Exploring the Edges of Theory-Practice Gap: Epistemic Cultures in Strategy-Tool Development and Use

Abstract

This paper takes a strategy-as-practice perspective on the study of strategy tools and the theory-practice gap in strategic management research. Based on a case study, the paper argues that differences in epistemic culture may complicate communication and co-operation between academics and practitioners. These differences may also result in management scholars producing knowledge and strategy tools that lack practical pertinence for corporate actors, particularly in the context of modernist management scholars and contemporary post-bureaucratic knowledge organizations (PBOs). In PBOs, where flexibility, participative management style and consensus building dialogue are emphasized, modernist strategy tools designed for rational problem solving by individual decision-makers may be inadequate. In PBOs, practical strategy work calls for tools that support collective knowledge production, promote dialogue and trust, and function as learning tools. Overall, the paper concludes that the development of strategy tools that actually support practical strategizing calls for a more social model of knowledge and strategy work.

Full text

Volume 16(2): 227–247
ISSN 1350–5084
Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC)
Exploring the Edges of Theory-Practice
Gap: Epistemic Cultures in Strategy-Tool
Development and Use
Johanna Moisander
Helsinki School of Economics, Department of Marketing and Management,
Helsinki, Finland
Sari Stenfors
SCANCOR, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Abstract. This paper takes a strategy-as-practice perspective on the study of
strategy tools and the theory-practice gap in strategic management research.
Based on a case study, the paper argues that differences in epistemic culture
may complicate communication and co-operation between academics and
practitioners. These differences may also result in management scholars
producing knowledge and strategy tools that lack practical pertinence for
corporate actors, particularly in the context of modernist management
scholars and contemporary post-bureaucratic knowledge organizations
(PBOs). In PBOs, where fl exibility, participative management style and
consensus building dialogue are emphasized, modernist strategy tools
designed for rational problem solving by individual decision-makers may
be inadequate. In PBOs, practical strategy work calls for tools that support
collective knowledge production, promote dialogue and trust, and function
as learning tools. Overall, the paper concludes that the development of
strategy tools that actually support practical strategizing calls for a more
social model of knowledge and strategy work. Key words. epistemic culture;
management tools; sociology of technology; strategic management; strategy
as practice
DOI: 10.1177/1350508408100476 http://org.sagepub.com
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We do not collect information to build up bureaucracy. We only collect
information that we perceive important. Not every [strategy] tool with a
fancy name interests us. We achieve very good results; our growth has
been exceptionally fast and profi table, and we don’t believe that [the use
of] theoretical models would empower us to get even better results. We
focus on profi tability, not on complicated calculations. Our good fortune is
based on the simplicity of our business idea, and most of our achievements
depend on our people, who work better with and through personal contacts
than by using [strategy] tools ... (Executive of a large Nordic corporation,
August 2003)
There are currently hundreds of different strategy tools, i.e. management
tools that support strategy work, available on the market, increasingly in
accessible computerized forms. Strategy tools, such as Balanced Scorecard
applications, SWOT analysis, Real Options, Value Chain, Porter’s Five
Forces and Executive Information Systems, are generally designed to
facilitate strategic management and to make practical strategy work in
organizations more effective. These tools are often based on academic
research and they offer practitioners the opportunity to implement man-
agement theory in practice. Strategy tools are introduced into practice
through business schools, consultants, popular business articles and
strategy literature (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall,
2002). According to several studies, however, strategy tools tend to be
misvalued and under-utilized by business practitioners (Miller and Ireland,
2005; Nutt, 2002; Styhre, 2002).
From a strategy-as-practice perspective (Whittington, 2003), we argue
in this paper that to gain a better understanding of the problems in pro-
ducing useful strategy tools, there is a need to focus on the epistemic cul-
tures (Knorr Cetina, 1999) that people draw from when designing and
using strategy tools. By epistemic cultures we refer here to the amalgams
of arrangements and mechanisms that make up how academics and
practitioners in a given fi eld know what they know (Knorr Cetina, 1999: 1).
As we shall explain later, different epistemic cultures provide developers
and users of strategy tools with different perspectives on producing and
warranting knowledge, and thus different ideas about how and for which
purposes a strategy tool is to be used. Therefore, to improve the practical
relevance of strategy tools there is a need for a better understanding of the
epistemic cultures in which they are produced and used.
The epistemic culture that has been on display in much of the existing
work of mainstream strategy scholars may be described as ‘modernist’ in
the sense that it values ‘scientifi c detachment over practical engagement,
the general over the contextual, and the quantitative over the qualitative’
(McKiernan and Carter, 2004: 62). Many critics have argued that such a
view to producing and warranting knowledge in organizations may guide
management scholars to producing knowledge and strategy tools that lack
practical pertinence for corporate actors (McKiernan and Carter, 2004;
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Whittington, 2004). And there have been numerous calls for a closer recon-
ciliation of academic theory with managerial reality (Aram and Salipante,
2003; Gopinath and Hoffman, 1995; Pettigrew, 2001; Powell, 2001a).
The purpose of this paper is to respond to these calls by working towards
a better understanding of the cultural-epistemic boundaries that sometimes
divide corporate practitioners and modernist strategy scholars. The aim,
more specifi cally, is to identify and discuss the challenges and opportun-
ities that these boundaries create for management scholars and for the
development of strategy tools in particular. We report fi ndings from an
empirical case study, which elaborates on the epistemic cultures of a group
of distinctively ‘modernist’ academic strategy tool developers and a group of
managers from a contemporary post-bureaucratic knowledge organization.
The interpretive framework that guides our analysis draws from sociology
of technology (Suchman, 1994) and the cultural approach to organization
research (Alvesson, 2002, 2004; Gregory 1983). We study strategy tools as
cultural artifacts and technologies of organizational knowledge production,
which take diverse forms in different epistemic cultures.
Overall, we argue that differences in epistemic cultures, clashing concep-
tions of ‘knowledge’ and the ‘subject of knowledge’ in particular, may result
in management scholars producing knowledge and strategy tools that
lack practical relevance for corporate actors (see also Jarzabkowski and
Wilson, 2006). This may be the case particularly in the context of modernist
management scholars and contemporary fl at, networked and team-based
learning organizations, often discussed as post-bureaucratic organizations
(see e.g. Garsten and Grey, 1997: 213–214; Grey and Garsten, 2001: 230).
In post-bureaucratic organizations, typically characterized by emphasis
on fl exibility, participative management style and consensus building
dialogue rather than rule-following, knowledge is to be taken not only as
a property of the individual mind of an expert or a knowledge worker but
also as something that is shared and which takes the form of accumulated
experience and learning embodied in the organization’s culture, systems,
processes and practices. In such organizations, production of knowledge
is largely based on consensus building, guided by a shared mission and
shared values, as well as on the recognition of a strong interdependence
among different organizational actors and outside stakeholders. In these
organizational environments, we argue, many ‘modernist’ strategy tools,
which are typically designed for individual problem solving and rational
decision-making, may well fall short of what the organization needs in
supporting its practical strategy work and knowledge production. In post-
bureaucratic organizations, there is rather a need for tools that support
organizational learning in multiple contexts and which foster dialogue and
trust in the collective processes through which knowledge is produced and
decisions are made in the organization.
At the level of organization and management theory, this paper contri-
butes to the body of literature on the adoption and use of management tools
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(e.g. Benders and van Veen, 2001) and to the literature on theory-practice
gap in management and organization studies (e.g. Aram and Salipante, 2003).
In the existing research, the adoption and use of management tools has
been studied mainly in terms of management fads from a neo-institutional
perspective (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Kieser, 1997). While much of this
research focuses on the topic at a theoretical, macro-level and paints a
picture of irrational and naïve tool users in the midst of institutional forces,
we shift the focus to the everyday contexts of management-tool use in
organizations and to the issue of translatability of the academic theories
that the tools are based on into practice.
Strategy Tool Development and Use as Cultural Production of Epistemic
practices
In the contemporary knowledge based economy, strategy tools can be
viewed and analysed as technologies of strategy work and organizational
knowledge production (Clegg et al., 2004; Graham and Williams, 2005;
Whittington, 2004). These technologies involve not only conceptual tools
but also material apparatus that range from complex computer programs
to simple white boards. Strategy tools thus typically give the organization
an opportunity to implement or use a set of theories about strategic man-
agement in practice. As such, strategy tools may function as non-human
actors actively involved in the making of the organizational realities in
which they are used (Knorr Cetina, 1997; Suchman, 2005).
Findings from sociology of technology indicate that although co-
operation and co-learning are generally emphasized and valued among
the developers and users of new technologies, there are often clear organ-
izational and cultural-epistemic differences that complicate the discussion
and dialogue between the two communities (Brown and Duguid, 1994;
Suchman and Bishop, 2000). These differences function as cultural and
practical boundaries that have to be dealt with and crossed for successful
cooperation to occur.
As with management technologies, strategy tools are inscribed with
particular moral orders and visions of the patterns, purposes and contexts
of their use, which originate from the developers’ epistemic culture and the
often received ways of looking at organizational and managerial practice.
Developers of strategy tools build into the tools certain interpretive schemes
for the work being carried out, certain facilities and resources to accomplish
that work, as well as certain organizational and managerial forms that de-
fi ne the organizationally sanctioned ways of doing it (Nardi and O’Day,
1999; Suchman, 1994). Strategy tools therefore involve moral orders, which
impose correct behaviours and foster good practices (Latour, 1988). When
corporate actors delegate tasks to technologies those technologies then start
to impinge behaviours back onto everyone who encounters them.
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Consequently, the development of strategy tools cannot be seen simply
as a creation of discreet, intrinsically meaningful objects, technologies or
devices (e.g. models or systems), or even networks of devices (Suchman
et al., 1999). Instead, the development, introduction and use of strategy
tools can be understood as cultural production of new forms of epistemic
and managerial practice.
In this paper, we focus only on the epistemic aspects of the cultural
production that the development and use of strategy tools entail. We shift
the object of inquiry from knowledge about strategy tools and their use to
the epistemic cultures that create and give authority to this knowledge.
Drawing from the cultural approach to organizational culture, we view
epistemic culture as a system of shared symbols and meanings (Alvesson,
2004: 318). It may also be viewed as a generally shared but constantly
negotiated, contested and changing system of representation, which
constitutes the conditions of possibility for subjectivity and epistemic
agency—the specifi c conditions for being and acting as a person and
knower—in organizations (e.g. Hall, 1997: 1–6). Epistemic culture exerts
its infl uence by offering specifi c forms of truth and intelligibility for people
to make sense of ‘knowledge production’ and themselves as ‘knowers’
(Knorr Cetina, 1999). It guides and constrains action in organizations by
making available particular ways of thinking and talking about knowledge
and knowing that are grounded in social practice. It organizes and orients
organizational knowledge production particularly through conventions
of normal practice. From this perspective, epistemic culture should by no
means be understood as a representation of what is known or believed in a
community but rather as a precondition for knowledge about organizational
knowledge production (Knorr Cetina, 1999: 10).
Hence, our aim is to study the cultural meanings of corporate knowledge
production that constitute epistemic cultures in two different communities
of knowledge workers and to examine the forms of intelligibility that these
cultures provide and offer for making sense of knowledge and epistemic
practices in organizations. This theoretical approach to culture enables
us to study the ways in which the space of possible and actual action is
organized and determined by different epistemic cultures. It also gives us
an opportunity to identify problematic issues and confl icting goals, which
generate tensions and create cultural boundaries that may complicate
collaboration between scholars and practitioners.
Research Approach, Design and Methods
To gain insights into the epistemic cultures of strategy tool users and de-
velopers we conducted a case study (Stake, 2003) of the two communities.
The empirical material used in the study consists of naturally occurring
documentary data as well as cultural talk produced using focus groups
(Morgan, 1993), and personal interviews (Holstein and Gubrium, 1997).
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The Case
The case analysed in this study is a cooperative project between academic
developers and corporate users of a strategy tool. The developers are faculty
members and graduate students of a business school, who specialize in
operations research/management science (OR/MS) models. The users are
managers of a division of a large corporation of the utilities sector, who have
been using a strategy tool developed by the OR/MS scholars in competitor
analysis and for pricing. The developer-scholars aim to engage in further
collaboration with the user-managers to produce ‘decision support for
strategic decision-making’ in the company. We thus look at these two
groups as potential partners and collaborators.
The company is a large corporation which describes itself as a fl at,
networked and team-based learning organization, where a culture of dia-
logue, collective decision-making and team work is cultivated. It may thus
be characterized as a post-bureaucratic organization, particularly in the
sense that it accents collective knowledge, shared expertise, contextual skills
and consensus building dialogue rather than rule-following (see e.g. Garsten
and Grey, 1997; Grey and Garsten, 2001) To illustrate, the company defi nes
its corporate strategy and core values in terms of ‘creativity and innovation’
through ‘continuous learning’ and ‘readiness to change’, emphasizing ‘co-
operative spirit’ through ‘respect for others’ as well as ‘open and active
communication’. Good results in this discourse are attributed to ‘joint
achievement’ by a ‘successful team’. The aim with these policies is to en-
courage and foster creativity and risk taking in the organization as well as
to provide knowledge workers with the challenge needed to have them
stretch beyond their perceived limits.
The academic community is a well established OR/MS department spe-
cialized in developing tools that support decision making. The science of
OR/MS draws from the disciplines of mathematics, economics and cognitive
psychology. The OR/MS community was chosen because it typically holds
onto the ‘modernist’ epistemological stance that characterizes much of
mainstream strategy literature.
The strategy tool is a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, a bench-
marking model, that is used by the authorities in the utilities sector, and
thus by corporations in the industry. DEA is based on the original ideas of
Charnes et al. (1978) and today employs state-of-the-art economic theories
of effi ciency. Computerized DEA models are nonparametric ‘black box’
models (i.e. knowledge is built in and closed into the model), which com-
pute given data into an effi ciency score that reveals how effi cient a company
is compared to its competitors.
The selection of the case and data was based on theoretical considerations
(Stake, 2003). The case is not a typical case of collaboration between
management scholars and practitioners or between academic developers
and corporate users of strategy tools, but rather a case that manifests the
phenomenon intensely and offers a particularly good opportunity to
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learn about cultural-epistemic boundaries that may divide the modernist
strategy scholars and corporate practitioners of contemporary knowledge
organizations (Stake, 2003: 152).
Empirical Materials
The empirical material for our study consists of three different types of
textual material: (1) personal interviews taped and transcribed into texts;
(2) focus group discussions videotaped and fully transcribed into texts;
and (3) documentary and archival materials. This material was gathered
as part of a more extensive ethnographic research project and the study
reported here is part of this project. The analysis is primarily based on
the personal interviews and the focus group of two OR/MS developers
and four corporate users of the strategy tool. The documentary material
is mainly used as complementary material, to support and illustrate the
interpretations that we make.
Personal interviews and focus groups. First, personal interviews were
carried out to get a preliminary understanding of the important topics and
issues to be discussed in the planned focus group. Both developers and users
were asked to describe their views on how formal methods are and can be
used in organizations for strategic planning and everyday managerial work.
Then, a focus group was organized to elaborate on the themes brought up
in the personal interviews. The focus group consisted of two developers
and three users (one user was absent) who were led to discuss the role of
formal methods in management work and in decision-making. Finally,
follow-up interviews were carried out with the same set of participants to
elaborate on the themes and issues that had come up in the course of
analysing the focus group data as well as the other empirical material.
Both the developers and users were particularly asked to comment and
refl ect on the views, ideas and opinions that they themselves and the other
participants of the focus group had expressed about the use of strategy tools
in business organizations. Excerpts from the focus group data were used
to elicit this information.
Documents. The documentary and archival data analysed in this study
consist of publicly available communications material, in printed and
online forms, on the case company, as well as on the global OR/MS com-
munity. This material includes the annual report and the website of the case
company as well as current newsletters and websites of the International
Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS), Institute for Oper-
ations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and a national
Operation Research Society.
Analysis
In analysing the data we focused on the cultural meanings and practices
through which people made sense of knowledge and knowledge production
in organizations. Our analysis was based on the assumption that social texts,
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such as the material gathered here, can be studied for the cultural forms they
make available (Alvesson, 2004; Turner, 1990). To learn about epistemic
cultures we focused on the meanings, taken-for granted assumptions and
ideas, modes of argumentation and expressed epistemic virtues through
which the corporate users and OR/MS developers organized their talk
about strategically valuable knowledge and about the role of strategy tools
in producing this knowledge. The analysis was carried out using basic
analytical procedures employed in cultural analysis. (Moisander and
Valtonen, 2006; Silverman, 1993; Turner, 1990). Regarding the general-
izability of our results, it seems worthwhile to emphasize that our purpose
is to work towards a better understanding of how the cultural-epistemic
boundaries between practitioners and academic scholars are produced
and maintained in text, talk and signifying practices. Our aim is not to say
anything about how typical or wide-spread these boundaries are within
the scientifi c community in general. Neither do we intend to make any
claims about the personal beliefs of single members of the groups that we
studied. Rather, our purpose is to offer some clarifi cation and to raise cri-
tical questions about the cultural conditions of successful collaboration
between academic strategy researchers and practitioners.
Scholar and Practitioner Articulations of Epistemic Culture
As anticipated, two different epistemic cultures of knowledge production
could be identifi ed in the empirical material that we analysed. The OR/
MS scholars tended to reify a cultural framework that can be described as
‘modernist’ in the sense that it emphasizes the role of individual ‘knowers’
as detached and objective decision-makers, whereas the corporate managers
invoked a ‘post-bureaucratic’ cultural framework that acknowledges the
social nature of knowledge and which is in line with the contemporary post-
bureaucratic management philosophies (Heckscher and Donnellon, 1994;
Powell, 2001b; Powell et al., 1996). These two epistemic cultures offer
different strategies and policies for creating and warranting knowledge in
the organizations (Knorr-Cetina, 1999: 1–3). Next, we shall illustrate the
observed differences in the epistemic cultures in three different areas: sub-
ject of knowledge, nature of knowledge and knowledge creation.
Subject of Knowledge
In the modernist OR/MS culture the knower, the subject of knowledge,
is generally an individual whose epistemic authority is based on rational
and logical thinking as well as on a rigorous use of systematic methods.
In line with the ontological presumptions characteristic of the operations
research discipline (Rosenhead, 1996), corporate knowledge workers are
represented by ‘a decision-maker’, who pursues predefi ned values and
interests. In the OR/MS scholars’ talk, the term refers to a fairly independent,
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self-directed, and ideally rational ‘top-manager’ of a hierarchically
organized corporation.
As the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science
(INFORMS) identifi es its target group, OR/MS tools are for ‘time-starved
executives’ who want to make ‘bolder decisions with less risk’ (INFORMS,
2004a). The description of what operations research is at the INFORMS
web page is illuminating:
In a nutshell, operations research (OR) is the discipline of applying advanced
analytical methods to help make better decisions. By using techniques such
as mathematical modeling to analyse complex situations, operations research
gives executives the power to make more effective decisions and build
more productive systems based on: More complete data; Consideration of
all available options; Careful predictions of outcomes and estimates of risk;
[and] The latest decision tools and techniques… (INFORMS, 2004b)
Consequently, the modernist OR/MS framework directs developers to
design strategy tools primarily for individual use by people who have
considerable power in the organization and who run the fi rm fairly
independently, mainly delegating tasks to their subordinates. Much like
mainstream strategic management theory, such thinking tends to ascribe
to the managers great powers to defi ne problems, identify sources of com-
petitive advantage, and to redirect their business (see also Alvesson and
Willmott, 1996).
In the post-bureaucratic culture, however, the subject of knowledge, is
not only an individual decision-maker but signifi cantly also a community
of people working and producing knowledge individually and collectively
in various teams and work groups organized around various intra and
inter-organizational collaborative projects. Talking about their daily work,
the managers we interviewed constantly refer to ‘management teams’,
‘auditing teams’, ‘development teams’ and ‘project teams’, in which they
carry out their tasks (see also Tengblad, 2006). Overall, the ‘knower’, in
this talk, is discussed in terms of teams and individuals as team-members,
as the following extract also indicates.
Interviewer: ...what happens during your workday? Manager: [...] on many
days I have meetings until midday; they can last till afternoon… I tend to
have meetings every day. It is very rare to have a day entirely for one’s own
activities. Also, the days pass, pretty much, talking to different people about
ongoing projects and then again with the members of my team. So [my daily
work] is, of course, of this social [nature]… (Practitioner 1I72T)
Consequently, the knower, in this sort of a post-bureaucratic epistemic
culture, is not only the individual executive who uses strategy tools to
make better decisions. The knower is also a multi-tasking team-member
who participates in collective processes of knowledge production and
decision-making and whose epistemic agency and authority may well be
continuously negotiated and renegotiated on a daily basis.
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Nature of Knowledge
In the modernist OR/MS culture, knowledge is generally discussed as
objective, clear, indisputable, and logical facts, e.g. probabilities, results,
best alternatives, input data, parameters—mainly numbers.
Well [the model] can, of course, be used to evaluate the technical effi ciency
[of the company] just like here, so that no assumptions are made about the
preferences of the decision-maker. And this now is the basic idea. Then, what
we also have been developing is combining [the measurement of technical
effi ciency with] multiple criteria decision making, and in a way setting on top
of these output measures [a set of] preferences [...] So there is this one level
that is added. This is then a strategic choice, and some upper level manager
can defi ne the importance of different criteria, for that technical effi ciency.
And then, the next phase is that this [model] can be used when planning how
the functions could be improved, if you are ineffi cient. (Scholar 1I68P)
For modelling purposes knowledge needs to be explicit, at least in part.
Good knowledge is also correct and accurate—it mirrors reality and
approaches the truth, in line with scientifi c realism as a scholar explains
below. Moreover, it is often something that can be represented in terms
of a logical structure and a set of empirically testable hypotheses (also
Déry et al., 1993). This type of knowledge can be expressed as a set of pro-
positions detached from the knowing subject (Scharmer, 2001), and it can
therefore be moved from one organizational context to another without
changes in the validity or content of the knowledge. Strategically important
knowledge is thus a ‘thing’ that can be gathered and stored in remote ‘case
banks’ or documented as correct procedures of ‘best practices’ and ‘effi cient
processes’, which may be used later when the need arises.
In the interview talk, the OR/MS scholars generally take for granted
the possibility of a single value free representation of the problematic situ-
ation and the existence of a ‘best possible’ (i.e. closest to the truth with the
current level of scientifi c expertise) solution:
I believe that we created the best model that could be built at the moment,
and then, of course, there are issues, which still should be improved. And
the argument that I would use here is this argument that I have learnt from
scientifi c realism, that there exists what the best scientifi c explanation
understands to be existing. In other words, we believe that we have operated
in the best way, not perfect, of course… (Scholar 1I99P)
In this sort of knowledge culture, then, disputes concerning appropriate
courses of action can be solved by distributing correct information about
facts, correcting logical thinking, making accurate calculations and by getting
informed about the priorities or values of an ‘upper-level manager’.
In general, much like the traditional strategic management scholars
(Aram and Salipante, 2003), OR/MS developers tend to talk about good—or
rather ‘optimal’—knowledge in terms of general and preferably timeless
principles that are valid across a variety of situations. This makes ideal know-
ledge permanent, complete and unifi ed (or unifi able).
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In the post-bureaucratic culture, however, knowledge is a collective
achievement of individuals working for the organization. In the corporate
strategy of the case company, for example, employees are commissioned
to work together, creatively and innovatively, to achieve business perform-
ance in rapidly changing market environments. As our analysis below
indicates, in such an epistemic culture, the nature of knowledge is social,
perspectival, and contextual.
In the interview and focus group data, practitioners repeatedly talk about
knowledge in terms of collective processes and objectives, e.g. in terms
of ‘development of internal processes according to the company vision’.
Accordingly with their corporate vision and values, they represent know-
ledge as intrinsically linked with the social and learning processes within
the organization. Corporate knowledge seems to be conceptualized as
accumulated experience and learning embodied not only in the individual
members of the organization but also in the organization’s culture, systems,
and processes (see also Demerest, 1997; Sveiby, 1996). In this sort of
epistemic culture, knowledge is essentially social in nature.
Such strategic knowledge is also perspectival. It is relative to specifi c
interpretive frameworks and perspectives of those who are making the
knowledge claims (Miller and Fox, 2001). It thus pertains to a point of view
or an ‘agenda’ that is not necessarily neutral or unbiased. One practitioner
pointed out in the focus group, for example, that it is important to under-
stand ‘what is entered in the model’ because the models often have im-
plicit ‘political steering effects’. Another practitioner inquired about the
perspective that the strategy tool was based on:
… what is the perspective [in the DEA model]? Is it the customers’ perspective
or is it the company’s perspective or the owners’ perspective? (Practitioner
F87TP)
Moreover, as project workers and members of different intra- and inter-
organizational teams and work groups, corporate knowledge workers need to
co-operate with numerous different professionals in different organizational
environments, continuously adapting to changing relations of power and
rules of interaction. Each of these micro-cultural environments may well have
different objectives, norms and standards for producing strategically valu-
able knowledge. Expertise in the post-bureaucratic epistemic culture is
hence also highly contextual.
In their talk, the practitioners explicitly recognize this and express a
need for multiple models, which can provide diverse information and offer
insights from a number of different angles.
In my mind […] measurement should be carried out so that it would cover
various points of views. One measurement would give you one viewpoint and
then there would be another indicator that would offer some other viewpoint
of the same topic. And then, summing them up one could see what effects
these measurements together will have from the fi rst point of view and then
from the other, and what their combination is. (Practitioner F74L)
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On the whole, the heavy reliance on facts, which characterizes the scholar
talk, is missing in corporate managers’ talk. A fact cannot necessarily be
isolated from values and it does not become a fact until it is valued by
fellow knowledge workers. In the post-bureaucratic organizations, where
the employees do not always work in formally hierarchical subordinate-
superordinate relationships, different people may well have their own
interests and perspectives, which lead them to pursue different objectives,
and to identify different factors as relevant (Baker, 1992). In such a case,
there is usually a potential for confl ict (Rosenhead, 1996).
Therefore, the criteria for good knowledge are rather pragmatic in the
post-bureaucratic epistemic culture. Rather than searching for ‘the optimal
solution’, practitioners are guided to search for ‘knowledge that works’ (see
also Simon, 1976). In their talk, the managers described good knowledge as
something that gives ‘food for thought’. They explicitly acknowledged that
knowledge is partial, fragmentary, relational and bounded, and thus called
for tools for integrating knowledge from multiple perspectives.
Knowledge Creation, Learning and the Role of strategy tools
The modernist OR/MS culture follows the mainstream strategic manage-
ment literature in representing organizations as problem seekers and solvers
(Von Krogh et al., 1994: 57). Thus, OR/MS models are devices that produce
solutions to problems.
In our data, the scholar-developers talk about learning only implicitly, in
terms of gaining ‘more complete data’ through accumulation of new and better
quality facts, and also in terms of mastering the ‘latest decision tools and
techniques’ for organizing information and solving complex problems
(INFORMS, 2004b). In line with the INFORMS slogan, ‘Operations
Research: The Science of Better’, the scholar-developers offer their expertise
to improve logical thinking and to correct errors in decision-makers’ infor-
mation processing. To illustrate, in the focus group discussion, one of the
scholars used his opening lines to demonstrate the usefulness of academic
expertise for the corporate world by presenting his prospective customers
a hypothetical investment problem. When the practitioners failed to solve
the problem, the scholar refl ected upon the incorrect answers as follows:
This example just, in general, indicates that it is very hard to make decisions,
even when the problem looks fairly simple… Well, I have used this example
to illustrate this to company executives […] This [incorrect investment
option] is tempting, and senior executives just, of course… It cannot be seen
that it is [more] profi table to invest into these [pointing to another option]…
So, one could begin [this meeting] by pronouncing that formal methods are
needed. (Scholar F52P)
In other words, the role of the OR/MS scholars and strategy tools is to ‘help’
corporate actors who are incompetent in mathematical-logical reasoning
or who fail to apply it in decision-making. Strategic advantage is achieved
by providing managers with ‘correct information’, ‘optimal choices’ and
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Johanna Moisander and Sari Stenfors
‘effi cient options’ based on a systematic mapping and measurement of the
factors, components and attributes that are relevant in the decision-making
contexts. By and large, the strategy tool is assumed to do the job and the
actual learning processes through which this information is transformed
into strategically valuable knowledge are not discussed.
In the post-bureaucratic epistemic culture, knowledge creation is a col-
lective endeavour, based on continuous processes of organizational and
individual learning, open communication and creative interaction between
members of the organization. Such ‘joint management practices’, as they
were referred to, rely on achieving commitment through negotiation of the
values, interests, and objectives involved. Therefore, corporate knowledge
creation, in these organizations, would seem to involve various forms of col-
lective problem structuring, collaborative problem solving and interactive
learning (e.g. Argyris and Schön, 1996; Senge, 1990).
In this type of environment, decisions and events rather evolve over time
dynamically as managers negotiate and confer on smaller decisions to
achieve goals instead of taking a single big decision. Talking about his every-
day work, for example, a manager pointed out that he cannot necessarily
take time to defi ne ‘big decisions’. He rather has to make a number of ‘small
decisions’ that quickly respond to changes in situations as they emerge.
And it is often in hindsight that he realizes that a more systematic decision
should have been taken. As he put it, ‘it would be good if I always actually
had a problem’. In situations like these, the decision-process often turns
into a process of muddling through (e.g. Weick, 1995). One thing leads
to another and earlier events and moves guide and constrain the way in
which the practitioner can perceive and structure their current problems.
Decision-making problems thus need to be structured, defi ned and clarifi ed
‘on the run’, in the process of making the decisions.
Moreover, accordingly with the post-bureaucratic management philo-
sophies, the production of strategic knowledge is represented as a dynamic,
spiral process of continuous development and knowledge creation. For
example, one of the practitioners described this by noting that ‘everything is
depicted as spiral processes’. In the contemporary business environments,
knowledge is dynamic and there is no static fi nish that would reveal the
set of truths about the world. Hence, there is no start and end to the spiral
of knowledge creation.
In this sort of knowledge culture, the role of strategy tools is to foster dia-
logue, to help to elaborate on new ideas and to bring about critical views.
In the focus group discussion, the managers expressed repeatedly that
they used the tool primarily as a learning-tool. They described using it
conceptually for both individual and collective processes of knowledge
creation. They do not talk about using the model for its prescriptive purposes,
i.e. for calculating effi ciency scores for strategic decision-making. It seems,
therefore, that to make use of these ‘modernist’ technologies of knowledge
production, practitioners of the contemporary post-bureaucratic knowledge
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organizations adapt them and reinterpret their use creatively (see also
Graham and Williams, 2005; Jarzabkowski, 2004; Zbaracki, 1998).
The cooperative project involving the users and developers in our study
was never actualized. Yet, both parties are actively engaged in improving
the strategy tool in their own ways.
Discussion
In this paper, we have offered new insights into the cultural-epistemic com-
plexity of fostering rigor and relevance in strategic management research.
We argue that to improve the practical relevance of academic management
research in general and strategy tools in particular, scholars need to identify
and problematize the subtle yet profound cultural differences in epistemic
practice that may not only complicate interaction and communication
with business practitioners but also hinder collaborative learning in the
development of management tools.
In the mainstream management literature, the assumption has been
that management and organization theories are ‘culture free’ (Clegg, 2003;
Hickson et al., 1974). However, our empirical analysis suggests that different
epistemic cultures set diverse and even confl icting conditions of possibility
for knowledge production, learning and organizational activities. In this
paper, we have focused on post-bureaucratic organizations and modernist
management scholars and found that a strategy tool designed for bench-
marking has different purposes and meanings for its modernist developers
and post-bureaucratic users.
Our case is special, and we are not suggesting that post-bureaucracy
constitutes a broader shift or trend in the market or that academics are all
modernist and practitioners post-bureaucratic. Furthermore, we understand
that even organizations that strive towards post-bureaucratic organizational
structures and practices often also have bureaucratic features. As many
scholars in the fi eld have noted, post-bureaucracies are not necessarily
able to deliver their ideological control (Garsten and Grey, 1997) and thus
often succeed in being ‘post-bureaucratic’ primarily at the level of rhetoric
(Alvesson, 2001). Nevertheless, the emergence of a considerable body of
literature on post-bureaucracy would seem to indicate that organizations
that can be described as post-bureaucratic (in the sense that our article
describes them) do exist in the market and may even be proliferating in
certain market environments. Most importantly, the post-bureaucratic
setting of our paper gives us the possibility to go beyond institutional
and individual level analysis and take a cultural focus that pinpoints the
micro-level challenges in bridging the theory-practice gap in management
and organization research.
The literature on theory-practice gap in management and organization
research is abundant, yet there is very little research that takes concrete steps
to discover opportunities in bridging academic work and strategy work. Our
study concentrates on the epistemic cultures that explain and guide the
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Johanna Moisander and Sari Stenfors
work around strategy tools. On the academic side it has traditionally been
seen as tool-development work and on the practice side it has traditionally
been seen as strategy-tool use. With Clegg (2003) we argue, however, that
the future paradigms for academic work call for new roles that are not as
clear cut. These roles include, for example, academic scholars that shape
scientifi c knowledge to applied purposes and practitioners who work in
academic settings.
In similar vein, we argue that the bridging of possible theory-practice
gaps in the fi eld of organization and management research calls for mutual
learning and partial translation between academy-based management
knowledge and corporate knowledge (Suchman, 1994). While our task
has been to discuss possible divides or complexities in communication
and collaboration between modernist academics and non-modernist prac-
titioners, similar problems may arguably be observed between modernist
practitioners and non-modernist academics—or between modernist and
non-modernist knowledge workers in general, be they academics or
practitioners. Nevertheless, it is important to note that being ‘different’ is
the basis and motive for collaboration, since a need for something that the
other party possesses makes the cooperation desirable. There is no need to
do away with those clashes and tensions that spark creativity and learning—
only the misconceptions that develop distrust and misunderstanding must
be cleared out.
Implications for the Development of Strategy Tools
Learning tools for dynamic business environments. Despite the possible
epistemic-cultural differences between academics and practitioners, we
argue that strategy tools hold the potential for bridging the gap between
theory and practice. Mingers and Rosenhead (2004) report various cases
of successful use of strategy tools called ‘problem structuring methods’ in
complex business environments. These ‘problem structuring methods’ are
designed to allow managers and other knowledge workers to analyse several
different aspects of a strategic problem or environment simultaneously, look
at the situation from various perspectives and use multiple methodologies
together for both conceptual and methodological triangulation. In post
bureaucratic organizations strategy tools can be used mainly as learning
tools for identifying possible problem-solving and decision-making situ-
ations and sites or to help ensure that management teams and other relevant
members of the organization are involved in the dialogue through which
decisions are made and strategically valuable knowledge is produced.
Sometimes there is no use for the fi nal model at all. The goal, then, is not
to develop accurate results, exact presentations, refi ned abstractions, and
strict processes but to design strategy tools that are simple and transparent
enough to promote dialogue and trust (see also Styhre, 2002).
Tools for dialogue and trust. In fl at project based organizations, strategy
tools are not merely practical and conceptual tools that can be used by
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individual knowledge workers as neutral instruments for making more
systematic and transparent decisions that are in line with a predefi ned
strategy. Strategy tools can be inscribed with particular visions of the
patterns, purposes and contexts of use in organizations and may involve
particular moral orders and ‘preferred readings’ of the learning and
business environment, which guide practitioners to limit themselves only
to the categories and procedures that the tools offer. These visions, con-
ceptualizations and epistemic norms may or may not be compatible with
the practical or political context in which the tools are used. As a result,
management teams would seem to be much more likely to use models
when it is clear to them that their ideas and knowledge are represented in
the model and when the models do not overly restrict their thinking (also
Morecroft, 1992).
Therefore, to be regarded as effective, strategy tools must become an
integral part of debate and dialogue in the organizational learning com-
munity, which possibly includes board relations (Tainio et al., 2001) and the
strategic alliance networks of the fi rm (Powell, 1990, 2001b; Powell et al.,
1996). In an epistemic community where no one can give orders, knowing an
optimal solution is of little use, especially if it is only the optimal solution
to one party’s version of the problem (Rosenhead, 1996). Rather, there is a
need to generate many models or a very general fl exible model and to articu-
late and elaborate them from the different subject positions that the different
members of the organization and its stakeholders can take (see also Longino,
1993: 116). A single uncontested representation of the problematic situation
under consideration that the strategy tools sometimes presuppose is often
impossible to achieve.
Multiple tools for multiple contexts of knowledge creation. The strategy
tools that are commonly used in contemporary knowledge organizations
aim to solve specifi c management-related problems. Some tools provide
diversity by creating points of views, like Balanced Scorecard. Others,
Scenario Planning for example, help to balance planning and intuition.
There are also tools that provide clarity to processes, like Six Sigma. Even
some facilitation and dialogue tools are in use for improving intersubjective
communication and collective decision-making in organizations. Yet, the
available tools cover only a small subset of the tasks that strategy work typic-
ally involves. Hence, there is still need for new practical methods suitable
for the more complex strategy level problems that characterize contemporary
post-bureaucratic knowledge intensive corporations.
Our study suggests that strategy tools should be considered and evaluated
as part of the larger organizational learning environment in which they are
used. The solutions and information that they provide are only one input
into the complex processes of discussion, negotiation and collective learn-
ing associated with decision-making and everyday business practices.
Strategy work in contemporary organization therefore requires multiple
methodologies. Instead of only one tool that solves the problem; successful
strategy work would seem to require a set of methods. Not only is there a
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need for tools that are context specifi c, i.e. tailored for specifi c business
and social learning environments, but, there is also a need for tools that
are specifi cally designed for different aspects of the problem, as well as
for different stages of the strategy process.
Strategy tools overall may cause bureaucracy in organizations that exhibit
post-bureaucratic tendencies (e.g. Hodgson, 2004) resulting in localized,
‘selective bureaucracy’ as described by Alvesson and Thompson (2005).
In practice, all organizations engage in bureaucratic procedures, and these
procedures are not completely undesirable as they may provide positive
effects like effi ciency and stability. However, when there is a high degree of
unpredictability and instability and where creativity and situational adapt-
ability are vital parts of work, bureaucracy is not desirable (Alvesson and
Thompson, 2005).
The balance of effi ciency and creativity is necessary in organizational
knowledge creation. It is easy to be limited only to the categories and pro-
cedures that a strategy tool offers. It may even prove to be effi cient at times,
as both divergent and convergent thinking have their time and place on
the never ending spiral of the creation of strategic knowledge. However, as
Brown and Gray (2004) among others have argued, it is often the informal
ways through which people solve problems that create potential for strategic
advantage. As the executive’s quote in the beginning of our paper suggests,
the people, not the tools and the processes are the real geniuses of the
organization. Consequently, strategy tools are useful in the long term only if
they provoke new ideas and facilitate communication, both with different
external stakeholders and between different interest groups within the
organization.
In sum, strategy tools at their best can support individual and collective
learning, make processes more effi cient and enable emergent qualities.
Most importantly, they can support unlearning, the ability to take and to
understand new perspectives. However, development of new techniques,
technologies, processes and experiences that genuinely support such
unlearning call for a more social model of knowledge and strategy work
as well as for genuine appreciation of co-production.
Note
We would like to extend our warmest thanks to Mats Alvesson for his editorial work
on our manuscript. We would also like to express our gratitude to Risto Tainio for
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Stephanie Freeman for her
signifi cant contribution in collecting the empirical materials for this study.
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Johanna Moisander works as a Professor at Helsinki School of Economics, Department of
Marketing and Management. Her research interests currently focus on Foucauldian
and cultural approaches to business research and qualitative research methodology.
She has published in Consumption, Markets and Culture, Management Decision,
Business Strategy and the Environment and International Journal of Consumer Studies.
Address: Helsinki School of Economics, Department of Marketing and Management,
PO Box 1210, FIN-00101 Helsinki, Finland. [email: johanna.moisander@hse.fi ]
Sari Stenfors is an Associate Director of Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational
Research at Stanford University. Her research interests, borne out of 15 years as
an international business executive and consultant in the healthcare, advertising
and design industries, are strategy tools, organizational innovation, experiential
learning methods and methods of business research. Furthermore, she is the CEO of
Innovation Democracy, Inc., a global NGO. Address: CERAS 531, Stanford University,
Stanford, California 94305-3084, USA. [email: stenfors@stanford.edu]
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