Who We Are

Who We Are

Mission

The mission of the SAP Interest Group is to create a developmental community for academics and practitioners who wish to advance knowledge and understanding of strategy as something people do rather than something organizations have. We aim to offer opportunities for lively and stimulating engagement to scholars sharing this interest.

Aims & Objectives

  1. Enable the growth and visibility of a body of scholarship that is showing significant potential for scholarly contribution in opening up a venue for exploring strategic management as it is practiced within and across organizations
  2. Enable further development of an emerging community of international scholars
  3. Meet the development needs of this community of scholars through recognizing and advancing their particular methodological and epistemological traditions
  4. Increase the vibrancy of the Academy through a body of scholarship that enables connections to, yet has no exact overlap with, many other divisions

Identity

The SAP Interest Group is a diverse community appreciating many different methodological and theoretical approaches. What unites us is a common belief that we can move the field of organization studies forward by focusing on the processes and practices constituting the everyday activities of organizational actors and relating these to strategic outcomes. This enables us to give agency back to actors and probe notions that are taken-for-granted within the broader field of organization studies. With its focus on the work of strategists the SAP Interest Group propagates a micro-level approach to traditional areas of strategy process and strategy content research, taking a particular interest in the generic practices by which strategy is accomplished (e.g. planning routines, discourse, tool-use). Methodologically this research focus generates particular challenges in terms of closeness to strategic practitioners. Thus the Interest Group encourages methodological innovation through, for example, collaborative and mixed method approaches, action research interventions, executive development and coaching based relationships, video and narrative approaches. Theoretical pluralism is also encouraged with recognition of the potential contributions from a wide range of sociological and organization theories such as practice-based approaches, institutional theories, discourse analysis, sensemaking, routines and cognition. The linkage through to strategic outcomes remains an important component of the research. It is ultimately necessary to link the outcomes of (multiple) strategizing activities, events and behavior within the firm to more macro organizational, institutional and, possibly, even broader social contexts and outcomes.

Brief History

The SAP Interest Group was proposed and inaugurated by Julia Balogun, Paula Jarzabkowski and Richard Whittington in 2009. The first elections took place in summer 2010 and a formal Steering Committee was subsequently established. The interest group has recently been reviewed by the Academy of Management and approval has been granted for the following five years.
Our continued growth depends on the activity of our membership and the number of submissions to our Interest Group. So if you want SAP to be successful, please submit to us!