Making Sense of Strategy

In strategic literature, the problems involved with the observation of the way organisations and their environment constitute each other has been neglected for far too long. The inherent circularity between organisations and their environment in defining strategies is often obscured by making either the environment or the capabilities of organisations the point reference in defining successful strategies. In this paper, it will be illustrated that with a focus on self-reference it is possible to observe, both theoretically and methodologically, the way organisations and their environment constitute each other reciprocally. For this, we will develop a both/and-approach to strategy to illustrate that organisations need to make sense of both their environment and organisation.