Strategy‐as‐practice: A review and future directions for the field

Abstract

This review maps and critically evaluates the rapidly growing body of research in the strategy‐as‐practice field. Following an introduction on the emergence and foundations of strategy‐as‐practice, the review is structured in three main parts, based on the terminology, issues and research agendas outlined in the field. First, the paper examines the concepts of practitioners and praxis. A typology of nine possible domains for strategy‐as‐practice research is developed, based on the way that different studies conceptualize the strategy practitioner and the level of strategy praxis that they aim to explain. Second, the paper reviews the concept of practices, which has been adopted widely but inconsistently within the strategy‐as‐practice literature. While there is no dominant view on practices, the review maps the various concepts of practices that inform the strategy‐as‐practice field and outlines avenues for future research. The final section attends to the call for strategy‐as‐practice research to develop and substantiate outcomes that may better explain or inform strategy praxis. Five categories of outcomes are found within existing empirical studies, and an agenda for building upon this evidence is advanced. The paper concludes with a summation of the current state of the field and some recommendations on how to take strategy‐as‐practice research forward.