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Beyond belief : Strategic taboos and organizational identity in strategic agenda setting
Journal
Strategic Organization
ISSN
1476-1270
ISSN-Digital
1741-315X
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2014-11-01
Author(s)
Hoon, Christina
Abstract
A comprehensive strategic agenda matters for fundamental strategic change. Our study seeks to explore and theorize how organizational identity beliefs influence the judgment of strategic actors when setting an organization's strategic agenda. We offer the notion of "strategic taboo" as those strategic options initially disqualified and deemed inconsistent with the organizational identity beliefs of strategic actors. Our study is concerned with how strategic actors confront strategic taboos in the process of setting an organization's strategic agenda. Based on a revelatory inductive case study, we find that strategic actors engage in assessing the concordance of the strategic taboos with organizational identity beliefs and, more specifically, that they focus on key identity elements (philosophy; priorities; practices) when doing so. We develop a typology of three reinterpretation practices that are each concerned with a key identity element. While contextualizing assesses the potential concordance of a strategic taboo with an organization's overall philosophy and purpose, instrumentalizing assesses such concordance with respect to what actors deem an organization's priorities to be. Finally, normalizing explores concordance with respect to compatibility and fit with the organization's practices. We suggest that assessing concordance of a strategic taboo with identity elements consists in reinterpreting collective identity beliefs in ways that make them consistent with what organizational actors deem the right course of action. This article discusses the implications for theory and research on strategic agenda setting, strategic change, a practice-based perspective on strategy, and on organizational identity.
Language
English
Keywords
Organizational identity beliefs
strategic agenda setting
strategic options
strategic taboo
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SoM - Responsible Corporate Competitiveness (RoCC)
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Sage
Publisher place
London
Volume
12
Number
4
Start page
244
End page
273
Pages
30
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
240836