Patrick Regnér

Strategy as practice (SAP) research has made great progress focusing on practice, praxis, or practitioners’ settings where strategy prevails, but less is known about how strategy emerges at the very origins where it is still non-existent and only imminent. The purpose of this paper is to advance insights into strategy origins by exploring and examining what antecedents regarding activities, actors and sensemaking are involved in the integration of sustainability into strategy. The fashion and apparel industry serves as a suitable setting as sustainability strategy development is imminent but neither strategy activities nor their context, including practices, actors, cognitions, etc. or outcomes are predetermined. Drawing on an inductive qualitative multiple-case pilot study, we reveal an intricate interrelationship between the doings and thinkings of strategy. We develop a framework showing two alternative strategizing sensemaking logics – the orienteering logic and the exploring logic – and their underlying mechanisms of sustainability initiative development. First, we contribute by providing a nuanced understanding of the interactive mechanisms between sensemaking and activity and thus add insights into the action side of action-meaning cycles in sensemaking and how people generate meanings based on actions and engagements. Second, moving beyond the prior interpretivist and cognitivist emphasis we unveil how ‘things’ become strategic and how diverse strands of activities and actors rely on strategic intent and limited or no intent with implications for strategy outcome. Third, we contribute to recent dialogues on how strategy research remains relevant considering global grand challenges.

The unique attributes of the internal and external contexts of multinational corporations (MNCs) make effective management of organizational change not only a necessity but also a challenge for these firms. The key to success lies in ensuring that the content, context, and process of change efforts are aligned and coherent. In this chapter, we will review each of these change dimensions with a particular focus on the specific issues and concerns faced by MNCs.

Introduction Although strategy-as-practice research has thrived during the last decade, the resource-based view (RBV: Barney 1991; Peteraf 1993; Wernerfelt 1984) and capabilities perspectives (Dosi, Nelson and Winter 2000; Eisenhardt and Martin 2000; Winter 2003) have continued to dominate mainstream strategic management research. Recent work has also started to show an increased interest in the micro aspects of strategy, emphasizing micro-foundations as essential in understanding organizational capabilities and resources and their origins (Abell, Felin and Foss 2008; Felin and Foss 2005; Gavetti 2005; Teece 2007). There have been repeated calls for examinations at the intersection between these research directions and SAP research (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan 2010; Johnson et al. 2007; Johnson, Melin and Whittington 2003; Regnér 2012; Vaara and Whittington 2012), but surprisingly little of this nature has materialized so far, with a few exceptions (for example, Ambrosini 2003; Ambrosini, Bowman and Burton-Taylor 2007; Kaplan 2008; Regnér 2003; 2008; Salvato 2003; 2009). This chapter examines the intersection between strategy as practice and perspectives that have dominated strategy content research during the last couple of decades. Specifically, it examines differences and commonalities, potential relationships and synergies between strategy as practice and the RBV, capabilities perspectives and the micro-foundations approach. It further investigates extant strategy-as-practice research at this intersection and identifies potential future research opportunities. What can possibly be gained from investigating this intersection? There are four points that are of particular importance. First, besides underlining the importance of strategy practices and activities generally for strategic management, it may provide insights into how practices, praxis and practitioners underlie resources and capabilities that maintain competitive advantage. If we accept that there is a relationship between what managers do and strategy content and outcomes, a key issue is determining how practices both enable and impede managers in their strategy praxis concerning resources and capabilities. By linking strategy as practice to resource-based, capabilities and micro-foundations research, it is thus possible to demonstrate the prominence of practices, social contexts and interactions for strategy. This is, of course, in contrast to extant assumptions in these strategy content research areas that often primarily emphasize rational top managers and individuals. The link to the resource-based and capabilities views may thus strengthen the main theoretical traits of the SAP approach and consolidate it.