This book travels a world of strategy practising through the aroma and taste of ‘Löfbergs coffee’, whose vast varieties and subtle nuances are reflections of good things in life. Once known as the Wine of Arabia, coffee has become one of the world’s most valuable trading commodities (Wild Reference Wild2004). Prompted by the psychoactive substance caffeine, coffee is associated with enhanced cognition and related clarity of expressions, a beverage enjoyed by people throughout the world. By using Löfbergs coffee as a hub from and around which a study of strategy practising radiates and flows, we also realize that ‘good’ is an ethical aspect, pronounced through the practising of morality as will and values.
At present, from the deictic here and now (Herman Reference Herman1995), will and values extend into a past and a future, promoting a temporal-relational understanding of moral human agency (Emirbayer and Mische Reference Emirbayer and Mische1998). In order to advance our understanding of strategy as practice we must direct attention to morality and examine how moral human agency unfolds in practising as a fluid and open-ended process (Tsoukas and Chia Reference Tsoukas and Chia2002) as it is constituted in activities with which practitioners entwine.
The aim of the book is to contribute an insightful and interesting supplement to existing strategy-as-practice research through offering a temporal-relational conceptualization of moral human agency in association with ‘good’ as will and values. The conceptualization develops via a rather detailed examination of the agency-focused parts of strategy-as-practice research, positioned in relation to business ethics research in integration with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder research, and via an excursion into moral-philosophical works before it is furnished with contours in an empirical-theoretical discussion of practitioners’ ongoing exercise of moral agency. Devoted to the pursuit of research that substantially integrates practising and morality in recognition of the practitioner’s existential entwinement with a world of Löfbergs coffee, the book intends to open up a new perspective of strategy practice. Like a piece of music worth listening to with sequences of sounds, interconnected melodies and themes, it triggers the development of new insights and experience.
Against a Dark Background
Against a dark background of unethical conduct in the business world an urgent need is to enhance our focus on morality in research on strategy as practice. As business schools have been held partly culpable for the financial crisis in 2008, there has been a considerable rise in demand for courses and programmes that prepare students for futures as leaders capable of creating sustainable value in business and for the social good (Chan, Fung and Yau Reference Chan, Fung and Yau2013). Yet, as Ghoshal (Reference Ghoshal2005: 75) asserts, business schools ‘do not need to create new courses; they need to simply stop teaching some old ones … Our theories and ideas have done much to strengthen the management practices that we are all now so loudly condemning.’ Prescriptions that flow from the Homo economicus models have socialized students into an ethics of limited accountability (Gintis and Khurana Reference Gintis, Khurana and Zak2008); ‘Economic Man’ is cold and calculating and does not worry much about morality (Stout Reference 147Stout and Zak2008).
In order to promote and inspire responsible management and education we need to encourage strategy-as-practice scholars to dedicate more interest to research on ethics in practising. Society’s trust in business has been eroded by actions that make people wonder whether business leaders have lost their moral compass and are motivated only out of self-interest (Nohria Reference Nohria2013). ‘Business can be pure hell, because it is relentless in the pursuit of its goals: goals that need to be aligned with those of the society to whom it is responsible and to whom it should have allegiance and to whom it should ultimately seek to be subservient’, remark Svensson and Wood (Reference Svensson and Wood2008: 306).
More than two decades ago, Lewis and Wärneryd (Reference Lewis and Wärneryd1994) gave plenty of examples of deceptive practices in branches of business and industry. Still today, whistleblowers reveal corruption, embezzlement and fraud, and, as a consequence, boards of directors, CEOs and other strategy practitioners are replaced. Corporate accounting scandals and related financial irregularities have received considerable media attention in recent years. Enron, World Com, Tyco International, Arthur Andersen and Skandia, for example, all claimed explicitly that they had a code of ethics and based their operations on ethical values but were not effective in communicating and living the code and the values (Svensson and Wood Reference Svensson and Wood2008). Willmott (Reference Willmott, Painter-Morland and ten Bos2011: 90) refers to the spectacular rise and fall of Enron: ‘Enron presented the appearance of a highly reputable company whose commitment to probity was broadcast by its values statement and detailed in its sixty-four-page code of ethics.’ But we need also to observe that there was a business system, comprising bankers, regulators, politicians, accountants, lawyers and capital market intermediaries that validated Enron’s business methods, as Willmott (Reference Willmott, Painter-Morland and ten Bos2011) points out.
Numerous other examples exist of businesses that officially ensure that they maintain high ethical standards but in actuality fail to do so. Media also report on family-owned businesses that engage in unethical conduct. Even if a family-owned business, as opposed to a non-family-owned business, is expected to be particularly concerned about ethics (Adams, Taschian and Shore Reference Adams, Taschian and Shore1996), ethical lapses occur. Ethical lapses in business conduct could result from an excessive focus on short-term results at the expense of long-term financial health (Nevins, Bearden and Money Reference Nevins, Bearden and Money2007).
Strategy-as-practice research must be carved out in the nexus of practising and ethics with a focus on moral human agency. By pulling back the firm-level curtains, in brighter light we can identify how morality is expressed and practised.
Ethical and Moral Reflection Required
Largely unaddressed in strategy-as-practice studies are questions of morality and moral human agency. Reviews of practice-based research elicit that doing strategy means actively participating in micro-strategizing activities and interactions in relation to macro-level structures (e.g. Golsorkhi et al. Reference Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015). Scholars view agency in relation to structure, defining agency as the human potentiality to participate in social systems or refuse to do so (Whittington Reference Whittington, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015).Without a concern for morality, human agency is consolidated in a single individual and elaborated through processes of sensemaking, discourse and materiality (Golsorkhi et al. Reference Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015).Generally, human agency is derived in an organizational context and ascribed to an individual practitioner whose actions are consequential for the organization’s direction and survival (Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl Reference Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl2007), seemingly ignorant of morality. As Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes (Reference Clegg, Kornberger and Rhodes2007) point out, we need to develop theoretical tools for ethical analyses of what people actually do when they engage with ethics at work. As does Bauman (Reference Bauman1993) they accentuate the practical aspect of ethics.
Ethical and moral reflection is required in practice-based strategy research, Balogun, Beech and Johnson (Reference Balogun, Beech, Johnson, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015) emphasize. We cannot ignore that ethical and moral issues run through every aspect of organizational and managerial work (Watson Reference Watson2006). The notions that people have an intrinsic propensity for acting on conceptions of morality and need to be affiliated with groups make room for Homo moralis, the moral human being (Skitka, Bauman and Mullen Reference Skitka, Bauman, Mullen, Hedgvedt and Clay-Werner2008). But we should not limit our focus to a single moral human agent since morality is expressed and effectuated in relation to the Other (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1992). As I have pointed out elsewhere (Ericson Reference Ericson2014), with reference to Cooper (Reference Cooper2005), we must not lose sense of a human world constituted of dynamic and mutable relations. This requires considering how agency in association with morality unfolds in strategy practising, exercised (lived) in relation to the Other, between practitioners. Practitioners are ‘always responding to and anticipating an “other”’ (Cunliffe Reference Cunliffe, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015: 442). Practitioners are beings-with-each-other (Raffnsøe, Møl Dalsgaard and Gudmand-Höyer Reference Raffnsøe, Gudmand-Höyer, Helin, Hernes, Hjorth and Holt2014). In the social dimension that emerges of people in relations to others (Plessner Lyons Reference Plessner Lyons1983), morality is not reduced to a discrete moment of individual choice of actions (Luco Reference Luco2014).
How to distinguish the meanings of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ has been debated. As Ricoeur (Reference Ricoeur2007: 45) admits, ‘Etymology is no help in this regard, inasmuch as one of the terms comes from Latin, the other from Greek, and both refer in one way or another to the domain of moral behavior.’ Ricoeur (Reference Ricoeur1992: 170, emphasis in original) reserves ethics for ‘the aim of an accomplished life and the term “morality” for the articulation of this aim.’ The term ‘ethical aim’ is translated from French la visée ethique and does not strictly mean ‘aim’, however; it refers to an intention that we are not necessarily aware of, emphasizes Franck (Reference Franck, Helin, Hernes, Hjorth and Holt2014). Ethics and morality concern how we relate to other human beings and not only what is right to do, Taylor (Reference Taylor1989) adds. This prompts, in the passage from the ethical aim to morality, a dialogic structure that incorporates otherness (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1992).
Otherness is also implied in sustainability, an important aspect of ethics and morality (Jennings Reference Jennings2010; Van Horn Reference Van Horn2015). It directs our attention to nature as an Other to which we relate. Sustainable practising has increased in importance to the survival, growth and profitability of a business, and to be sustained over time a business must take into account its ecological and societal impact. Sustainability encompasses values that range from the preservation of human health to the biosphere (Hirsch Hadorn et al. Reference Hirsch Hadorn, Bradley, Pohl, Rist and Wiesmann2006). Thus it is important to introduce a nature–Other with respect to coffee as a ‘component’ of the biosphere.
Historically, there has been little focus on the sustainability aspect in connection to coffee. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the spread of coffee cultivation was largely the result of the expansion of European trade and colonialism with slaves playing an important part in the establishment of plantation economies and coffee companies. As Wild (Reference Wild2004: 121) notes: ‘The white masters ruled the roost. The pattern was initiated by the Spanish, followed by the Portuguese in Brazil in the late sixteenth century, and later by the British and French in the West Indies, and perfected in the American colonies.’ With recent proliferation of sustainability labels such as Fairtrade, Shade Grown, Bird Friendly and Organic coffee, the focus has shifted towards the coffee farmers and their living and farming conditions. In Sweden, sustainability-labelled coffee is strongly associated with Löfbergs. With reference to Löfbergs coffee we gain insights into how moral agency unfolds through a range of activities with which practitioners entwine.
‘Löfbergs coffee’ is a term used in association with the brand ‘Löfbergs Lila’ (Löfbergs Purple), but is not limited to the brand. It dissolves into a variety of strategy-oriented activities – from bean to cup. ‘Löfberg’ is also the name of a family who owns a group of companies, the Löfbergs Group,Footnote 1 envisioned as ‘the most sustainable coffee group in Europe that with passion, strong brands and the best tasting coffee delivers increased value for our customers and owners’ (Annual Report 2014/2015: 8). Anders Löfberg, owner, former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors (personal communication, November 4, 2015) summarizes: ‘Löfbergs coffee does not only refer to a specific material content … it opens up to a number of activities and experiences, including the customer’s and the consumer’s experience of an ethically good product and a company that focuses on sustainability throughout the entire value chain: from bean to cup.’
A Beautiful Group Portrait
The human Other actualizes a moral agency that cannot be reduced to an individual as a detached subject. Nor can moral agency be sought in and determined solely by sustainability. Moral agency extends beyond issues of sustainability, constituting interactions and relationships among practitioners. However, the missing dimension in strategy-as-practice research, defined in terms of ‘moral human agency in business’, cannot be constructed directly. The portrayal of the sustainable coffee group in public websites, annual reports and other official documents cannot be ignored. It immediately attracts our attention in its beautifully described ethics interlinked with sustainability.
We are informed about a coffee group, consisting of the Swedish parent company AB Anders Löfberg with subsidiaries in Norway, Denmark, Finland, England, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that produces about 10.5 million cups of coffee per day and in dialogues with its stakeholders takes responsibility for people and environment, ensuring that profitability concerns go hand-in-hand with climate concerns. This group represents great keenness for and devotion to morally good practising, ingrained in the owner-family’s responsibility for the coffee farmers, the employees, the customers and others and even the biosphere. Representing the third and fourth generations, the Löfberg family considers this responsibility to be a prerequisite for a long-term sustainable, profitable and competitive business.
Nevertheless, a group portrait that highlights ethics can create an illusion of a whole that operates in conformity with moral standards and rules. It is thus imperative to reach beyond an organization-level description, critically examining how practitioners articulate the ethical aim when engaging morality in practising. The Löfbergs Group, envisioned as the most sustainable coffee group in Europe, represents a beautiful portrait that calls for presentation. At the same time, this portrait mounts a springboard that provides impetus for centring the focus on practitioners’ morality-imbued practising. The empirical-theoretical focus thus shifts away from a predefined group context towards a context that forms as practitioners and others entwine with a variety of activities. Being committed to a relational ontology and geisting means effectuating this ‘from–towards’ movement.
Committed to a Relational Ontology and Geisting
Ontologically, ‘human science’ derives from a translation of the German Geisteswissenschaften. As opposed to the English word ‘mind’, which has mainly cognitive connotations, the word Geist refers to moral and emotional atmospheres that may reign in a lived space (Van Manen Reference Van Manen1990). Geisting closely relates to lived experience as used by Dilthey (Reference Dilthey1985) for an exploration of pre-reflective dimensions of human existence. The notion of lived experience implies an understanding that extends beyond the practitioner’s subjective experiences, causal explanations and generalizations (Van Manen Reference Van Manen1990). Informed by Heidegger’s phenomenological thinking, lived experience suggests a movement through a world as ‘a kind of mindless dwelling that precedes any subject/object and hence any reliance on mental content’ (Chia and MacKay Reference Chia and MacKay2007: 230, emphasis in original). Also Gadamer (Reference Gadamer1989), a student of Heidegger, saw lived experience as an ongoing integrative life process through which the practitioner relates to the Other and a past. From Gadamer’s philosophical-hermeneutical horizon, it is necessary to mark a distinction between experience as Erlebnis and Erfahrung. Erlebnis permits plurality, referring to experiences a subject has, whereas Erfahrung in its singularity overcomes subjectivity and is something a subject undergoes. Thus a world comes into being in lived experience (as used in the singular form). Time in terms of temporality, accordingly, conveys existential entwinement with the world.
A relational ontology with its strong connection to lived experience gives primacy to an interpretive study that provides dialogical openness to a Löfbergs world of practising. If we use variables to identify what things are, a category like dependency to represent possible relationships between variables and generalities such as classes (Helin et al Reference Helin, Hernes, Hjorth, Holt, Helin, Hernes, Hjorth and Holt2014), we risk neglecting lived experience. Stefanovic (Reference Stefanovic2000: 263) underlines, ‘The selection and classification of indicators cannot proceed as if it were merely a technical matter of identifying a single set of “correct” variables.’ Instead, we should refer questions of knowledge back to lived experience (Van Manen Reference Van Manen1990), offering a temporal-relational conceptualization of moral human agency in recognition of a human’s existential entwinement with the world (Sandberg and Dall’Alba Reference Sandberg and Dall’Alba2009).
From a lived-experience perspective, inspired by Heideggerian phenomenology and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics, the practitioner existentially connects to a Löfbergs world of practising, entwined with strategy-oriented activities that constitute practising in association with morality. ‘A single action at a point in time is not a practice; it is the passage of time that converts action into practice … any attention to practice also demands an attention to history and, in particular, to time’ (Ericson, Melin and Popp Reference Ericson, Melin, Popp, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015: 516). ‘Passage of time’ is a linear sequence of activities but also implies non-linearity because of simultaneous and overlapping temporal orientations, unveiled in practising lived at present.
Method Accentuating Interpretation and Understanding
Implied in a relational ontology and adjacent lived-experience perspective is a qualitative method that accentuates interpretation and understanding and draws on empirical material generated via documents and dialogues with practitioners. There are no data ‘out there’ ready to be gathered; ‘research is creation and construction’ (Grand, von Arx and Rüegg-Stürm Reference Grand, von Arx, Rüegg-Stürm, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015: 90, emphasis in original). Dialogues help the researcher to get at least some glimpses of an ongoing integrative life process in which the practitioner is absorbed. Unable to grasp the richness of lived experience fully, the researcher can only rely on the language used, that is, practitioners’ orally uttered and written words. Research committed to a relational ontology and geisting interrelates a human being’s life movement with language, promoting the idea that language has its ‘true being only in dialogue, in coming to an understanding’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1989: 446, emphasis in original). Understanding, intertwined with interpretation, fundamentally connects with language.
Dialogue is a form of talk that can take us to whatever the practitioner finds it appropriate to talk about. It begins in an interrogative space that allows the researcher to cross over into the world of the Other (Risser Reference Risser1981). Referring to Wittgenstein (Reference Wittgenstein1953) and Bakhtin (Reference Bakhtin1984), this suggests, according to Shotter (Reference Shotter2006), an understanding of how we relate to the other person and make otherness available to us in the activities occurring between us and the Other. It requires responding to the utterances of our dialogue partner, refraining from following a check-list questionnaire. A dialogue emphasizes participation and is a process of direct face-to-face encounter; in a dialogue two or more people are making something in common, not only conveying certain ideas or viewpoints but ready to go on to something different that takes shape in mutuality. But as people can be very polite to each other and avoid issues that lead to tensions and conflicts, topics that upset are likely not to be brought up, resulting in ‘cozy adjustment’, as Bohm (Reference Bohm2004: 15) observes.
In order to maintain relational consistency in method it is crucial in the dialogue not to reduce the ‘practitioner’ to individuality, being aware that the practitioner through ‘absorbed involvement in the world’ (Chia and Holt Reference Chia and Holt2006: 639) is always exposed to, affected by and vulnerable to the Other (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1992). A singular body ‘is not individuality; it is, each time, the punctuality of a “with” that establishes a certain origin of meaning and connects it to an infinity of other possible origins’ (Nancy Reference Nancy2000: 85). This sustains a relational reality where being-with constitutes an irreducible phenomenon, as Christians (Reference Christians, Denzin and Lincoln2003) highlights. The interpersonal results from the actualization of reciprocity and a willingness to meet the Other openly in dialogue with no intention to dominate, as Roger observes in dialogue with Buber (Anderson and Cissna Reference Anderson and Cissna1997).
Practitioner is not just something you are but something you are continuously in interaction with others. Practising presides over the practitioner but since practising is not equipped with a voice we must listen to the voice of the practitioner and pay careful attention to what is disclosed about what goes on between practitioners. When the focus pans out of an agent’s physically discrete position we are able to gain insight into that which happens between agents, expressed in dialogues with me as a researcher. It is through my encounter with this agent that the potential for inquiring into and contributing to the advancement of an understanding of temporal-relational moral agency arises. I make myself a co-author, not as to existence, but as to moral agency in business, expressed and effectuated by the practitioners in reflection of their specific reality.
Generation of Empirical Material
The generation of empirical material through face-to-face dialogues with practitioners associated with the Löfbergs Group, the Löfbergs-practitioners, started in October 2011 and a few dialogues were conducted during 2012. In this early phase of the study, the dialogues into which I entered with the practitioners mainly revolved around the practitioners’ involvement in activities carried out in the chronology of time. Although my initial intention was to focus on strategic activities associated with development and growth, I soon realized that focus needed to be shifted to morality in association with ‘good’ as will and values. The practitioners often referred to a good will based on the five values of responsibility, commitment, long-term approach, entrepreneurship and professionalism, when talking about their involvement in strategically oriented activities – from bean to cup. A reorientation towards ethics and morality was apparently needed in my study.
In 2015, the generation of empirical material intensified through numerous dialogues with Löfbergs-practitioners holding positions as directors and managers as these play a key role in the development and maintenance of ethical standards and the practising of codes of conduct and moral values (Carroll Reference Carroll2000; Nohria Reference Nohria2013). Once again I met with owners, the present and former Chairman of the Board of Directors, the present and former CEO, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Human Resources Manager. In order to provide some variation in the empirical material, practitioners not designated a formal position as director or manager were invited and dialogues were carried out with people working as administrator, employee representative, production technician, process operator, receptionist and tour guide. The very first contact (in 2011) was with one owner, at that time the Marketing and Communications Director. I continuously communicated with her for advice on practitioners to meet as the study proceeded. The bean-to-cup chain constitutes activities that link together efforts made by other practitioners than those directly associated with the Löfbergs Group. Coffee farmers, representatives of development and certification projects, customers and consumers of Löfbergs coffee were also provided room for making their voices heard, some of which only echoed in written material. By participating in a guided tour through the production facilities there was also an opportunity for me to gain information about the machinery and equipment with which Löfbergs-practitioners interact.
The practising described is of strategic character. Strategy generally implies ‘mobilizing resources in ways that strengthen the focal organization’s command of its environment and/or weaken the position of competitors’ (Alvesson and Willmott Reference Alvesson and Willmott1996: 129). In this book, the focus is on moral human agency as it unfolds in practising that constitutes strategic-oriented activities that practitioners entwine with when developing the coffee business over the long run. From-bean-to-cup activities orient towards a future characterized by sustainable and profitable growth that generates competitive advantages and is therefore considered to be constitutive of a practising that is strategic in nature. But it is important to note that an organization is not ‘there’ and that strategy cannot be unequivocally defined. We must critically reflect on how to use the term ‘strategy’. Blom and Alvesson (Reference Blom, Alvesson, Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara2015: 423) ‘sound a warning about the tendencies of overusing and inflating the signifier and discourse of strategy.’ The current study refers to strategic-oriented activities, and the practitioners involved in these activities are not necessarily strategy practitioners or strategists. It is difficult to use the strategy label for all practitioners. In the following, the term ‘practitioners’ refer to Löfbergs-practitioners (including three owners) while coffee farmers, representatives of development and certification projects, customers and consumers are referred to as ‘other people’ or ‘others’ with whom the Löfbergs-practitioners interact.
The face-to-face dialogues with the Löfbergs-practitioners, ranging from approximately twenty to ninety minutes, took place at the headquarters and in the Löfbergs café Rosteriet, located in Karlstad, the largest city of the province of Värmland, Sweden. I live in Karlstad and the geographical closeness of the headquarters, production facilities and the café Rosteriet has been a great advantage. Most dialogues took place in the café, a location arranged by the practitioners. For each of us, the café appeared to provide a comfortable and enabling environment for a dialogue. The dialogues initially focused on the name ‘Löfbergs’, its connotations and meanings and what it is like to represent Löfbergs. Further, the talk revolved around the historical development and the practitioners’ interactions with others, their current involvement in activities and challenges faced.
The practitioners made references to sustainability and good will in association with values, and they were then asked to describe will and values and explain how they are expressed through activities. Consistent with a relational ontology, the dialogues centred on morality as inherent in the practitioners’ activities, rather than as something they related to as being external to them. They revealed how morality in relation to the idea of the good comes alive and what it means to practise the values of responsibility, commitment, long-term approach, entrepreneurship and professionalism. The dialogue ended with a focus on the practitioner’s ‘Löfbergs life’ and what makes this life meaningful.
At visits to five other cafés in Karlstad I met with the café owners, a director and a guest. In a busy café there is not much time for a dialogue. Therefore the talk concentrated around the one question of why Löfbergs coffee is offered. Moreover, I paid a visit to three cafés not offering Löfbergs coffee, expecting to learn more about the advantages of actually offering the guest coffee with the label Löfberg but these expectations were not realized.
In total, thirty-three dialogues were conducted, five of them via email. The medium of email seemed more convenient to use when following up on the guided tour and for accessing some of the customers as the dialogues with them mainly concentrated on one question. In addition, empirical material was generated from annual reports, sustainability reports, and documents referring to policies, code of conduct, good will and values, coffee farmers and networks in which the Löfbergs Group participates.
All dialogues were conducted in Swedish. The face-to-face dialogues were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The parts of the dialogues that focused on practising in association with morality were translated into English. This entails an interpretation and understanding that can be described in terms of highlighting (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1989). The highlighting includes transcribed text that provides insights into morality primarily with regard to how morality in association with good as will and values is effectuated through strategic-oriented activities. ‘Language is the medium in which substantive understanding and agreement can take place between two people’, says Gadamer (Reference Gadamer1989: 384). One must then be cautious about the translation of the meaning, understood in one context, to another context. This requires an interpretation that bridges a gap between the original words and the reproduced words and awareness that the translation cannot remove the fundamental gap between two languages.
The translated text has been submitted to the practitioners involved in the study. They have all been given the opportunity to read and reflect on the parts referring to the dialogues. Over the course of two occasions all twenty-six dialogue partners have communicated their comments, requiring only a few changes in the text, and these changes have been confirmed by submitting the revised text to the practitioners requiring the changes. In this process, understanding and agreement have taken place between interpreters because we are not activated as the dialogue partners we previously were when speaking the same language. The translation and highlighting involve interpretation that makes mutual understanding possible. The twenty-six dialogue partners have given me the permission to publish the material and openly acknowledge their participation in the study under their full names.
Cultivating Dialogical Openness
The Löfbergs coffee product is used as a hub from and around which the study radiates and flows. It is then not about a monological approach to Löfbergs coffee, outlined as a case in the traditional sense, closing in on a single firm or group of firms, family business and family. Instead, the current study can be conceived of as an ‘open case’. As we go along, windows are opened, presenting us with opportunities to gain insight into moral human agency in business through a description of activities with which practitioners, not only those associated with a family-owned business called Löfbergs, engage but also coffee farmers, representatives of development and certification projects, customers and consumers. The use of a context defined by the Löfbergs Group as impetus for a move towards a context that emerges through activities people live neither requires concentrating on a family firm, nor on an identification of family members in relation to non-family members. The focus on morality among humans is not limited to what occurs within a family firm or between members belonging to one category rather than another. In family business research, family and business are often approached as two coevolving social systems and such an approach is presented as being ‘truly realistic’ for an understanding of the unique characteristics of a family business (Neubauer Reference Neubauer2003: 269).Footnote 2 Family business is described as an open system and attention is paid to its sub-systems (Shepherd and Haynie, Reference Shepherd and Haynie2009). The owning family and its members are ‘there’, immediately recognized without considering how they become in relation to the Other. An autonomous positioning of family business or firm and member as entities excludes the notion of a being that appears to us as a becoming in relation to the Other. When breaking through the enclosure of the same in terms of organization and member we realize the importance of otherness (Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur1992). This incites a break with the functionalistic perspective that characterizes much family business research (Helin Reference 138Helin2011). From a relational-ontological standpoint, a family is not an entity related to another entity, that of a business or a firm, but is constituted of spatially and temporally shifting relationships. In the words of Cooper (Reference Cooper2005: 1708): ‘Relationality invites us to see the world as the movement of relationships between things rather than the things themselves as static or quasi-static structures.’
Crucial for advancing our understanding of morality in association with strategy practising is staying in ‘living motion, not so much in locomotive movement, as in a dynamic interactive, expressive-responsive relation with the others and otherness’ as Shotter (Reference Shotter2006: 594) expresses it. It is also about staying in motion with theory, continually interweaving theory with the empirical material. The research process promotes empirical-theoretical interrelatedness, combining interpretation, understanding and application. A temporal-relational conceptualization of moral human agency is not entirely guided by theoretical premises but is constructed as the empirical-theoretical discussion proceeds through a process in which interpretation, understanding and application are unified. The original model for this we find in the ancient cosmology where the interpreter of the divine will is able to apply practically the words of the oracle, as Gadamer (Reference Gadamer1989) informs us. Interpretation and understanding of strategy-as-practice text and moral-philosophical text are applied to the present situation, defined by a missing dimension in strategy as practice, that of moral human agency in business. The texts are not only repeated but critically reflected on and dealt with for clearly illustrating why strategy-as-practice research is lacking an interest in morality, what morality is about and why it is important to add the dimension of moral human agency to strategy-as-practice research. Since moral human agency is not a static phenomenon but extends in time and space, texts provided by practice-based studies and moral-philosophical work are also linked to text that probes into temporal-relational agency.
The strong empirical orientation of the book too fosters the idea that we must intensify our contacts and interactions with practitioners for furthering our understanding of their reality. We need to strengthen our relationships with practitioners and move practice and theory closer together (Pettigrew, Woodman and Cameron Reference Pettigrew, Woodman and Cameron2001; Sandberg and Tsoukas Reference Sandberg and Tsoukas2011), taking into account that there are no ‘pure’ empirical data in terms of facts to detect ‘out there’ or original founding thoughts to build on (Alvesson and Kärreman Reference Alvesson and Kärreman2007). It is thus about cultivating dialogical openness (Hjorth and Johannisson Reference Hjorth, Johannisson and Fayolle2007) to empirical-theoretical becomings of moral human agency. With reference to Löfbergs coffee it is, in addition, possible to shine some light in the darkness of unethical action mass media often bombard us with.
To Follow
With reference to a rich corpus of strategy-as-practice research, Chapter 2 dedicates specific interest to how agency is approached. As pointed out, in the absence of a moral dimension, practice-based studies centre on agency in relation to structure, sensemaking, discourse and materiality. The chapter also emphasizes that we should not limit our focus to a single human agent, applying a two-category language of agency-structure. Morality is expressed and effectuated in relation to the Other. This necessitates a more elaborate theoretical treatment of strategy, agency and morality. Hence, attention is turned to moral-philosophical works that help further our interpretation and understanding of human agency in connection to morality. While reminding us that the Greek philosophical tradition and its inheritors exhibited strong interest in ethics and morality, Chapter 3 accentuates that strategy-as-practice research can benefit from addressing this interest. The chapter provides us with moral-philosophical perspectives and concepts that deepen our insights into morality and agency, and makes us aware of temporal relationality with reference to iterational, projective and practical-evaluative dimensions.
Chapter 4 directs attention to the Löfbergs Group, interwoven with theory presented in Chapter 2. The empirical material focused on this group raises theoretical concerns primarily regarding sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholders, which are aspects of morality Chapter 2 deals with to a certain extent. Theory of relevance for understanding the group-related work is also added as the discussion proceeds in Chapter 4. In closing, the chapter points to the need to move beyond a group-related moral agency for shedding light on moral agency as expressed and effectuated in activities with which Löfbergs-practitioners and others entwine. Against a dark background of unethical conduct in the business world we should not feel content with a research contribution that merely directs attention to the organizational level. A beautiful portrait of a group of companies can create an illusion of a group committed to high ethical standards. Thus, it is important to go beyond the group-level description for making the actual practising of morality more transparent in connection to temporal relationality, discussed in Chapter 3.
To be able to put forward convincing arguments for moving beyond a group-related description it is, however, necessary to include such a description. Indeed, through a focus on the Löfbergs Group we recognize the need for a move away from it. Chapter 4 provides impetus for enriching our understanding of strategy practising in connection to morality, instigating a move towards Chapter 5, which directs attention to the projective, practical-evaluative and iterational dimensions discussed in Chapter 3. Relational ontologically, moral human agency is an expression of geisting. Then we cannot present as the only truth that which the group context of Löfbergs coffee informs us in Chapter 4. We must be receptive to the human Other and a lived experience that goes beyond what can be verified. This is accentuated through the from-towards movement which implicates a transition from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5. Thus two empirical-oriented chapters are included in the book.
In Chapter 5, the longest chapter, dialogues with Löfbergs-practitioners reveal that morality interlinks with ‘good’ as will and values and that will and values extend into a past and a future, promoting a temporal-relational interpretation and understanding of moral human agency. The empirical-theoretical discussion refers to a value chain that comprises activities related to growing, transportation, processing, distribution and consumption of coffee. It also directs attention to a past strongly associated with a good will that is based on the values of responsibility, commitment, long-term approach, entrepreneurship and professionalism. ‘Our good will’ context emerges as Löfbergs-practitioners interact and effectuate these values. This particular context relates to a world of practising to which the practitioners belong as social-historical beings.
Chapter 6 is the final chapter, emphasizing the importance of adding a temporal-relational conceptualization of moral human agency to the study of strategy as practice. Advancing beyond a bifurcation of agency and structure, micro and macro, moral human agency unfolds in the projective, practical-evaluative and iterational dimensions. These dimensions expand our understanding of agency in recognition of a morality that does not merely propose a means–ends instrumental morality in the teleological sense and a moral obligation in the deontological sense. When moving away from the Löfbergs Group context towards ‘our-good-will’ context we realize that a value-based good will constitutes a morality that also gives primacy to justice as reciprocity for mutual benefit and respect and moral direction felt through meaning and passion. As pointed out, ethics and morality concern how we relate to the Other as human, past and nature.
