Linda Rouleau

Strategizing in pluralistic contexts: Rethinking theoretical frames:

Pluralistic organizations characterized by multiple objectives, diffuse power and knowledge-based work processes present a complex challenge both for strategy theorists and for strategy practitioners because the very nature of strategy as usually understood (an explicit and unified direction for the organization) appears to contradict the natural dynamics of these organizations. Yet pluralism is to some extent always present in organizations and perhaps increasingly so. This article explores the usefulness of three alternate and complementary theoretical frames for understanding and influencing strategy practice in pluralistic contexts: Actor-Network Theory, Conventionalist Theory and the social practice perspective. Each of these frameworks has a predominant focus on one of the fundamental attributes of pluralism: power, values and knowledge. Together, they offer a multi-faceted understanding of the complex practice of strategizing in pluralistic contexts.

Taking strategy seriously:responsibility and reform for an important social practice

Strategy is a pervasive and consequential practice in mostWestern societies. We respond to strategy’s importance by drawing an initial map of strategy as an organizational field that embraces not just firms, but consultancies, business schools, the state and financial institutions. Using the example of Enron, we show how the strategy field is prone to manipulations in which other actors in the field can easily become entrapped, with grave consequences. Given these consequences, we argue that it is time to take strategy seriously in three senses: undertaking systematic research on the field itself; developing appropriate responses to recent failures in the field; and building more heedful interrelationships between actors within the field, particularly between business schools and practitioners.

The Practice of Leadership in the Messy World of Organizations

This article examines the practice of leadership in organizations characterized by ambiguous authority relationships. Drawing on three empirical case studies illustrative of a long-term research program on change in health care organizations, we examine leadership as a practical activity focusing particularly on its dynamic, collective, situated, and dialectical nature. We invite researchers on leadership to look carefully at the embeddedness of leadership roles in context and at the type and consequences of practices that leaders develop in such contexts. Implications of these ideas for further research and for would-be leaders are discussed.

Escalating Indecision: Between Reification and Strategic Ambiguity

This paper examines an organizational pathology that we label “escalating indecision”---where people find themselves driven to invest time and energy in activities and decision processes aimed at resolving an issue of common concern, but where closure appears elusive. The phenomenon is illustrated through a case history in which a strategic orientation decision involving the configuration of a group of large teaching hospitals was continually made, unmade, and remade, producing little concrete strategic action over many years before achieving more tangible moves toward implementation. The paper introduces the notion of a “network of indecision” in which participants have become sufficiently attached to a common project to continue working together to move it forward, but their divergent conceptions of what this involves prevent them from materializing it in a tangible form. The paper suggests that networks of indecision are dialectically constituted through a set of practices of reification and practices of strategic ambiguity. The phenomenon is strongly associated with pluralistic settings characterized by diffuse power and divergent interests, and its prevalence is likely to be greater in situations of reactive leadership, uncertain resource availabilities, and long time horizons.

The power of numbers in strategizing

This article draws on a detailed case study of a complex decision process in a public healthcare system to consider the role and potential power of numbers in strategizing. Because of their association with precision and accuracy, numbers may seem at first sight to be unlikely tools for decision making in contexts characterized by ambiguous goals and diffuse authority.Yet in the case described in this article, managers successfully mobilized a system of numbers to make an extremely controversial strategic decision.The empirical study examines in depth the micro-practices and processes by which the objectivity and legitimacy of a transparently contestable system of numbers were socially constructed in a public forum. By developing a system whose results mapped on to dominant values and interests, by displaying transparency, consistency and competence in defence of the system, and by organizing the decision process in a way that disempowered adversaries, the pro tagonists in the case were able to infuse a difficult decision with positive value. It is concluded that the power of numbers lies in their ability to fill the strategic void created by pluralism.Though contested, numbers can under certain conditions come to acquire and provide authority in organizations where power is diffuse.This is most likely when the number systems enable the reconciliation of diverse values and interests, when they are embedded in shared systems of meaning, and when they are coupled with and activated by particular micro-practices that support the legitimacy of their promoters as disinterested advocates for the collective good.

Postmodernism and Postmodernity in Organization Analysis

Draws a distinction, via the edited text of an interview, between a sociology of postmodernity and postmodernism: the latter has an emphasis on theory and its intertextuality while the former would focus more evidently on discontinuities in the empirical world which serve to mark a difference from the ways in which that world has been appropriated and appreciated through a more modernist perspective. For organization theory the difference is articulated in particular by the awareness that there are now counter‐factuals available to challenge some predominant assumptions about the way in which organization occurs. The assumptions have a predominantly “Western” basis; some elements of the challenge come from an increasing knowledge of the specificities of Asian practice. A crucial axis for comparison between relevant tendencies towards “modernism” and “postmodernism” is that of “differentiation”. Proposes that modernist tendencies are towards the increase of differentiation, postmodern towards the increase ...

From the ethnographic turn to new forms of organizational ethnography

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline the context and the content of the six papers that follow in this special issue on “New Forms of Organizational Ethnography”. Design/methodology/approach – This editorial explains the burgeoning interest in organizational ethnography over the last decade in terms of several favourable conditions that have supported this resurgence. It also offers a general view of the nature and diversity of new forms of organizational ethnography in studies of management and organization. Findings – New forms of organizational ethnography have emerged in response to rapidly changing organizational environments and technological advances as well as the paradigmatic transformation of ethnography and ascendency of discursive and practice-based studies. Originality/value – The editorial highlights an “ethnographic turn” in management and organization studies that is characterized by a renewal of the discipline through the proliferation of new forms of organizational ethnograp...

Theory of routine dynamics and connections to strategy as practice

Introduction Recent research in the fields of both routines and strategy has used practice theory to focus attention on the dynamic and generative processes that result in strategy and routines and that have previously been studied as relatively static entities (Jarzabkowski 2005; Feldman and Orlikowski 2011; Whittington, this volume). Strategy as practice and the theory of routine dynamics are, thus, distinct but related theories of organizing. In this chapter I discuss similarities and synergies between the study of routines as dynamic processes and the study of strategy as practice. I focus particular attention on the emergent and mutually constituted nature of these organizational processes. I argue that these characteristics make the a priori identification of analytical entities difficult and misleading. As a result, definitions of routines and strategy, or of processes that constitute them, need to be developed in the context of specific empirical settings and specific research questions. This chapter is written from the perspective of routines and seeks to identify some of the ways in which routine dynamics can contribute to strategy-as-practice research. The theory of routine dynamics is not only a compatible theory but also a useful tool for the study of strategy as practice. Accordingly, I begin the chapter with a description of routine dynamics. In the second section I discuss the connections between routine dynamics and strategy as practice. The third section explores challenges that research in routine dynamics and strategy as practice have in common, specifically the issue of identifying relevant action and enacted patterns and issues of multiplicity, or the ‘problem’ of identifying a singular routine or strategy. The fourth section presents studies of routine dynamics that contribute to strategy as practice and that show how strategies emerge through routines. Methodological implications are summarized briefly in the conclusion. Theory of routine dynamics In recent years a theory of routines has developed through the work of many scholars. The foundational work was provided by Martha Feldman and Brian Pentland, each working independently and, later, jointly. Pentlands work developed the idea of routines as effortful accomplishments (Pentland and Reuter 1994). Feldmans work built on this idea and pointed out that routines were not only effortful but also emergent (Feldman, 2000).

The institutional work of hospital risk managers: democratizing and professionalizing risk management

The growing importance of risk management programs and policies in health care organizations has given rise to a new organizational figure, the risk managers. This paper seeks to better understand their role by looking at their risk work as a form of institutional work. From an inductive study of hospital risk managers in the Quebec health care sector, we provide a situated account of the risk work or ‘the effortful pattern of practices’ accomplished by hospital risk managers at the intra- and extra-organizational levels. The results show that they engage in two broader recursive forms of institutional work. At the intra-organizational level, it is by building bridges, autonomizing teams, legitimizing risk work, and pragmatizing interventions that hospital risk managers contribute to democratizing the risk management practices in their organization. At the extra-organizational level, it is by networking with colleagues, hybridizing knowledge, shaping identity, and debating solutions that they contribute to articulating a professionalization project. We argue that the recursive relationship between these two forms of institutional work, namely democratizing and professionalizing risk management, demonstrates how the risk work done at one level facilitates the risk work accomplished at the other. The paper provides three contributions. First, it opens the black box of the hospital risk managers’ roles by showing the complexity of their risk work, instead of formalizing expectations about their role in a normative way, as is generally the case. Second, this research provides evidence about how actors with limited collective power and resources such as hospital risk managers participate in disseminating risk management programs and policies. Third, the paper offers a multi-level understanding of the ways by which hospital risk managers work to institutionalize risk management program and policies. The paper ends by discussing the importance of gaining a better understanding of the risk managers’ role and their institutional work.

Studying strategizing through biographical methods: narratives of practices and life trajectories of practitioners

Despite efforts to develop innovative and new research methods for studying strategizing, most strategy-as-practice research has been based on longitudinal case studies drawing on interviews, observations and documents (Vaara and Whittington 2012). While these methods provide a complex set of historical and contextual data that are obviously necessary for understanding practices, they tend to concentrate on the organizational level, thus leaving unclear the way managers and others draw on their explicit and tacit knowledge when they are strategizing. Nonetheless, the essence of strategist agency cannot be separated from strategists’ life experience and their social, professional and/or managerial identity (Tengblad 2012). Therefore, there is a need to develop interest in methods offering the possibility to better understand who strategists are and how they define themselves, how they make sense of the strategy and how they position themselves within their organization and external networks. Biographical methods constitute a set of pertinent narrative methods of inquiry for carrying out in-depth studies of strategizing practices (Fenton and Langley 2011). With the aim of understanding the subjective essence of a persons life or part of that life, biographical research focuses on individuals, who are asked to narrate their experiences and provide their own accounts of the significant change they have gone through over time (Goodley et al . 2004). To better understand the practices and skills individuals use when they are strategizing, biographical methods constitute a relevant methodological option offering multiple variants (biography, life story, autobiography, life history and so on) that can be used in complementary ways with ethnographic, participative and visual qualitative methods of inquiry (Merrill and West 2009). This chapter proposes to study strategizing by collecting data through a specific kind of biographical method, namely narratives of practices. Narratives of practices are specific life stories that focus on work experience and professional trajectories (Bertaux 1981). As with any biographical method, narratives of practices, or work life stories, allow the researcher to dig into the ‘life-world’ of strategists, whether they are managers or not, in order to capture the taken-for-granted streams of routines, events, interactions and knowledge that constitute their practices (Kupers, Mantere and Statler 2013). For example, Gerstrom (2013) draws on a variant of this method in her doctoral thesis to study how managers defend, protect and adapt their identity when dealing with financial crisis.