Research Summary: The purpose of this article is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real-time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of "selfresponsibility" played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are used in meaning-making, and how such concepts may be mobilized for the legitimation of strategic change. Our main contribution is to offer strategic concepts as a missing micro-level component of the language-based view of strategic processes and practices. By so doing, our analysis also adds to studies on strategic ambiguity and advances research on vocabularies. Managerial Summary: Our analysis helps to understand the role of strategic concepts, that is, specific words or phrases with established and at least partly shared meanings, in an organization's strategy process. We show how adopting the concept "self-responsibility" helped managers in a city organization to make sense of environmental challenges and to promote change. Our analysis highlights how such concepts involve ambiguity that can help managers to establish common ground, but can also hinder implementation of specific decisions and actions if it grows over time. We suggest that under environmental changes, development of new strategic concepts may be crucial in helping managers to collectively deal with environmental changes and to articulate a new strategic direction for the organization. K E Y W O R D Sconcept, discourse, language, practice, sensemaking
1. Benzpyrene hydroxylase of human liver biopsies and of livers from four inbred rat strains and from a non-inbred Sprague-Dawley rat strain, rabbit and guinea-pig was studied. 2. The human liver benzpyrene hydroxylase was similar to that of laboratory animals with respect to cofactor requirements, NADPH and O2, microsomal localization and inhibition by CO and N2. 3. Kinetic analysis of human adult benzpyrene hydroxylase indicated the presence of two enzymes, whereas human foetal liver contained only one enzyme hydroxylating 3,4-benzpyrene. Michaelis constants of human liver benzpyrene hydroxylase were slightly higher than Km values of animal liver enzymes. 4. Benzpyrene hydroxylase activity in human liver showed no sex difference, was enhanced by cigarette smoking and was decreased in patients with liver damage. 5. Variation of benzpyrene hydroxylase activity in human liver samples was about 6-fold in the 'control' group and 16-fold when all patients were considered. Variation of benzpyrene hydroxylase activity in inbred rat strains was less than 60% between different individuals and in the non-inbred rat, rabbit and guinea-pig the variation was 2- to 3-fold or less.
Drawing on the notion of answerability introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin, this article inquires into our moral responsibility as academic writers to others for what and how we write. According to Bakhtin, it is a difficult task to be answerable from one’s unique place in being and it is tempting to seek some sort of alibi, be it a theoretical principle, an aesthetic ideal, or a larger whole, and to play the roles therein. To break away from these domains, in search of some sort of ethical authorship, we engage in a Menippean dialogue. Exploring responsibility in such a satirical dialogue creates an awareness of the roles we easily hide behind, draws attention to what these roles might do to our writing, and enables us to try out other roles as we allow ourselves to not be so deadly serious in our writing.
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