Reinstating the radical: Trajectory, debates, and proposals for strategy as practice

Strategy as practice (SAP) has developed from a relatively radical idea emphasising situated and knowledgeable strategy practices to a well-recognised field explaining a wide range of strategy activities and practices. Despite this remarkable trajectory, SAP continues to be shaped by ongoing onto-epistemological debates. This essay follows the call to embrace SAP’s early roots in social practices and proposes reinstating the radical in SAP research. We briefly review SAP’s trajectory, showing how advocates and critics have co-constructed the field as it is today. Based on this review, we identify two ongoing debates of intentionality and the macro–micro divide and highlight the onto-epistemological nature of these debates and the methodological challenges to move beyond the debates. Finally, we propose three research ‘bridges’ across these debatesto further advancethe radical SAP agenda and its growth as a vibrant intellectual community open to a wide range of research and phenomena as part of the field’s continuous process of becoming.

实践中的战略（SAP）已经从一个强调情境化和知识性战略实践的相对激进的理念，发展成为一个被广泛认可的领域，能够解释各种各样的战略活动和实践。尽管有这样显著的发展轨迹，SAP仍然受到持续的本体论 - 认识论辩论的影响。本文响应回归SAP在社会实践中的早期根源的呼吁，并提议在SAP研究中恢复其激进性。我们简要回顾了SAP的发展轨迹，展示了倡导者和批评者是如何共同构建了今天的这个领域。基于这一回顾，我们确定了关于意向性和宏观 - 微观分歧的两场持续的辩论，并强调了这些辩论的本体论 - 认识论性质以及超越这些辩论所面临的方法论挑战。最后，我们提出了跨越这些辩论的三个研究“桥梁”，以进一步推进激进的SAP议程，并促进其作为一个充满活力的学术群体的成长，对广泛的研究和现象保持开放，这也是该领域持续发展过程的一部分。