Becoming Misrepresentations: A Taxonomy of Strategy Schools

Abstract

Robert Chia’s work on the deconstruction and decentering of decision making offers a powerful challenge to the strategic management literature (Chia, 1994, 1996). Writers on strategy are used to debating the nature and rationality of decisions, their political motivations and the possible mismatches between strategic decisions and strategic outcomes. However, the notion that these decisions might be relatively unimportant in the hurly burly of organisational activity is not widely held or even discussed in the strategy literature.

In this paper we follow Chia and others by decentering decisions from the Schools derived in Whittington’s (1993) taxonomy - selected because the Schools are constructed around notions of strategic choice. Drawing on Anderson (2003), the paper argues that scholars have created the literature described by Whittington’s Schools by exaggerating some, and suppressing other, deparaoxising strategies. This representation also removes the temporal dimension of strategic issues by seeking to bring the future into the present. This is reversed by thinking through Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic time, centered on individual becoming. Taking this as a starting point, the paper looks for links between individual and collective becoming. This identifies five additional Strategy Schools, but shows that none are capable of satisfying the conditions of becoming: attunement, standing, discourse and destiny. The nine Schools are identified in relation to their frailties; a becoming misrepresentation.

Keywords: Strategy, strategy paradigms, strategic choice, strategic change

JEL Classification: M13, L26