Strategy as Practice : Recursiveness , Adaptation and Strategic Practices - in - Use

In this paper, a social theory framework is developed to explain the common themes of recursive and adaptive practice underpinning existing strategic management literature. In practice, there is a co-existent tension between recursive and adaptive forms of strategic action since both are important to competitive advantage. This tension may be better understood by examining how practitioners use strategic practices, such as management tools and techniques, to put strategy into practice. We exemplify this point with a discussion of how strategic planning may be adapted to the multiple contexts in which it is used. The paper concludes by proposing a research agenda for the study of strategic practices-in-use. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 2 Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use Introduction Recently, concern over the gap between the theory of what people do and what people actually do has given rise to the ‘practice’ approach in the management literatures. For example, there are literatures on knowing in practice, formal analysis in practice and technology in practice, each of which share a common focus upon the way that actors interact with the social and physical features of context in the everyday activities that constitute practice. Most recently, the practice approach has entered the strategy literature, recommending that we focus upon strategists engaged in the real work of strategising (Hendry, 2000; Whittington, 1996; 2001a). That is, just as the literatures on knowing in practice suggest that knowledge is not something that a firm has but knowing in action, something that a firm and its actors do (Cook and Brown, 1999), so we should examine strategy not as something a firm has but something a firm does. The practice approach is commensurate with appeals for a new paradigm to revitalise strategy theory by addressing key questions and concerns, such as how firms behave and how and why firms are different (Prahalad and Hamel, 1994). However, we should be cautious about launching into yet another theory of strategy since the field is already characterised by a diverse array of approaches from microeconomic theories of firm positioning to examinations of managerial cognition (Mintzberg et al, 1998). Strategy as practice can provide a valuable contribution to this problem because it is posited as a framework for understanding the relationships between different theories (Hendry, 2000). Each existing approach is assumed to provide a partial view of strategy, with actual practice the point of interaction between different theoretical approaches. While the points of interaction that constitute practice are richly supported by social theory, there is no applicable framework for their integration in the strategic management literature. The dearth of theoretical orientation leaves the strategy scholar with questions about what practice is, why it is a relevant topic for investigation, and how it might be studied. In this paper we develop a social theory framework that may be used to integrate existing strategic management literature and provide a platform for the empirical investigation of strategy as practice. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 3 The paper is in three sections. The first section of the paper draws upon social theory to address two themes implied by practice, recursiveness and adaptation. These two core elements of practice implicitly underpin much of the current strategic management literature. For example, in a double special issue of Strategic Management Journal on the evolution of capabilities (Helfat, 2000), all eleven papers deal with some aspect of strategic change or rigidity, particularly the conundrum of how a firm can embrace both. A theory of practice brings recursiveness and adaptation into a dialectic tension in which the two are inextricably linked. Practice is thus a means of integrating diverse strategy literatures within a more holistic framework. In the second section we suggest that to empirically investigate these two practice themes, it is important to examine how strategic practitioners use strategic practices. A theoretical explanation for the role of practitioners and strategic practices-in-use is provided. The third section develops a research agenda for the study of strategic practices-in-use, which we posit as a method for understanding recursive and adaptive forms of strategy as practice. This research agenda is supported with the example of strategic planning, a persistent strategic practice that has adapted to multiple contexts over time. In conclusion, the paper proposes that strategy as practice is a topic for serious academic endeavour being both theoretically robust and practically relevant. Section one: Recursiveness and adaptation in practice In this section, a theoretical foundation for two key practice themes, recursiveness and adaptation, is built upon four main areas of social theory; structuration (Giddens, 1984), habitus (Bourdieu, 1990), social becoming (Sztompka, 1991), and communities of practice (Brown and Duguid, 1991; 2001). These theoretical contributions to practice are elaborated and then linked to concepts in existing strategic management literature. While the diversity of approaches might be criticised for eclecticism, practice is posited as the point of interaction between pluralist epistemologies (Cook and Brown, 1999). Our intention is to develop a more holistic approach to the study of practice through the integration of diverse theoretical perspectives (Spender, 1998). First this section examines the reciprocity inherent in strategy as practice, termed the problem of recursiveness because it obscures the means by which practice adapts. The problem of recursiveness penetrates the strategic management literature at multiple levels from individual cognition to organisational structures and industry environments Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 4 (see Table 1). To address this problem, the paper turns to the second theme, that of the social context in which practice occurs. Practice occurs in macro contexts that provide commonalities of action but also in micro contexts in which action is highly localised. The interaction between contexts provides an opportunity for adaptive practice, a theme that is also present in the strategic management literature (see Table 2). Discussion of these two themes furnishes a theoretical orientation for recursiveness and adaptation as key concepts in the strategic management literature that co-exist in strategy as practice. INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE Reciprocal practice: the problem of recursiveness The term ‘practice’ implies repetitive performance in order to become ‘practised’; that is, to attain recurrent, habitual or routinized accomplishment of particular actions. For example, in sport or music practice develops competence and improves performance. Practice is thus a particular type of self-reinforcing learning akin to single loop or exploitative learning theories (cf. Argote, 1999). The routinized nature of practice may be explained by theories of social order, such as structuration (Giddens, 1984), in which the interaction between agent and structure is recursive. Structuration examines the relationship between agents and socially-produced structures through recursively situated practices that form part of daily routines. Structures are the collective systems within which human actors carry out their daily activities. Structures constrain and enable human action and are also created and re-created by actors who draw upon social structure in order to act. This reciprocity between agent and structure enables the persistence of social order, embedding it in social institutions that endure across time and space. Lest this appear excessively deterministic, social order may serve agency, being drawn upon purposively by knowledgeable actors. However, knowledge is not necessarily explicit. Rather, action may occur as a function of practical consciousness, in which tacit, experience-based knowledge is “incorporated in the practices which make up the bulk of daily life” (ibid:90). Structuration makes three main contributions to the routinized nature of practice. First, practice is institutionalised in social structures that persist across time and space. Secondly, institutional social structures are incorporated in the daily practices that constitute action. Thirdly, structures persist through the tacit knowledge and practical consciousness of actors who choose familiar patterns because it provides them with “ontological security” (ibid:64). Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 5 Bourdieu (1990) further elaborates the reciprocity between agent and structure. He refers to a dialectic of social structures and structuring dispositions within which every practical action occurs. This dialectic is the ‘habitus’, which is socially constructed but transcends the individual, being “constituted in practice and ... always oriented towards practical functions” (ibid:52). Practice comprises social order residing both in people’s minds and in the habitus, which functions as a form of collective memory. Bourdieu imbues the latter with properties akin to genetics “reproducing the acquisitions of the predecessors in the successors” (ibid: 291). The temporal persistence of habitus shapes the aspirations of those who enact it in daily practice. Habitus assumes causality by structuring new information in accordance with the information already accumulated. This ensures its constancy and resistance to change. Agents’ choices will be influenced by their consideration of what is possible, this belief being shaped by “concrete indices of the accessible and inaccessible” (ibid: 64). For Bourdieu, agents are “accomplices in the processes that tend to make the probable a reality” (ibid: 65). Both Bourdieu and Giddens provide a rationale for the stable and institutional characteristics of practice, albeit that structuration predicates this stability on the ontological security of the actor while habitus is a more structurally oriented theory. This focus on stability obscures the adaptive nature of practice (cf. Orlikowski, 2000) and will be termed here the problem of recursiveness. Recursiveness means the socially accomplished reproduction of sequences of activity and action because the actors involved possess a negotiated sense that one template from their repertoire will address a new situation. [While] recursiveness is always improvised ... equally, there can be a durability about recursiveness that constrains attempts to transform the sequences. (Clark, 2000:67) This durability may be considered a ‘code-of-practice’ or even ‘best practice’, being sedimented rules and resources that govern how to act. Recursiveness underpins much of the strategic management literature and is present at three levels, the actor, the organisation and the social institution. At the level of the actor, the problem is largely a psychological one arising from individual cognition. The mental models of actors are subject to structural influences such as formal operating procedures (Cyert and March, 1963), heuristic devices (Newell, Shaw and Simon, 1962), and, in interpretative Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 6 theories, to stored cognitive recipes (Weick, 1969). The relationship between thought and action arises from procedural memory, the skill-base associated with cognition. Procedural memory predisposes those familiar routinized actions developed from experience that actors undertake without conscious thought (Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994). Individual cognition is related to social structure through its manifestation as collective phenomena shared by groups of actors. Similar to the notion of habitus, collective memory structures boundarize cognition (Cyert and March, 1963) and create perceptual filters (Prahalad and Bettis, 1986) that direct choice-making behaviour towards the known. The reinforcement of routinized and stable structures through collective cognition is found in literatures on groupthink (Janis, 1972), top team homogeneity (Wiersema and Bantel, 1992), and restricted learning capabilities (Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000). The recursiveness arising from actors’ needs for ontological security (Giddens, 1984) is thus present in much of the literature on cognition, interpretation and collective cognition. At the organisational level, the problem of recursiveness is illustrated in path dependence, persistent organisational routines, and organisational memory. The strategic and operational routines of an organisation have genetic properties that predispose it to act in certain ways and, more importantly, define the possible options that it may take (Nelson and Winter, 1982). Routines are socially complex, embedded, and interlocked. They comprise a social architecture that penetrates a firm’s communication channels, information filters and problem-solving strategies making it difficult for the firm to absorb new technologies (Henderson and Clark, 1990). The normative influences of routines may be understood as organisational memory (Walsh and Ungson, 1991) or cultural web (Johnson, 1987), providing embedded repertoires, rites and rituals for action that are persistent sources of firm identity. These characteristics may even be considered firm resources, building distinctive traits that are a non-transferrable source of competitive advantage. However, path dependence means that resources are difficult to shed or reconfigure quickly. Strategically a firm is liable to exploit and build upon existing resources (Grant, 1991), exhibiting resource deepening behaviour that channels evolution along familiar lines (Karim and Mitchell, 2000), even where these are no longer viable. The distinctive social structures of a firm may thus be seen as its core rigidities (Leonard-Barton, 1992), predisposing recurrent action patterns (Cohen et al, 1996) and leading to organisational inertia (Hannan and Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 7 Freeman,1984; Rumelt, 1995). These concepts of organisational stability are implicitly underpinned by the social theory of habitus; that social structure assimilates information that is self-reinforcing and resistant to change. The problem of recursiveness arising from embedded social institutions is present in institutional theory, particularly the notion of isomorphism, in which organisations, particularly those in the same sector or industry, come to resemble each other because of the common social structures upon which they draw (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Similar to the self-reinforcing structural notions of habitus, social institutions may be predisposed to particular organisational forms (Hannan and Freeman, 1977). These institutional forces are also linked to agency through their influence on managerial cognition (Elenkov, 1997), with isomorphic tendencies evidenced in the choice-making behaviour of actors who draw upon similar social structures. For example, firms in the same industry display similar recipes for action (Spender, 1989). This is because strategic actors are embedded within industry networks that constitute collective cognitive structures and these influence conformity of choice in different firms (Geletkanycz and Hambrick, 1997; Porac et al, 1989). Undoubtedly, social practice is characterised by recursiveness that is evident in the choices arising from interaction between social institutions, organisations, and actors (cf. Table 1). This is not necessarily a weakness for firms. Indeed, the literature extols the competitive advantages of an experience curve (Argote, 1999), successful companies ‘stick to the knitting’ (Peters and Waterman, 1982), and resource-deepening behaviour builds distinctive competences and capabilities (Karim and Mitchell, 2000). From this perspective recursiveness equates with learned efficiencies, suggesting that ‘practice makes perfect’. Since firms display similar choice-making behaviour, recursiveness may even be associated with best practice. However, the convergence that underpins best practice may also be associated with organisational inertia and the destruction of strategic differentiation between competitors (Nattermann, 2000). As differentiation and change are important factors of competitive advantage in even moderately dynamic environments, recursive practice is a problem in strategic management. However, for each of the arguments above, there are counter arguments that suggest practice also has adaptive characteristics (see Table 2). In order to understand practice as an ongoing social process, capable of encompassing both Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 8 stability and change, we now turn to theories of co-existent and dynamic interaction between agent and structure. INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE Adaptive practice: social movement within macro and micro contexts Adaptation, being varying degrees of change from incremental adjustment to radical reorientation, may be explained using the theory of social becoming (Pettigrew, 1990; Sztompka, 1991). Sztompka (1991) exposes three false dichotomies in social theory. First, he criticises the dichotomy between agent and social structure, proposing that there is a third ontological dimension; “the unified socio-individual field” (ibid:94). Secondly he shows the false separation of static and dynamic processes of social reality. This is because ‘life’ or ‘living’ are constantly undergoing change and selftransformation. Finally, he posits that potential and actuality are not separable since potential reality and actual reality are in a continual state of oscillation and feedback in the process of social becoming. Sztompka’s theory is one of “a living, socio-individual field in the process of becoming” (ibid:95). The interaction between agent and structure does not sustain sedimented behaviours; it is ‘becoming’, not became. He identifies practice as the unit of analysis for observing ‘becoming’, which is the chain of social events “where operation and action meet, a dialectic synthesis of what is going on in a society and what people are doing” (ibid:96). Practice is an evolving process of social order arising from the interplay between external and internal social structure building. External structure is the wider societal context, in which there is a current of social movement; “what is going on in a society” (ibid:96). Internal structure is any given group engaged in their own local construction of practice, “what people are doing” (ibid:96). Change is carried out within the internal context in interaction with the external context. There is thus an ongoing process of social becoming that is realised through a chain of social events, or practice. These assumptions about changing social order underpin the strategy process field, which “describes how things change over time” (Van de Ven, 1992:169) through the study of sequences of events (for example, Abbott, 1990; Glick et al, 1990; Van de Ven and Poole, 1990). In strategy process studies, change arises from the interaction Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 9 between embedded levels of context from the socio-economic to the industry to the firm (Pettigrew 1987; Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991). Child (1997) incorporates the actor into the change process through strategic choice, which is “a consciously-sought adaptation to, and manipulation of, existing internal structures and environmental conditions” (ibid:67, emphasis in original). Organisations are involved in an ongoing, adaptive process of internal or within-firm social structure building, embedded within a wider context of external or environmental social structure building. The interplay between levels of social structure building may be better understood with reference to plurality. Modern society has plural social institutions, such as political, economic, ethnic, and religious institutions that may be regarded as co-existing forms of social structure (Giddens, 1991; Whittington, 1992). Actors are involved in the interplay between these institutions, affording opportunities for change. For example, divergent firm level strategies in the Taiwanese computer industry are found to result from the varied use that skilled strategic actors make of the different rules and resources present in three social institutions; political, technological and business systems (Hung and Whittington, 1997). Strategic behaviour may thus be divergent or isomorphic depending upon the particular institutions that are invoked, with modern society characterised by plural social institutions. This theoretical framing suggests that there are macro and micro contexts in which strategy as practice occurs (Whittington, 2001b). Interaction between contexts provides opportunities for adaptive practice because the macro level is characterised by multiple social institutions, while the micro level is heterogeneous due to the localised social movement occasioned by “what people are doing” (Sztompka, 1991:96). We now explore micro context through the literature on communities of practice. Micro-context: Communities of practice In a ‘community of practice’ individual thought is essentially social and is developed in interaction with the practical activities of a community, through living and participating in its experiences over time (Cook and Brown, 1999; Lave and Wenger, 1991). The literature on communities of practice provides two important components of a theory of practice; that practice is local and that local contexts provide opportunity for adaptive practice. We shall explore these in turn. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 10 While communities may have some broad similarities, each community has specific social interactions that constitute a unique interpretative context (Brown and Duguid, 1991). Practice is local and situated, arising from the “moment-by-moment interactions between actors, and between actors and the environments of their action” (Suchman, 1987:179). Rather than looking for structural invariants, normative rules of conduct, or preconceived cognitive schema, therefore, practice scholars should investigate “the processes whereby particular, uniquely constituted circumstances are systematically interpreted so as to render meaning shared” (ibid:67). To understand practice it is important to move beyond institutional similarities to penetrate the situated and localised nature of practice in particular contexts. This concept of a localised and unique interpretative context is central to the literature on communities of practice. For example, Orr’s (1996) photocopier technicians operate in a distinctly local setting in which their interactions are strongly influenced by the particularities of a specific work time and space. Orlikowski (2000) draws our attention to the localised use of technology that results in contextual specificity of technology-inpractice, even where the use of these technologies is widely pervasive and normatively structured in wider contexts. Practice is situated, experiential knowing-in-doing, and thus particular to the participants in a community (Brown and Duguid, 2001; Cook and Brown, 1999). This local context provides an opportunity for adaptive practice. New knowledge about specific situations may arise from the social activities of dialogue and interaction (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Cook and Brown, 1999; Wenger, 1998), often about a problem or failure (cf. Pisano, 1994; Sitkin, 1992). For example, when the formal codeof-practice for mending a faulty photocopier is inadequate to the task Orr’s (1996) technicians engage in adaptive social interaction. They tell stories about the problem that generate new methods for its solution. New practice does not come from external sources but from participating in the social process of problem-solving within that community. In this process, existing frameworks take on new meanings that are highly contextual. Local practice may thus deviate from institutionally established practice. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 11 However, a problem is not essential to the learning inherent in a community of practice. Communities of practice are concerned with, and always oriented towards social activity (Wenger, 1998). The social nature of communities constitutes an adaptive learning opportunity that involves new forms of practice. Through the entry and exit of their members, communities are exposed to generative practice. New participants learn from continuing members how to interpret the social infrastructure of a particular community, in the process resocialising the continuing players and reinforcing existing practice. However, due to their low socialisation to the community, new members also question the infrastructure, so creating the potential for its re-evaluation and adaptation (Lave and Wenger, 1991; March, 1991). Even stable communities may be exposed to adaptation where their members are also members of wider “networks of communities” (Brown and Duguid, 2001:205), for example, with professionals in other organisations or in non-work communities. Communities that have largely stable membership, with limited external networks, and few crises or problems are liable to engage in recursive practice while the converse situation promotes adaptive practice. While these examples tend to look at particular subsets of organisations, such as engineers (Orr, 1996) or insurance clerks (Wenger, 1998), it is probable that such concepts also hold true for strategic practitioners. For example, it is important to “know the ‘done thing’ locally” (Whittington, 1996:732) in order to enact strategy in particular contexts. Strategy as practice is found to be particular to the organisation that constitutes its community of interpretation (Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2002) and to be situated within a “taken-for-granted and highly contextualised rationality” (Spender and Grinyer, 1996:30). Firms may thus be conceptualised as a strategic community of practice. However, firms may also be considered a collection of more or less loosely coupled diverse communities, not all of which are primarily strategic (cf. Brown and Duguid, 2001). Therefore, there is some question as to the boundaries for a strategic community of practice (cf. Whittington, 2001b). Strategic practitioners are liable to act within specific organisational communities, but also to be involved in strategic ‘networks of practice’ outside the organisation (Brown and Duguid, 2001). The first provides opportunities for locally adaptive practice while the second enables adaptation through interaction with external contexts. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 12 Adaptive practice: interplay between contexts in the strategic management literature The concept of localised practice is present in the resource-based view (RBV), which posits that localised, and hence distinctive strategic contexts are value-creating. RBV proposes that firms are heterogeneous with competitive advantage arising from their unique and idiosyncratic bundling of firm resources (Barney, 1991). In addition to physical resources, RBV includes intangible assets such as social complexity as a source of advantage. However, early forms of RBV have been criticised for their market-based assumptions that commodify socially embedded processes (Cook and Brown, 1999; Scarbrough, 1998) and ignore the dynamism inherent in strategic action (Spender, 1996). The learning involved in this type of resource acquisition is exploitative and resource deepening (Karim and Mitchell, 2000), leading to recursiveness. Resources may provide competitive advantage at a moment in time but their adaptation and, thus, the sustainability of competitive advantage in changing environments, is less apparent suggesting the rigidities and routines of the previous section (cf. Cockburn et al, 2000). A more adaptive form of RBV may be found in theories of competitive advantage based upon knowledge resources (Grant, 1996; Spender, 1996) and dynamic capabilities (Helfat, 2000; Teece et al, 1997). While continuing to emphasise the heterogeneity arising from idiosyncratic and localised practice, the knowledge-based and dynamic capabilities literatures focus more upon the learning and adaptation involved in competitive advantage. Dynamic capabilities are “processes that use resources – specifically the processes to integrate, reconfigure, gain and release resources – to match and even create market change” (Teece et al, 1997). New resource configurations, that is, adaptive practice, may be generated from the use of existing resources. Importantly, dynamic capabilities are perceived to generate change inside the firm and also to lead to market change. How does this adaptive practice within the micro-context of firm strategy lead to adaptation in macro-context? With reference to social becoming (Sztompka, 1991), how does the local context of “what people are doing” interplay with the macro context of “what is going on in a society” (ibid:96)? If the firm is viewed as a set of loose-tight coupled communities, each comprising a local context, the strategy literature on adaptive practice is rather limited. There is a nascent body of research into new forms Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 13 of organising that examines networked, strategically decentralised firms such as ABB, which begins to capture these phenomena (Whittington et al, 1999). There is also an increasing interest in micro-strategising (cf. Johnson et al, forthcoming), looking, for example, at how innovations in firm micro-contexts and peripheries are important to firm strategy (Johnson and Huff, 1998). If, however, we take the view that a firm is a micro-context, interaction with the macro context is examined in strategy process research on change as multi-level phenomena (for example, Pettigrew, 1987; Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991). There is also a growing literature linking firm idiosyncrasies to competitive advantage (Barney, 1990; Grant, 1991; Teece et al, 1997). This relationship between within-firm practice and the more general context of markets offers opportunities for cross-firm and cross-sector adaptation. Since competition is associated with imitative behaviour, lesser performers will move to adopt the practices of successful performers, leading to the spread of best practice (Cockburn et al, 2000). Particular practices will be efficacious across a range of industries, increasing their uptake from micro-contexts into macro-contexts. Indeed, even where firms start from quite different positions, they tend to converge upon similar capabilities over time (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000). While best practice indicates how micro-context practice is transmitted to macro-context and spread throughout a group of firms, constituting adaptation, it also poses the problem of institutional isomorphism. That is, best practice is overly concerned with mimetic behaviour that leads to convergence (Nattermann, 2000). However, the concept of pluralism is also present in the notion of new markets. Strategy textbooks abound with cases of firms, such as Honda, Southwest Airlines and Ikea, which developed divergent strategies and targeted new markets in seemingly saturated and normatively structured competitive conditions. Adaptation is not simply a matter of transferring practice between contexts. Rather it is a matter of adaptive interplay between contexts that may generate new practice. This is perhaps best shown in the strategy literature on different velocity markets. For example, dynamic capabilities may be more repetitive and resource deepening in moderately dynamic markets and involve newly created knowledge in high-velocity markets (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000). In high velocity markets, which are characterised by plurality, firm heterogeneity and localised variations in practice are common. Firms in these markets Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 14 are complex adaptive systems (Pascale, 1999) that display unique solutions and rapidly changing responses such as patching (Eisenhardt and Brown, 1999), simple rules (Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001) and time-pacing (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997). These examples of continuously evolving firms show that rapid interactions between micro and macro-contexts may result in even radically adaptive rather than recursive practice. While such recent literatures permit us to understand adaptive practice in high velocity markets, they focus on a subset of extreme example firms. For most firms, recursiveness is also important. Firms need both recursive and adaptive practice to capitalise on routines of success as well as developing the capacity for reinvention. There is thus a coexistent tension between recursive and adaptive modes of practice. These coexistent tensions are based in the social interactions that span the plural micro and macro contexts that comprise the strategy as practice arena. Any given practice community must be considered in terms of the micro-strategies that constitute reality for its practitioners but also the community’s interactions with some wider practice arena that has more general application (Whittington, 2001b). Unique practice in particular contexts may penetrate wider spheres and so be adopted and adapted to other contexts stimulating further social movement that contributes to the ongoing chain of practice. Interaction between contexts is important to a theory of strategy as practice, permitting us to move between the specific and the general and to understand both recursiveness and adaptation. However, the many literatures on which we have drawn illustrate only partial components of recursive and adaptive practice (see Tables 1 and 2). How then, may strategy scholars and practitioners better understand this problem? Section two: Strategic practitioners and strategic practices-in-use In this section we propose that a study of the way that strategic practices are used may furnish a better understanding of recursive and adaptive forms of practice. We theorise the role of strategic practitioners and the strategic practices they use drawing again upon Giddens (1984) and Bourdieu (1990) and also incorporating de Certeau’s (1984) notion of practice as usage and Vygotsky’s (1978) emphasis on the tools used in practical activity. Using this framing, we posit that strategic practices-in-use are a methodological entry point for examining recursive and adaptive forms of strategy as practice (see Table 3). Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 15 INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE Practitioners: Skill and bricolage In lay terms a practitioner is a professional; one who has undergone training in order to go into practice, for example legal or medical practice. The practitioner draws upon ‘codes-of-practice’, learned through formal training, to guide professional action. As individual practitioners become more accomplished, practice also involves tacit experiential elements that imply differential levels of skill and ability. However, in strategy the training, skill and experience involved in becoming a strategic practitioner are rather less obvious. To address this problem, we shall develop a theoretical orientation for strategic practitioners as skilled actors. Practitioners as knowledgeable, purposive and reflexive In structuration theory actors are knowledgeable, purposive, and reflexive and so, able to enact structure to their own ends (Giddens, 1984). These three concepts are important to our understanding of how strategic practitioners act. Knowledge resides in both discursive consciousness and practical consciousness, which are discussed in the cognition literatures as declarative or ‘fact’ based memory and procedural or ‘skill’ based memory (Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994; Moorman and Miner, 1998). Essentially, actors have knowledge that they can articulate and skill-based, practical knowledge that they express through doing. While the cognition and knowledge based literatures have made considerable ground by examining these as separate forms of knowledge (for example, Nonaka, 1994), Giddens is more concerned with permeability between the discursive and the practical and this is the central tenet of the practice perspective on knowledge. Knowledge is not a possession to be codified and transmitted. Rather, it is knowing in action, created and shared through social activity (Brown and Duguid, 2001; Cook and Brown, 1999). A strategic practitioner is thus engaged in knowing, some of it explicit, discursive or declarative, and some of it tacit, practical or procedural, but all of it occurring through the social medium of practice. Actors are also purposive and reflexive. Purposive actors have intent, which is essential to the largely teleological, goal-seeking assumptions underpinning strategy (Van de Ven, 1992). While the literature on emergent strategy indicates that strategic action does not always comply with intent (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985), this does not deny Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 16 its fundamentally teleological nature. As Giddens (1984) notes, intentful action may have unintended consequences that may shape subsequent intent. The continuously evolving interaction of the intended and the actual is located within the inherent reflexivity of actors. They are able to monitor the outcomes of action and consequently reframe their orientation towards subsequent action. Due to the routinization implicit in procedural forms of knowing, orientations may be slow to change, suggesting recursiveness. However, adaptation is enhanced where social activity increases the dynamic interplay and reflexivity involved in knowing (Cook and Brown, 1999). Bourdieu (1990) enhances our understanding of both intent and knowing in action. Using the example of a football game, he discusses skilled action as anticipatory of the future. A player sees in advance where the game is going and acts in accordance with that supposition of the future by being in position for the ball. While this may be a calculated response, based on past experience of this and other games, it is also tacit and immediate. The practice world that makes up the actor’s reality presents all the components of interaction from which to make a response that comprises both reason and intuitive reaction. In the rather limited literature on practitioners this process is referred to as reflection in action (Schon, 1983). It combines repertoire and experimentation, using the past to conjecture the present and future and being spontaneously reflexive in expanding the repertoire in accordance with the outcomes attained. While reflection may be deliberate and post-action, it is the capacity for ‘thinking on one’s feet’ that characterises differential skill levels in practitioners. These concepts are applicable to strategic practitioners who position themselves and their organisation in accordance with anticipation of the future. Skilled practitioners are liable to have a greater repertoire of strategic practices to draw upon but also to be more reflexive in their use, displaying routinized or adaptive behaviour as called for by a situation. Therefore, to understand skilled practice we should look not only at what strategy is done but also at how strategy is done, the characteristics of usage that may show the skill of the practitioner. Practitioners and skill: Bricolage To elaborate this point, we turn to de Certeau (1984) who examines practice through a study of ordinary actors engaged in using the artefacts of everyday practice to their own ends. Practice is the art of combination; “A way of thinking invested in a way of acting Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 17 ... which cannot be dissociated from an art of using” (ibid:xv, emphasis added). Social structure contains the established artefacts to use for action. These artefacts were developed with particular intentions. However, artefacts are only guidelines containing multiple potentialities according to use. The use of artefacts in ways other than intended may change the artefact, the practice and, over time, the intent associated with the artefact. Where the intent implied in artefacts complies largely with the intent of actors, habitual, routinized use may be expected, leading to recursiveness. However, the appropriation of artefacts for particular, unanticipated outcomes may well involve their adaptation. This is referred to as bricolage, the making do and “artisan-like inventiveness” (ibid:xviii), by which actors produce their own intentful activities from the artefacts that structure everyday activity. Bricolage, meaning ‘do-it-yourself’, involves improvisation with the materials at hand, particularly under conditions of resource scarcity (Moorman and Miner, 1998). While bricolage may involve quite mundane forms of practice, it also involves high levels of skill and experience to perform the familiar well and, particularly, to deploy the familiar in novel ways that lead to its adaptation. Bricolage is a point of interaction, bringing together actor, intent, artefacts and contextual features of time and space, within an act of usage. It is, therefore, particularly apposite to our concept of practice as the doing of strategy. For example, some authors have drawn upon de Certeau (1984) to explore the complex interactions involved in ordinary activities such as cooks doing cooking (Giard, 1998). Whittington (2001b) suggests that these concepts also apply to strategists doing strategising, recommending that we examine what constitutes the ingredients and utensils of strategic practitioners. We explore this notion in our next section on strategic practices, which we propose are the tools that strategic practitioners use to do strategy. Strategic practices-in-use In this section we posit that strategic practices are a means of examining how strategic practitioners are involved in recursive and adaptive forms of practice. There is a distinction between strategy as practice and strategic practices (Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2002; Whittington, 2001). Practice is teleological, “an activity seeking a goal” (Turner, 1994:8) whereas practices are the “ingrained habits or bits of tacit knowledge” (ibid:8) which constitute the activity. Much of the literature on strategy as practice Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 18 actually deals with practices, those socio-cultural artefacts through which strategy is instantiated. For example, Whittington (1996) advises us to look at the form filling and number crunching involved in doing strategy, and Hendry (2000) recommends strategy documents and other formalised types of strategic discourse as empirical artefacts that provide insight into practice. The theoretical rationale for a study of practices may be found in activity theory. Activity theory premises that psychological development is a social process arising from an individual’s interactions within particular historical and cultural contexts (Vygotsky, 1978). Interaction provides an interpretative basis from which individuals attribute meaning to their own and others actions (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985). The outcome of interaction is practical activity, being the purposive, outcome-oriented work in which actors engage (Kozulin, 1990; Leontiev, 1978; Zinchenko, 1983). Interaction is enabled through the technical and psychological tools that actors use to engage with their environments (Engestrom, 1993; Kozulin, 1990). The use of such tools is practical, being directed towards constructing outcome-oriented activity. Since these ‘tools’ are used to establish practical activity, they may be defined as the practices through which activity is constructed. If we marry activity theory’s emphasis on the practices through which activity is constructed with de Certeau’s (1984) notions of bricolage, we may better conceptualise how strategic practices are used by practitioners to construct strategy. Analogously, this interaction may be considered as the toolkit, the homebuilder, and the ‘do-it-yourself’ project. The homebuilder sets out to build a conservatory with normative considerations of what this structure is, regulatory influences from town planning authorities, and personal taste. The resulting edifice will combine these institutional and individual aspects of intent with contextual features, such as terrain, space constraints, and existing structure. Equally, however, the outcome will be influenced by characteristics of use, such as the skill and resourcefulness of the homebuilder in using the tools and materials available for construction. The tools and materials do not create the practice but mediate its usage and outcomes in a given context. Similarities in construction are likely to be due to institutional influences and access to broadly similar tools and materials while differences will be more attributable to context and the skill involved in usage. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 19 What then, are the tools and practices used by strategic practitioners to construct strategy? In this paper, we identify the strategy toolkit as those frameworks, techniques and practices that are the basis of many strategy textbooks and teaching. While other interpretations of the strategy toolkit might be derived, this definition has resonance since, in an annual Bain and Company survey into management tools and practices, senior executives are found to draw upon such tools (Rigby, 2001). There has been a proliferation of management practices over the last century. These range from the Taylorist views of efficient labour management, to the planning schools of the 1960s and 70s that offer rational techniques for strategy formulation and resource allocation, to the more recent, process focused tools of just-in-time, quality circles and core competences. These tools have both technical, object-focused uses and psychological, subject-focused uses. For example, tools such as divisionalisation, enterprise resource planning, and strategic architecture platforms are oriented towards the arrangement and coordination of material resources. By contrast, conceptual schema, such as Porter’s (1980) five forces, Boston boxes, and scenario planning assist strategists to generate meaning from and impose meaning upon their surroundings. While these distinctions are not totally discrete, management practices may be seen as the repertoire of ‘strategic utensils’ through which strategic practitioners may display knowledge and skill in constructing strategic activity. Strategic practices as mediators of recursive and adaptive practice Strategic practices are implicated in the recursiveness and adaptation that characterises strategy as practice. Whittington (2001b) suggests that strategic practices are regular, socially-defined modes of acting while Jarzabkowski and Wilson (2002) focus upon them at the within-firm level as the formal operating procedures and planning mechanisms involved in key strategy processes of direction setting, resource allocation, and monitoring and control. These two perspectives, one aimed at the macro, institutionalised uses of practices and one dealing with the micro, localised uses of practices are key to understanding their role in recursive and adaptive practice. We now examine each of these in turn. Strategic practices are part of the macro-contexts of what is going on in a society, arising from co-production within different communities of practice; industry, Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 20 academia, consultants, and the press, each with some common points of discourse. They are diffused through the teachings and research of business schools, their use by consultancy firms, and through management fashion (Abrahamson, 1996) in which the popular press plays a part (Mazza and Alvarez, 2000). Particular types of practices may become institutionalised during different periods of social evolution. For example, the ideologies underlying prevalent practices have been associated with wider economic expansions and contractions and broad cultural shifts (Barley and Kunda, 1992). During an economic upswing when profitability is related to management of capital, rational practices that focus upon efficient structures and technologies are prevalent. Conversely, during economic downswings there is emphasis on normative practices related to the management of labour. This perspective relates management practices to wider social events and explains their rapid diffusion, or ‘fashion’ during particular periods, illustrating how ‘best practice’ spreads from macro to multiple micro contexts. As per our earlier argument, plurality of macro contexts is implied since management ideologies are characterised by inconsistency and contradiction. Interplay between ideologies explains the dynamics of ideological change (ibid). Institutional fields are, therefore, not hegemonous but pluralistic and contradictory, providing opportunity for variation in management practices (cf. Dacin et al, 2002). Strategic practices also form part of the localised context of what people are doing. They occur within particular companies. For example, the introduction of scenario planning to the business arena is widely attributed to Royal Dutch Shell, where it was adopted to counteract tendencies for recursiveness in managerial cognition. Some practices, such as the BCG portfolio matrix, originated in consultancy firms and were subsequently widely adopted. Practices particular to national cultures have been recognised as productive and so become more widely assimilated, such as the Japanese techniques of kaizen and kanban. Still other practices are uniquely associated with a particular academic, as with the five forces, which are indelibly Michael Porter’s (1980). Such practices occur in localised ways and then are articulated, evolved, and given a wider presence through their usage, creating diffusion from micro to macro contexts. For example, knowledge management is being articulated in a multitude of practices from core competences to intrapreneuring, self-managed teams, and even communities of practice (for example, Prahalad and Hamel 1990; Nonaka, 1994; Wenger and Snyder, 2000), which are associated with a knowledge economy. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 21 The proliferation of practices in macro and micro contexts may be considered an interaction between what people are doing in different communities and the zeitgeist of what is happening in society, that is, the dominant ideologies of a particular era. While there is always the urge to converge, evident in terms such as best practice and benchmarking, there is also ontinual evolution of new practices within particular communities. While current literatures suggest that firms in high velocity environments are evolving new strategic practices (for example, Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997; Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001; Pascale, 1999), Mintzberg (1993) notes that every turn in strategic management from the design school onwards has evolved new practices on the premise that their era is characterised by greater complexity in which the old rules are no longer relevant. Adaptation appears chronic in the doing of strategy, with communities continuously seeking new practices or ways of doing strategy in order to evolve better practice. Strategic practices are not beset by the stasis of attainment implied in best practice, but by the ongoing teleology of ‘becoming’ inherent in better practice. We may therefore study how they are used and adapted, why they persist or become obsolete, and when new practices are developed, as a means of penetrating the recursive and adaptive modes of strategy as practice. Section three: Towards a research agenda for strategy as practice Building upon the discussion of practices and of practitioners engaged in usage, in this section we develop a research agenda for strategy as practice based around an investigation of strategic practices-in-use. While the literature on strategic tools and techniques is widespread and diverse, rather little is known about tools in use. Extant research is often prescriptive, using tools and techniques to explain how strategy ‘should be’, but is rather less concerned with how they are actually used in particular contexts and what influence this has on strategy as practice. Yet a study of strategic practices-in-use would illuminate practice, bringing to the foreground the interplay between strategic practitioners and their various communities of practice as they engage in recursive and adaptive modes of strategic action. Strategic business planning provides an example of the relationship between strategic practices and strategy as practice. It has been a prevalent practice in the literature since the 1960s as both a technical tool for the designation of material resources and a Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 22 conceptual tool for the interpretation and diffusion of strategic action. Strategic planning originated as an essentially rational approach to strategising through diagnosis and forecasting, strategy formulation, resource allocation, and strategy implementation (cf. Andrews, 1971; Ansoff, 1965; Bower, 1970). Subsequently, it has been the subject of considerable academic debate, criticised because its predictive assumptions do not reflect the uncertainty of strategy in practice (Mintzberg, 1990; 1994) and defended because it was designed to assist practitioners to engage with uncertainty (Ansoff, 1991). While Mintzberg (1987) contends that strategic planning ignores thinking in action, other authors suggest that planning can indeed aid strategic thinking if it is used to provide synthesis between thought and action, that is, for putting practitioner thinking into action (Heracleous, 1998; Liedtka and Rosenblum, 1996). While the academic community of practice has debated the merits of strategic planning, the community of strategic practitioners has continued to use it. The annual Bain and Company survey of management tools and techniques finds that strategic planning is consistently popular. In 1999 it ranked first out of 25 common practices, being the principal technique used by 81% of managers worldwide (Rigby, 2001). How should we interpret this finding? Does it mean that managers are so subject to recursive modes of thought, either for individual, organisational or institutional reasons, that they continue to use an obsolete practice from the 1960s? It is more likely that strategic planning has persisted through the economic and cultural shifts of the past 40 years because it is a flexible practice that may adapt to changing circumstances and contextual contingencies. Its potential adaptability is as diverse as the contexts in which it is used. For example, firms in high velocity environments that are characterised by dynamism and discontinuous change (Bourgeois and Eisenhardt, 1988), such as telecommunications tend to use strategic planning in less formal, fast-paced and experience-based ways that enable practitioners to cope with rapidly shifting environments (cf. Eisenhardt and Brown, 1998; Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001). Firms with extended value chains are likely to link strategic planning to internal architectures of enterprise resource planning and data-mining, using it for more efficient coordination and projection of resources (Pereira, 1999; Teo and King, 1997). Still other firms in regulated environments, such as privatised utilities and public sector organisations, may use strategic planning as a means of demonstrating accountability and transparency to regulators and government authorities (Oakes et al, 1998). Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 23 These varied institutional and environmental parameters suggest that quite different uptakes and uses of strategic planning that indicate evolution from its initial theoretical provenance as a tool for rational action. Inside individual firms, strategic planning may be further altered in accordance with the intentions of practitioners and the considerations of context. For example, strategic planning has evolved into strategic story-telling at 3M to meet the company’s needs for strategy diffusion, creativity, and innovation (Shaw et al, 1998). This may influence firm actions since the adaptive use of strategic planning to incorporate strategic creativity has been found to increase the capacity of firms such as GE Capital to grasp acquisition opportunities (Beinhocker and Kaplan, 2002). Strategic planning is, thus, a practice with generic characteristics in macro strategic contexts but also adaptable to the skill and bricolage inherent in microcontexts, developing locally specific and contingent uses. Other examples of adaptive, localised use of strategic practices may be found. For example, Skandia has developed its own version of the balanced scorecard, the Skandia Navigator, which attempts to capture and manage intellectual capital and futurizing within the firm (Earl and Nahapiet, 1999; Nahapiet, 2001). Kostova and Roth (2002) found that, despite the broader institutional context, there is a strongly localised component in the adoption and use of TQM practices, even within the same corporation. These adaptive, localised uses of practices are able to diffuse between plural macro and micro contexts through international business awards, professional networks, management teaching cases, academic research and the business media. Strategic practices thus reflect both the dominant modes of practice in any given era and also the individual skilled and knowledgeable uses of practices that contribute to the ongoing becoming of practice. Operationalising the research agenda: studying strategic practices In Figure 1, the relationship between macro and micro contexts and strategic practicesin-use is conceptually modelled. The usage of strategic practices by skilled and knowledgeable strategic practitioners is positioned at the nexus of plural macro and micro contexts of practice. Interactions between macro and micro contexts in the usage of practices generates a stream of strategic action that may either be prone to greater recursiveness, becoming more stable and practiced, or be involved in the adaptive Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 24 practice by which strategic action evolves and changes. We maintain that a study of strategic practices-in-use is a primary entry point to empirically investigate this model. INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE Practices provide a more rigorous basis of comparison for strategy as practice than an attempt to study practice itself or even to study strategic practitioners. Drawing upon surveys such as that of Bain and Company, commonly used strategic practices may be defined and their theoretical properties identified in the academic literature, serving as a benchmark against which to compare their actual use. Through observation of practices-in-use, we may examine the knowledge, skill and bricolage of practitioners as they engage in recursive or adaptive modes of strategy as practice. Some research questions we might ask across a sample of firms are: 1. What strategic practices are commonly used, in order to identify the degree to which particular practices have diffused into localised contexts; 2. Who uses practices, which would help to define who might be termed a strategic practitioner and the degree to which usage is distributed throughout the levels of a firm; 3. Why are these practices used, establishing the practitioner intent and normative rationales for selecting particular practices; 4. How are the practices used, developing an understanding of the generic and localised uses of practices, their adaptation to context, and the skill and bricolage of the practitioners in using them in different situations; 5. Under what circumstances are established practices found to be obsolete, and why do new practices emerge? Such questions would provide the basis for robust multiple-site comparison and contrast of the practice of strategy and the skill of strategic practitioners. By contrast, an attempt to study either strategy as practice or strategic practitioners in different contexts is beset by methodological problems in defining comparative criteria on which to examine the doing of strategy. It is of little benefit to find that ‘strategy is done differently’ since we wish to know what is done differently, how it is done differently, why it is done differently and, most importantly, what is the point of generic similarity Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski 25 from which difference may be understood. Practices provide the generic similarity of identifiable artefacts. As with the example of strategic planning, the study of practicesin-use illuminates contextual influences upon practice, how individual practitioners deploy practice, and provides a basis for relating these specific micro-findings to dominant and changing ideologies in society. Therefore, we propose that the study of strategy as practice is well served by beginning with strategic practices-in-use as the primary unit of analysis. Conclusion A research agenda into strategic practices responds to recent calls by the academic community and the research funding bodies for management research that is both academically challenging and intimately connected with and relevant to the concerns of practice (cf. Pettigrew, 1996; Rynes et al, 2001; Starkey and Madan, 2001). In focussing upon strategic practices-in-use, we move the study of strategy as practice from richly detailed single case studies of doing strategy, that, while fascinating, are hard to relate to wider circumstances other than at the conceptual level. Instead, we have a means of developing equally rich but also methodologically robust comparisons of doing strategy in multiple case studies that may be practically as well as conceptually related to wider issues. While the former allows us to take strategists and their work seriously, the latter also permits us to come closer to the concerns of these strategists to develop better practice. Comparative analysis may highlight more or less effective uses of practices, differential skill levels, and the applicability, adaptation, or obsolescence of practices within particular activities or contexts. In particular we may develop a link between practice and performance by analysing tendencies towards recursive or adaptive usage of practices and the impact this has upon strategic action over time. Such analyses are both theoretically important and have practical implications for cross firm and cross sector learning about the nature and uses of strategy as practice. Strategy as practice: Recursiveness, adaptation and strategic practices-in-use. Paula Jarzabkowski