Strategy Retold: Toward a Narrative View of Strategic Discourse

Barry, David Andrew; Elmes, Michael

doi:10.4324/9781351147965-3

Cited by 49 publications

(100 citation statements)

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“…We have snapshots of the entrepreneurial legacy as expressed by incumbent and next-generation family members, but it seems unlikely that entrepreneurial legacies are static (Suddaby et al, 2010). Research on storytelling shows that narratives are reconstructions and interpretations that evolve as they are retold (Barry and Elmes, 1997), so it seems imperative to know how incumbents change, add to, or embellish entrepreneurial legacies, and to understand what motivates change across generations. Is it that each generation adds narratives about important entrepreneurial achievements and resilience while shedding others?…”

Section: Implications For Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship

Jaskiewicz

Combs

Rau

2015

Journal of Business Venturing

542

641

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Section: Implications For Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship

Jaskiewicz

Combs

Rau

2015

Journal of Business Venturing

542

641

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“…Strategy as narrative forms part of a body of literature which focuses on strategy as practice (SAP). This body of literature emerged in the 1990s with seminal papers such as Barry and Elmes (1997). Research in this area has gained in popularity due to its capacity to investigate the microprocesses of strategy, which up until then had been relatively neglected in favour of approaches which focus on the effects of strategy.…”

Section: Strategy As Narrative Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic narrative in multi‐academy trusts in England: Principal drivers for expansion

Baxter

Floyd

2019

British Educational Res J

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Multi‐academy trusts (MATs) are now a common feature of the English educational landscape. Yet numerous high‐profile failures indicate that they present substantial challenges in terms of leadership and governance. One of the areas that most exercises school leaders and boards is the setting of strategic direction for the MAT. This includes elements such as its expansion. This article draws on 30 interviews with school leaders and trustees from 6 MATs and 10 interviews with national leaders of governance in looking to respond to the research question: What are the principal drivers for strategic expansion in MATs? The article begins by contextualising the research in light of recent policy, then moves to consider why theory on strategy as narrative was chosen in preference to other strategic approaches, and how it was employed to analyse data. The article concludes that within this sample there are a number of drivers for MAT expansion and that these fall under six principal categories: opportunities, values, pressures, feelings, risks and resources. It also concludes that resources and business viability play a substantial part in decisions to expand, and that strategy appears to be an iterative learning process. As such, it contributes to theory on the governance of multi‐level organisations and to practice in terms of the Department for Education's focus on MAT growth.

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“…Narrative approaches build on the idea that language is constitutive and not just representative of social and organizational reality (Maguire and Hardy 2009, Maitlis and Christianson 2014, Phillips and Hardy 2002 to highlight the divergent interpretations that can form around strategic change initiatives (Barry and Elmes 1997, Brown and Humphreys 2003, Buchanan and Dawson 2007 and the consequences of these. Meanings constructed in narratives "make things happen" (Buchanan and Dawson 2007, p. 671;Hardy et al 2000) by suggesting courses of action.…”

Section: Narratives and Sensemakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Senior Managers’ Sensemaking and Responses to Strategic Change

Balogun

Bartunek

2015

Organization Science

132

160

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O ur longitudinal study of the sensemaking and responses to strategic change of the senior management team of a UK multinational subsidiary provides unusual data that enable us to explore the complexity of senior team change related sensemaking. We show senior teams to be distinct interpretive communities rather than one homogeneous category of change agents, as typically portrayed in change literature, who at times of center-led strategic change occupy a complex dual recipient/change agent role. By adopting a narrative approach, we show the shared sensemaking of such a team to be impacted by the locally differentiated nature of its interpretive and relational contexts, leading to context specific interpretations of center-led change and locally distinct responses, with consequences for change outcomes. We found that because of their dual role, senior managers construct two sets of interwoven and interacting change narratives which mediate the relationship between the wider organizational change and local change actions. Our analysis reveals how these evaluations of change, accompanied by affect, evolve over time and how they impact action. These findings contribute to existing theories of sensemaking and change by addressing the previously undertheorized relationship between senior management teams' sensemaking and their responses to strategic change.

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Strategy Retold: Toward a Narrative View of Strategic Discourse

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship

Strategic narrative in multi‐academy trusts in England: Principal drivers for expansion

Senior Managers’ Sensemaking and Responses to Strategic Change

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