Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking, and Power

There has been increasing interest in the discursive aspects of strategy over the last two decades. In this paper we review the existing literature, focusing on six major bodies of discursive scholarship: post-structural, critical discourse analysis, narrative, rhetoric, conversation analysis, and metaphor. Our review reveals the significant contributions of research on strategy and discourse, but also the potential to advance research in this area by bringing together research on discursive practices and research on other practices we know to be important in strategy work. We explore the potential of discursive scholarship in integrating between significant theoretical domains (sensemaking, power, and sociomateriality), and realms of analysis (institutional, organizational, and the episodic), relevant to strategy scholarship. This allows us to place the papers published in this special issue on Strategy as Discourse: Its Significance, Challenges, and Future Directions among the body of knowledge accumulated thus far, and to suggest a way forward for future scholarship.