Making sense: exploring the links between material and conversational aspects in strategy discourse

This paper sets out to contribute to the domain of strategy-as-practice, particularly to unpacking the complexity of sociomateriality in strategy discourse. Scholars have emphasized the potential of artefacts to enhance stakeholders’ interactions and sensemaking during strategizing. However there is a lack of insight into how material and conversational aspects are intertwined at the micro-level of discourse, as well as how artefacts contribute to generating new ideas and practices. This paper addresses this gap by presenting empirical research on real-time strategy discourse carried out during facilitated, model-supported workshops amongst two groups of stakeholders. Drawing on the knowledge-perspective of group conversations, the author carries out a systematic and fine-grained analysis of workshop transcripts to assess the effect of models on stakeholders’ communicative behaviours, knowledge creation and negotiation of meaning that has implications for organisational practice. The analysis suggests that micro-processes linking material and conversational aspects can trigger different patterns of strategizing – the transforming, sharing and stagnating patterns. These patterns comprise different dynamics of knowledge creation and negotiation of meaning, thereby supporting or constraining the generation of new practices.