Historically, management theory has ignored the constraints imposed by the biophysical (natural) environment. Building upon resource-based theory, this article attempts to fill this void by proposing a natural-resource-based view of the firm—a theory of competitive advantage based upon the firm's relationship to the natural environment. It is composed of three interconnected strategies: pollution prevention, product stewardship, and sustainable development. Propositions are advanced for each of these strategies regarding key resource requirements and their contributions to sustained competitive advantage.

A natural resource-based view of the firm

This article reviews research in Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) and suggests directions for its development. The power of this perspective lies in its ability to explain how strategy-making is enabled and constrained by prevailing organizational and societal practices. Our review shows how SAP research has helped to advance social theories in strategic management, offered alternatives to performance-dominated analyzes, broadened the scope in terms of organizations studied and promoted new methodologies. In particular, it has provided important insights into the tools and methods of strategy-making (practices), how strategy work takes place (praxis), and the role and identity of the actors involved (practitioners). However, we argue that there is a need to go further in the analysis of social practices to unleash the full potential of this perspective. Hence, we outline five directions for the further development of the practice perspective: placing agency in a web of practices, recognizing the macro-institutional nature of practices, focusing attention on emergence in strategy-making, exploring how the material matters, and promoting critical analysis.

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Strategy-as-Practice: Taking Social Practices Seriously

Research in closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) has grown rapidly over the last 10 years. The authors offer a critical review of influential CLSC research that takes a business economics perspective. Much of the research was inspired by practice-driven thoughtpieces, and this helped to keep research focused on relevant issues. However, CLSC research has several assumptions, such as perfect substitution between new and remanufactured products that risk becoming institutionalized. There is a strong need to carefully examine current industrial practice so that research remains focused on relevant problems. Deeper understanding of consumer perceptions of remanufactured products, product diffusion, and valuation of returned products are needed for the field to continue to add insights into developing sustainable economies.

Production and Operations Management

This article aims to consolidate the psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by taking stock and evaluating the recent surge of person-focused CSR research. With a systematic review, the authors identify, synthesize, and organize three streams of micro-CSR studies—focused on (i) individual drivers of CSR engagement, (ii) individual processes of CSR evaluations, and (iii) individual reactions to CSR initiatives—into a coherent behavioral framework. This review highlights significant gaps, methodological issues, and imbalances in the treatment of the three components in prior micro-CSR research. It uncovers the need to conceptualize how multiple drivers of CSR interact and how the plurality of mechanisms and boundary conditions that can explain individual reactions to CSR might be integrated theoretically. By organizing micro-CSR studies into a coherent framework, this review also reveals the lack of connections within and between substreams of micro-CSR research; to tackle them, this article proposes an agenda for further research, focused on six key challenges.

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The psychological microfoundations of corporate social responsibility: A person-centric systematic review

This paper takes the long view on the development of strategy as a profession, from the 1950s to today. We identify strategy as a structurally precarious profession, subject to cyclical demand and shifts in organizational power. This precariousness has increased with the secular shift towards more open forms of strategy-making, with more transparency inside and outside organizations and more inclusion of different actors internally and externally. We analyse four forces - organizational, societal, cultural and technological - driving the evolution of strategy as a profession and discuss implications for the future of strategy work, for effective strategies, for strategy's professional bodies and for strategy research

Opening Strategy: Evolution of a Precarious Profession

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice this paper develops a novel approach to the study of CSR. According to this approach, pro-social activities are conceptualized as social practices that are employed by individual managers in their personal struggles for social power. Whether such practices are enacted or not depends on the (1) particular features of the social field in which the managers are embedded, (2) the individual managers’ socially shaped dispositions and (3) their respective stock of different forms of capital. By combing these three concepts the Bourdieusian approach provides a particularly fruitful theoretical lens on CSR phenomena, not least as this allows reconciling seemingly competing conceptualizations in the existing CSR literature such as economic vs. non-economic motivation as drivers of CSR activity, micro- vs. macro-level explanations and voluntaristic vs. deterministic views of managers’ behaviors.

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Why Do Corporate Actors Engage in Pro-Social Behavior? A Bourdieusian Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility

It has often been argued by scholars adopting a practice approach that by focusing on “what people do in relation to strategy” their research would be particularly relevant to practitioners. In response to this assumption, this article draws on a Bourdieusian perspective to argue that most practice-based strategy scholars are unaware of their inevitably “scholastic view” which is the cause for the gap between strategy research and praxis. This unawareness leads to two related fallacies: epistemic doxa and scholastic ethnocentrism. In order to avoid these fallacies, strategy researchers need to develop a particular kind of reflexivity by engaging in what is known as “participant objectivation.” This enables the researcher to generate rigorous research that is conceptually relevant to practitioners—without dissolving the necessary differentiation between strategy research and praxis.

Does Practice-Based Research on Strategy Lead to Practically Relevant Knowledge? Implications of a Bourdieusian Perspective:

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, this article develops a novel approach to the study of corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to this approach, pro-social activities are conceptualized as social practices that individual managers employ in their efforts to attain social power. Whether such practices are enacted or not depends on (1) the particular features of the social field; (2) the individual managers’ socially shaped dispositions and (3) their stock of different forms of capital. By combining these theoretical concepts, the Bourdieusian approach we develop highlights the interplay between the economic and non-economic motivations that underlie CSR, acknowledging influences both on the micro- and the macro-level, as well as deterministic and voluntaristic aspects of human behaviour.

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Why do corporate actors engage in pro-social behaviour? A Bourdieusian perspective on corporate social responsibility:

In this paper we examine middle managers’ struggle over their subject position as strategists in the context of participative strategy processes. Based on a longitudinal case study of a company undertaking an Open Strategy process, we show how the wider inclusion of front-line employees in developing new strategy undermines the traditional subject position of middle managers. Based on these findings, we develop a process model depicting the recursive dynamics of middle managers’ struggles to maintain their subject positions in the face of employee participation. With these findings we contribute to the literature on middle managers by advancing our understanding of the implications of employee participation for middle managers’ subject position as strategists and their different ways of reclaiming their subject position. We also contribute to the literature on Open Strategy by revealing the implications for traditional strategy actors as well as by explaining the processual dynamics of participation over time.

Middle Managers’ Struggle Over Their Subject Position in Open Strategy Processes

This chapter introduces the practice theory developed by Theodore Schatzki and highlights its implications for organization studies. In particular, it shows how his theory contributes to our understanding of the micro-foundations of organizations, the embeddedness of organizations in their wider social context, and the temporal and spatial dimensions of organizations. It also discusses how Schatzki’s theory can be applied in empirical research on organizations.

Violetta Splitter

Papers

Why Do Corporate Actors Engage in Pro-Social Behavior? A Bourdieusian Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility

Does Practice-Based Research on Strategy Lead to Practically Relevant Knowledge? Implications of a Bourdieusian Perspective:

Why do corporate actors engage in pro-social behaviour? A Bourdieusian perspective on corporate social responsibility:

Middle Managers’ Struggle Over Their Subject Position in Open Strategy Processes

Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory and its implications for organization studies