Making Strategy

Abstract

This chapter argues that to appreciate what strategy-as-practice (SAP) has to offer strategy researchers, and to fully realize its potential, it needs to be grounded on an onto-epistemology that acknowledges the various ways through which strategies qua practices may develop, as well as the various modes of intentionality and language use that, crucially, underlie strategy-making. A fully developed Heideggerian onto-epistemological framework provides a coherent way for different types of strategy-making to be researched from a practice perspective. A Heideggerian lens on SAP first brings intentionality under scrutiny and shows how it is constructed in strategizing episodes through practitioners drawing upon particular sociomaterial practices. Secondly, it shows the “inherited background” from which practitioners engage in coherent practical coping, and explores how aspects of this “inherited background” are brought to explicit awareness in the face of breakdowns.