Finding an emergent way through transformational change: a narrative approach to strategy

Current strategic media management has a tendency to draw on design or planning schools and focus primarily on competitive advantages, industry development, and strategic positioning. However, the way in which strategies emerge from everyday practices is poorly understood. To this end, we build a theoretical lens from the narrative approach to strategy-as-practice and the concept of “wayfinding”, and study how organisational narratives can help both managers and employees to construct meaning around emergent strategy during ongoing transformational change. Through interview data of an empirical case study, we identify narratives on three fronts – about (1) employees, (2) managers, and (3) the market – and elaborate on how these narratives may give meaning, offer guidance, and provide an actionable basis from which to find a way through ongoing transformational change. Our study contributes to the research on strategic media management by showing how narratives can help to make sense of emergent strategy and the way organisations find their way through ongoing change.