Through the looking glass: Strategic organizational practices in strategic management

• Author: Gwyneth Edwards
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1442
• Date: 01 September 2018

Through the looking glass: Strategic

organizational practices in strategic management

Gwyneth Edwards*

HEC Montréal

Abstract

The f‌ield of strategic management indicates that there is no

‘one best way’to manage strategy over time, leaving

researchers with a pluralistic research setting. The f‌indings

here suggest that strategic organizational practices, a

construct from the international business literature, can

provide insight into the strategy formation process. I argue

that strategic organizational practices, which are actor-

centered and embedded with values and beliefs, ref‌lect both

the content and process of strategy, and the organizational

environment itself, thereby providing a pluralistic context

of theoretical study. Through the exploration of four

practices implemented by a large Canadian-based

multinational enterprise, the paper encourages a more

explicit integration of strategic organizational practices, as

a unit of analysis, into the f‌ield of strategic management.

Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Keywords: strategic organizational practices, strategy

formation, models of knowing

Résumé

Les travaux en gestion stratégique révèlent que « la

meilleure façon » de gérer une stratégie change avec le

temps, d’où la pluralité des contextes d’étude. Dans cet

article, je montre que les pratiques organisationnelles

stratégiques, notion empruntée à la littérature en commerce

international, permettent de mieux cerner le processus de

formation de la stratégie. Je soutiens notamment que dans

la mesure où ces pratiques sont centrées sur l’acteur et

ancrées dans des systèmes de valeurs et de croyances, elles

ref‌lètent non seulement le contenu et le processus de la

stratégie, mais aussi l’environnement organisationnel lui-

même, ce qui crée un contexte pluraliste pour des études

théoriques. À travers l’exploration de quatre pratiques

organisationnelles mises en œuvre dans de grandes

multinationales basées au Canada, je propose que dans le

domaine de la gestion stratégique, les pratiques

organisationnelles stratégiques soient explicitement

considérées comme unité d’analyse. Copyright © 2017

ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mots-clés : pratiques organisationnelles stratégiques,

formation de la stratégie, modèles du savoir

Strategic organizational practices, a construct from

international business (IB), are def‌ined as practices that are

people-centered, embedded with values, norms and beliefs,

which provide a competitive advantage to the f‌irm (Kostova,

1999). The construct was introduced within the IB literature

to discuss how knowledge is transferred across borders

within the multinational organization. This paper argues that

the study of strategic organizational practices also allows

strategic management researchers to understand and analyze

strategy from multiple levels of analysis and through

numerous theoretical lenses. Through the study of strategic

organizational practices, we can gain further insight into

the formation of strategy and the trajectory of the f‌irm, both

of which continue to be on an ongoing quest of researchers

and practitioners (e.g., Sminia & de Rond, 2012; Thomas

& Ambrosini, 2015).

From the planning school (e.g., Andrews, 1987;

Ansoff, 1965) through to the recent development of

strategy-as-practice (e.g. Whittington, 2006), researchers

have looked at the ways in which f‌irms formulate and

implement strategy through multiple lenses. Some theories

treat the environment as a distinct entity that exists above

and beyond the organization (e.g., planning school,

population ecology, network theory and institutional

theory), while other theories (e.g., structuration theory,

knowledge theory, strategy-as-practice) argue that

‘environment’and ‘organization’are simply labels and that

the organizational environment is socially-enacted

(Smircich & Stubbart, 1985).

*Please address correspondence to: Gwyneth Edwards, HEC Montréal,

International business/affaires internationals, 3000, chemin de la Côte-

Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Québec, H3T 2A7, Canada. Email: gwyneth.

edwards@hec.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

35: 373–389 (2018)

Published online 17 April 2017 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1442

Can J Adm Sci

35(3), 373–389 (2018)Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 373

Mintzberg (1978) argued that strategy is not an object

that is created and then acted upon, but rather realized over

time and characterized by a “pattern in a stream of

decisions”(p. 935). Practitioners, however, have continued

to formulate and implement strategy within formal strategic

planning processes, albeit with greater recognition of

managerial cognition and the need to create capabilities that

allow for strategic change (Avenier, 1997; Grant, 2003;

Teece, 2007). Researchers, as university professors,

continue to provide practitioners with the technological tools

to formulate such strategies (Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2015;

Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008).

This parallel activity between practitioners’quest for

knowing how to strategize and researchers’epistemological

position has pushed a stream of strategy researchers closer to

the phenomenon through the study on how strategy is

practiced in organizations (starting with Whittington et al.,

2003). Along with ongoing and related research in strategy

process, this extension of Mintzberg’s research argues that

strategy plays out in organizations over time, through the

intersection of practitioners, praxis, and practices. Strategy-

as-practice (SAP) doesn’t deny the existence of formal

strategy formulation processes, however; rather, SAP

considers strategic plans and other forms of materiality

(e.g., PowerPoint; Kaplan, 2011) as important components

in the practice of strategy within the f‌irm. Nevertheless,

SAP moves away from classical strategy research in relation

to causality with f‌irm performance by “extending the range

of outcomes, particularly by broadening the understanding

of performance”(Vaara & Whittington, 2012, p. 291).

This paper acknowledges the validity of these strategy

paradigms and practitioner perspectives and suggests that

strategic organization practices, a construct developed

within the IB literature, are worthy of study within the

context of strategy research. To demonstrate the validity of

this argument, Smircich and Stubbart’s (1985) models of

knowing the environment (i.e. objective, perceived, and

enacted) are used as a means to organize the literature and

discuss the power of strategic organizational practices as a

unit of analysis. To illustrate the arguments, the paper draws

upon the case of a large Canadian-based multinational

enterprise, using practitioners’understanding of strategic

organizational practices. The paper closes by summarizing

how strategic organizational practices could be further

explored by researchers and practitioners.

Strategic Organizational Practices

Strategic organizational practices are “ways of

conducting organizational functions that have evolved over

time under the inf‌luence of an organization’s history, people,

interests, and actions and that have become

institutionalized”(Kostova, 1999, p. 309). Kostova’s

(1999) def‌inition is founded within institutional theory and

therefore the def‌inition represents not only the content of

the practice but also the process in which it becomes

diffused across the organization (see Table 1).

Strategic organizational practices are considered to

ref‌lect the core competencies of the f‌irm, thereby providing

a distinct competitive advantage; unlike technology

practices, they are people-centered and therefore diff‌icult to

imitate. Over time, the practices are formalized to be

understood and used by individuals throughout the

organization. Characteristically, they consist of rules,

cognitive elements, and values and beliefs that acquire

symbolic and normative meaning, and become a source of

identity for employees. Collectively, the practices represent

the “shared knowledge and competence of the organization”

(Kostova, 1999, p. 309).

Kostova (1999) described the diffusion of practices as a

two-step process: implementation followed by

internalization. Implementation occurs once formal rules

are being followed, while internalization occurs once

employees attach value and meaning to the practice

(measured by degree of commitment, satisfaction, and

psychological ownership). A strategic organizational

practice may be def‌ined and implemented within the

Table 1

Strategic Organizational Practices: Characteristics and Attributes of Diffusion, Adapted from Kostova (1999)

Characteristics of strategic organizational practices

Strategic component Ref‌lect core competencies of the f‌irm; provide a distinct competitive advantage; diff‌icult to imitate

Content People-centered; formalized rules; cognitive elements; values; beliefs

Representation Symbolic and normative meaning; source of identity; shared knowledge and competencies of the organization

Attributes of the diffusion of strategic organizational practices

Implementation Degree to which formal rules are followed

Internalization Degree to which practice is accepted, adopted, infused with value

Commitment Strength and involvement in the practice

Satisfaction Affective attitude towards the practice

Psychological ownership Practice is considered an extension of self

STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES EDWARDS

Can J Adm Sci

35(3), 373–389 (2018)Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 374