirbayer and Mische’s framework has made in other fields

and examine its potential for strategy. After detailing our qualitative data collection and

abductive approach, we present our analysis, emphasising how inter-temporal tensions offer

opportunities for strategists to influence the (re)production of social structures in strategising.

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In other words, we explore the conditions and consequences of strategy work as a dynamic

process. Finally, we reflect upon the theoretical and empirical implications of our argument

for the wider strategy literature, and consider possibilities for future research.

AGENCY, STRUCTURE AND TIME IN STRATEGY

Given the importance of the future to strategic practice it is perhaps unsurprising that

temporality is held to be ‘the root form of strategy work’ (Vesa and Franck 2013: 24). As

strategic practice is inherently concerned with time, many studies have emphasized its

processual, dynamic and emergent aspects (Mintzberg 1978, Pettigrew 1987). In the strategy

as practice (SAP) literature especially, there has been a sensitivity to how strategy actors are

enabled and constrained by discursive and socio-material practices in the unfolding processes

of strategy-making (Mantere and Vaara 2008, Vaara and Whittington 2012, Chia and

MacKay 2007, Aggerholm et al. 2012).

Much of the theorizing of time in strategy has adopted an interpretivist or

sensemaking perspective (Weick 1979, Chia and MacKay 2007), which depicts temporality

as constructed from social interaction (Vesa and Franck 2013; Kaplan & Orlikowski 2013).

This contrasts with the ‘process school’ of strategy in which time is ostensibly depicted as

predictable, uniform, linear, divisible, continuous, sequential and discrete (Vesa and Franck

2013, Hernes et al. 2013, Lee and Liebenau 1999). The ‘post-processual’, interpretivist

conception of temporality has made important inroads into both critiquing the linear, and

often teleological, assumptions made in traditional strategy practices such as predictive

modelling or strategic planning, and also highlighting the micro-level interactions and

interpretations by which local conceptions of time are enabled (e.g. Lee and Liebenau 1999;

Bakken et al. 2013; Vesa and Franck 2013). Yet it also risks eschewing the importance of the

real, either ontologically or methodologically. This limits its potential to transcend divisions

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within strategy research, and to offer insights to strategy academics and practitioners

(Herepath 2014, Johnson et al. 2003).

One study which has acknowledged the limitation of this duality is Orlikowski and

Yates (2002). However, their solution is to use Giddens’ structuration theory to conflate the

two perspectives, suggesting that objective time is merely “an impression….(the) apparent

objectivity is in fact objectification, constituted by the actors who reify the temporal

structures they enact in recurrent social practice” (p.686). We suggest that rather than eliding

the differences between realist and interpretivist views on time, there is potentially more to be

gained from a theoretical position which can incorporate both without conflation and thereby

allow opportunities for understanding the temporal relations between structure, agency and

narrative. As Orlikowski and Yates (2002) acknowledge, any potential solution must start

with ontology, and it is to this which we now turn.

INCORPORATING A REALIST APPROACH TO STRATEGY AND TIME

What Seidl and Whittington (2014) refer to as tall ontologies is a potentially useful, but

underused, approach to strategy and holds the prospect of avoiding ‘micro-isolationism’. It

situates local praxis within a vertical hierarchy in which structures ‘higher up’ have the

possibility to enable or constrain actions ‘lower down’. One increasingly popular tall ontology

is critical realism (Bhaskar 1993, Bhaskar 1994) which distinguishes between the transitive

narratives which are used to describe the world and the intransitive underlying causal

mechanisms and which underpin social phenomena. Critical realism has proven increasingly

popular in organization studies, not only because it can incorporate and combine analyses of

discourse and social structure (Fairclough et al. 2004), but also because it distinguishes

between social structures and the reflexive agency which reproduces and changes them. In

this respect, it differs from other kinds of realism that are more dogmatic in claiming the link

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between raw data and reality (Kwan and Tsang 2001; Miller 2011). However, despite its

epistemological promise, few studies at the intersection of sensemaking and strategy practice

have considered either empirically or theoretically what value a critical realist approach can

add (Vaara and Whittington 2012, Herepath 2014, see also, Jarzabkowski and Paul Spee

2009, Jarzabkowski et al. 2007, Golsorkhi et al. 2010).

To address this question, we turn to Emirbayer and Mische (1998), who connect

agency and time by way of the ‘temporal orientations’ that agents adopt to mediate the

structuring of action. As agents “move within and among different unfolding contexts, they

switch between (or ‘recompose’) their temporal orientations - as constructed within and by

means of those contexts - and thus are capable of changing their relationship to structure” (p.

964). These temporal orientations of agency concern the past (‘iterational’), present

(‘practical-evaluative’) and future (‘projective’), and each is given emphasis in differing

structural contexts. For example, where social structures are taken for granted or

institutionalized, ‘iterational agency’ tends to reproduce them through strongly patterned

habits. Alternatively, in periods of uncertainty, this is disrupted as the agent often needs to

imagine alternative futures through a ‘projective’ element. Further, in emerging or

developing contexts, the agent makes “practical and normative judgments among alternative

trajectories of action” utilising the ‘practical-evaluative’ element of agency (Emirbayer &

Mische, 1998: 971). These agentic choices are often made in deliberation or interaction with

others, but also importantly, as Delbridge and Edwards (2013) have argued, through ‘internal

conversations’ that agents have with themselves. The ‘internal conversation’ or reflexivity,

leads agents to reflect on often multiple and conflicting structures and, in turn, consciously

shape their relationship towards them to ‘make a difference’ or ‘choose to do otherwise’.

Emirbayer and Mische’s conception of agency is useful, then, not only because it theorizes

interplay between structural conditions of possibility and a variegated agent, but also because

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it develops an account of intentionality which does not always concern itself with future

strategising.

The insights of Emirbayer and Mische are particularly useful for strategy research

given that the apparent paradox of embedded agency features prominently, challenging

scholars to account for change. However, as practice-based strategy studies have moved the

field progressively towards praxis as the ‘smallest unit’ of analysis (Orlikowski 2000), there

is a risk of ontological entanglement in the differentiation between structure, agency and the

reflexive thought (Reckwitz 2002). The attention to agency (Jarzabkowski 2008) therefore,

risks being seen solely in the context of collective sensemaking (Kaplan & Orlikowski,

2013), rather than acknowledging an individuals’ relationship to prior social structures, which

informs their reflexivity (Archer 2003). As Emirbayer and Mische make clear (p.981-983),

temporal orientations are not simple interpretations or constructions. They are an iteration

between the embodiment of past experiences (e.g. socialization, memory, habitus) and the

extant environment in which reflexive actors find themselves. They are also a product of the

personal projects and plans which both past experiences and present opportunities have

informed. One implication of this theorising, which has remained unexplored, is the potential

for these different orientations to come into conflict. For example, what happens when an

agent that has been socialized over time to prioritize stability, habituation and stasis, finds

themselves in a structural context which demands the opposite? Whittington’s (1992: 704)

insight that, “it is by active exploitation of the tensions between divergent structural

principles that managers gain their agency”, is we would argue, equally applicable to

temporal orientations. As Araujo and Easton (2012) argue “we need a better grasp of the

varied tensions between [real] chronological and [subjective] kairotic time in the way actors

structure and make sense of their actions” (p.317). We therefore frame our inquiry around

two research questions:

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 How does time or ‘temporality’ condition the agentic (re)production of social structures

during strategising?

 How are different temporal orientations held in tension, or otherwise, and what effects

does this have on opportunities for change?

To realize further the potential of Embirbayer and Mische’s (1998) work for strategy

scholars, we first explore how strategy practitioners experience agentic tensions, and how

these tensions relate to historical structures that emerge through a realist account of time.

From our data, we shall argue that social structures in the past and present, such as

professions and organizations, constrain and enable the agent in their production and

reproduction of narratives about the past, present and future. In addition to providing an

important theoretical contribution to the field of strategy, this offers the beginning of a

rapprochement between interpretivist and realist accounts of time. After detailing our

qualitative data collection and abductive approach, we present our findings which show how

the historical and extant structures enveloping the activity of chief strategy officers (CSOs)

interact with their agentic orientation and the narratives which they construct. In our

discussion, we develop a model illustrating the interrelatedness of agency, structures and

narratives over time and explore the theoretical and empirical implications of a more

inclusive framing of time for the strategy literature.

METHODS

In this study, we focused on “hearing the point of view” of strategists (Mantere 2008: 298) as

they wrestled, in different contexts, with tensions associated with their strategic agency. An

exploratory focus on their mundane, every-day realities shifted to a deeper interest in how

these were shaped and informed by temporal orientations and tensions between them. Neither

free from influence, nor entirely determined, respondents brought various struggles and

8
opportunities to bear on how they approached their strategy work. Adopting a critical realist

lens, we relied on interviewing to bring experiences to the surface, whilst guarding against

taking respondents’ accounts at face value through careful use of respondent triangulation

(Janesick 1988) as well as drawing on relevant corporate documents and internet sources

concerning company histories (Miller and Tsang 2011, Olsen 2004).

Research context and sources of data

Interviews were initially conducted with senior managers leading the internal strategy

functions within their organizations, who frequently identified as CSOs. Although the title of

Chief Strategy Officer is relatively new in the corporate lexicon, we were less focused on

their position in the corporate hierarchy (Mantere 2008) and more concerned with the “sea of

tensions” these practitioners experienced as they worked between top and frontline managers

to effect change (Angwin et al. 2009). To deepen our insight of the context and triangulate

our findings, we conducted additional interviews with external consultants familiar with the

strategists’ work and their organizations’ history, as well as some in situ observation.

CSOs are an emerging profession that work across multiple organizational structures

and boundaries, especially between board and senior management, and centre and periphery

(Breene et al. 2007). Thus, they provide a useful opportunity to explore the practical

difficulties of developing and implementing strategy (Paroutis and Heracleous 2013). As

strategists, they also typically engage in future projections related to investment decisions

(Menz and Scheef 2014) although, as we shall see, this was only a small part of the practice

of our particular sample. They are frequently located outside the main business unit

structures, placing them in a precarious position as they rely largely on persuasion and

patronage to effect change (what used to be termed “staff professionals”). Yet they also often

arrive at these roles with considerable experience from other organizations, in particular

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professional services firms such as management consultancies. For example, Breene et al.

(2007: 87) found, in the Unites States at least, that CSOs “are, in many ways, as diverse as

the titles they hold. They do not emerge from predictable backgrounds with easy to map

career paths or aspirations” (also, Menz et al. 2013). As we shall see, in our case, this

diversity accentuated the tensions which CSOs felt, as they contrasted their own backgrounds

with that of colleagues, the changing needs of the organization and their own uncertain

legitimacy (also Whittington et al. 2011: 534). In this respect, they tended to operate in a

context characterized by structural openness, which provided particular opportunities for

agency whilst simultaneously presenting constraints, or at least an ambiguity, that arose from

contradictions and tensions.

To access these practitioners, we approached 250 Global Fortune 1000 organizations,

relying on contact details provided by two professional service firms. An interview protocol

was developed to capture information on respondents and their organizations. This included

biographical information, such as age, prior occupational background and tenure. In addition,

we collected organization-level information, such as current reporting structure inside the

organization, size of the strategy team and formal responsibilities (Isabella 1990). Forty-eight

interviews were conducted with strategists by the first author over a 12 month period, and

eight follow up interviews were conducted with external consultants familiar with these

particular internal strategists and their work. Each interview lasted between 45-80 minutes,

and was conducted face-to-face where possible (n=34), and otherwise by phone (n=22). Due

to the sensitivities of the issues discussed, 38 interviews were recorded and transcribed, and

the remainder were recorded by hand by a second interviewer (Miller et al. 1997) and cross-

checked for completeness by both interviewers within 24 hours. This amounted to 372 pages

of transcription in total. Interviewees worked within numerous sectors including consumer

goods, energy, telecommunications, financial services, and industrial goods, which allowed

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us to achieve saturation in relation to the role. A summary of the data collected, including

respondents’ biographies and the strategists’ organizational contexts, is summarized in Table

1 below.

======== Insert Table 1 about here ========

Our research followed a critical realist approach (Smith and Elger 2014) in that it sought to

distinguish between relatively objective facts (such as interviewees’ backgrounds, age,

historical events in the organization, recruitment context and organizational structures) and

the narratives that interviewees constructed. The former were, wherever possible, checked

with other sources such as Linked-in, company literature, news items and, as noted earlier,

interviews with external consultants familiar with the context (Puranam et al. 2006). This

allowed us later to distinguish as much as possible between real events that occurred and

interviewees’ constructions or sensemaking. The interviews also explored interviewees’

personal attitudes and reflections on their social context. They comprised questions such as

“how do you approach strategizing in your organization?”, “what do you feel works well in

terms of strategy making, and what is challenging?” and “how does your background inform

your approach to strategizing?”. To further triangulate these data, some in-situ non-

participant observation was conducted such as attendance at formal team meetings and

informal interactions with employees.

Data analysis

We adopted an abductive approach to the data analysis, continuously iterating between the

data and theory in the extant literature (Wodak 2004, Dougherty 2002). Adopting a critical

realist lens, the aim of our methodological approach was to develop an understanding of how

the respondents’ experience of the past and present enabled and constrained their thinking,

but also how they constructed or made sense of these events (and the future) in relation with

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others. Our analysis therefore focused on eliciting a deeper appreciation of the tensions that

strategists experienced, whilst recognising that they were unable to “carry total awareness of

the entire set of structural conditions which prompt at action” (Pawson 2006: 302). Our

analysis progressed in three overlapping stages, which are summarized in Table 2 below.

======== Insert Table 2 about here ========

First, from an initial reading of the interviews, temporality appeared to be an important

theme. This was not just the usual strategic concern with corporate futures, but a recognition

that various aspects of the past and the present had real effects on strategy. Our concurrent

reading of the strategy, organization and time literature highlighted not only that Emirbayer

and Mische (1998) provided a useful framing for our findings, but also that extant strategy

theorising on time had tended to focus on interpretations and constructions of time. It had

largely ignored the actual historical contexts which appeared to be crucial in understanding

the struggles and options of strategists, especially in relation to their own professional

backgrounds and the organizational structures in which they worked.

We therefore organized the data in Nvivo according to these emergent themes - the

historical and extant structures of respondents and their functions. The past was coded in

terms of biographical and organizational details. Respectively, this included the CSOs’ prior

backgrounds as ex-financiers and ex-consultant strategists for example, and historical

organizational structures such as the location of the previous CSO in relation to the centre

(Menz and Scheef 2014). The present was coded in terms of action linked to current

organizational structures (e.g. the strategy function’s reporting relationship to the centre and

the strategic planning cycle) and strategic agendas that were being prioritized by the CEO at

the time. Finally, the future was coded as expectations of future action, such as commitments

12
to hiring and other human resource plans as well as intended resource allocations. We then

coded for orientations towards the past, present, and future form the interview data. Each of

the authors conducted this coding separately, with an intercoder agreement of k= 0.8 (Cohen

1960). Differences were resolved through discussion between each of the authors.

During the second stage, and reviewing the above coding, we noted that opportunities

for agency frequently followed instances where two codings for the present, past or future

were co-existent. Our observation was grounded in the fact that agents’ experience of

tensions provoked reflexivity as agents were forced to make choices or priorities in relation to

multiple temporalities (also Whittington 1992). Even the decision to do nothing was itself a

choice. Working in NVivo, we used language indicators to code these moments of tension

such as ‘yet’, ‘but’, ‘re-learn’, ‘tension’, ‘challenge’, ‘hard’, ‘push/pull’, ‘trying to figure

out’; but also applied our own interpretations, taking the wider context into account. This

yielded 38 instances of tension, which were then grouped around emergent themes and

compared with the temporalities, or the multiplicity of temporalities, identified in the first

phase. Initially the first author grouped the codes, but these were then examined and

discussed by all the authors through questioning and interrogation to enable further

triangulation (Mantere et al. 2012). This process identified tensions that actors reflected on at

the intersection of the past, present and future.

In the third stage of analysis, we returned to the data and examined how these tensions

created effects in terms of how the strategists chose to undertake their work: that is, exercised

their agency. Here, we drew on Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) elements of agency. We

regarded individuals’ accounts as an important source of information, but where possible,

checked statements with company data, third parties and Linked-in, as well as our own

understanding of the corporate context (Harre and Second 1972; Mantere 2008). This allowed

some distinction between narratives and facts which was most evident when narratives

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incorporated visions of the future (Kaplan and Orlikowski 2013). For example, based on our

knowledge of the organization’s context, the comment below about the future was interpreted

in relation to the respondent’s construction of their own past interactions with the CEO,

rather than being a generic comment about CSOs:

“For a new CEO coming on board, the CSO should focus on a fast and efficient on-
boarding of the CEO. Even a few weeks saved here reap great benefits in terms of
future decision making speeds and the CEO-connect with leadership team.” (Marian,
senior strategist in a multinational IT organization)

We used triangulation between these data sources to identify patterns across all respondents

in relation to inter-temporal tensions, and analysed how these provoked different approaches

towards the opportunities for, or constraints, on action. We shared our final results with

respondents, including each of the external consultants, and took their comments and

reactions into consideration. In Table 3 below, we summarize examples of our coding across

each of these three steps, which serve as supplementary data to the findings reported in the

next section.

======== Insert Table 3 about here ========

FINDINGS

The past, present and future appeared to weigh heavily on respondents. They guided their

choices in different ways regarding the degrees of manoeuvrability and inventiveness for

strategic possibilities and change. We now seek to show how the intersection of the past and

present created opportunities for reflexivity, which, in turn, allowed for strategic agency. At

each intersection, actors had a range of potential responses, sometimes viewing them as

opportunities to continue existing patterns of thought and action (iterational element),

sometimes imagining new possibilities (projective element), and other times forming

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normative and practical judgements in relation to alternative options (practical-evaluative

element). Thus, we found that time was not merely constructed through a series of ‘framing

experiments’ (Schön and Rein 1995, Bartel and Garud 2009) that informed narrative

coherence (Kaplan and Orlikowski 2013), but helped order individuals’ relationship to the

action itself. Because the past, present, and future were, to greater and lesser extents, latent

across our data, we structure our findings in relation to Embirbayer and Miche’s (1998) three

elements of agency.

Strategic agency and the practical-evaluative element

Strategists came to their posts with pasts which had an effect on how they approached their

present responsibilities, even if they were seemingly unaware of this influence. First, lengthy

past professional backgrounds shaped how strategists approached their present role, at least in

respect of the kinds of issues that provoked tensions for them. Second, respondents inherited

an organizational structure that located their role within an organizational hierarchy vis-a-vis

the CEO or the business units. As these histories came into contact with present

responsibilities, they caused strategists to reflect on tensions and contradictions, sometimes

using their deliberations to motivate radical change and other times seeking to conform, as

we illustrate below. This judgment in relation to alternative trajectories for present action

reflected practical-evaluative agency.

Nigel had been hired as the CSO of a bank after working for over a decade as the

bank’s external strategy consultant. In this former role, Nigel had approached strategizing in

a particular way, by conducting detailed independent analyses, projecting confidence to

audiences to garner influence and ensuring that his presentations always led to a specific

recommendation for action by bank executives. However, when he changed from being an

external consultant to being an internal strategist, his colleagues expected him to approach his

15
(present) strategizing differently. Specifically, he was expected to be more deliberative and

consultative in his decision-making, minimizing the influence of his previous background by

listening more and speaking less. Nigel reflected on the resultant tensions as follows:

“[Previously] what I tried to do was focus on content. I had a portfolio of activities

and I had to shut down some things and I tried to make a big impact. At [the bank], I
went and spoke to people [when I arrived]. The hardest thing to re-learn was that I
didn't have to speak. Previously, I was constantly looking for ways to add value. Here
now, I ... learn how to be quiet, listen to the senior execs so they open up.” (Nigel,
senior strategist in a regional retail bank)

On the one hand, Nigel’s context had not changed, at least in the sense that he continued to

work with the same colleagues on similar strategic issues and the organizational structure of

the bank remained largely unchanged. However, since his role in the organizational structure

had changed (present) in relation to his (past) background, he was forced to reflect on how he

could continue to influence strategizing within the bank. This surfaced as a choice between

continuing in line with his former practices, or adjusting to his new realities. In this instance,

he sought to fit into the landscape, thereby adjusting his strategizing to a mode that was more

accommodative of existing expectations rather than fight against it. As he commented in

relation to his response to tension:

“At some stage you need to influence others, but I needed to take [my] time. The risk
is that you end up becoming a floater. At [the bank], my objective for the first 60 days
was to ensure that it became natural for me to be there.” (Nigel, senior strategist in a
regional retail bank)

For Nigel, the tension between the past and present was experienced as a ‘re-learning’

tension, and spurred changes to how he approached his strategy work. Since the opinions of

his colleagues mattered, Nigel shifted his behaviour to conform with their expectations. In

this respect, the structural assemblage of his past profession (as a strategy consultant) did not

predetermine his reflexive response. Rather, it prefigured the incompatibility between his real

16
past and present, creating the opportunity for reflexivity that forced a choice on how to act.

The past therefore, not only had an effect in an interpretivist sense, as a construct for

sensemaking, but was consequential in a realist sense because it dictated what Nigel himself

found stressful and provocative.

As a contrast to Nigel’s case, David was appointed as the CSO of a rival bank in the

same country, but was recruited after a lengthy career in accounting (rather than strategy

consulting). However, David’s ‘internal conversation’ played out differently, leading to a

different choice by him to realize his agency. When David joined the bank, the board was

struggling to manage the strategy process since there was a lack of agreement about how to

discuss long-term projects. The board was largely advised by, and composed of, agents with

operational and financial accounting experience who had a detailed understanding of

domestic regulations and operations (the real present), but lacked backgrounds in strategy to

survey the whole-of-business. This was problematic since the bank had recently engaged in

acquisitions that had shifted its present operations from being located in a single national

jurisdiction to being located within fifteen countries in the region.

In David’s past as an accountant, he was accustomed to working with colleagues who

shared a common, professional expertise. As he encountered professional diversity within the

bank‘s senior ranks, David experienced frustration at his inability to convey numbers

succinctly to board members, leading them to ask for, in his view, irrelevant analyses. As he

reflected:

“The thing that gives us the most grief is agreeing how we will look at the business. Is
it by segment, division, geography? Including or excluding goodwill etcetera? The
Management Board wants to look at every conceivable cut of the business and this is
difficult for a multi-country business.” (David, senior strategist in a regional retail
bank)

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In response to this tension, David decided to hire new strategists into his team who had

strategy consulting rather than accounting backgrounds, and were therefore able to utilize

their prior skills. David’s reflexivity allowed him to recognize the limitations of his

background in relation to current structures, and led him to adopt a more pro-active approach

to change. As he noted in relation to his response to tension:

“[We] tried to get (the) Management Board to play a more pro-active role in agreeing
the longer-term target state for the business. This was a big step away from the “sum
of the parts” approach that had been in place before and was successful in getting the
board to change their thinking” (David, senior strategist in a regional retail bank)

Here then, David’s reflexivity led to a change in the strategic planning process. Instead of

conducting an approach that undertook bespoke analyses (“sum of the parts” approach”),

David adopted an one that created several planning targets over an extended timeline

(“agreeing the long-term target state”). Notwithstanding David’s discursive efforts to project

narrative coherence, he was provoked by the disconnection between his own real past and

present, which he experienced as frustration. However, unlike Nigel, David used this

frustration as a reason to change the organizational structure, rather than conform to it.

Strategic agency and the projective element

A future-oriented preoccupation of respondents was their hiring strategy for new staff and

consultants. Respondents did not approach this issue de novo, but instead moderated their

future plans based on assumptions inherited from their professional pasts. Robert, for

example, arrived to the role of CSO at a consumer goods company after a long career as a

strategy consultant. Although the function was initially populated with a small number of

employees who had been seconded out of business units, the CEO gave Robert greater

responsibility to hire a larger team. Robert reflected on his intentions in the following way:

“[Our hiring approach is] hodgepodge today, but I’m trying to get to a point where
everyone has consulting experience. The reason for that is that there are a lot of

18
 people in the company with domain expertise, but fewer people with the consulting
toolkit. Also, if you hire correctly, people from consulting firms will bring some
domain expertise themselves” (Robert, Senior strategist in a global consumer goods
company)

Robert described strategy consulting as a “tool kit”, since doing so construed his prior

background as a legitimate profession and, by extension, a structural context for his new

function. Robert also chose to interpret real differences between his own and others’

background as a positive attribute, by creating a strategy that replicated his own

organizationally scarce biography. This signalled projective agency in relation to hopes and

desires for the future.

However, the real past could also be construed negatively in relation to future

strategizing. Heather, the CSO of an industrials goods company, was also a former strategy

consultant who also joined a newly formed strategy function. Given this background, Heather

was familiar with the influence that external consultants could exert on the strategizing

process. This, in turn, influenced her procurement strategy for hiring external management

consultants in her new role, which was highly template-driven and limited to small,

incremental tasks. Heather expressed her attitude about external consultants as follows:

“We are willing to get external help when we need it but we never outsource the
thinking, or the accountability. Generally, we are satisfied with the support we get and
are experienced buyers of professional services. Negotiating a Master Services
Agreement with consultants helps a lot.” (Heather, Strategist in an multinational
industrial goods company)

Here she exercised agency by reflecting on past and future tensions as an opportunity to

embed divergence from her own past. In this respect, the narrative construction of the future

was complemented by aspects of the past that were real, in the sense of stemming from prior

experiences, rather than being only narrative accounts about the past.

19
 Besides professional backgrounds, organizational structures were a second type of

real past that shaped strategists’ constructions of the future. When Anna was hired as CSO at

a consumer goods company, it had never had a group strategy function. Internal strategists

had historically been located within the business units and assisted leaders and middle

managers there to implement strategic changes through divisional processes. When invited to

join the company, Anna initially tried to centralize these strategic activities by taking control

of data analysis and strategic planning. However, this caused resistance and tensions as

middle managers sought to exert their past authority in relation to these new, present

initiatives.

These inter-temporal tensions triggered Anna to adopt a novel understanding of her strategy

work. Whereas she could have conformed with past patterns (orientation to the past), or

continued to radically reform the organization (orientation to future), she instead sought a

pragmatic negotiation between these two positions. Anna made sense of her work as neither

assisting business units nor devising her own strategy, but as serving an integrative,

facilitating role across business units. As she reflected in her response to the tension:

"We don't impose ourselves on the business units. I used to feel it was my job to "do
strategy", but now realize that's not really required. What I need to worry about is how
the whole thing comes together. I don't 'call' a business for not having a decent
strategy but I do play a role in aligning across the business." (Anna, Strategist in a
large consumer goods business)

Here, the real organizational structures of the past and the projected future interactions with

business units created a contradiction, which Anna responded to reflexively by devising a

compromise that extricated herself from a situation that put her at odds with present

organizational structures. On the one hand, this sets out Anna’s strategy work as

sensemaking, as she skilfully crafted different narratives of her future. On the other hand,

Anna’s sensemaking was prefigured by real, apriori structural changes to the organization

20
including her own appointment to a newly created job. Without this change from past to

present structure, a different story may have emerged in relation to how strategy work is done

within her consumer goods company. However, by creating a new position and recruiting

Anna, the CEO had actively shaped the structural conditions for sensemaking and, in turn,

established the parameters for debate between the centre and the business units.

Strategic agency and iterational element of agency

Finally, in the case of the iterational element of agency, strategists selectively reactivated past

patterns. However, their accounts were, once again, rooted in their individual histories. Thus,

individuals with different histories were not only called on to make agentic choices in the

face of salient tensions, but they also emphasized different narrative constructions depending

on their unique pasts.

Pearl was a senior strategist within a global insurance company when the strategy

function was radically restructured by a new CEO. Not only were numerous strategists

retrenched, but the organization was reconfigured so that the strategy function now reported

to the Chief Financial Officer rather than the CEO. The history of this restructure intersected

with how extant resources were configured in the present. Pearl described the inter-temporal

tensions as follows:

“We used to be a big team of 20-30 people and devolved through the business units.
Now we’re down to 6 people. This is driven by the CEO’s preference for clarity and
execution. We’re moving to a holding company structure and reduced team. The team
spends their time almost exclusively on the holding company strategy. We used to be
a generalist skill set, program management skills. Now we have more financially
oriented people” (Pearl, strategist in a global insurance firm)

For Pearl, the changes to the present structure were not an emergent phenomena that elicited

choice, but rather something imposed from above beyond her will. This triggered reflexivity

whereby Pearl sought to selectively focus on certain aspects of the past – namely, previous

21
mistakes, excessive self-confidence and failure to listen - in order to orient her current

preoccupations. As she noted whilst reflecting on the transformation:

“The big thing is that we are part of the finance community now..... The big challenge
for us was not to screw things up and be ego free. We had to listen a lot.” (Pearl,
strategist in a global insurance firm)

This apparent case of failure, where an internal strategy function is radically reconfigured,

shows how the past can have a residual effect on what is selected in the present. At one level,

Pearl is constructing a narrative that links the past with a reformed present. However, this

narrative only takes root because Pearl herself experienced these historical changes and has

reflected on them as a source for her own renewed agency. An agent with a different

background may have drawn stability from selecting different, iterational elements. Harry, an

external strategy advisor to the company, did not for example, perceive stability in terms of

the link to the finance function, but rather the strength of relationship with the CEO. As he

noted:

"Success is around the level of engagement with the CEO. Does the CEO come to us
with questions? Are we pulled into things by the CEO?" (Harry, external consultant to
global insurance firm)

Although this difference is one of discursive construction, it is rooted in different historical

pasts, which inform the present. Thus, agents can seek to have a perceived beneficial effect

on the interests of their organizations by reflexively drawing on their own, real pasts which,

in turn, informs the kinds of narratives they construct.

DISCUSSION

In this paper, we have explored how tensions between temporal orientations afford strategists

opportunities for reflexive agency. Our starting point was to develop the growing interest

within SAP around how macro-phenomena inform strategizing (Jarzabkowski and Paul Spee

22
2009, Vaara and Whittington 2012). As with Kaplan and Orlikowski (2013), we drew upon

the seminal work of Emirbayer and Mische (1998) to differentiate past, present, and future

temporal orientations. However, following other recent studies of strategy (eg Herepath,

2014) and related calls in the strategic management literature (Miller 2011; Kwan & Watson

2001), we sensitized our analysis to a realist perspective to provide a grounding for our

research question: how does time condition the agentic (re)production of social structures

during strategizing? In order to explain how temporality has real effects, we developed a

second, explanatory research question: how can different temporal orientations be held in

tension, or otherwise, and what effects this has on opportunities for change? In addressing

these questions, we drew on interviews with strategists to understand how individuals’

experiences were intimately connected to time, agency and structural dynamics. Our findings

on the relationship between these dimensions is summarized in Figure 1 and outlined below.

======== Insert Figure 1 about here ========

Our analysis offers a structurally embedded account of strategy making. We view strategizing

as constituted through the interplay between structure and action as mediated through actors’

conscious wrestling and reflection on the constraints imposed by extant social structures. In

order to explain this interplay, we drew on a critical realist ontology to show how prior

biographical and organizational structures were consequential to the kinds of issues that

agents wrestled with in their local contexts. For example, Nigel and David both occupied

similar roles at rival banks in the same geography. However, they came to their roles with

different histories, which in turn shaped issues which they perceived as sources of tension.

Nigel experienced tensions between his prior background as a strategy consultant persuading

clients, and his new context as a corporate ‘insider’. The juxtaposition between these two

contexts triggered reflection, as he confronted a perceived demand to listen more and speak

23
less. By contrast, David’s prior context of working in a professionally homogenous

environment was radically different to his present context of professional heterogeneity. This

presented challenges, as he sought to exert influence through strategizing.

These instances of past and present structure are reflected in the Structural Domain

layer at the top of Figure 1. This structural domain - which for us concerned professional

biographies and organizational structures - conditions and is reproduced by agency. These

structures are real and their effects in the past are felt in the conditioning and socialization of

agents, and in the present, constrain and enable opportunities for agency. Yet, the impact of

real structures in the future is yet to be felt. This is not to suggest that there are not

imaginations, projections or narratives about the future, but that these may be significantly

different to what that future actually holds. Nevertheless, structuring shapes strategy through

reflexivity, as actors contemplate opportunities for strategic agency.

As depicted in the Relational Agency layer in the middle of Figure 1, agents are

embedded within multiple temporalities (Embirbayer and Mische 1998). Temporal

orientations act as an analytical link between agency and time, as agents predominantly

attend to (or orient in) one or other of these dimensions. We have shown how opportunities

for change are triggered by inconsistencies or tensions arising at the intersection between

temporal orientations. For example, Pearl made choices in relation to her present action by

reflecting on the challenges experienced during a past organizational restructure, which were

different to Harry who embodied a different professional history. Similarly, as Heather

projected into the future how she would engage with external consultants, she drew on her

own experiences from her prior occupation. Thus, the arrows between past, present, and

future in Figure 1 depict how tensions between temporal orientations constrain actors to make

choices or prioritize one temporality in relation to another. Agency is therefore conditioned,

though not determined, by the structural context of the past (Archer 2000). As we have seen,

24
depending on the interaction between past structural conditioning, the structural opportunities

of the present, and the reflexivity of the individual, this agency can be projective (with an

orientation to change), evaluative (with a focus on present coping), or iterational (continuing

the past).

Inter-related with these two strata, but crucially not reducible to either, are the

Narratives that strategists use to construct the past, present or future (the bottom layer in

Figure 1). Whilst these clearly have effects upon the present and future (Kaplan and

Orlikowski 2013), they cannot change the conditioning or socialization that happened in the

past. Moreover, a central insight from our findings suggests that the narratives of strategists

are a form of agency which reflect the temporal orientation of the individual concerned.

Agents construct narrative coherence inside organizations in relation to their own past, rather

than solely cohering with the organization’s past, thereby eliciting something ontologically

prior to the current action. The interdependence between these three layers is represented in

Figure 1 by two-way arrows that connect all three layers.

Implications for the treatment of the past, present and future in strategy

Time has long been a central concern in the strategic management literature and its interest in

how firms dynamically secure competitive advantage (Ghemawat 2001, Porter 2008).

However, extensions to this work that have attended to what strategists do (Whittington

2006) and how this is enabled and constrained (Mantere & Vaara 2008) have largely adopted

an interpretivist or sensemaking perspective that theorizes time as entirely constructed

through social interaction (Vesa and Franck 2013; Kaplan & Orlikwiski 2013). Thus, despite

calls to enlarge this research agenda with taller ontologies (Vaara and Whittington 2012,

Golsorkhi et al. 2010, Vaara et al. 2003), there have been relatively few studies that show

how an explicitly realist view of structure can inform our understanding of local strategizing.

25
 Our study suggests that strategy making is not only shaped by coherent narratives, but

also how these narratives interact with individuals’ own links to their structural histories and

presents. Thus, the actual (as opposed to constructed) past is consequential for how the

present and future unfold, shaping not only who participates in the collective sensemaking

process, but also how they participate and what issues they regard as material. This

complements, but also complicates the nature of work as ‘strange conversations’ (Pitsis et al.

2003, Weick 1979), since it suggests a less predictable path to the way strategy work

becomes constructed and accepted within organizations (Spee & Jarzabkowksi 2011).

Existing strategy studies already recognize that real time, in the form of time elapsed,

can influence the trajectory of sensemaking inside organizations (Mantere et al. 2012,

Sonenshein 2010). Yet these studies tend to focus on collective sensemaking in the same

organization, and therefore minimize attention to what individual managers may bring to

sensemaking by way of legacies from their past organizations. Whilst we know that discourse

matters to strategy participation (Vaara and Whittington 2012, Paroutis and Heracleous

2013), we have also shown that practitioners participate differently, based on how they

interpret cues in light of their pasts.

A second implication of adopting a critical realist take on time is that it enlarges the

role that history has on strategy making. Strategy research has tended to take a bifurcated

view of history, adopting either an objectivist or interpretivist perspective (Mir & Watson

2000). For example, early work on the path dependent nature of strategy and resource

configuration (Levinthal 1997, Nelson and Winter 2002) has been continued in more recent

research in the process tradition, that depicts time as ostensibly uniform, linear and

predictable (Vesa and Frank 2013: 24; see also, Hernes et al. 2013; Lee and Libenau 1999).

On the other hand, scholars in the SAP tradition have tended to use the process school as a

26
theoretical counterpoint, contrasting a variety of dualistic typologies of time such as, clock

vs. lived time, A vs. B, kairos vs. chronos, monochronicity vs. polychronicity, and diachronic

vs. synchronic time (Bakken et al. 2013). Thus, more recent attempts to enlarge the treatment

of time in SAP have done so only in so far as envisaging more elaborate, coherent, and

embodied narratives interlinking these orientations (Kaplan & Orlikowksi 2013; Stigliani and

Ravasi 2012).

Our findings offer a potential rapprochement between these two perspectives,

suggesting that real and interpreted time may not only be compatible, but are also closely

inter-related. Actors draw on their past, through their occupational backgrounds and

organizational structures, to produce and reproduce narratives about their past, present and

future. On the one hand, narratives stemming from these prior structures point to the

constraining or enabling influence of the actual past and present. On the other hand, as actors

change professions or join new organizations, the real past coexists with narratives created in

the present about the past, present, and future.

We should also note that adding a critical realist ontology emphasizes that the past,

present and future are very different in their effects. The past has effects on the present in a

qualitatively different way to the future, the latter of which may well be imagined, but is yet

to be actually experienced and thus make a difference. This is in contrast with interpretivist

framings which tend to emphasize the sameness, through construction, of all three temporal

aspects (Kaplan and Orlikowski 2013). This offers researchers a basis for a sensitive and

inclusive approach to temporality which does not conflate what happens with what is talked

about, whilst acknowledging that our knowledge of what occurs is mediated by our

epistemological framing.

27
Implications for strategic agency and tension

Our second contribution is to highlight the role of tensions between overlapping temporalities

as triggers for strategic agency. Strategy scholars, particularly in committing to a practice

turn, have moved progressively towards recognizing the socially constitutive nature of

strategy (Vaara & Whittington 2012). Yet a key consequence of this choice, and in

conceptualizing social structure and human agency through the lens of Giddens’ structuration

theory in particular, is that human actors are often conflated with context. This ‘mutually

constitutive’ link between structure and agency sheds light on the collective accomplishment

of strategizing, but tends to obfuscate the individual parts. By showing how tensions at the

intersection of temporal orientations present opportunities for reflexivity and agency, we

show the triggers that afford individual agents the opportunity to change their relationship to

structure, or otherwise.

Prior studies that have linked a realist take on reflexivity to strategy and practice have

highlighted the way that the temporal dimensions condition action (Hereapth 2014; Delbridge

& Edwards). Our findings build on these by showing how the conditions between structures

instigated reflexive choices for the individuals themselves. Tensions between structures arise

as time elapses, presenting opportunities for individuals to reflect on contradictions and, in

turn, prioritize one temporal orientation in relation to the others. These choices are not simply

constructions, but emerge from embodiments of the (real) past, which come into contact with

the extant environment. At the same time, past structures do not determine their choices but

rather create the space for this consideration.

Existing studies have tended to locate the enablers and constraints of strategic agency

within a dialogical view, which depict the multi-vocal nature of strategy conversations. This

multi-vocality is already contemplated in a collective, social environment across multiple

hierarchical levels (Mantere 2008), parts of the organization (Regnér 2003), and with external

28
observers to the action (Lüscher and Lewis, 2008). We draw attention to the multi-vocality

practitioners have with themselves through their ‘internal conversations’. These are prompted

as actors interpret cues from their present environment in juxtaposition with the past,

rendering agency. Reviewing prior literature in this light may account for the time lag

associated with sensemaking: actors’ internal conversations may be postponed for several

years when environmental cues remain subverted or unperceived (Dutton & Dutterich 1992),

but may be prompted by exposure to materials that stimulate memory (Stigliani & Ravasi

2013).

We therefore make explicit a hitherto implicit understanding of strategic agency at the

intersection of practice, praxis and practitioners (Whittington 2006). Traditionally, this

methodological bracketing has obfuscated the ‘structural pliability’ hinted at by Giddens

(1979: 75) since it has treated praxis and practitioner as co-constitutive. However, by

highlighting the prior histories of practitioners, we shed light on how professional

backgrounds at least shape strategy practice and, by extension, open up possibilities for the

practice agenda to connect with other structural phenomena which operate above the busy

interactions of praxis and narrative.

LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION

This paper has sought to identify opportunities to enrich an interpretivist perspective on time

in strategizing through the adoption of a taller ontology. However, we acknowledge a number

of limitations with our efforts, which deserve attention in future studies. First, a critical realist

view on strategy could clearly be enhanced by extending our focus on professional

biographies and organizational structures into ethnographic studies of everyday praxis. We

suggest that this might be achieved through access to in-depth longitudinal data in which

larger, macro-societal structures and tensions are in play. We see potential for future studies

29
therefore, to examine how multiple agents bring their individual histories to bear within a

single strategic issue and amongst multiple actors over time. This may provide new insights

into when and how individual histories play different roles at different points in, for example,

the strategic change process.

Second, we would encourage researchers to consider additional structural influences

beyond the ones we have considered, such as the role of educational background, as well as

broader structures such as cultures, political structures, gender, ethnicity, class and power

relations. One methodological approach to examining this might be to develop quasi-

experimental designs that allow researchers to examine the effect of different structural

contexts on action (Malsch et al. 2011). This might enhance generalization of our own

findings, by testing relationships between biographical backgrounds and praxis. More

generally, we see critical realism as a fruitful lens to moderate debates between more naïve

realist (or positivist) approaches to strategy and interpretivist approaches, by showing the

effect of real structures on strategy practice and processes, especially as these effects are

realized over time.

In addition, we hope to have contributed to the strategy literature at an empirical level,

although we acknowledge that more is needed to substantiate our findings. For example, we

have begun to shed some light on the influence of consultancy firms on strategy praxis and

practices. This is ‘under-investigated’ in general, but especially in the indirect form we have

seen, through the employment of former consultants into in-house strategy positions, even

though this is not uncommon (Sturdy and Wright 2008). More is needed to understand how

these associations carry through into the everyday praxis of doing strategy, including the use

of particular strategy tools or discursive and visual practices from consultancies and

elsewhere (Paroutis et al. 2015).

30
 Finally, we have also complemented studies of the emergence and transformation of

the strategy profession more generally, by showing how other occupations help inform

strategizing (Whittington et al. 2011). While others have pointed to the diversity of

occupational backgrounds among practitioners (Menz and Scheef 2014), few have explored

the consequences of such diversity in terms of the skills and knowledge these practitioners

bring to bear. The ability to orchestrate diverse human and capital resources, including

organizational structures, designs and personnel may be a source of long-term competitive

advantage (Barney 1986, Teece et al. 1997) or, perhaps, paralysis. Taking the practitioner as

the unit of analysis, future research may examine how the different types of reflexivity shape

practices and praxis. This may be of particular interest as another way of closing the loop

between higher level structures and activities on the ground.

31
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Table 1: Data collected, including biographical and organizational histories

Data corpus     Respondent biographies Organizational structure for

internal strategists
Interviews Documentary In situ Professional Age Context for Reporting structure
data observations background appointment
-Internal -PowerPoint: 24 -15 formal -Finance background: -Age 30-40: 10 -New job - CEO centred: 29
strategists: 48 decks team meetings 18 created: 13
-Age 40-50: 26 - BU or other centred:
-External -Photos, -28 informal -Strategy Consulting -Replace 19
strategy diagrams, or meetings or background: 24 -Age 50-60: 20 existing job:
consultants: 8 sketches: 12 conversations 35
-Other (e.g.
-News and Engineering): 6
archival
searches: 220 - External strategy
news items consultants (current):
collected 8

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Table 2: Data analysis: types of data and stages of analytical process
Stage
1. Identify accounts of
past, present and future in
each interview
2. Identify inter-temporal
tensions
3. Incorporate agency
accounts and relate to
literature to build a
theoretical model
Type of data Analytical action Output
1. Interviews 1. Review data to get an overall sense of - 3 types of time categories (past,
2. Biographical and important themes present, future)
historical data from 2. Organize data in Nvivo based on categories of - 98 instances of temporal orientation
protocol real past and present
3. Code respondent orientations towards past,
present, and future from interview data
4. Check coding reliability with other researchers
1. Interviews 1. Cluster codes based on two or more temporal - 38 instances of tension
2. Documentary orientations
data 2. Return to raw data to confirm link to real
3. In situ organizational events
observation 3. Discuss coding between authors
1. Interviews 1. Identify agency accounts stemming from - Three types of agency (practical-
2. Documentary tension evaluative, projective, iterational)
data 2. Cross-check agency accounts with - Theoretical model of relationship
3. In situ documentary data and in situ observation between structure, agency, and
observation 3. Share themes and results with respondents for narrative
4. Member checking comment
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Table 3: Data supporting interpretations at each analytical stage

Dimension Representative quotes

Temporal orientation
  Past Strategist interprets their hiring needs through lens of their past professional background as a strategy
consultant: “We have two gaps in the organization, both significant. The first is the core consulting craft
skills—problem solving, structured communication. The team is remarkably weak at that.” (Senior strategist,
global media company)
Strategist interprets their hiring needs through lens of their past professional background as a strategy
consultant: “The capability gap is around problem framing. We can find plenty of smart, financial services
knowledgeable people, but not the ability to manage ambiguity. We need a good mix of both skills” (Senior
strategist, international retail bank)
  Present Strategist frames strategizing activities as constantly under negotiation: “We write a plan not a PowerPoint.
Our strategizing is based on ongoing engagement with the business units which is not fixed in stone. In terms
of elapsed time, throughout the year there is ongoing debate" (Senior strategist, global investment bank)
Strategist describes their hiring strategy as constantly precarious: “The quality of the people we get coming
through the strategy office depends on the job they get afterwards. That is a key part of the value proposition.
We need strong alumni to point to. The new CSO pushed hard on this. He made it easy to leave, provided
great references and played a facilitating role. The result has been more movement between the business unit
and the line” (Senior strategist, international retail bank)

  Future Strategists describes their role in terms of uncertainties in the future: "The Strategy Department is in charge of
every new project falling outside the boxes of the traditional organization" (Strategist, global energy
company)
Strategists perceive their role in terms of future horizon scanning: “[My] position is a look-out post in charge
of capturing weak signals of changes" (Strategist, global telecommunications business)
Tension between temporal orientations

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  Past/ Present Strategist reflects on present legitimacy based on past accomplishment in first 100 days: “The first 100 days
are make or break, especially in terms of getting the right traction with leadership colleagues. I have seen that
the CEO forms his impressions in the first 100 days and rarely changes that later on.” (Senior strategist,
multinational IT organization)
  Strategist situates their present work in relation to past power structures in the organization: “The previous
CSO was from finance, and treated the role as more about monitoring KPIs and financials rather than helping
to drive [the company] forward. I was brought in to create a more strategic view and help build the next leg
and ensure future group growth.” (Strategist, consumer goods conglomerate)
  Strategists situates current approach to strategizing with past approach: “The Chairman has a strong belief in
Argenti process: that is, start at the bottom and then it bubbles up. A good framework for a conglomerate, but
doesn't work for us because we have so many shared assets.... [The problem is that] the CEO and CFO are
involved too late, creating too many overlays and sandbagging. Now what we do is that the strategy teams
pulls out the key frames for senior executives and strategy days are their pitch for the next job.” (Senior
strategist, international retail bank)
  Present/ Strategist perceives effectiveness of future work in terms of present perceptions: "Coordination is genuinely
Future hard to do but it’s only possible where there are real personal relationships, built on trust. It’s very important
to be “apolitical”, not the “evil agent” of the CEO”. (Strategist, consumer goods conglomerate)
Accounts of strategic agency
  Practical- Strategist perceives alternative trajectories for strategizing, and makes a selection: “A key point I made was the
evaluative difference between a BU CSO and a group CSO. I see my role as less about managing a strategy process …
but more about identifying and building the next leg or legs of the whole group. Hence my role is naturally
both strategy and business development. I have been asked to get the new leg going”. (Strategist, consumer
goods conglomerate)
  Strategist makes a choice in relation to everyday focus: “I see business unit [strategists] as being much more
focused on the strategic planning and business planning processes of current business. So it’s incremental and
business model innovation, but all about improving the existing businesses. [On the other hand, as group
CSO,] I spend a lot of time looking outwards and forwards, rather than on the current business.” (Senior
strategist, global telecommunications business)

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  Projective Strategists projects intentions for change in the future: "Internally, we are looking for capable people that for
some reason have hit a road-block in their career. Mostly, we can find these people who know the business
and can get things done. What we don’t have internally is analytical grunt but we can easily source that
externally. The main challenge is execution and it’s very hard in our industry to find experienced people.
(Strategist, multinational industrial goods company)
  Given lack of success in the last, a strategist speculates on an alternative approach: “The best way to
coordinate the work between different departments is to clearly define the role of each department; the
functions should work independently and only rarely work together”. (Senior strategist, global energy
company)
  Iterational Strategist describes strategizing based on reactivating past patterns. “Our culture is more focussed on the
finances. Strategy runs the 3 year planning process and provides challenge to financial performance to make
sure questions are asked. We also run a three year discussion with the Board." (Strategist, global insurance
firm)

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Figure 1: Model of the relationship between structure, strategic agency, and narratives over time

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