Two Decades of Revolutionizing Strategy Research: How Strategy-as-Practice Illuminates the Complex, Dynamic and Consequential Ways of Doing Strategy

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) offers a practice-theoretical perspective on strategy, which is fundamentally different from mainstream strategic management research. This approach has proven fruitful in helping us better understand the micro-level processes and practices in strategy work and strategic change challenging many assumptions in extant work. The Academy of Management journals have been pivotal in advancing and disseminating SAP research. Therefore, it is now important to summarize and elaborate these contributions by presenting the cumulative insights of SAP as a field of management research. In this introduction, we focus on three key areas of contributions of this body of work, which include (1) identifying the varied and consequential roles and identities of strategic actors; (2) observing the embedded and evolving discursive and socio-material practices inherent to strategy work; and (3) challenging the origins, processes, and dynamics of strategic change. We use these contributions to draw out opportunities for SAP research to further broaden the set of actors seen as strategists, move beyond the study of single organizations toward studying strategizing on large-scale complex problems, focus more on how issues emerge and become strategic, and recognize the key opportunities and risks in the use of artificial intelligence and other new technologies in strategy.