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.

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This paper seeks to better understand the way middle managers contribute strategically to the development of an organization by examining how they enact the strategic roles allocated to them, with particular reference to strategic change. Through vignettes drawn from the authors' current research, a framework is developed that shows two situated, but interlinked, discursive activities, 'performing the conversation' and 'setting the scene', to be critical to the accomplishment of middle manager sensemaking. Language use is key, but needs to be combined with an ability to devise a setting in which to perform the language. The paper shows how middle managers knowledgeably enact these two sets of discursive activities by drawing on contextually relevant verbal, symbolic, and sociocultural systems, to allow them to draw people from different organizational levels into the change as they go about their day-to-day work.

The tendency for intended strategies to lead to unintended consequences is well documented. This longitudinal, real-time analysis of planned change implementation provides an explanation for this phenomenon. We focus on the social processes of interaction between middle managers as change recipients as they try to make sense of the change interventions. We show the extent to which lateral, informal processes of inter-recipient sensemaking contribute to both intended and unintended change outcomes, and therefore the unpredictable, emergent nature of strategic change. The findings raise the issue of the extent to which it is possible to manage evolving recipient interpretations during change implementation.