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Implementing a new organizational strategy effectively nowadays is said to require open strategizing practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of three intertwined open strategizing practices in conjunction with a transformational leadership style towards effective strategy implementation.

The study was conducted within 37 geographically dispersed locations of a Dutch governmental organization. The top managers and senior managers were surveyed at two points in time (n T1 = 548; n T2 = 414) and group interviewed at T2. Exploratory factor and linear regression analyses were performed. The qualitative data pertaining to the specific way in which leaders can impact the relationship between open strategizing practices and strategy implementation was analyzed using the Gioia methodology.

As hypothesized, transformational leadership moderates the positive relationship between open strategizing practices and effective strategy implementation. This moderating effect was corroborated through the interview data in which the managers stressed the need for “intrinsically motivated” and “empowering” leaders to effectively support the adoption of their own locally-developed location strategy, as part of the overall strategy.

Despite the timely focus on the three intertwined open strategizing practices, the findings are only based on the perceptions of the various top and senior managers employed by one Western public sector organization.

Top and senior managers who need to improve their organization's strategy implementation can apply the here tested three open strategizing practices. They should also be aware of the key role of transformational leadership.

The authors contribute to the “open” strategy-as-practice domain by showing how top and senior managers' transformational leadership style supports the beneficial effects of adopting the three practices.

This paper aims to analyze the strategizing and organizing practices in the innovation process by using a processual approach. Three types of practices are examined: discursive, episodic and administrative. Their arrangement and their influence are also studied in the innovation process. The final objective is to understand the making process of the strategizing/organizing (S/O) duality, which remains today one of the major challenges of the strategy-as-practice.

The paper uses a longitudinal and qualitative methodology applied to a single case study. Primary data are based on 18 semi-directive interviews during a three-year period. Secondary data came from various meeting and reports, Web sites, newspapers and newsletters.

The results show that strategizing and organizing practices are preconditioned by the phases of the innovation process. In the idea generation, commercialization and diffusion phases, strategizing takes precedence over the organizing, whereas in the R & D phase, it is the opposite. In the industrialization phase, strategizing and organizing are carried out simultaneously. Other results highlight the influence between discursive, episodic and administrative practices in the innovation process.

This research offers guidance to practitioners of innovation who want to attain a deeper understanding of the innovation-making process and its close ties with strategizing and organizing.

The authors empirically validate the making process of the S/O duality and examine the theoretical and empirical relevance of an innovizing concept, when the innovation-making process implicitly generates the production of a new inseparable S/O duality.

This paper expands theory on strategists by investigating how non-executive strategy professionals in multi-business firms strategize. In focus is the strategizing of two groups of non-executive strategy professionals: a corporate strategy team and eleven business strategists employed in each of the incorporated units.

A case study design was employed to explore privileged accessed data to gain first-hand in-depth qualities of strategists' work. The design was characterized by phenomenon driven immersed participatory insider research with retrospective reflection and theorizing. Data includes strategies, interview data, calendars, meeting minutes, workshop material and observational field notes.

Non-executive strategy professionals in multi-business firms are either employed at the corporate center or in the peripheral businesses. Based on this location and their individual experiences they assume an exclusive content or an inclusive process strategizing orientation. In practice, the groups strategize tightly together.

Case studies are useful in explorative research providing thick descriptions. While empirically rich, the results of this study are limited by the context of one single case. Future research is encouraged to confirm, contradict and refine the results presented.

The insights from this study can help organizations regarding how to employ strategy professionals in multi-business firms.

This paper contributes to a recognized need to explore strategists' work. In contrary to the majority of existing research, focusing on senior management and/or strategy formulation, this paper highlighted non-executive strategy professionals' strategizing.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the relationship and networking strategy tools in the IMP literature. It proposes six dimensions for characterizing such tools: approach to tool development, level (and layer) of analysis, perspective of interaction, activities of network strategizing, external or internal orientation and use for “strategizing on” vs “strategizing in” relationships and networks.

The paper uses a manual qualitative content analysis approach and an inductive approach, well suited for extracting relationship and networking strategy tools due to their implicit and dispersed nature.

The paper presents an IMP toolbox comprising a wide variety of relationship and networking strategy tools emphasizing interconnectedness, interdependence and limited managerial autonomy, as well as an analysis of how identified tools are positioned along each of the six proposed dimensions.

This paper contributes a conceptual framework with a vocabulary to content analyze and discuss relationship and networking strategy tools in IMP research.

The IMP toolbox may be a useful point of departure for managers who feel a need for developing and using a mix of tools for strategizing in business relationships and networks.

The paper instills a strategy tool lens in the IMP literature and foregrounds strategizing concepts and techniques that were previously difficult to attend to for both researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intricate ways in which accounting is implicated in the unfolding of strategizing in a pluralistic setting. The authors treat strategizing as a practical coping mechanism which begins in response to a problem and unfolds over time into an episode. This approach enables the authors to explore strategizing pathways and the ways they can mobilise accounting to advance from practical coping to explicit strategic intent.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with Clinical Directors, Business Managers and Finance personnel at three NHS hospitals. Documents were also collected, such as business cases and financial reports. The authors employed theories on strategizing agency, episodes and practical coping to select examples of strategizing and indicate how strategizing is constructed and performed. The authors present the results of this qualitative analysis in three strategizing narratives.

The analysis highlights how Clinical Directors’ strategizing with accounting, in response to their financial problems, can take on contesting, conforming and circumventing modes. As the strategizing pathway unfolds, accounting acts as an obligatory passage point through which Clinical Directors pursue their strategic intent. Along each pathway the authors identify, first, where practical coping takes on a clear strategic intent and, second, whether this emergent strategy proves efficacious.

The authors contribute to the nascent body of accounting and strategizing studies through seeing strategizing with accounting, not as the formulation of explicit organisational strategy as “done” in board rooms and strategy meetings, but as an impromptu response to a critical financial problem within a localised organisational setting. In response to a problem, actors may realise their immanent strategizing through their engagement with accounting practices.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on an aspect of service innovation processes that has remained fairly hidden so far, namely, the role of emotions.

The authors use the strategizing approach from strategy research, which focusses on detailed processes, practices, and discourse, to understand the influence of emotions on service innovation processes. The empirical data stem from a longitudinal ethnographic study of a service innovation process.

In the investigated case, the dominant emotion of anxiety is revealed. The authors focus on this emotion in order to explore how it affects the innovation process itself and the outcome. The authors identify five emotion-driven practices that form elements of what the authors label emotional strategizing.

Emotion seems to give energy and direction to the service innovation process. This is both positive and challenging for top-level managers.

The authors reveal a hidden aspect of service innovation processes – the effect of emotions. Furthermore, the authors show that emotions are important because they give energy and direction to the innovation work, and emerge in practices. Emotional strategizing, as a new term, gives visibility to this important issue.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a field study, investigating accounting, strategising and accounting for strategic management and power structures in the Jordanian higher education (HE) sector on the basis of Bourdieu’s theory of practice.

This paper adopts an interpretive stance, seeking to investigate the perceptions of actors in the field, with regard to accounting, strategising and accounting for strategic management in HE. The adopted methodology is adapted grounded theory, as this study assumes a prior theoretical stance of Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts. Data were collected through participant observation in meetings, at the workplace, interviews and documentation.

The main findings of this paper reflect how strategising and accounting in practice manifest themselves in the Jordanian HE sector. Bourdieu’s theory of practice sets the meta-theoretical context of the current study, with field setting the scene, and habitus being represented in the strategising mind-set participants adopt. The mind-set determines how strategic management accounting is perceived and dealt with. Strategic management accounting takes place at varying degrees. The power structures that influence and determine strategising and accounting in support thereof are researched on the basis of Bourdieu’s forms of capital. Different forms of capital matter in the HE sector determined by fields’ doxa.

The researcher is a part of the field, the Jordanian HE sector; thus, their habitus has been exposed to its characteristics and features. Thus, certain internalised structures and experiences needed to be challenged for this analysis, which was not an easy task.

This study investigates accounting, strategic management and power structures in HE, and it highlights the different power structures, using Bourdieu’s forms of capital, which offers a great insight into how different cultures approach similar issues.

Due to the changes in organizational, social, cultural and technological factors, companies from different contexts are shifting towards open forms of strategy-making with more widened inclusion of internal and external actors and greater transparency regarding their strategic issues, including their internationalization processes. The purpose of this paper is to understand how Open Strategizing occurs in the accelerated process of internationalization considering different contexts.

The authors conducted a qualitative comparative case study in Brazilian and English technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which rapidly internationalized. Furthermore, data was collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and documental analysis.

The authors suggest that openness contributes to the accelerated process of internationalization. Additionally, the authors show that the home-country and the national cultural contexts affect openness. The authors also disclose openness as crucial and inherent to the accelerated process of internationalization, while context is relevant but not determinant in the Open Strategizing.

The authors contribute to Open Strategy (OS) literature by presenting how Open Strategizing unfolds daily during the internationalization process and by evidencing the role of home-country and national cultural contexts in the configuration and dynamics of Open Strategizing. The authors also contribute to the international entrepreneurship (IE) literature by advancing the understanding of the strategies and drivers adopted by technology-based SMEs internationalizing in an accelerated way.

The study has two related objectives. At the firm level of analysis, the author proposes that a clearer distinction between firms’ mediating functions and mediators could enhance the understanding of business network strategizing. Whereas firms’ mediating functions have received attention in IMP research, less focus has been given to organizations whose core business is mediation. At the system level of analysis, the study complements the perception of a network horizon with that of a network verizon. Whereas the horizon is closely associated with work on firms’ mediating functions, the network verizon is of particular interest to mediators. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This conceptual study combines IMP insights with strategic management theory.

The notion of a network horizon is important for business network strategizing, but also influences the perception of relevant network structures. These structures tend to be characterized by sequential interdependencies and a long-linked technology, often associated with physical products and production facilities. The notion of a network verizon highlights a network “depth” that has been unnoticed by previous work, which has focused on how narrow or wide a firm’s network horizon should be. The network horizon and the network verizon add strategizing options in terms of connecting key actors in the network to create additional value.

This paper concerns how IMP scholars understand boundaries and firms, and how perceptions of these influence business network strategizing. The study articulates a distinction between firms’ mediating functions and those organizations that fundamentally create value through mediating services. This distinction has system-level implications. In particular, the claim that the basis for a firm’s strategizing is its network horizon is discussed. The author proposes the notion of a “network Verizon,” providing a boundary perception of specific relevance to mediators. The network verizon portrays a network depth beyond both sequential tiers in a supply chain and links between different supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of strategic management accounting (SMA) in an English university. It is in search of and investigates SMA practices and processes, and their meaning to participants in an English university context. The higher education (HE) institution under research had gone through a major change a couple of years prior to this study, including implementation of new strategic management and management accounting practices.

The approach taken is an interpretive one and the adopted methodology is grounded theory according to Glaser's evolved approach. Data collection took place largely through interviews and, where possible, participant observation.

The main findings of the research concern the core concept of the strategising mindset, which encapsulates the institutional, divisional and individual stance towards strategy and SMA. The strategising mindset is understood as the belief system that is adopted with regard to SMA, which is divided into a bureaucratic and an entrepreneurial mindset. According to the respective mindset, accounting for strategic management is dealt with and institutional members' perceptions of SMA are shaped. The particular mindset adopted depends on the context members were and are functioning, which reflects Bourdieu's theory of practice.

The main contributions are the emergent theoretical framework on SMA in HE, the concept of the strategising mindset and resulting views and conclusions on what SMA actually means in practice. To the authors' knowledge, no such theoretical framework has been published to date.