4. 2 STRATEGY AS PRACTICE. Since the seminal article "Strategy as Practice" written by ...... change: The mayor, the streetâfighter and the insiderâout". Journal ...
STRATEGY AS PRACTICE AND CASE STUDY Christiane Ferreira Bellucci UNIVERSIDADE DO VALE DO ITAJAÍ AND UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA - Itajaí, Brazil Rosalia Aldraci Barbosa Lavarda UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA - Florianópolis, Brazil Category: 13 STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT >> 13_03 STRATEGIC PROCESSES AND PRACTICES
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ISBN 9782960219500.
ABSTRACT
The goal of this study is to investigate how the case study can be considered a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon considering the strategy as practice perspective. To achieve the objective we revisited seminal papers published in high index management journals that have presented the case study method to analyze the phenomenon from the strategy as practice perspective. We found that the case study is a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon when it concerns to the perspective of strategy as practice once it looks into the case in its singularity and so does the strategy as a social practice process. In this sense, the most approached issues were dynamic social process; routines; individual behavior; interactions and how processes occur. This paper contributes to shed light on the relevance of qualitative research applying the case study method to investigate the strategy as practice process. Keywords: Case study; Strategy as practice; Qualitative
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STRATEGY AS PRACTICE AND CASE STUDY: CONNECTING A SUITABLE RESEARCH METHOD TO THE STUDY OF PRACTICE AS A PROCESS
ABSTRACT
The goal of this study is to investigate how the case study can be considered a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon considering the strategy as practice perspective. To achieve the objective we revisited seminal papers published in high index management journals that have presented the case study method to analyze the phenomenon from the strategy as practice perspective. We found that the case study is a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon when it concerns to the perspective of strategy as practice once it looks into the case in its singularity and so does the strategy as a social practice process. In this sense, the most approached issues were dynamic social process; routines; individual behavior; interactions and how processes occur. This paper contributes to shed light on the relevance of qualitative research applying the case study method to investigate the strategy as practice process.
Keywords: Case study; Strategy as practice; Qualitative methodology; Systematic analysis.
INTRODUCTION
Traditionally, the discipline of strategy has dealt with its issues as something that the organization has: the organization applies strategy in one way or another (Whittington, 2003). Strategy studies to date have addressed the macro aspects of the organization, in which the complexity of the strategic process is reduced to some causal variables, leaving aside the
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evidences of human actions. Thus, the field of strategy needs “to attend to a much more microlevel phenomena” (Johnson; Melin; Whittington, 2003: 3). But what happens with the micro level of phenomena? To fill this gap, more research has emerged on the subject. They are termed as Strategy as Practice (SAP) or Strategizing in which the topics addressed are the actions and interactions of the individuals practicing the strategy (Whittington, 1996; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). The study of strategy thus, is then viewed as something that people do (Whittington, 2006). In strategy as practice, “the ‘practice’ under investigation is the strategy as a flow of organizational activity that incorporates content and process, intention and emergence, thinking and acting, as reciprocal, intertwined and frequently indistinguishable parts of a whole when they are observed at a close range” (Jarzabbowski, 2005:7). Due to the fact that practices in the strategy as practice need to be studied more closely than the traditional perspective of strategy, Whittington (1996: 732) observes that this perspective will have some implications for practitioners, teachers and researchers, with it being the most radical challenge for the academic community “once the local routines of practice are not easily understood from a distance”. In his view, “research will need to do more than manipulating large statistical databases and teachers more than merely lecturing”. In Whittington’s (1996: 734) words, the strategy as practice perspective will “require new kinds of research” [...]. “Thus, the detailed case study of strategy formulation and implementation developed in recent years by scholars in the process tradition provide a great deal of insight into how managers interact in decision-making, agenda-shaping and achieving cognitive change”. We agree with Whittington (1996) and believe that case study is an appropriate methodology to understand an organization through the strategy as practice perspective, given that it helps the researcher to examine “the way that actors interact with the social and physical
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features of context in the everyday activities that constitutes practice” (Jazarbkowski, 2003). Acoording to Yin (1989), this research method is generally used to understand the "how" and the "why" of a contemporary phenomenon in some real-life context. Hence, we elaborate a research question (RQ) to guide our study: How can the case study be a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon considering the strategy as practice perspective? In order to answer the RQ we developed a systematic analysis considering the seminal papers published in management journals. We revisited papers that have presented the case study method to analyze the phenomena with the strategy as practice perspective. We found that the case study is a suitable methodology to perform an in-depth analysis of phenomena when it concerns the strategy as practice perspective, since it analyzes the case in its singularity as does the studies of strategy as a social practice process, shedding light on the actions and on the routines or specific strategic episodes and decision-making processes. In addition, we noted that since 2003, there has been an increasing number of case study research as the method to understand the organizations’ strategies in practice and their micro practices, in different contexts. The article contributes to indicate more qualitative methods to study reality, in addition to those addressed by Golsorki, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara (2015). Also, this article contributes, as well as other methods already pointed out in the SAP handbook, to indicate that qualitative methods have the power to study reality in the field of research, because it studies the phenomenon at an in-depth level. Thus, the case study is able to do that, in line with these other methods (such as ethnography, ethnomethodology).
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2 STRATEGY AS PRACTICE
Since the seminal article "Strategy as Practice" written by Whittington (1996), the strategy studies began focusing on a more sociological and process-based view of activities within organizations. The strategy as practice or strategizing is composed of a group of interdependent actors (Whittington et al., 2003), who carry out activities considered strategic insofar as the results of their actions contribute to the organization gaining competitive advantage, in order to guarantee their survival (Johnson et al., 2003). Even if these strategic activities are formally planned and elaborated, they are considered as a practical strategy from the moment they start bringing results to the organization (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Studies on strategy as practice gained importance in the scientific community through the focus on the interaction between agents and micro activities carried out within organizations. The studies focus on the analysis of three main elements: practice, praxis and practitioners. It is at the intersection of these elements that the strategy formation process occurs, that is, strategizing (Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). The practice is the “to do”, once it provides behavioral, cognitive, discursive and physical sources through which multiple actors are able to interact and socially achieve collective goals. They must be studied so that one can understand how the strategy is constructed (Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). Practice is defined as types of routine behaviors that consist of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, things and their use, knowledge acquired in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge (Reckwitz, 2002, p.224; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). It is also the routine of behavior, including traditions, norms and procedures (Whittington, 2006).
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For Tierney & Sallee (2008) “Praxis refers to a particular philosophy used to guide and conduct research. Like action researchers, those who engage in praxis-oriented research involve the community or group under study in the research process. Engaging in praxis is not a path for the harried researcher interested only in quickly collecting and analyzing data. Praxis-based research is a long process that involves establishing mutually beneficial relationships between the researcher and members of the community of study. The theory of praxis is one of a few theories that push researchers to engage in action-oriented research. Considering the strategy as practice theory, praxis is the flow of activity developed by people (Whittington, 2006). For Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl (2007), praxis refers to a term that describes human action in its entirety. The interconnection between the action of different and dispersed groups, individuals and the organization within which these individuals act and contribute. It is, in this way, the execution of the practice within the organization, of interpretation and how these practices impact the organization’s daily life (Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). Practitioners are the actors themselves. They are the individuals who practice the strategies, they are the ones responsible for practicing the practices (Whittington, 2006) and, therefore, they are intertwined with practice and praxis. They are obvious units of analysis since they are active participants in the construction of activities that are consequences for the survival of the organization. However, analyzing the participants is not an easy task since they shape their activities through who they are, how they act, and what practices they resort to in a particular action (Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). Whittington (2006) developed a diagram in which practice, praxis and practitioners are integrated into the practice of strategy, as shown in Figure 1.
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----------------------------------Insert Figure 1 about here ----------------------------------In this diagram, the author relates strategy as practice at intraorganizational, organizational and extraorganizational levels. Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the set of strategy practices, the letters A through to D, are the strategy professionals (top management, middle managers and outsiders), with the letters A, B, C at the intra-organizational level and the letter D at extraorganizational level, since the Roman numerals I to V are the praxis within the organization. Through this analysis, the author shows that the practices carried out by strategists can be made based on both the organization itself (1, 2 and 3) and also on extraorganizational (4) level, which depends only on the convenience of the strategy practitioner himself. Thus, the figure above insists on both the sequence of detailed praxis within the organization (represented by i-v) and the potential influence of practices and practitioners available outside the organization (represented by practice 4 and practitioner D) (Whittington, 2006). With this, the author emphasizes the need to understand how the process of strategizing is developed and disseminated both inside and outside the organization. From this diagram, Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) reinterpret the interrelation between practice, praxis and practitioners, shown in Figure 2. ----------------------------------Insert Figure 2 about here ----------------------------------Figure 2 shows that all concepts are interconnected, so it is not possible to study one without touching on aspects of the others. Strategy as practice or strategizing occurs in the link between practice, praxis and practitioners, and this diagram supports it and can be used to link some of the key issues within the context of strategy as practice (Jarzabkowski, 2007).
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Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) presented five questions that still need to be answered in order to follow an agenda for the study of strategy as practice, namely: (i) What is strategy ? (ii) Who is the strategist? (iii) What do the practitioners do? (iv) What explains an analysis of strategists and of what they do? (v) How can an existing social organization and theory inform a strategy analysis as a practice? The first question concerns the concept of strategy in the practical perspective which is the “doing strategy”, that is, the construction of the flow of activities and interactions of multiple actors and the practices on which they are based (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). As for the second question, the strategy is according to who the strategists are, how they act and what resources they use (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Question number three is recurrent when the subject is strategy as practice. It focuses on what the strategy involves in practice and how this practice forms the strategy. This question, which aims to understand what constitutes “doing”, is theoretically based on the concept of practice, that is, it focuses on the specific practices that practitioners engage in when they are doing the strategy. The question can be answered through analysis of meetings, management processes, discursive forms among others (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). The fourth issue is motivated by two important challenges that strategy as a practice should address. In the first one, we have the “what for” problem, since the strategy as practice has a strong empirical focus on how the strategy is constructed, which may lead to a lack of defined result. The second challenge, however, concerns how deep strategy as practice research goes since it exposes the ‘micro’ level strategy, which leads to explanations that are inconsequential elsewhere than the specific situation they belong to (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Hence, strategy as practice scholars “emphasize the importance of research that closely examines the actual doing of strategy; the material artifacts to hand, the language that is used, the physical positioning in strategy episodes” and everything that “is brought together in
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strategy work”. Yet, “strategy as practice is concerned with the explanatory theory, endeavoring to reflect actual practice with some accuracy” (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008: 287). Jazarbkowski et al. (2015) challenged the Practice-Based View of Strategy (PBV) suggested by Bromiley & Rau (2014), as they focused on practices as stand-alone phenomena and offered an integrative scheme to approach not only the practices but also the praxis and the practitioners of the strategy. The integrative scheme does not identify only the best practices because this focus is liable to misattribute performance effects. As a complement to the practices, the scheme recognizes the links between practices, the ways in which they are engaged, who engages them and their potential outcomes. According to Jazarbkowski et al. (2015), to achieve results, companies cannot look only at the practices done but also at how the practices have been done and by whom. The authors offer a scheme shown in Figure 3. ----------------------------------Insert Figure 3 about here ----------------------------------In summary, the scheme shows the interdependence between how and by who the practices are done with the results of the organization. Jarzabkowski et al. (2015: 16) add that, “without an appreciation of the mutual dependence between the what, who and how, strategy research runs the risk of misattributing performance differentials and, as a consequence, offering misleading advice to strategy practitioners”. Many case studies have been done to examine strategy as practice where they analyze the interactions among practices, praxis and practitioners in organizations. We address this methodological strategy in the following section.
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3 THE CASE STUDY METHOD
According to Yin (1989, 1993), the case study can be defined as a research strategy that is characterized by studying the phenomena as a dynamic process, within its real context, using several sources of evidence, in order to explain the phenomenon observed globally and considering its complexity. “As a research effort, the case study unequivocally contributes to our understanding of individual, organizational, social, and political phenomena” (Yin, 1989: 21). According to Stake (2000: 435), “the case study is not a methodological choice, but a choice of what will be studied [...]”, that is, the case. As a form of research, the case study is defined by the interest in individual cases, not by the research method used (Stake, 2000). “Well-structured case studies are holistic and context sensitive” and can be “individuals, groups, organizations, cultures, regions, or nation-states”. “The purpose of case studies is to gather comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth information about each case of interest” (Patton, 2000: 447). In general, case studies represent the preferred strategy when researchers have questions such as “how” and “why”, “when the researcher has limited control over events and when the focus is on contemporary phenomena inserted in some context of the real life” (Yin, 1989). In summary, Hartley (1994) points out that the main terms and conditions of use of this methodology are: when you want to explore social processes as they occur in organizations; when one wants to perform a dynamic, contextual and generally longitudinal analysis of several different actions and meanings that take place within organizations; it is important to understand the social processes in their organizational and environmental context; the goal is to explore new processes and/or behaviors that are not well understood; if one wants to capture the
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emergent and immanent properties of life in organizations and exploit that organizational behavior that is informal, unusual, secret, or even illicit. For Lavarda & Balbastre (2009) and Pérez-Aguiar (1999), in line with Yin (1989), the project of a case study has six stages: to establish the objectives of the research; establish the theoretical framework of research; define the unit of analysis; select the cases that will be the object of the study; study a pilot case; to draw up a case study protocol. In the latter case, Pérez Aguiar (1999) states that sources of evidence (people, documents, direct observation, interview or questionnaire - structured or semi-structured, etc.) and data collection procedures (which may be extended beyond mere collection of data, including aspects that affect access to the organization, such as the way the company is received, the ease or difficulty in obtaining the information, the knowledge of the interviewee) must be defined and anticipated in advance. It is also necessary to define whether an interview or questionnaire (structured or semi-structured) will be used. According to Yin (1989), there are three types of case studies: explanatory, exploratory and descriptive. The explanatory case studies are characterized by trying to give answers to the how and why questions; furthermore, the theoretical propositions that guide the research specify a logical and complete series of causal events, albeit hypothetical, that intend to connect concepts and variables. Exploratory case studies have as its basic objective to investigate those situations where there is no well-defined theoretical framework or where there is no clear set of results. In this sense, exploratory research is used when searching for clues about the general nature of a problem, possible decision alternatives and the most relevant variables that need to be considered. In addition, this type of case study allows us to generate alternative hypotheses that can be contrasted in later studies. The exploratory study also serves to analyze the “how” and the “whys”. In turn, the descriptive case studies analyze how a phenomenon occurs within its real context, describing it in the most complex way (Yin, 1989).
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For Yin (1989: 41), the research project of the case study supposes a logical sequence that connects the data obtained with the initial research questions and, in the end, with its conclusions. “Colloquially, a research project is a plan of action to get out of here and get there, where here can be defined as the initial set of questions to be answered, and there is a set of conclusions (answers) on those issues”. In order to have proven quality, the case study have must have multiple sources of evidence (that must come from two or more sources, but converging in relation to the same set of facts or discoveries); establish a chain of evidence (explicit links between the questions asked, the data collected and the conclusions reached); have the draft reviewed by key informants; have conformity to the standard; make explanation construction and analysis of time series; use replication logic in multiple case studies; use a case study protocol and develop a database for the case study (Yin, 1989). Patton (2000: 449) also mentions about the data collection and states that “case data consists of all the information one has about each case: interview data, observations, the documentary data [...], impressions and statements of others about the case, and contextual information [...]”. However, according to Stake (2000: 443), many researchers are concerned “about the clarity and validity of their own communication” out of the collected data. “To reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation, research employ various procedures, two of the most common being redundancy of data gathering and procedural challenge to explanation”. These procedures, for caseworks, are called triangulation. Stake (2000: 443) states that triangulation “has been generally considered a process of using multiple perceptions to clarify meaning, verifying the repeatability of an observation of interpretation”. According to Yin (1989), the triangulation of data becomes a rational foundation, so any finding or conclusion in a case study will be more convincing and accurate.
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Also in order to attest the quality of the case study research projects, Yin (1989) proposes four tests that are commonly used: construct validity, internal validity, external validity and reliability, and defines some tactics for the case study to pass in each test according to Figure 4. ------------------------------Insert Figure 4 about here ------------------------------The validity of the construct refers to the establishment of correct operational measures for the concepts under study; the internal validity establishes a cause-and-effect relationship, whereby some conditions are shown that lead to other conditions as differentiated in false relationships (only used for causal - or explanatory case studies), the external validity establishes the domain to which a study can be generalized and reliability shows that the operations of a study can be repeated, presenting the same findings and conclusions. As it is a qualitative method and different from the traditional quantitative method, the case study is sometimes seen as discredited and unreliable. Stake (2000) divides the case study into three types, based on its purpose: intrinsic, instrumental and collective. In the intrinsic case study, the researcher wants to better understand the particular case and, it is the case that interests the researcher in all its particularity and normality. The study is carried out because of an intrinsic interest in something, for example, a clinic, a conference, a particular child, a curriculum. In the instrumental case study, a particular case is examined primarily to provide insight into a subject or to redesign a generalization. Unlike the intrinsic case study, in the instrumental the case is of secondary interest, it has a secondary role of support and facilitates the understanding of something more. In the collective case study, the interest is less in a specific case and the researcher wants to investigate a phenomenon, population or general conditions. It is like an extended instrumental case study
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for many cases. Here, cases are chosen because they are believed to lead to a better understanding, perhaps better theorizing about a large number of cases. Flyvbjerg (2004) examines and corrects five common misunderstandings about case study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. The author concludes that “a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one”. In this sense, we make a linkage of the case study as a proper method to understand indepth phenomena in the strategy as practice perspective.
4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The goal of this study was to investigate how the case study can be considered a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon considering the strategy as practice perspective. In order to achieve the objective, we developed a systematic analysis considering the seminal papers published in management journals. We revisited papers that have presented the case study method to analyze the phenomena with the strategy as practice perspective. The articles were searched in international databases using the following keywords: strategy as practice, strategizing, strategic practices, case study, and practice. We carried out the search in the databases (Blackwell, Wilson, Emerald, Sage, Science Direct, Wiley InterScience and Scielo); Web of Science and Strategy community site: strategy as practice
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(www.s-as-p.org). The journals where the articles were published were: Journal of Management, Organization Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Long Range Planning, Administrative Science Quarterly and Human Relations, Scandinavian Journal of Management. The data sources described above were chosen due to the fact that they are representative in the international context regarding the publication of organizational studies and have high impact factor index on the research area, as shown: Academy of Management Journal: 7.417; Journal of management studies: 3.962; Long range planning: 3.547; Industrial Marketing Management: 3.166; Organization Studies. 3.107; British Journal of Management: 2.982; Human Relations: 2.622; European Management Journal: 2.481; Strategic organization: 1,94; Scandinavian Journal of Management: 1.450; Journal of Organizational Change Management: 0.761 and Business History: 0.830. The articles obtained by the search strategy were evaluated according to the following criteria: (i) They deal with the theme “strategy as practice”, “strategizing”, “strategy as practice” and “strategic practices”; (ii) Use the case study as a methodological research strategy. In the first step, through the keywords in the databases mentioned above, 96 articles were collected among essays and case studies between the years 2003 and 2017. After this first collection, a screening was done to verify which of the articles used the case study as the method to analyze the organizations. There were then, 30 articles selected as shown on Table 1: ------------------------------Insert Table 1 about here -------------------------------
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5 STRATEGY AS PRACTICE WITH THE CASE STUDY METHOD
This section clarifies how the papers have approached the strategy as practice perspective considering the case study is a suitable methodology to perform an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon. In order to do so, we have categorized the articles into five themes that have been mostly used by the researches of the strategy as practice area, which are: (i) dynamic social process; (ii) close look at micro activities (routines); (iii) individual behavior; (iv) interactions and (v) how (processes occur). Although the strategy as practice perspective studies include all these categories (Johnson et al. 2003; Jarzabbowski, 2005; Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007), sometimes even together, we decided to separate them in order to demonstrate in a didactic and clear way how they chose the case study as the research method to explain the real-life phenomena. Table 2 explains the similarities between the case study and strategy as practice perspective in relation to the categories approached. ------------------------------Insert Table 2 about here -------------------------------
Starting with the dynamic social process category, we found four articles that addressed the theme (Beech & Johnson, 2005; Smínia, 2005; Molloy & Whittington, 2005; Mueller, Whittle, Gilchrist & Lenney, 2013). All the articles used the case study as methodological approach to explain the processes of the organizations in real-time, from the practice lenses, showing the dynamic process within its real context as suggested by Yin (1989). According to Johnson et al. (2003: 5), the activity-based view “goes inside organizations, their strategies and
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their processes, to investigate what’s actually done and by whom”. In this topic, the articles used almost the seven sources of evidence mentioned by Yin (1989): photography, documentation, archival documents, interviews and direct observation (which they focused more). The second issue approached by the authors were the routines inside the organization, where the purpose was to have an in-depth observation of what was done and by whom (Salvato, 2003; Samra-Fredericks, 2003; Linda Rouleau, 2005). According to Whittington (1996: 734), “to understand strategizing better, we need a close observation of strategists as they work their ways through their strategy routines”. The authors looked close into the organizations to gather comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth information, as proposed by Patton (2000), like the strategists’ linguistic skills and forms of knowledge for strategizing (Samra-Fredericks, 2003) and their routines and conversations (Rouleau, 2005) for example. The data were collected mostly through semi-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analyses (Yin, 1989). In order to understand the strategizing behavior of the top management team of three universities from the United Kingdom, Jarzabkowski (2008) conducted a seven years longitudinal qualitative case study as suggested by Hartley (1994), when he stated that exploring new processes and/or behaviors that are not well understood is one of the main term and condition to use the case study as the research method. With the same objective, Sillince & Muller (2007) have explained the different positions taken by middle and top management about a strategy failure and concentrated their study in the reframing of accounts of responsibility for strategy. Hoon (2007) conducted a single longitudinal qualitative in-depth case study in a German university to examine the role of committees as strategic practice during the implementation of personnel development in a
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public administration and, Laine and Vaara (2007) examined the discourses and practices of strategic development in an engineering and consulting group. To reach the objective, Jarzabkowski (2008), similar to the other authors, collected data through interviews, documentary sources and nonparticipant observation of strategy meetings, pre- and post-meeting observations, shadowing, and other on-site observational data (Yin, 1989), which enabled her to explore strategizing behaviors and processes as they unfolded. Jarzabkowski (2008) has addressed how the managers shape either the structural context or the interpretations of organization members, that is, what the managers actually do in the strategy process. As reported by Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl (2007) the “to do” part of the strategy must be studied if one wants to understand how the strategy is constructed. It is by analyzing the process of doing the strategy that researchers can comprehend how strategists behave. The practices are the routines of behavior, including traditions, norms and procedures, as stated by Whittington (2006). The studies with the strategy as practice perspective have also conducted case studies to analyze the interactions of the members that do the strategies in the organizations (Jazarbkowski, 2003a; Balogun & Johnson, 2005; Aaboen & Dubois & Lind, 2013; Werle & Seidl, 2015; Jarkabkowski & Burke & Spee, 2015). In general, the articles focused on the practical activities in which the organizational members interact and on the strategic practices through which interaction are conducted (Jarzabkowski, 2003a). According to Yin (1989), the case study contributes to the understanding of the social phenomena, as well as organizational and political phenomenon. In opposition to the main stream of strategy studies, the strategy as practice perspective is concerned with the actions and interactions of the individuals practicing the strategy within organizations (Whittington, 1996; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). This perspective examines “the way that actors interact with the social and physical features of context in the
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everyday activities that constitutes practice” (Jazarbkowski, 2003). According to Balogun & Johnson (2005), they chose the case study to approach the phenomena once they wanted to capture the contextual richness and complexity of the case. The data, as suggested by Yin (1989), were collected by multiple sources like participant observation of meetings, written notes, as well as photographs, documents and interviews with the participants of the research. Nevertheless, most of the papers examined in this article adopted the strategy as practice perspective, and the case study as the method, to understand how things occur inside the organizations and how strategy is constructed (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007) and how these practices impact the organization’s daily life (Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). According to Yin (1989), the case study is generally the method used to understand “how” and “why” a contemporary phenomenon occurs in some real-life context. Paroutis, Franco & Papadopoulos (2015) examined how a top management team in a medium size enterprise creates a strategy tool during a workshop. By using this method, they could see the interaction of the members, the discussions in depth and everything that involves those kind of events. In the same line, Maitlis & Lawrence (2003: 114) studied the failure in the organizational strategizing process of members of a British symphony orchestra to construct an artistic strategy for their organization. The focus of the study was “to understand how decisions were made, and to identify and explain the patterns of involvement for a variety of different stakeholder groups”. Regner (2003: 63) has also examined how managers create and develop strategy in practice by using a dual longitudinal case study methodology, including a single indepth study combined with a multiple retrospective study, involving four multinational companies.
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Other authors conducted case studies to understand how organizational strategies met, or failed to meet with everyday work (Mantere, 2005); how managers respond to the same corporate change initiatives (Stensaker & Falkenberg, 2007); “how strategy meetings are involved in either stabilizing existing strategic orientations (Jazarbkowski & Seild, 2008); “how strategic planning is able to deliver strategic integration within organizations” (Jazabkowski & Balogun, 2009: 1255) and how boards ‘do’ strategy (Paroutis & Pettigrew, 2007; Hendry, Kiel & Nicholson, 2010). Yet, Jazarbkowski, Spee & Smets (2013) studied the practice of underwriting managers in reinsurance companies and identified the material artifacts that the managers used to appraise reinsurance deals in order to identify their practices and how the artifacts influence on that. Tidström & Rajala (2016: 35) focused on “coopetition praxis and practices and how these are interrelated on the micro, meso and macro levels”. In the same year, Darb & Knott (2016) used ethnographic techniques over one month to study how an informal business and its network partners do strategic networking. In 2017, Concannon & Nordberg (2017: 1), revisited the work of directors, that is, how they engage in strategizing on the service side. Finally, Pfister & Jack & Darwin (2017), with the new topic on strategizing - Open strategy - have studied how middle managers work with performance indicators to strategize. To analyze “how”, authors collected data from in-depth interviews, participant observations, video- and audio-recording and extensive documentary analysis as Patton (2000), Yin (1989), Lavarda & Balbastre (2009) and Pérez-Aguiar (1999) proposed to guarantee the validity and reliability of the studies (Yin, 1989). All the articles revisited have triangulated the data collected through the sources mentioned above. For Yin (1989), the triangulation of data becomes a rational foundation, so any finding or conclusion in a case study will be more convincing and accurate. Besides, the
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triangulation is valid once is makes use of multiple perceptions to clarify the meaning of the researched phenomena (Stake, 2000).
5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
“To understand strategizing better, we need a close observation of strategists as they work their ways through their strategy routines” (Whittington, 1996: 734). The goal of this study was to investigate how the case study can be considered a suitable methodology to analyze an in-depth phenomenon considering the strategy as practice perspective. In order to achieve the objective, we developed a systematic analysis considering the seminal papers published in management journals. We revisited papers that have presented the case study method to analyze the phenomena with the strategy as practice perspective. We found that the case study is a suitable method to perform an in-depth analysis of phenomena when it concerns the perspective of strategy as practice, once it looks at the case in its singularity and so does the strategy as a social practice process. In addition, we noted that since 2003, there has been an increasing number of studies applying the case study as a method to understand the organizations’ strategies in practice and their micro practices in different contexts. Whittington (1996:732) observed that the strategy as practice perspective would have some implications for practitioners, teachers and researches, being it the most radical challenge for the academic community “once the local routines of practice are not easily understood from a distance”. In his opinion, research would need to do more than manipulate large statistical databases and teachers do more than merely lecture.
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Furthermore, it could be confirmed by the articles analyzed as they went inside the organization, analyzing the dynamic social processes; close look at micro activities (routines); tried to comprehend the individual behavior of the members participants of the strategy making; aimed to understand their interactions and how they construct the strategy. Because the strategy as practice is interested in situated, concrete activity (Whittington, 2003), the strategizing perspective needs to trace the detailed micro activities which constitute the day-to-day activities of individuals that make up strategies, face to face, interviewing and observing in locus. Hence, the case study is one of the best methodologies to understand such practices as they are used to study the phenomena in its particularity (Stalke, 2000) as a dynamic process (Yin, 1989); it explores social processes as they occur in organizations (Hartley, 1994); it gathers comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth information (Patton, 2000); it contributes to understanding the individual, organizational, social, and political phenomena (Yin, 1989); it explores new processes and/or behaviors that are not well understood (Hartley, 1994) and it is appropriate when researchers have questions such as “how” and “why” (Yin, 1989). “Thus, the detailed case study of strategy formulation and implementation developed in recent years by scholars in the process tradition provide a great deal of insight into how managers interact in decision-making, agenda-shaping and achieving cognitive change” (Whittington, 2006). The main contribution of this theoretical study is that it to indicates more qualitative methods to study reality, in addition to those addressed by Golsorki, Rouleau, Seidl and Vaara (2015). Also, this article contributes, as well as other methods already pointed out in the SAP handbook, to indicate that qualitative methods have the power to study reality in the field of research, because it studies the phenomenon at an in-depth level. Thus, the case study is able to do that, in line with these other methods (such as ethnography, ethnomethodology). So, we
22
highlight the relevance of qualitative research applying the case study method to investigate strategy as practice process. The limitation that can be pointed out is related to the scope of the paper that is limited to a theoretical (Whetten, 1989) investigation and does not intend on being tested empirically this time, it means we did not conduct a case study in practice, we only analyzed others. So, we believe that future studies may be conducted focusing on empirical research using the case study combined with other methods such as ethnomethodology or ethnographic studies, as mentioned before. By going deep inside the organization, conducting powerful studies involving people in action in their environment, in day-to-day activities and practices, we can better understand and comprehend phenomena that involve practices and practitioners and look for still unanswered questions: where are those practices leading us as a community of practitioners?
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Whittington, R. et al. Taking strategy seriously: responsibility and reform for an important social practice. Journal of Management Inquiry, 12 (4), 396-409. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613-634. Whittington, R. (2014) Making strategy: the hard work of institutional innovation in an open professional field. 14th EURAM. Waves and wings of strategic leadership for sustainable competitiveness, Valencia, 16099-16099. Whittington, R. (2007). Strategy Practice and Strategy Process, Family Differences and the Sociological Eye. Organization Studies, 28 (10), 1575-1586. Yin, R. K. 1989. Case Study Research. Design and Methods, 4. edt, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Yin, R. K. 1993. Applications of Case Study Research, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1. Integrating Praxis, Practices and Practitioners Source: Whittington (2006).
28
Figure 2. A conceptual framework for analyzing strategy as practice Source: Jarzabkowski et al. (2007:11).
Figure 3. A Schematic Model of Strategy Practice Source: Jazarbkowski et al. (2015:17)
29 Tests
Case study tactic
Phase of research
Construct validity
- multiple sources of evidence;
Data collection
- establish chain of evidence;
Internal validity
- have key informants review draft case study reports
Composition
- do pattern matching
Data analysis
- do explanation-building - address rival explanations - use logic models External validity
- use theory in single case design;
Research design
- use replication logic in multiple-case designs; Reliability
- use case study protocol;
Data collection
- develop case study database
Figure 4. Case study tactics for four design tests Source: Yin (1989:55)
Table 1. Bibliographic references selected for demonstration No
Author(s)
Article title
1
Jarzabkowski
Strategic
2
3
Salvato
Maitlis Lawrence
&
Source Practices:
An
Journal
of
Year
Source of data collection
2003
Interview,
observation,
Activity Theory Perspective on
Management
ethnographic
Continuity and Change.
Studies
documents and archival
IF: 3.962-JCR
data.
of
data,
The Role of Micro-Strategies
Journal
in the Engineering of Firm
Management
Evolution.
Studies
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the
Journal
dark: Understanding failure in
Management
meetings and rehearsals,
organizational strategizing.
Studies
Interviews with orchestra
of
2003
2003
Direct
observation
of
managers, players, Board members, and other key
30 actors,
and
extensive
documentary analysis 4
Samra-
Strategizing
as
Lived
Journal
of
2003
Fredricks
Experience and Strategists’
Management
observation, conversation
Everyday Efforts to Shape
Studies
analysis, recording of the
Strategic Direction. 5
Régner
Ethnography,
close-up
routines.
Strategy Creation in the
Journal
of
2003
Periphery:
Management
semi-structured
Inductive Versus Deductive
Studies
interviews,
Strategy Making* Strategy
observation, in-depth company
documents and archival
creation
periphery:
Personal
in
inductive
the
data.
versus
deductive strategy making 6
Beech, N. &
Discourses
of
disrupted
Johnson
identities in the practice of
Journal
of
Organizational
strategic change: The mayor,
Change
the
Management
street-fighter
and
the
2005
Longitudinal engagement with the focal organization.
insider-out. 7
Linda Rouleau
Micro-Practices of Strategic
Journal
Sensemaking and Sensegiving:
management
observations,
How
studies
structured interviews, and
Middle
Managers
of
2005
Interpret and Sell Change
Semiparticipant semi-
document analyses.
Every Day.
8
Saku Mantere
Strategic practices as enablers
Strategic
2005
and disablers of championing
organization
Semi-structured interviews.
activity. 9
Sminia
Strategy formation as layered
Scandinavian
discussion.
Journal
of
Management
2005
Direct observation,
real-time formal
interviews; the collection
31 of ethnographic data from casual
observation,
and
document analysis. 10
Eamonn Molloy
&
Richard
Practices of Organising: Inside
Emerald
and Outside the Processes of
insights
2005
Photography, observation and extensive interviews
Change.
Whittington 11
Balogun
&
Johnson
From intended strategies to
Organization
unintended
studies
outcomes:
the
2005
Interviews,
direct
observation and documents
impact of change recipient
analysis
sensemaking. 12
Hoon
Committees
as
strategic
practice: The role of strategic conversation
in
a
Human
2007
Relations
and
public
Laine & Vaara
workshops,
semi-
structured interviews and
administration. 13
Observations in meetings
documents analysis.
Struggling over subjectivity: A
Human
discursive analysis of strategic
Relations
2007
Participant observation, all kinds
development in a group.
of
documents
company and
target
interviews. 14
Paroutis
&
Pettigrew
Strategizing
in
the
multi-
business firm: Strategy teams
Human
2007
Interviews.
2007
Interviews,
Relations
at multiple levels and over time. 15
Stensaker
&
Falkenberg 16
Sillince Mueller
&
Making sense of different
Human
responses to corporate change.
Relations
Switching
Organization
strategic
perspective: The reframing of accounts of responsibility.
Studies
observations,
and secondary information. 2007
Interviews,
documents
analysis and observations.
32 17
Jarzabkowski
Shaping
strategy
as
a
structuration process.
Academy of
2008
management
Interviews,
documents
analysis and observations.
journal 18
19
20
21
22
Jarzabkowski
The Role of Meetings in the
Organization
& Seild
Social Practice of Strategy.
studies
Jarzabkowiski
The Practice and Process of
Journal
& Balogun
Delivering Integration through
Management
Strategic Planning.
Studies
Hendry,
Kiel
How boards strategise:
A
2008
Observations,
interviews,
documents analysis. of
Long Range
2009
Interviews,
documents
analysis and observations.
2010
In-depth
and
semi-
& Nicholson
strategy as practice view.
Planning
Jarzabkowski,
Material artifacts: Practices for
European
Spee & Smets
doing strategy with stuff.
Management
observation, interview and
Journal
documents data.
Aaboen,
Strategizing as networking for
Industrial
Dubois & Lind
new ventures.
Marketing
structured interviews. 2013
2013
Non-participant
Interviews and documents (secondary data) analysis.
Management 23
Mueller
&
Whittle, Gilchrist.
24
&
Politics and strategy practice
Business
An
History
ethnomethodologically-
perspective.
Paroutis,
Visual &
Papadopoulos
interactions
strategy
tools:
strategic
British
producing
Journal
in
archival interviews,
direct observation
with
knowledge
Documentation, documents,
informed discourse analysis
Lenney.
Franco
2013
2015 of
Direct
observation,
interviews and video-audio
Management
recording.
workshops. 25
Werle & Seidl
The Layered Materiality of
British
Strategizing:
Journal
Objects
and
Epistemic the
Interplay
between Material Artefacts in the Exploration of Strategic Topics
2015 of
Management
Interviews,
direct
observation, photography and documents analysis.
33 26
27
Jarzabkowski,
Constructing
for
British
Burke & Spee
Strategic Work: A Multimodal
Journal
Perspective
Management
Tidström
&
Rajala
28
29
30
Spaces
Coopetition
strategy
interrelated
praxis
2015 of
as
Industrial
and
Marketing
Ethnography observation, video-recording
and
interviews. 2016
Interview and documents analysis
practices on multiple levels.
Management
Strategising practices in an
European
informal economy setting: A
Management
shadowing, secondary data
case of strategic networking.
Journal
and everyday ethnography.
Concannon &
Boards strategizing in liminal
European
Nordberg
spaces: Process and practice,
Management
formal and informal.
Journal
Pfister, Jack &
Strategizing open innovation:
Scandinavia
Darwin
How middle managers work
n Journal of
with performance indicators.
Management
Darbi & Knott
2016
interviews,
observations,
2017
Interviews
2017
Observation and interviews
Source: Research Data
Table 2. Categories and Similarities between Case Study and Strategy as Practice Perspective Categories
The Case Study
The Strategy as Practice Perspective
Studies the phenomena as a dynamic process
Studies the strategy as a social process
Dynamic
(Yin, 1989). Explores social processes as
(Jarzabbowski, 2005; Whittington, 2006).
Social Process
they occur in organizations (Hartley, 1994). The purpose of case studies is to gather
Observes the phenomena at a close range
comprehensive, systematic, and in-depth
and it cannot be understood from a distance
Close look at
information (Patton, 2000). It is used when
(Whittington, 1996; Jarzabbowski, 2005).
micro
the interest is the particularity of a case
Close look at the micro level phenomena
activities
(Stake, 2000).
(Johnson & Melin & Whittington, 2003; Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski, Balogun & Seidl, 2007). The strategizing perspective
34 needs to trace the detailed micro activities which constitute the day-to-day activities of individuals that make up strategies (Whittington, 2003) “Contributes to understanding the
Analyzes the human actions and interactions
individual, organizational, social, and
of individuals practicing the strategy
Actions and
political phenomena” (Yin, 1989).
(Whittington, 2006; Jarzabkowski, Balogun
Interactions
It may be used to analyze several different
& Seidl, 2007). It studies the construction of
actions (Hartley, 1994).
the flow of activities and interactions of
Provide a better understanding of the
multiple actors and the practices on which
phenomena (Stake, 2000).
they are based (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007).
Explores new processes and/or behaviors
Understands the behavior of the members
Individual
that are not well understood as well as
involved in strategizing (Jarzabkowski,
behavior
exploiting that organizational behavior that
Balogun & Seidl, 2007).
is informal, unusual, secret, or even illicit (Hartley, 1994). “Well-structured case studies are holistic and context sensitive” and can be “individuals, groups, organizations, cultures, regions, or nationstates” (Patton, 2000).
How
Used when researchers who have questions
Understands how strategy is constructed
such as “how” and “why” (Yin, 1989).
(Jarzabkowski et al., 2007).
(processes occur)
Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the research
