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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Strategic management journal 2018-10, Vol.39 (10), p.2794-2826
Main Authors: Jalonen, Kari, Schildt, Henri, Vaara, Eero
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Business administration
concept
Conceptual development
discourse
Economics and Finance
Environmental policy
Humanities and Social Sciences
language
Legitimation
Meaning
Municipal government
practice
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Responsibilities
Sensemaking
Strategic management
Time study
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
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.
ISSN:0143-2095
1097-0266
DOI:10.1002/smj.2924