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- Demir, Robert, 1972-
(author)
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Strategy as Sociomaterial Practices : Planning, Decision-Making, and Responsiveness in Corporate Lending
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In their everyday work, organizations, like individuals, find it familiar to consider information technologies and other material objects as nonnegotiable necessities. Management and organization researchers have recalled this evident fact by advancing knowledge of the mundane aspects of computer-mediated work. Some researchers have even proposed grounds, conceptually and empirically, for an alignment between strategy and technology as a rich source of competitive advantage. However, whereas some researchers have debated the notion that strategy is realized according to plans, others have focused on the drifting nature of technology, i.e. the unintended uses and conflicts during and after development, design, and implementation. Thus, the notion of strategy-technology alignment has remained an unresolved issue among researchers but still as much a desire among organizations. Recently, however, a practice-based approach has emerged in strategy and technology studies of management, suggesting that social phenomena are appropriately understood as situated and recurrent meaningful activities that both shape structures of actions and are constrained by them. The present study extends conventional views of practice in that it adapts a relational ontology to practice in which the social and material are assumed to constitute one another on a mutual and recurrent basis. Hence, the present study pursues a sociomaterial view of strategy practice, in general, and strategic planning, decision-making, and responsiveness practices, in particular, in an effort to propose an alternative framework for strategy-technology alignment. Thus, the study draws together a number of diverse, yet compatible, concepts in a unique arrangement, underscoring the inseparability of thought, body, emotions, and affect from our relationship to materiality. In taking this approach, the present study opens the less familiar ground of how material objects are considered as omnipresent companions to our social practices and discourses and thus mutually constitutive of our actions. The study draws on in-depth qualitative data from three Swedish banks to analyze and discuss the implications of a sociomaterial approach to corporate lending practice as an example within which planning, decision-making, and responsiveness are the three most prominent strategy practice activities. The study closes by discussing several implications for theory, research methods, and managerial considerations.
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| 3. |
- Yakhlef, Ali
(author)
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The corporeality of practice-based learning
- 2010
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In: Organization Studies. - : SAGE Publications. - 0170-8406 .- 1741-3044. ; 31:4, s. 409-430
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Practice-based approaches to learning and knowing can be credited with their contribution to, among other things, establishing the social basis for human cognition, action and interaction. However, although they emphasise the (ontological) significance of practice, inter/action and activity as the basis of learning and knowing, little attention has been paid to the body - that which makes all doing and performs all action. The aim of the present study is to suggest a corporeal ground for a practice-based learning theory. The body is regarded as our link to the practical (social and material) world, and is thus the medium of learning and knowing. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's (1962; 1964; 1968) advanced phenomenology learning is viewed as a process of incorporating and absorbing new competencies and understandings into our body schema, which in turn transforms our ways of perceiving and acting. Learning is corporeal, pre-discursive and pre-social, stemming from the body's perpetual need to cope with tensions arising in the body-environment connections. The study closes with some theoretical and practical implications for practice-based approaches to learning and knowing.
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| 4. |
- Yakhlef, Ali
(author)
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The three facets of knowledge : A critique of the practice-based learning theory
- 2010
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In: Research Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-7333 .- 1873-7625. ; 39:1, s. 39-46
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The community of practice learning theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991) can be credited with establishing the social basis of learning, viewing it as occurring through participation in social practices and activities. However, it remains silent on the cognitive content of what is learned by participants in a community of practice. Nor does it address explicitly the role of individuals in the knowing process. Individuals are merely depicted in terms of a desire to belong to a community, progressing from a peripheral participation position to a more central one. The aim of the present paper is to assess the contribution of Lave and Wenger's (1991) practice theory for educational and other learning social settings. In a schooling context, for instance, Lave and Wenger's (1991) account of learning would imply that what students learn at school is how to relate and belong to the school community. By reducing learning and knowing to participation, and by displacing cognition from individuals to anonymous practices, the practice-based epistemology ignores the significant corpus of content knowledge (such as curriculums) and ascribes too passive a role to individuals and glosses over their differentiated access to resources for changing practices and their differentiated efforts in their social and cognitive development. The present paper suggests an approach to knowledge that takes into account the various facets of knowledge, that is, knowledge as knowledge-productive practices, as content, and as relation to a knowing subject, at the same time preserving the sociality of knowledge and learning.
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| 5. |
- Yakhlef, Ali
(author)
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The trinity of international strategy : Adaptation, standardization and transformation
- 2010
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In: Asian Business & Management. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1472-4782 .- 1476-9328. ; 9:1, s. 47-65
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The significance of context has not escaped the attention of international strategy theorists. In entering foreign markets, firms are assumed to possess two strategic choices: context adaptation and/or standardization. This implies that context is a given and management action is reduced to adapting or not. Both approaches downplay management's ability to transform context. To redress this, this article seeks to emphasize the significance of transformation strategy, which aims not to passively adapt to the foreign context or settle for a standardization strategy, but to transform the context in the image of home conditions. Adopting a social constructivist approach, the paper argues that the context and content of strategy are intrinsically linked. Rather than just adapting or not to the target context of the foreign market, it is suggested that the extension of strategy from one context to another entails or requires the transformation of that context. To illustrate this, the article discusses IKEA's extension of its own strategy into the Chinese context. The article closes with some implications for the theory and practice of international marketing strategy.
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