While the strategy-as-practice research agenda has gained considerable momentum over the past five years, many challenges still remain in developing it into a robust field of research. In this editorial, we define the study of strategy from a practice perspective and propose five main questions that the strategy-as-practice agenda seeks to address. We argue that a coherent approach to answering these questions may be facilitated using an overarching conceptual framework of praxis, practices and practitioners. This framework is used to explain the key challenges underlying the strategy-as-practice agenda and how they may be examined empirically. In discussing these challenges, we refer to the contributions made by existing empirical research and highlight under-explored areas that will provide fruitful avenues for future research. The editorial concludes by introducing the articles in the special issue.

The sustainability problems with regard to the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services increasingly challenge the legitimacy of corporations. The literature distinguishes three strategies that corporations commonly employ to respond to legitimacy problems: adapt to external expectations, manipulate the perception of their stakeholders, or engage in a discourse with those who question their legitimacy. We discuss three approaches to determine the appropriate response strategy: one‐best‐way approach, contingency approach, and paradox approach. We argue that in the face of heterogeneous environments with conflicting demands, corporations that follow a paradox approach are likely to be more successful in preserving their legitimacy than those that adopt one of the other two approaches. We develop a theoretical framework for the application of different response strategies and explore the management of paradoxes by way of structural, contextual, or reflective means.

Responding to increasing practitioner and academic interest in Open Strategy, this article builds on recent theoretical and empirical studies in order to advance research in the following ways. We begin by developing a definition of Open Strategy that emphasizes variation along the two dimensions of transparency and inclusion, as well as the dilemmas and dynamics inherent in its practices. We identify five dilemmas in particular: those of process, commitment, disclosure, empowerment and escalation. We continue by exploring key dynamics in Open Strategy, including both movements along the dimensions of transparency and inclusion, and movements between the two dimensions. Respecting the acute dilemmas of Open Strategy, we allow in each case for movement away from greater openness. The article concludes by proposing an agenda for future research on Open Strategy.

 In this paper we draw on Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory, and in particular his concept of an 'episode', to guide research into strategic practice and its relationship to the operating routines of an organization. Episodes, in Luhmann's theory, provide a mechanism by which a system can suspend its routine structures and so initiate a reflection on and change of these structures. Applying this theory to the organizational process of strategic change, we draw attention to the routine nature of strategic episodes and to their organizational role as the effective locus of strategic practice and the interaction between strategic and operating routines. We continue to develop a framework for the systematic analysis of different kinds of episode in terms of key aspects of their initiation, conduct and termination.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. ABSTRACT This paper addresses the recent turn in strategy research to practice-based theorizing. Based on a data set of 51 meeting observations, the paper examines how strategy meetings are involved in either stabilizing existing strategic orientations or proposing variations that cumulatively generate change in strategic orientations. Eleven significant structuring characteristics of strategy meetings are identified and examined with regard to their potential for stabilizing or destabilizing existing strategic orientations. Based on a taxonomy of meeting structures, we explain three typical evolutionary paths through which variations emerge, are maintained and developed, and are selected or de-selected. The findings make four main contributions. First, they contribute to the literature on strategy-as-practice by explaining how the practice of meetings is related to consequential strategic outcomes. Second, they contribute to the literature on organizational becoming by demonstrating the role of meetings in shaping stability and change. Third, they extend and elaborate the concept of meetings as strategic episodes. Fourth, they contribute to the literature on garbage can models of strategy-making. Permanent repository link:Keywords: Strategy-as-practice, strategy meetings, university, strategy episodes, strategizing. 1 The authors would like to thank colleagues, Richard Whittington and John Sillince, for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper and the three anonymous reviewers and the Senior Editor, Ann Langley, for their enormous help with developing this published version of the paper. Jarzabkowski, P. & D. . 'The role of strategy meetings in the social practice of strategy '. Organization Studies, 29.11: 1391-1426 1 The Role of Meetings in the Social Practice of StrategyWith its recent turn towards practice-based theorizing (Balogun et al. 2007;Hendry 2000;Jarzabkowski 2005;Johnson et al. 2003;Whittington 1996;2006) strategy research has developed a particular interest in the everyday activities of strategy practitioners. Strategy, it is argued, may be understood as something people do rather than something that firms-in-their markets have. While Johnson et al. (2003) proposed a focus on the everyday micro-activities through which actors shape strategic outcomes, others emphasize that these micro-phenomena need to be understood within their social context. Actors do not act in isolation but draw upon regular, socially defined modes of acting that make their actions and interactions meaningful to others (Balogun et al. 2007;Chia and Mackay 2007;Suchman 1986;Wilson and Jarzabkowski 2004;Whittington 2006). We must thus look to those social structures, such as tools, technologies and discourses, through which micro actions are constructed and which, in turn, construct the possibilities for action (Giddens 1984;Orlikowski 1996). Strategy-as-practice has, therefore, been conceptualized "as...

The last 15 years have witnessed renewed interest in resistance in and around organizations. In this essay, we offer a conceptual framework to thematise this burgeoning conceptual and empirical terrain. We critically explore scholarship that examines resistance in terms of its manifestations and political intent or impact. We offer four fields of possibility for resistance scholarship: individual infrapolitics, collective infrapolitics, insubordination, and insurrection (the "Four I's" of Resistance).We conclude by considering the relationship between resistance theory and praxis, and pose four questions, or provocations, for stimulating future resistance research and practice.

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Taking perspectives from papers published previously in Organization Studies, we argue for progress in strategy-as-practice research through more effective linking of 'local' strategizing activity with 'larger' social phenomena. We introduce a range of theoretical approaches capable of incorporating larger-scale phenomena and countering what we term 'micro-isolationism', the tendency to explain local activities in their own terms. Organizing the theories according to how far they lean towards either tall or flat ontologies, we outline their respective strengths and weaknesses. Against this background, we develop three broad guidelines that can help protect against empirical micro-isolationism and thereby extend the scope of strategy-as-practice research.