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3 - Making strategy: meta-theoretical insights from Heideggerian phenomenology

from Part I - Ontological and Epistemological Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2015

By
Haridimos Tsoukas
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Haridimos Tsoukas
Affiliation:
University of Cyprus
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
Grenoble School of Management
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Svenska Handelshögskolan, Helsinki
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Summary

My purpose in this chapter is to lay out an onto-epistemological framework for strategy as practice by drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology. The need for such a framework comes from the recent proliferation of strategy-as-practice studies and the concomitant advancement of relevant knowledge claims, which do not necessarily share the same understanding of ‘strategy’ or ‘practice’. Bringing clarity to what strategy as practice can achieve, how it relates to similar perspectives and how it can be further advanced will help dissolve ambiguities, spot contradictions and integrate various theoretical lenses. Heideggerian phenomenology is highly relevant for such a task, as it foregrounds the notion of practice and the modes of human involvement in practice. Since strategy relates to intentionality and the use of tools and artefacts, especially language, how intentions and language are implicated in the making of strategy is of critical importance. By way of example, consider the following three vignettes.

  1. (1)The contrasting accounts of Honda's spectacular success in capturing two-thirds of the motorcycle industry in the United States, in the early 1960s, are well known. Pascale's (1984) account, drawn from interviews with the Honda executives who were in charge of the US project at the time, shows the largely improvisational nature of Honda's responses to unexpected problems and unfolding events on the ground, as the company made the effort to enter the US market. One of the Honda executives remarked: ‘In truth, we had no strategy other than the idea of seeing if we could sell something in the United States. It was a new frontier, a new challenge, and it fit the “success against all odds” culture that Mr Honda had cultivated’ (Pascale 1984: 54). By contrast, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study of the same phenomenon accounted for Honda's success in terms of microeconomic concepts, such as ‘low cost producer’ and ‘economies of scale’ (BCG 1975). While, for Pascale, Honda's success was accountable in terms of the unique processes through which the particular Honda executives experimented, adapted and learned, for the authors of the BCG report, Honda's success was an illustration of the microeconomic strategy model. Whereas both accounts point at patterns of action over time, they explain those patterns differently. Adaptationists highlight the absence of well-defined, elaborately articulated plans and intentions, whereas microeconomists allude to the advantages firms enjoy by pursuing the precepts of the strategy model.

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Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 58 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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