A humanistic future for strategizing in a world of uncertainties: Learning from an extreme case

Our study centralizes uncertainty, addressing not only its potential for organizational opportunities but also its existential dimensions for humans. Our ethnographic study of a deliberately “humanistic” company analyzes how human action and strategic agency are interwoven under conditions of deep uncertainty. Building on Strategy-as-Practice research and insights from sociology and science and technology studies, we develop three conceptual anchors: the cunning of uncertainty, communities of discovery, and resonant relationships. Our empirical findings describe how four interrelated practices – setting principles to encourage discovery, cultivating resonance through relational spaces, scaling communities through organizational spheres, and leading through zooming in and out- form a dynamic social web that connects human action to strategic agency.