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Chapter 28 - Studying Strategizing through Biographical Interviews or Narratives of Practices

from Part IV - Methodological Resources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2025

Damon Golsorkhi
Affiliation:
emlyon Business School
Linda Rouleau
Affiliation:
HEC Montréal
David Seidl
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Eero Vaara
Affiliation:
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
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Summary

Linda Rouleau suggests that biographical research provides a set of narrative methods of inquiry for carrying out in-depth studies of strategizing practices. Amongst the diverse forms that biographical methods can take, she suggests that biographical interviews or narratives of practices, that is, focusing on work experience and professional trajectories, provide privileged access to the subjective accounts of what managers and others ‘do’. Rouleau provides an overview of how biographical methods have been used in strategy as practice research in an attempt at gaining an in-depth look into the world of practitioners who are strategizing. She also puts forth illustrative data extracted from a previous study based on narratives of practices, which examined how middle managers deal with the restructuring of their organization. Finally, she explains how biographical methods, in general, and biographical interviews or narratives of practices, in particular, can be used to gain access to explicit and tacit knowledge, and how the depth of the relationship between narrator and researcher is central to a thorough understanding of strategizing practices.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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