Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice

The Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice provides the first comprehensive overview of an emerging and growing stream of research in strategic management. An international team of scholars has been assembled to produce a systematic introduction to the various epistemological, methodological and theoretical aspects of the strategy-as-practice approach. This perspective explores and explains the contribution that strategizing makes to daily operations at all levels of an organization. Moving away from a disembodied and asocial study of firm assets, technologies and practices, the strategy-as-practice approach breaks down many of the traditional paradigmatic boundaries in strategy to investigate who the strategists are, what strategists do, how they do it, and what the consequences or outcomes of their actions are. Including a number of detailed empirical studies, the handbook will be an essential guide for future research in this vibrant field.

Review :
I enjoyed reading this book. Its various well-written contributions offer rich connections between strategy as praxis (in the original sense of doing ) and several major modern anthropological, sociological and philosophical theories. For years to come, it will form a valuable intellectual substratum from which truly novel and unexpected research ideas will emerge. Robert A. Burgelman, Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and author of Strategy is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company s Future (2002) The strategy-as-practice perspective, primarily championed by European scholars, burst upon the intellectual scene only recently but it is already redefining the landscape of strategic management. It is also furthering the long overdue rapprochement between strategic management and organization theory. This handbook provides an excellent and thoughtful reflection upon this new and refreshing perspective and convincingly outlines both its achievements to date as well as its considerable potential. It should become an essential read. Royston Greenwood, Associate Dean (Research) and Telus Professor of Strategic Management, University of Alberta School of Business The Cambridge Handbook of Strategy-as-Practice is a significant addition to the growing literature on strategy-as-practice that both consolidates and builds the field. It provides a history and overview and discussion of issues within the field while keeping the boundaries open. The ontological and epistemological contributions deepen the theoretical grounding without constraining it by efforts to create a unified theory. The new case material is exciting and rich. This is a book people will use! Martha Feldman, Professor of Social Ecology, Political Science, Business and Sociology, and Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management, University of California, Irvine This is an important handbook that will give management scholars an enlightened understanding of the nature and reach of strategy-as-practice as an important new subfield in strategic management research, its intellectual roots and methodological orientations, and its future research directions. Notably, strategy-as-practice promises to enrich the extant strategy literature with European schools of thought that shed new lights on the micro structuring actions of various agents involved in strategy making and how these actions produce macro consequences at the organizational and societal levels. Quy Huy, Associate Professor of Strategy and Coordinator of the Strategy Area, INSEAD