Strategizing in a digital economy: A strategy-as-practice approach

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Gegenhuber
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 422808692

Digital technologies increasingly affect the process of strategy-making – they impact how actors craft, understand, and execute strategies. Despite the impact of the ‘digital’ on strategy-making, strategy research on this topic is still in its infancy. The goal of this research network is thus to build a community of early scholars interested in the topic of digitalization of strategy-making, to develop a joint research agenda, and to stimulate high-quality research on this topic. Our network will draw on a strategy-as-practice perspective on the digitalization of strategy-making because this perspective proves particularly suitable to examine changes in strategy making based on the actual activities of strategy practitioners. In particular, strategy-as-practice draws attention to three main concepts in the ‘doing’ of strategy: 1) strategy practices, which refer to sets of meaningful routinized activities related to strategy making. In the context of digitalization, new strategy practices emerged, such as strategy blogging or crowdsourcing; 2) strategy practitioners, who are the actors who deploy strategizing activities. Through the rise of new digital technologies, strategy is increasingly open, including lower-level employees or outside stakeholders and, 3) strategy praxis, which refers to the actual activities or performance of strategy practitioners in enacting their practices. Through digitalization, algorithms, for example, might increase the velocity of strategic decision making. Taking stock of the current debates in the strategy and related literatures, we identify an agenda for future research around these three main concepts that will guide the inquiries and debates in our network meetings. To support us in our endeavor, we invited leading scholars from the field of strategy as well as distinguished scholars from related fields who will provide additional inspirations and insights on the topic of digital strategizing.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• International Connection: Austria, Switzerland
• Participating Persons: Dr. Maximilian Heimstädt; Georg Reischauer, Ph.D.; Dr. Violetta Splitter