Achieving Strategic Consensus through Individuals’ Social Practice: The Perspective of Kuwaiti Managers

It has been established that successful communication and implementation of organisational strategies is highly relevant to the understanding and commitment of internal stakeholders to this strategy. Termed strategic consensus, research in this area has quantitatively suggested that the concept is material in nature and can be simply controlled and aligned with other constructs including strategy implementation processes (Aranda and Arellano, 2010; Edh Mirzaei et al., 2016). However, there is limited research available in the literature on the social practice roles of both top and middle managers in achieving strategic consensus and their commitment to such understanding in terms of driving strategy. In this study, we explore the role of top and middle managers in forming a shared understanding of strategy during the communication and the implementation processes from a social practice perspective. Particularly, the focus of this investigation is to understand how a shared understanding is socially practiced and achieved between top and middle managers, and the consequent implications this might have for strategy communication and execution. A qualitative approach with a single case study was applied with a total of 27 interviews conducted. We argue that whilst strategic consensus as a factor affecting various business areas, the overall effect is not wholly dependent on the factor in and of itself; rather, the social interaction of both top and middle managers in reaching a shared understanding and their commitment to such an understanding plays a critical role in the extent to which strategies may be successfully realised.