The Future of Strategy Implementation Research in the Strategy Context: A Call for a Divergent Shift in Strategizing

Although researchers have extensively investigated obstacles to strategy implementation, many organisations, both public and private, still face strategy implementation failure. In this research, we examine the way in which strategy is communicated among top and middle managers from a social practice perspective. We argue that strategy implementation research and relevant obstacles are no longer representative of the problem of strategy failure; rather, it is the accumulation of social interactions between internal social actors that need to be internally understood in terms of strategizing. Our data is based on a single case study with 20 interviews drawn from one public sector organisation, from which we find that internal social actors must align both individual- and group-level cognition prior the strategy implementation phase. Furthermore, we found that most of the strategy implementation barriers are in fact related to the strategy communication prior the actual execution of the associated strategic objectives. Our findings report a vital concern in terms of how future strategizing should be formed, and therefore calls for a shift in thought from strategy implementation barriers to the social practice barriers that impede the execution of strategic objectives. Our exploration therefore pushes the field forward by enriching the under-researched area of strategy communication processes and the cognitive understanding of internal social practice.