How strategy comes to matter: Strategizing as the communicative materialization of matters of concern

Abstract

This article contributes to the discursive and interactional study of strategizing by drawing attention to the communicative practices through which strategy progressively materializes itself. Drawing on the interactions between the partners and members of a community-based organization participating in a strategic planning exercise, our study reveals that communication plays a key role in the initial formulation of strategy, that is, in deciding which issues matter most for the organization. We identify four communicative practices through which concerns gradually become strategic: presentifying, substantiating, attributing, and crystallizing matters of concern. The article contributes to the strategy-as-practice tradition by proposing that communication materializes strategic concerns and that strategizing takes place through that materializing process.