The Discursive Construction of Strategists' Subjectivities: Towards a Paradox Lens on Strategy

Stéphanie Dameron and Christophe Torset
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Stéphanie Dameron: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Until recently, the field of strategy has neglected the question of what it means to be a strategist. Based on an analysis of 68 interviews with strategy practitioners, our results highlight four main tensions that emerge from strategists' discourses on strategizing work: the social tension, the cognitive tension, the focus tension, and the time tension. This tension-based representation of strategy enables us to differentiate between three forms of strategists' subjectivities, i.e. the ways by which strategists discursively cope with tensions as a means of constituting their identity and legitimacy: the mythicizing subjectivity, the concretizing subjectivity, and the dialogizing subjectivity. Such results shed light on what a strategist is, suggesting that strategizing can be conceptualized as the art of balancing tensions and that multiple strategists' subjectivities within a paradox lens on strategy may in fact co-exist.

Keywords: discourse; paradox; strategist; strategizing; subjectivity; tension (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Journal of Management Studies, 2014, 51 (2), ⟨10.1111/joms.12072⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01637704

DOI: 10.1111/joms.12072

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