Open Access
Temporal Work in Strategy Making
Sarah Kaplan,Wanda J. Orlikowski +1 more
TLDR
In this paper, the authors developed a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action.Abstract:
This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible, and acceptable; otherwise, breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but they could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change.read more
Citations
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Context, time, and change : Historical approaches to entrepreneurship research
R. Daniel Wadhwani,R. Daniel Wadhwani,David A. Kirsch,Friederike Welter,William B. Gartner,William B. Gartner,Geoffrey Jones +6 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the value of historical methods and reasoning in strategic entrepreneurship research and theory is articulated, and a special issue of the special issue, Contextualiz... is presented.
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History‐informed strategy research: The promise of history and historical research methods in advancing strategy scholarship
Nicholas Argyres,Alfredo Vittorio De Massis,Alfredo Vittorio De Massis,Alfredo Vittorio De Massis,Nicolai J. Foss,Nicolai J. Foss,Federico Frattini,Geoffrey Jones,Brian S. Silverman +8 more
TL;DR: This work takes stock on the role of history in strategy research, outline the key strategic issues that can be informed by a historical way of doing research, discuss the available historical methods, and offer suggestions for future research in the history/strategy intersection.
References
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