Abstract
Arguably no new technology surpasses the textbook in providing structured syllabus coverage. Textbooks, as Ashcraft and Allen (2009: 24) explain, are not only ‘products of embodied scholarly labour, but also agents that can guide us in breaking the silence’. In writing Strategy, Theory and Practice, Stewart Clegg and his colleagues, Chris Carter, Martin Kornberger and Jochen Schweitzer, aspire to ‘break the silence’ on one of the strategy textbook taboos—the various ways that the cultures of strategy-making are imbued with social, organizational and political issues. The authors’ prefatory remarks point not so much to a new research phenomenon, but to an important and well established research agenda which has stubbornly remained unimpactful at the undergraduate strategy textbook level. Where debate has raged in the literature, it does so within the territorial confines of peer-reviewed journals (see Baum, 2011; Lampel, 2011). Indeed, rarely do academics want to take to the ball the undergraduate-Cinderella-textbooks. Whenever academics review textbooks, the upshot is often a book review that only considers the inscription of the textbook. In this review I will extend that approach, considering not only the inscription of a textbook—Strategy, Theory and Practice—but also some of the interconnected meanings that can be ascribed to that textbook. Just as the institutional work of strategy knowing, doing and being reeks of ambition, power and politics, textbooks-as-artefacts are also embedded in the institutional work and epistemic cultures of academic fields.
On ascription
Strategy, Theory and Practice is remarkable from a number of standpoints. At one level it is significant for the way that the authors’ warrants, values and assumptions about the strategy field are unapologetically forthright. Also of note, is the (re)production and diffusion of extant research ideas and insights and it is exceptionally controversial character in places. But arguably its crowning glory is the treatment of textbooks as artefacts embedded in the everyday institutional work and epistemic cultures of an (developing) academic field. The prefatorial remarks within Strategy, Theory and Practice reminds us that the textbook is always embedded in institutions. As Clegg et al. assert, the European strategy field is firmly in the grip of one text, which research studies show carries dominant value-laden implications, both within the classroom (Richardson, 2004) and across the wider disciplinary field (Ashcraft and Allen, 2009). Significantly, Strategy, Theory and Practice humanizes and indeed localizes strategy theory building rather than sketching it as an exclusively ‘global phenomenon’ and a detached pedagogic instrument—an epistemology of possession. Strategy, Theory and Practice does not simply reload or rather retool the strategist’s toolbox. The authors show another human side to the epistemic cultures of strategy knowledge production, while also acknowledging that strategy may be done in other ways.
Don’t judge this book by its cover. Beneath the pithily named title and the prefatorial philosophical epigraph remarks, is a textbook that is jammed with incisive insights. Uncovered are the nature of the configuration of the strategy field, the characteristics of individuals, as well as the emergence of scholarly movements and counter-movements. These lively intellectual collisions and debates will do much to challenge the dominant institutional grip of the market-leading strategy textbooks. In doing so, Clegg and his colleagues have recognized the vantage points of various theoretical provinces. Furthermore, they have surveyed the associated academic tribes and movements, all the while developing an appreciative vocabulary that can be used to bridge them. Of course, Strategy, Theory and Practice is not a neutral sphere itself. Rather, it is closely bound up with the apparatus and epistemic machinery of knowing, doing and being a strategist. Bounded up with this textbook are the discernable politics of denigration, critique, dismissal, silence, accommodation and unity—and, which, separately and together, add to the real politick of the strategy machinery. Lest we forget (see p. 21, point 7), even academic authors can be strategy activists.
Strategy, Theory and Practice also begins to tackle questions of another part of the strategy story—the collective (counter-) movements, or as the authors term it ‘Central Currents in Strategy’ (part 2). While a number of influential academic (counter-) movements or ‘currents’ are discernible, this is a story that is anything but clear cut, certain and permanent. For example, chapter 4 discusses the emergence of strategy movements such as the strategy-as-practice scholars. However, parts of any academic movement experience will often remain un-storied and untold. For example, the authors may tell us about the role of the workshops assembled around pressing theoretical questions. Or they may illustrate the tightly-knit clans and groups of researchers, or the spate of special edited volumes and other published works pouring out in the wake of the movement, or even the academic exchanges spilling out into journals. At the same time it is equally important to acknowledge that other events may be pruned from such epistemic experiences. Not least those ranging from the routine academic exchanges between the actors and the various staging posts (economic theory and organization theory), to the highly critical interventions of academics in adjacent disciplines. Not least from the deliberate concealment or a withholding of empirical support specifically from the contribution of wider communities, to the side-stepping of theoretically limiting questions. Not least from the brutality of venturing stakes on academic territory traditionally occupied by others, to the paradigmatic crisis that flare up periodically. Not least in the research agenda (cross-Atlantic-) hijacking amidst the interpersonal opposites, revenge and bitter competitive rivalries ‘thrown up’ from epistemic cultures. There are penetrating glimpses of the real politick of academia within Strategy, Theory and Practice.
Strategy, Theory and Practice is also filled with a fascination with quirky geographical locations from Bradford to Aston and indeed elsewhere. The spatial institutional setting and the elevation of groups, departments or centre affiliations is, however, not without its institutional and competitive conditions, constraints and prejudices. Epistemic cultures, affiliations and ambitions often evolve and indeed switch. And as cohort theory attests, rarely do the ambitions accompanying (research) missions transforming any field, emerge in isolation. That is, researchers often enter or develop within a field at roughly the same time or during the same era in a field’s history. Indeed James March (2004) found that research communities evolve naturally toward narrowness and parochialism within geographic, linguistic and cultural boundaries. Of course, there is much reading to be done between the tribal territorial lines of the strategy field. It is clear that the institutional and epistemic cultures within strategy domain are contested, much like strategy making itself. Different actors (academics), turning points, schisms, fractions and indeed tribes tackle strategy from different perspectives.
Besides geographical detail, it is useful that the authors hail from various intellectual backgrounds, not least non-business school backgrounds. The construction of Strategy, Theory and Practice pulls an irony together and makes an important and a rare reflection on the epistemic cultures and social dynamics of business schools. On the one hand, business strategy scholars bemoan the way that textbook accounts of strategy are hopelessly inadequate at capturing the social, political and power issues. On the other hand, the ‘business school cultures’ regularly cleanse sociologists and rip down anything social from their homogenous and controlled corridors. That this culture thrives, despite the near collapse of the entire Western banking system, suggests that the epistemological assumptions of Strategy, Theory and Practice must surely take root, if only for the sustainability of business schools. There ought to be little doubt that the social is always embedded in the economic and organization of strategy after reading the final chapter (chapter 11), with different risks emerging from the ‘varieties of capitalism’ systems.
Equally important is the overlap of Strategy, Theory and Practice structure with existing strategic management capstone courses. Strategy, Theory and Practice comprises 12 chapters which are organized under four parts—an introduction, central currents in strategy, the politics of strategy and global strategies. How this ‘outlier format’ fairs against the simplistic and yet powerfully embedded analysis-implementation-evaluation one, which is espoused by several incumbent textbooks, remains to be seen. Any consideration of Strategy, Theory and Practice will be (habitually) done in light of the dominant logics of incumbent textbooks like Gerry Johnston and Kevin Scholes’ Exploring Corporate Strategy and the strategic management pedagogic machinery and efficient routines—the seminarized timetables, module outlines, reading lists, PowerPoint lecture slides and library resources. But this should not be a problem for the motivated research-led academic who engages in strategy pedagogy, right? Perhaps research-led academics will not be institutionally locked into the traditional textbook operandi modus, and certainly not the so-called ‘champions of the new currents’!? Therein lies the challenge for this dynamic textbook, however pedagogically noble it is. The points outlined above, while broad, are meant to highlight some of the issues on the ascription of Strategy, Theory and Practice.
On inscription
Strategy, Theory and Practice sweeps up many of the important research strategy research advancements and currents in recent years. That is to say, the authors begin the difficult task of joining up the various theoretical perspectives on strategy. If nothing else, the staging posts from Strategy, Theory and Practice remind us of the eclectic nature of strategy. It also reminds us of the various provinces from which it is emerging, the directions it is moving and the staging posts it has quite not yet reached. It is within this intellectual containment of the strategy textbook genre that the 430 page epitome (excluding references) ought to be singled out and enlisted as a core reading text. It merits adoption not least because it taps into rich steams of research, opening up and engaging with extant strategy avenues of research. This is a marked departure from many of its contemporary cohort. In this departure it embraces the scholarly kindred spirit of plurality and diversity to deepen the understanding of strategy. More than that, it enlivens the chapters with the actors and characters—the human theorists. This textbook will surely be a relief for students who are increasingly primed on the culture of strategy. For such poor souls their secondary immune response towards repetitive contact with the SWOT Analysis and other acronyms is no longer a curriculum irritant. Rather, it is an indicative of the constraints of traditional strategy capstone courses to reflect the contemporary research undertaken within the field, the limited pedagogic prowess of some academic departments, and ultimately the limited value for money for increasingly fee-paying students. It is also indicative, moreover, of the ontological gerrymandering and selective bias of Deans and other academics wielding prejudice towards traditional path dependent research agendas and mimicking global university impact and target rhetoric, all the while marginalizing and decoupling pedagogic practice with self preservation, parochial interests and vested research. Strategy, Theory and Practice rightly calls time on that epistemic subpractice.
From a structural perspective, a glance at other strategy texts confirms that Strategy, Theory and Practice is not simply another ‘boilerplating’ effort. The enhancements are sufficiently significant with an incisive commentary surrounding a range of issues regarding theory development. So the authors have done a good job in reconfiguring the strategy textbook, moving it away from the usual parsing of strategy into dictums of content versus process, bottom-up versus top down, and the various simplistic schema of the ‘I have a problem but now I have a toolkit of solutions’ variety. The companion website links directly to interesting research articles and, alongside the sparks from the heated discussion, will surely keep the reader warm. Admittedly for students nowadays studying strategy they are often primed on Web 2.0 technologies. This interactive maelstrom is heightening public strategy consciousness and altering the state of understanding strategists, strategies and strategizing. The authors of Strategy, Theory and Practice clearly recognize this across a number of fronts and the online activities will go some way to making it engaging and interactive for students.
As with any broad ranging text, intellectual cuttings will inevitably be left on the office floor. One such cutting is the role of marketing in strategy (chapter 5). Although the authors are to be commended for acknowledging the ‘strategic role’ of marketing, the dialogue between the staging posts of strategic marketing and strategic management research remains limited to the concepts such as service dominant logic, segmentation, targeting and positioning, relationship marketing and branding. Notwithstanding that marketing can be viewed as a way of doing business in keeping the business in step with the anticipated customer, channel and competitor environments, a reading of chapter 5 reveals that old conceptual functional prejudices surface on micro consumer issues, brand tactics or product decisions within fast moving consumer goods industries. In chapter 5, we get a sense of the clean, straightforward and linear marketing process depiction of deciding and taking marketing action, rather than the ways that marketing departments and marketers are imbued in the social, organizational and political issues. Up to this point in the textbook, the authors had been sweeping taboos out of the way and, yet, here in this chapter the silence returned.
Leaving aside whether strategic marketing really does bestow any benefit to strategy making—which is a moot point based on reading the contents of chapter 5 and other research—we must also ask where is ‘the biography of great marketing scholars’—or as Stephen Brown and Shelby D. Hunt called them ‘marketing legends’? When we read chapter 5, a patchier picture emerges. Although there are some references to the work of marketing academics, unlike the humanizing weapon favoured in previous chapters, marketing strategy thinkers such as Theodore Levitt, George Day, Gerry Wind, Nirmalya Kumar, Robert Morgan, Nigel Piercy and others are conspicuously absent. Ironically, this may be more reflective of the limited ‘marketability’ and interdisciplinary work of marketing strategy academics? Perhaps it also reflects an academic shift toward the analysis of more consumer and product topics among mainstream marketing scholars? It is nonetheless a sobering thought that no influential contributions from these marketing strategy scholars merit attention by the authors.
Rather than marketing and branding being ‘strategic forces’ (chapter 5, p. 149), in practice or even in academic circles, marketing appears in relation to corporate strategy to be occupying a disciplinary Cinderella status. Chapter 5 impresses the view that a more appropriate subtitle for this chapter should be ‘an obituary’. In this sense, in both practice and in academic work, marketing influence has ceased to exist in terms of strategic management thinking. The study by Furrer, Thomas and Goussevskaia (2008) demonstrates that the vocabulary of marketing is afforded little, if any, attention in over 26 years of strategic management research. Indeed marketing studies point to an overwhelming conclusion; that marketing, marketing departments and marketers are excluded from strategy making in practice. Marketing is the victim of both corporate dominance and the epistemic machinery of the strategy field, to the power and real politick written about elsewhere in the textbook. Undoubtedly an emerging research agenda will blossom as a result of this dominance. None of this activity, however, can mask the epistemic cultures and machinery of strategy scholars claiming disciplinary territory and boundaries. In an extensive review, Furrer, Thomas and Goussevskaia’s (2008: 16) conclude that ‘a more balanced view involving the integration between the different academic influences on the field of strategic management’. This might be realized in subsequent editions of Strategy, Theory and Practice. Unlike the degree of integration between research fields of strategy and organization studies, chapter 5 reveals there has been little integration transpiring between the mainstream marketing and strategy academic fields.
While the book is aimed at students studying undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, its insightful commentary on a range of theory development and conceptual questions suggests that is likely to also benefit research students. This might even extend to the wily artefact ‘researcher’ more generally. Anyone interested in accessing the more subtle and pervasive social and political spaces of strategy, will gain significantly from picking up this well crafted textbook. Strategy, Theory and Practice will not be a Step Child textbook and, it is hoped, will ruffle a few feathers and challenge the dominant institutional textbook pecking-order hierarchy. While there are ominous omissions, such as the role of marketing in strategy thought that I have already discussed, regardless of these omissions, there is also no question that the publication of Strategy, Theory and Practice represents a significant step forward on the part of representing the strategy field. Importantly, it points us in the direction of a new pedagogic paradigm, to new staging posts for research activity, and advances our understanding of the epistemic cultures and machinery of strategy artefacts.