Material artifacts: Practices for doing strategy with ‘stuff’

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Summary

This paper addresses the dearth of research into material artifacts and how they are engaged in strategizing activities. Building on the strategy-as-practice perspective, and the notion of epistemic objects, we develop a typology of strategy practices that show how managers use material artifacts to strategize by a dual process of knowledge abstraction and substitution. Empirically, we study the practice of underwriting managers in reinsurance companies. Our findings first identify the artifacts – pictures, maps, data packs, spreadsheets and graphs – that these managers use to appraise reinsurance deals. Second, the analysis of each artifact’s situated use led to the identification of five practices for doing strategy with artifacts: physicalizing, locating, enumerating, analyzing, and selecting. Last, we developed a typology that shows how practices vary in terms of their level of abstraction from the physical properties of the risk being reinsured and unfold through a process of substituting. Our conceptual framework extends existing work in the strategy-as-practice field that calls for research into the role of material artifacts.

Highlights

► Our conceptual framework extends existing work in the strategy-as-practice. ► It offers a typology of artifacts and their situated uses in doing strategy work. ► It shows strategizing as a dual process of knowledge abstraction and substitution.

Introduction

From a strategy-as-practice perspective, strategy is not a static property of a firm but is continuously created in the doing of strategy work. Embedded in such doing are all kinds of ‘stuff’ to make strategy happen including routines and procedures, discursive resources and material artifacts (Whittington, 2007). There are increasing calls within the strategy-as-practice literature to focus on those material objects, such as whiteboards, spreadsheets, and PowerPoints, through which people do strategy work (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007, Jarzabkowski and Whittington, 2008, Kaplan, 2011, Whittington, 2003). However, the study of such objects and, in particular, the implications of the way that they interact with human activity in strategy making remains relatively underexplored (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009), with some exceptions (e.g. Kaplan, 2011, Molloy and Whittington, 2005).

The relative neglect of the role of material artifacts – those ‘things’ that are part of the everyday doing of strategy – in strategy research is in part due to inconsistent and overly broad definitions and theoretical conceptualizations of strategy practices, in which actors, objects and intentions are interwoven in a complex bundle of practices (Carter et al., 2008, Jarzabkowski and Spee, 2009, Reckwitz, 2002). In an attempt to rectify such shortcomings, we place our focus particularly on the material practices – the actual computers, desks, whiteboards, post-its, spreadsheets, telephones and other material objects – that are socially enacted in doing strategy (Jarzabkowski and Whittington, 2008, Whittington, 2007). These are part of the strategy work making up “the stuff of strategy, without which strategy work could hardly happen” (Whittington, 2007: 1579). Specifically, to address the identified gap in the current strategy-as-practice literature, we explore the following research question: What roles do material artifacts play in accomplishing strategy work? Consistent with our strategy-as-practice approach, we define strategy work not only as strategy formulation but also as “the organizing work involved in the implementation of strategies, and all the other activities that lead to the emergence of organizational strategies, conscious or not” (Vaara & Whittington, 2012: 3).

We address our research question in the empirical context of reinsurance – that is the insurance of insurance companies. Specifically, we study underwriting managers’ practice of appraising reinsurance deals in order to better understand the roles of material artifacts in strategy work. A reinsurance firm’s strategy involves the allocation of capital to a portfolio of reinsurance deals. Reinsurance underwriting managers are critical for building the portfolio through their strategy work of appraising a spread of reinsurance deals across different territories with a view to maximizing returns on capital, whilst also ensuring portfolio diversification. While portfolio targets are set as part of the annual planning cycle, these are somewhat flexible, as underwriting managers continuously reevaluate the portfolio according to the returns they can achieve in relation to the market cycle. Consistent with other professional knowledge workers (Knorr-Cetina, 1999, Lowendahl and Revang, 1998), they are thus empowered to make decisions that shape their firms’ strategy. This paper examines the strategy work of underwriting managers in appraising reinsurance deals on properties located in Europe during the 2009/2010 annual reinsurance cycle. At this time, due to a softening cycle (Insurance Services Network), underwriting managers were appraising specific reinsurance deals with a view to adjusting the portfolio to counter potential rate reductions in different territories and on different deals. In doing so, they perform the strategy work that is central to their firm’s strategy of maximizing portfolio gains.

The process of appraising reinsurance deals is thus a salient context for studying strategy work because it enables underwriting managers to (a) spread capital across diverse deals; (b) select those deals that they believe will provide the best return on capital for their firm. In appraising deals, underwriting managers’ task is to grow the bottom-line and to seek opportunities to increase the top-line of the firm’s reinsurance portfolio in order to achieve targets set in the annual strategic planning cycle. Inability to achieve these targets has a direct impact upon the firm’s performance as capital may be underutilized or overstretched. At the same time, consistent with a strategy-as-practice definition, appraising reinsurance deals is mundane, everyday strategy work (Jarzabkowski and Whittington, 2008, Vaara and Whittington, 2012, Whittington, 2007) that constitutes the main activity for underwriting managers, who typically appraise several hundred deals throughout the annual cycle in order to fulfill their strategy portfolio. In doing so, they engage with multiple artifacts, such as photos, maps and spreadsheets, that are an inherent part of the process of appraising deals.

The paper takes the following structure. First, we review the strategy-as-practice literature, highlighting the dearth of empirical research into the role of material artifacts in strategizing. Second, we draw upon literature on epistemic objects and knowledge work in order to provide a conceptual framework for analyzing the situated use of material artifacts. Third, we outline the method of this in-depth qualitative study of appraising reinsurance deals. Fourth, we present findings about the practices of using five artifacts that are part of the everyday strategizing activity of appraising reinsurance deals. Fifth, we discuss these findings by introducing two concepts, abstraction and substitution, that contribute to our understanding of material artifacts in the strategizing process.

Section snippets

Strategy-as-practice: current trends and shortcomings

A practice perspective on strategy builds upon several seminal scholars in social theory, such as Bourdieu, 1977, Bourdieu, 1990, De Certeau, 1984, Foucault, 1977, Giddens, 1979. Strategy as a social practice is defined as ‘a situated, socially accomplished activity constructed through the interactions of multiple actors’ (Jarzabkowski, 2005: 7). The strategy-as-practice approach thus moves from traditional concepts of strategy as something an organization has to something that people do.

Research setting

We selected the reinsurance sector for our study because it is a professional service sector in which professional knowledge workers play a significant role in shaping the strategy of their firms (Knorr-Cetina, 1999, Lowendahl and Revang, 1998, Von Nordenflycht, 2010), so enabling us to focus on managers whose work might clearly display elements of everyday strategy work (e.g. Vaara and Whittington, 2012, Whittington, 2006). Furthermore, financial service sectors, such as reinsurance, have been

Findings

In qualitative research there is always a trade-off between showing the rich data upon which findings are based and the constraints of an academic manuscript (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007, Golden-Biddle and Locke, 2006). This trade-off is particularly pertinent in presenting episodes of underwriting managers’ appraising reinsurance deals, where situated activities must be analyzed. In the findings we therefore present each of the five artifacts and the work that underwriting managers enact in

Discussion

Despite increasing calls for research into strategy practices as those ‘things’ that comprise much of the work of strategizing, such as spreadsheets, flipcharts, post-it notes and whiteboards (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008), there is still little empirical evidence on strategizing with stuff (Vaara & Whittington, 2012). This paper therefore set out to address a research question that was motivated by a gap in the strategy-as-practice literature: what role do material artifacts play in

Conclusions and implications for theory

This study makes a contribution to strategy-as-practice. While a number of scholars have called for research into strategy practices, those ‘things’ that are part of the everyday doing of strategy (e.g. Jarzabkowski, 2004, Vaara and Whittington, 2012, Whittington, 2003, Whittington, 2006), there is a dearth of empirical research in the field. In part this is because of inconsistent and overly broad definitions and theoretical conceptualizations of strategy practices (Carter et al., 2008,

PAULA JARZABKOWSKI is a Professor of Strategic Management at Aston Business School.

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    PAULA JARZABKOWSKI is a Professor of Strategic Management at Aston Business School.

    A. PAUL SPEE is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Sydney Business School.

    MICHAEL SMETS is a lecturer in Strategy at Aston Business School.

    The authors thank the following funding bodies for their support to collect the data on which this paper is based: Economic and Social Research Council grants RES-173-27-0163, British Academy SG091192, and the Insurance Intellectual Capital Initiative.

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