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SAP Distinguished Keynote: Richard Whittington & Dan Simpson

  • 1.  SAP Distinguished Keynote: Richard Whittington & Dan Simpson

    Posted 08-03-2020 16:44
    Please join us for the SAP Distinguished Keynote on Monday, August 10th from 11am to 12 noon EDT on the AoM virtual conference platform.

    The SAP Distinguished Keynote features the prominent and highly distinguished scholar Professor Richard Whittington (Saïd Business School, Oxford University), one of the founders and leading figures of the Strategy-as-Practice community. With his seminal article, Strategy as Practice in 1996 in Long Range Planning, Richard laid the intellectual roots for the strategy-as-practice approach and through his writing, speaking and mentoring has continued to inspire generations of SAP scholars. He has also been fundamental to establishing and shaping the Strategizing Activities and Practices group at the Academy of Management.

    Richard Whittington's talk is titled "How to Change Strategy (with a capital S)"
    My talk addresses the need to change Strategy as a field of practice, research and teaching. I will start with three chief ills troubling Strategy: its chronic neglect of key stakeholders; its narrow focus on profits; and its ethnocentric orientation towards the West, particularly the Anglosphere. I shall challenge the audience for their solutions to these three ills but propose some remedies of my own. In particular, I shall stress the importance of more open approaches to strategy-making, a more comprehensive understanding of organizational purpose; and the promotion of research and theory from outside the Western mainstream. Drawing from experience from earlier moments of change in Strategy, I shall suggest ways in which radical change could be advanced. I shall be looking forward to energetic debate.

    Professor Dan Simpson (Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley) is a long-standing friend and collaborator of Richard. Dan has held various executive positions in strategy and strategic planning before joining academia. He will provide a commentary to Richard's provocations and recommendations

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    Katharina Dittrich
    Warwick Business School
    COVENTRY
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