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University of St Gallen

Team

Claus Jacobs, Swiss National Science Foundation Professor of Strategy
Karin Kreutzer, Post Doc
Florian Ueberbacher, phd-student and research associate
Carola Wolf, PhD Candidate
Torsten Schmid, Assistant Professor
Simon Grand, Academic Director, RISE Management Research
Harald Tuckermann, Director of the Research Program "HealthCare Excellence"

Professional Roles

Claus Jacobs Swiss National Science Foundation Professor of Strategy
Claus Jacobs Treasurer, Academy of Management Special Interest Group Strategizing Activities and Practice SAP 2010-2012

Projects

  • Strategy as Discourse - Reconstructing a Social Practice (Swiss NSF funded)

  • Strategy, initially a military practice, has nowadays penetrated various domains of social life beyond the immediate realm of business firms. Its discourse and practices have entered adjacent academic disciplines; have spread from the private to the public sector and have also impacted not only on organizations but on their employees’ professional identities (Whittington et al., 2003). Strategy of organizations and strategic activities of their members are mainly incarnated in discursive dynamics that seem poorly understood to date. Thus, we need a subtler understanding how strategy is discursively constructed and constituted as a social practice. The purpose of this study is to develop a discursive view on the formation and development of strategy. The need for a subtler, micro-level understanding of the social processes in strategy is demonstrated and the evolutionary view on strategy is employed as an initial heuristic to observe the phenomenon. The practice-based view suggests strategy as a situated, socially accomplished activity. It provides three central analytical foci for understanding the development of strategy over time, namely concept of strategy; identity of strategists and their activities. Since a discursive view conceives of strategy as a discursively constructed object, studying strategy as discourse means to reconstruct the practices through which strategy as a discursive object is produced and how it in turn constructs and constitutes organizational realities. Theory development being the primary purpose of this study and in order to account for the exploratory nature of the research questions, a longitudinal multi-case study design will be employed. Within an overall discourse analysis approach, empirical data will be analyzed through narrative, rhetoric and metaphor analysis respectively. The findings of this study are intended to extend the practice-based view on strategy. Also, the findings of the study should have implications in terms of specifying ‘disaggregated outcomes’, rather than the grand concept of organizational performance, such as individual and collective ability to understand strategic issues and influence strategic decisions; group dynamics, collective skills and conversational qualities as well as effective forms of strategy development and use of strategy tools. Finally, a discursive view might also inform the resource-based view of strategy by providing an analysis of interactive, discursive behavior, i.e. so-called ‘micro-assets’ that in turn might explain sustained competitive advantage.

Publications

2011
Loizos Heracleous, & Claus D. Jacobs (2011). Crafting Strategy - Embodied Metaphors in Practice. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
2008
Loizos Heracleous, & Claus D. Jacobs (2008). Crafting Strategy – The Role of Embodied Metaphors. Long Range Planning, 41(3), 309-325.
2008
Loizos Heracleous, & Claus D Jacobs (2008). Understanding organizations through embodied metaphors. ORGANISATION STUDIES, 29(1), 45-78.
2008
Matt Statler, Claus D. Jacobs, & Johan Roos (2008). Performing Strategy - Analogical Reasoning as Strategic Practice. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 24(2), 133-144.
2007
Claus D. Jacobs, & Loizos Heracleous (2007). Strategizing through playful design. Journal of Business Strategy, 28(4), 75-80.
2006
Claus D. Jacobs, & Loizos Heracleous (2006). Constructing Shared Understanding – The Role of Embodied Metaphor in Organization Development. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 42(2), 207-226.
2005
Peter Buergi, Claus D. Jacobs, & Johan Roos (2005). From Metaphor to Practice in the Crafting of Strategy. Journal of Management Inquiry, 14(1), 78-94.
2005
Loizos Heracleous, & Claus D. Jacobs (2005). The Serious Business of Play. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(1), 19-20.
2005
Steven W. Floyd, Johan Roos, Claus D. Jacobs, & Franz W. Kellermanns (2005). Innovating Strategy Process. Oxford: Blackwell - Strategic Management Society Series.
2005
Claus D. Jacobs, & Loizos Heracleous (2005). Answers for Questions to Come – Reflective Dialogue as Enabler of Strategic Innovation. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 18(4), 338-352.

Events

2011 European Group of Organization Studies 2011: Strategy-as-Practice Standing Working Group: Informal Strategizing – Power, Identity and Technologies. With Richard Whittington and Pikka-Maria Laine. July 2011. Gothenburg, Sweden
2009 European Academy of Management 2009 Conference Track: Strategy-as-Practice: New methodological approaches and challenges. With Balogun, J. and Paroutis, S. May 11-14, 2009. Liverpool, UK
2009 Academy of Management 2009 – Symposium (BPS/OMT:) Strategic Management and Language. With Heracleous, L., Mantere, S., Phillips, N., Samra-Fredericks, D., Vaara, E., Willmott, H. August, 7-11, 2009. Chicago IL, USA
2008 Strategy as Practice Symposium: The Craft of Discourse Analysis in Strategy as Practice Research. Nov 11-12, 2008. St. Gallen, CH
2004 First Strategy as Practice Workshop on the "Continent". May 6-7, 2004. Lausanne, Switzerland.

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