Book contents
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface to the Third Edition
- Introduction: What Is Strategy as Practice?
- Part I Ontological and Epistemological Questions
- Chapter 1 Epistemological Alternatives for Researching Strategy as Practice: Building and Dwelling Worldviews
- Chapter 2 How Is Strategy Made? A Heideggerian Onto-Epistemological Framework for Studying Strategy as Practice
- Chapter 3 Constructivist Paradigms and Their Relevance for Strategy-as-Practice Research
- Chapter 4 The Ongoing Challenge of Developing Cumulative Knowledge about Strategy as Practice
- Chapter 5 Practical Relevance of Practice-Theoretical Research on Strategy
- Part II Theoretical Resources: Social Theory
- Part III Theoretical Resources: Organization and Management Theories
- Part IV Methodological Resources
- Part V Substantive Topic Areas
- Index
- References
Chapter 3 - Constructivist Paradigms and Their Relevance for Strategy-as-Practice Research
from Part I - Ontological and Epistemological Questions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2025
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface to the Third Edition
- Introduction: What Is Strategy as Practice?
- Part I Ontological and Epistemological Questions
- Chapter 1 Epistemological Alternatives for Researching Strategy as Practice: Building and Dwelling Worldviews
- Chapter 2 How Is Strategy Made? A Heideggerian Onto-Epistemological Framework for Studying Strategy as Practice
- Chapter 3 Constructivist Paradigms and Their Relevance for Strategy-as-Practice Research
- Chapter 4 The Ongoing Challenge of Developing Cumulative Knowledge about Strategy as Practice
- Chapter 5 Practical Relevance of Practice-Theoretical Research on Strategy
- Part II Theoretical Resources: Social Theory
- Part III Theoretical Resources: Organization and Management Theories
- Part IV Methodological Resources
- Part V Substantive Topic Areas
- Index
- References
Summary
Simon Grand, Widar von Arx and Johannes Rüegg-Stürm argue that real practice research needs to be accompanied by constructivist epistemologies. They show that while there are many variants of constructivism, they all share four central concerns: (1) they question a concept of ‘reality’ as something that is ‘objectively given’; (2) they study the status of knowledge and the processes through which it is constructed; (3) they treat agency in the construction of reality as distributed among heterogeneous actants; and (4) they challenge the predominance of unquestioned dichotomies in the social sciences, like micro vs. macro or situated activities vs. collective practices. After introducing and comparing the three most central constructivist perspectives, Grand and his co-authors discuss the implications of the four central assumptions of strategy as practice research, useful for the study of strategizing practices, the understanding of strategy and the conduct of strategy research. Above all, they emphasize that the very notion of strategy and strategizing practice contains nothing that can be taken as given, but is instead the result of continuous (re)construction by the activities of the practitioners and researchers involved.
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- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice , pp. 63 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025