Strategic concepts as micro-level tools in strategic sensemaking

Research summary: The purpose of this article is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real-time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of "selfresponsibility" played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Strategic management journal Vol. 39; no. 10; pp. 2794 - 2826
Main Authors: Jalonen, Kari, Schildt, Henri, Vaara, Eero
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons Ltd 01.10.2018
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Wiley Periodicals Inc
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Business administration
Changes
City managers
Common ground
concept
Concepts
Conceptual development
discourse
Economics and Finance
Environmental policy
Humanities and Social Sciences
language
Legitimation
Managers
Meaning
Municipal government
practice
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Responsibilities
Responsibility
Self concept
Sensemaking
Strategic management
Time
Time study
practice
language
sensemaking
concept
discourse
ISSN:0143-2095, 1097-0266
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Research summary: The purpose of this article is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real-time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of "selfresponsibility" played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are used in meaning-making, and how such concepts may be mobilized for the legitimation of strategic change. Our main contribution is to offer strategic concepts as a missing micro-level component of the language-based view of strategic processes and practices. By so doing, our analysis also adds to studies on strategic ambiguity and advances research on vocabularies. Managerial summary: Our analysis helps to understand the role of strategic concepts, that is, specific words or phrases with established and at least partly shared meanings, in an organization's strategy process. We show how adopting the concept "self-responsibility" helped managers in a city organization to make sense of environmental challenges and to promote change. Our analysis highlights how such concepts involve ambiguity that can help managers to establish common ground, but can also hinder implementation of specific decisions and actions if it grows over time. We suggest that under environmental changes, development of new strategic concepts may be crucial in helping managers to collectively deal with environmental changes and to articulate a new strategic direction for the organization.
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ISSN:0143-2095
1097-0266
DOI:10.1002/smj.2924