Understanding the Franchised Strategic Praxis from the Practice Established by Franchise System

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the perception of a franchise on building strategies located around practices experienced by referencing franchisor's standards and regional reality. There is a complexity in the relationship between franchisee and franchisor in a franchise system and its implications in the strategies developed by these actors. This qualitative research adopted the theoretical approach called Strategy as Practice, which seeks to understand the strategy considering its stakeholders (practitioners), practices established and incorporated in addition to the practice that represents the effective implementation of strategic actions, socially constructed and reconstructed. For data collection, in-depth open interviews were conducted with the owner of two franchise stores, located in a city in the Brazil´s Northeast. The data were analyzed and categorized according to feedback from the franchisee on how he responds to practices imposed by the franchise system. As a result, four categories were identified that represent relevant practices: workshops sponsored by the franchisor, the franchisee's annual planning, visiting consultants, and business strategies for sales. It was concluded that although there is considerable control of the franchisor on its franchisees, many of the practices of the franchise system are adapted and transformed in practice by the franchisee, often in a different way than was originally imposed. We emphasize the importance of strategy as practice approach in understanding the construction and interpretation of the strategy in a franchise system based on social relationships developed in this system.