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Chapter 5 - Practical Relevance of Practice-Theoretical Research on Strategy

from Part I - Ontological and Epistemological Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2025

By
Violetta Splitter  and
David Seidl
Edited by
Damon Golsorkhi ,
Linda Rouleau ,
David Seidl  and
Eero Vaara
Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
emlyon Business School
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
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Summary

Violetta Splitter and David Seidl address the practical relevance of practice-based research on strategy. They review practice-based studies that have examined the ontological and epistemological conditions for producing strategy research that proves relevant to management practice. Drawing on these works, they argue that researchers inevitably adopt a scholastic point of view, which makes it impossible to directly capture the logic of strategy practice. However, strategy as practice scholars can increase the practical relevance of their research by developing theories based on practical logic. They have outlined three approaches to capture the logic of management practice: (1) theorizing through practical rationality; (2) the application of ‘participant objectivation’; and (3) the consideration of the dissociation process. They argue that if strategy as practice research builds on these insights, it can prove a particularly fruitful approach for generating knowledge that is of conceptual relevance to strategy practice.

Keywords

strategy as practicepractice approachpractical relevancepractical logic
Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 98 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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