Practice in research: phenomenon, perspective and philosophy

Orlikowski, Wanda J.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511777882.002

Cited by 143 publications

(176 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…These insights reinforce the potential of research approaches that adopt a practice lens on strategy. Studying strategy just like any other practice sensitizes us to the many actors involved, the projects they work on, their ongoing activities, and the multiple views, interests, norms, and tensions of their work (Jarzabkowski and Kaplan 2010;Orlikowski 2010;Whittington 2007). Strategy is not the outcome of decisions taken by a monolithic organization, but rather is produced in the ongoing interpretations and interactions of multiple organizational participants in practice and over time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By seeing what strategists do in their daily work through a "sociological eye" (Whittington 2006(Whittington , p. 1577) (see also, Jarzabkowski et al 2007;Jarzabkowski and Kaplan 2010;Orlikowski 2010), we found that organizational participants at CommCorp struggled on a daily basis to reconcile different views of the past, present and future. Specifically, in our in-depth analysis of five strategy projects at CommCorp, we found that actors could not enact new visions for the future without constructing strategic accounts that articulated how such futures connected meaningfully to a history of the company and to current internal and external pressures.…”

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confidence: 90%

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Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

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428

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This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible and acceptable, otherwise breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change. Temporal Work in Strategy Making-1 -A fundamental challenge for managers making strategy is coping with an uncertain future. In studying strategic change, scholars have emphasized the importance of sensemaking as a collective and often conflictual interpretive process for dealing with uncertainties about the business, the market, and the environment that lead to breakdowns in understandings and require cognitive reorientations to move forward (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al. 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). These studies suggest that linking across interpretations of the past, present and future make action possible, but have left unexplained how and why some linkages work and some fail in practice, and, for those that do work, why some lead to the status quo and others produce change.Our study of strategy making in practice offers some answers to these questions. We found that managers -through a set of practices that we call "temporal work" -come to settle on particular strategic accounts that link interpretations of the past, present and future in ways that appear coherent, plausible and Settling on a strategic account, even if provisional, allows actors to shift from disagreeing or deliberating about meanings to implementing strategic choices, thus enabling the organization to move forward in the face of uncertainty. If a settlement breaks down, further temporal work is required in order to reconstruct a new str...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 90%

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

Self Cite

428

458

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show abstract

“…As referidas autoras propugnam que as diferentes ênfases têm como efeito distintas compreensões sobre o poder das práticas na produção da vida social. Os estudos que enfatizam as práticas como um fenômeno destacam o que os praticantes fazem em ação, pois elas são consideradas base para a sofisticação de modelos e estruturas de análise organizacional (Orlikowski, 2010).…”

Section: Definindo O Conceito De Práticas Nos Estudos Organizacionaisunclassified

“…O campo de estudos sobre práticas como perspectiva desenvolve uma abordagem analítica de fenômenos sociais particulares, destacando a vida cotidiana como produtora da sociedade (Orlikowski, 2010). De acordo com Orlikowski (2010), esse campo de estudos compreende duas principais gerações de teóricos das práticas: a primeira formada por autores como, por exemplo, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu; e, a segunda, de teóricos das práticas, a exemplo de Theodore Schatzki, Andreas Reckwitz e Sherry Ortner.…”

Section: Definindo O Conceito De Práticas Nos Estudos Organizacionaisunclassified

“…De acordo com Orlikowski (2010), esse campo de estudos compreende duas principais gerações de teóricos das práticas: a primeira formada por autores como, por exemplo, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu; e, a segunda, de teóricos das práticas, a exemplo de Theodore Schatzki, Andreas Reckwitz e Sherry Ortner.…”

Section: Definindo O Conceito De Práticas Nos Estudos Organizacionaisunclassified

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Os Circos Contemporâneos como Heterotopias Organizacionais: Uma Etnografia Multissituada no Contexto Brasil-Canadá

Oliveira

Cavedon

2017

Rev. adm. contemp.

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Reclaiming the social in socialization: A practice‐based understanding of newcomer adjustment

Harris

Cooper‐Thomas

Smith

et al. 2020

Human Resource Dev Quarterly

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The socialization of an employee into a new role provides an opportunity for both the newcomer and the organization to maintain or improve current practices. In this paper, integrating ideas from a practice-based perspective with the concept of sensemaking, we draw on the multiple perspectives provided by the newcomer and relevant colleagues to examine the socialization process. Using an inductive, qualitative approach analyzing 21 semi-structured interviews in six organizations with four types of participant-newcomers, and their respective coworkers, managers, and human resource (HR) representatives-our findings shed light on how interactions between newcomers and these three types of insiders influence newcomers' enactment of organizational practices. Specifically, newcomers who received greater sensegiving from insiders had, in turn, more opportunity to sensetest their nascent understandings, and to sensemake using these inputs, leading to the replication of organizational practices. Conversely, newcomers with limited access to sensegiving were less able to sensetest, and instead relied more on previous experiences to make sense of their new environment, leading to the determination of practices. Newcomers with substantial prior work experience used this as a valuable input to sensemaking, allowing quasi-replication and determination of organizational practices that were more likely to be accepted, although not always. Our findings highlight social aspects of socialization as integral to sensemaking processes and performance of practice. In order to optimize

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Practice in research: phenomenon, perspective and philosophy

Cited by 143 publications

References 36 publications

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Os Circos Contemporâneos como Heterotopias Organizacionais: Uma Etnografia Multissituada no Contexto Brasil-Canadá

Reclaiming the social in socialization: A practice‐based understanding of newcomer adjustment

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