On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Discursive Perspective

We still know little of why strategy processes often involve participation problems. In this paper, we argue that this crucial issue is linked to fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of strategy work. Hence, we need to examine how strategy processes are typically made sense of and what roles are assigned to specific organizational members. For this purpose, we adopt a critical discursive perspective that allows us to uncover how specific conceptions of strategy work are reproduced and legitimated in organizational strategizing. Our empirical analysis is based on an extensive research project on strategy work in 12 organizations. As a result of our analysis, we identify three central discourses that seem to be systematically associated with non-participatory approaches to strategy work: ‘mystification’, ‘disciplining’, and ‘technologization’. However, we also distinguish three strategy discourses that promote participation: ‘self-actualization’, ‘dialogization’, and ‘concretization’. Our analysis shows that strategy as practice involves alternative and even competing discourses that have fundamentally different kinds of implications for participation in strategy work. We argue from a critical perspective that it is important to be aware of the inherent problems associated with dominant discourses as well as to actively advance the use of alternative ones. This is a preprint of an Article accepted for publication in Organization Science. © 2007 Intitute for Operations Research and Management Sciences.