NEGOTIATING STRATEGIC-MANAGEMENT CONTRADICTIONS IN PRACTICE: AN ACTIVITY-BASED APPROACH

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Managing organisational activities challenges actors’ abilities to negotiate contradictions and paradoxes inherent in much human practice. Organisational theorists have suggested ways in which managers may address such contradictions, e.g. embracing them (Beech et al 2004; Smith and Tushman 2005) or separating and transcending them (e.g. Poole and van der Ven 1989). Price and Newson (2003) consider paradoxes from the construction-management literature perspective, and suggest that strategic-management success depends on strategists’ ability to create balance between paradoxical strategies such as rational versus creative strategies and strategy versus organisational effectiveness. However, much of the literature on organisational paradoxes so far remains theoretical. To test the offered models, there is a need for empirical studies of how paradoxes and contradictions are negotiated in situated practice. There is also a need to explore innovative approaches and frameworks for such empirical studies. One such approach, proposed in this paper, is Strategy-as-Practice Over the last decade Strategy-as-Practice has grown as a distinctive field of strategic-management study (e.g. Whittington 2006; Jarzabkowski et al 2007), grounded in the broader social sciences’ “practice turn” (e.g. Schatzki et al 2001). Strategy-as-Practice focuses on strategising as situated, social practice constructed through interactions of multiple actors embedded in institutional contexts. In these situated practices, content, process, intention, emergence, talk and action are intricately intertwined, as are inherent contradictions that are part and parcel of dynamic activity systems (e.g. Engeström et al 1999). The purpose of this paper is to explore how tensions and contradictions arise and are negotiated in strategy-management meetings in a large construction company. In 2008, the company revised its environmental strategies, focusing on one particular strategy: to be a sustainable builder of society. What did this strategy actually mean? What did management intend it to mean, and how was it made sense of by employees as the meetings unfolded? To answer these questions, we observed, recorded and analysed four strategy revision meetings with several actors across different levels in the organisation. This paper discusses how micro-level strategic activities are linked with broader institutional practices. The interpretations of “sustainable development” were imbued with tensions, ambiguities and contradictions reflecting, among others, the paradox between rational versus creative strategies and that between strategy versus organisational effectiveness. The actors invoked different meanings that have been (re)negotiated and (re)conceptualised over time and across several institutional and organisational boundaries and levels. These meanings were used as rhetorical resources to pit opposing groups against each other or to align them, using the same “green” label. REFERENCES Beech, N., Burns, H., de Caestecker, L., MackIntoch, R., and MacLean, D. (2004) Paradox as invitation to act in problematic change situations. Human relations, 57(1), 1313-1332. Daniels, H., Edwards, A., Engeström, Y., Gallagher, T., and Ludvigsen, S. (2010) Activity Theory in Practice: promoting learning across boundaries and agencies. London: Routledge Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., and Punamäki, R. (eds) (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory. Cambridge University Press. Jarzabkowski, P., Balogun, J. and Seidl, D. (2007). Strategizing: the challenges of a practice perspective. Human Relations, 60(1), 5-27. Poole, M.S. and van der Ven, A.H. (1989) Using paradox to build management and organization theories. Academy of management review, 14(4), 562-578. Price, A.D.F and Newson, E. (2003) Strategic management: consideration of paradoxes, processes, and associated concepts as applied to construction. Jurnal of management in engineering, 19(4), 183-192. Schatzki, T., Knorr-Cetina, K. and von Savigny, E. (2000). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge. Smith, W.K. and Tushman, M.L. (2005) Manageing strategic contradictions: a top management model for managing innovation streams. Organization science, 16(5), 522-536. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613-634.