thinking of strategy in a postmodern way. part 2

Peter FranklinHead of Department of Strategic Management& Marketing, Nottingham Business School,Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street,Nottingham NG1 4BU

Thinking ofstrategy in apostmodern way

Part 2

. This is the concluding part of an

article which proposes that theadoption of a postmodern way ofthinking should help thedevelopment of a new strategyparadigm.

. The article begins with a thoroughbut simpli®ed expression ofpostmodernism written to make thisarea of philosophy more accessibleand understandable to those whohave not confronted it before.

. The article concludes with the viewthat by taking a postmodernorientation, both strategy thinkingand strategy practice will bene®t.#1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

VI. Assertion 3: postmodernism

Postmodernism . . . shows [the humanagent] to be essentially an observer-commu-nity which constructs interpretations of theworld, these interpretations having noabsolute or universal status. (Cooper andBurrell, 1988, p. 94.)

Reprise

In Part 1, I sought to develop an argumentwhich demonstrated that the idea and practiceof strategy are muddled and incomplete, and

that strategy is in urgent need of an agreedparadigm.

As part of the discussion I drew attention todifferent interpretations of the term `strategy',and went on to assert that these differentinterpretations were consistent with Kuhn's(1970) idea of a pre-paradigm where, usingKuhn's diagnosis (1970, p. 178, 47±48), `anumber of schools compete for the dom-ination of a given ®eld', and `frequent anddeep debates over legitimate methods, prob-lems and standards of solution . . . de®ne [thedifferent] schools [rather than] produceagreement.'

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change, December 1998

Strategic ChangeStrat. Change 7, 437±448 (1998)

As part of my overall argument I also made athird assertion; namely that the adoption of apostmodern style of thinking provides twomain bene®ts to strategic thinking and prac-tice. First it encourages new insights about thestrategic process, and helps to reveal theunconscious ontological assumptions that wemake about the world that we `see', analyse,and make decisions about. Second, the adop-tion of a postmodern way of thinking helpsclarify the focus and scope of an agreedparadigm, and gives impetus to the agendasand actions which we as managers, strategictheorists and management developers need topursue and complete.

The assertion that adoption of a postmodern`orientation' (Alvesson, 1995) can provide abasis for the development of strategic thinkingand practice, and the becoming of an agreedparadigm, is the focus of Part 2.

Outline

Part 2 is developed over two sections.Section VII begins with a de®nition of the

scope of `postmodernism'. The section goes onto explore four de®nitions or themes. The ®rstis concerned with postmodernism as a debateabout reality.1 The second is concerned withpostmodernism, semiotics and the `crisis ofrepresentation'. And the third explores theimplications of postmodernism to the author-ity of science, noticing in particular thequestionable dependence of science on pastoutcomes as a basis for further experi-mentation and progress, and as part of thesame problem, the self referential nature ofscience where the basis of proof is obtained byreference to other proofs, where these in turnhave no absolute standard or base. Fourth,Section VII considers the consequences of anemphasis on `process' rather than structure.

Finally, taking account of the overall argu-ment developed in Parts 1 and 2 of this paper,Section VIII brings the paper to a conclusion byconsidering the implications of a postmodern

style of thinking for the development ofstrategic thinking, theory and practice.

Helping to make sense of postmodernism

While acknowledging that much of the literat-ure on postmodernism is inaccessible, oftencontradictory and irritating to many, the paperattempts to simplify some of the ideas andlanguage adopted by postmodern writerswithout diluting the meanings and underlyingepistemology. The glossary appended at theend of this paper also provides de®nitions andexplanations to facilitate understanding.

VII. So what is postmodernism?

Postmodernism as a debate about reality

The term `postmodern' refers both to a periodof time and an epistemological stance2 whichhas its origins back in the 1950s when manybegan to see the `grandiose dreams of Western-ization [becoming] tarnished' (Lyon, 1994,p. 6).

In epistemological terms, postmodernisminvolves a critical questioning of the assump-tions and outcomes of modernism, where thelatter term is used to capture the ideals of theEnlightenment, when scienti®c reasoning dis-placed the ungrounded theories, speculations,superstitions and sorceries of the Middle Ages.

In social science, postmodernism ®rstqueries, then denies, the objecti®cations ofpositivism borrowed from physics and othersciences. For example, modern (i.e. modernist)organizational analysis treats the idea of organ-ization as an abstraction as if it were `out there',distant from the very community whichcomprises the entity itself. In this modernistontology, it is therefore possible to speak of`the organization', as a unique holistic entity, or`thing', which can be managed and changed asif it were a mere artefact or fabrication; evenpossibly some `thing' to be re-engineered.3 Itfollows that in this ontology the managementand change of an organization can therefore be

1This has resonance with Section IV (in Part 1) where weconsidered some of the ontological issues confrontingstrategic management.

2Legge (1995, p. 286) and Hassard (1996, p. 53).3Morgan (1986) offers other telling metaphors oforganization.


438 Peter Franklin

assumed to be accomplished by `tools andtechniques' available to `the management'Ðallof these being simpli®ed objecti®cationswhich in turn divert attention from thecomplex interrelated political and social pro-cesses associated with change.

By contrast, postmodernism adopts a differ-ent ontology and challenges us to explain theworld from our own experiencesÐfrom ourown standpoint as stakeholders and activists,rather than as passive distant observers. This isa world where the idea of òrganization' isreplaced with the idea of òrganizing'; wherethe process of human relating takes priority;where the modernist idea of òrganization' isdiscarded in favour of attention to the primaryorganizing processes which, over time andspace, bring about continuous emergence,growth, decay and change where nothingremains constant other than possibly thename of the organization itself.4

This shift in ontology is important tostrategic thinking in three ways. First, thinkingin a postmodern way encourages us to observeand investigate `the world' (another objecti®-cation) in a different way. It encourages us to becareful about our assumptions and percep-tions, and to be curious about, and anticipateour individual impacts and effects on thewhole. In observing the world in a postmodernway we are forced to associate with it; we areforced to return to being a part of the world;we become the world. Hence the postmodernworld is a different world from that objecti®edby the modernist project.

Second, by adopting a postmodern ontology,a modernist ideaÐlike competitionÐ

suddenly needs to be explained in a differ-ent way than by relying unduly (and unthink-ingly) on the notions of rivalry and equilibriumfound in economics and carried forward tostrategy. The objecti®cation `competition' hastherefore to be explained from different angleswhich explore empirically the complexprocesses underlying changes in behaviours,symbols and language in competing. Post-modernism therefore teases us to thinkbehind the icon; to pierce the super®cialityand laziness of our language where unthink-ingly we use nouns (like `competition') whichhave the effect of concealing the complex time-and space-related processes of changing (like`competing').

Third, postmodernism brings to our atten-tion the idea that language has an effect onwhat we observe and what we say we observe.When we look at a tree, for example, we call it atree because, based on our past experience andprior knowledge, we are able to place it into acategory of entities which we've beenschooled to call `trees'. However, if we areable to see the detail of its leaves, or touch thetexture of its bark, then we tend to use a sub-classi®cation which aims to be more àccurate',and hence call it a particular species of tree. Onthe basis of our revised taxonomy our tree thentakes on a different meaning: it acquires adifferent label and, possibly due to our pastexperiences, a different emotional connectionwhen we choose to speak about Ènglish oaks'rather than `trees'.

Postmodernism brings to our attention thethought that language is not neutral: that

words, indeed even the physical representa-tions of letters and words which are printed onthis page, have unique meanings imputed tothem by those who read them. Thus the word`tree' is likely to have a different meaning forme than for you. As you read the word `tree',the way you `see' or picture a tree in yourmind's eye will be different from the way I

Language is not neutral

`Modernism is that moment when maninvented himself; when he no longer sawhimself as a re¯ection of God or Nature.'

4Commenting on Weber's contribution, Smart (1993,p. 88), notes the essential paradox of modernity.

Modernity simultaneously creates the promise and thepossibility, perhaps the ¯eeting experience of satis-faction, but it is driven by an endless pursuit ofinnovation or change which creates restlessness,discontent, and dissatisfaction, and in consequencediminishes the experience and meaning of existence.


Thinking of strategy in a postmodern way. Part 2 439

picture the idea of a tree in mine. Possibly moreprofoundly, the way that you picture the treeI'm writing about, may well be different fromthe way I hope or intention you to imagine thetree. Thus, while in both our minds we picturetrees, neither of our trees is the same tree. Wetherefore have a basis for potential con¯ictshould I go on to assert a strategic requirement;namely, that the way I picture my tree isthe only way for you to picture your trees infuture.

When we move this sort of thinking into thedomain of management, the potential for dis-agreement and con¯ict becomes ever more selfevident. For example, when we use the term`customers', not only do we bring into exist-ence a taxonomy which seeks to separate thespecies `customer' from any other species(such as `consumer'), worse it conceals thepossibility that the `customer' is simultan-eously also an employee and/or shareholder.It fails to capture the holistic nature of ourexistence.

The shorthand expression `customers' mayalso be misleading, for by attending to the classas a whole (i.e. `customers') unknowingly wemay well be tempted to imagine all customersto be the same, and hence fail to recognize theindividual requirements of an individual custo-mer. Adopting a postmodern way of thinkingencourages us not to confuse the index or theclass of entities called `customers' from theactual customer who routinely comes to us tonegotiate or buy from us.

Having explained some of the consequencesof postmodernism to ontologyÐto the way weseek to derive meaningful patterns fromrandom phenomena derived from empiricalobservations, and then construct labels whichenable collections of phenomena (like stars) tobe grouped together in labels (such as con-stellations5)Ðwe now turn to semiotics, to the

study of signs and symbols, and the issue of re-presentation.

Semiotics and the crisisof representation

As a key element in its epistemology, post-modernism is particularly associated withsemiotics (Gottdeiner, 1994)Ðthe study ofsigns and symbolsÐand by association, isconcerned with the `crises of representation'(Gephart et al., 1996, p. 7) and the problem of`reality'. In this regard postmodernism sharesthe concerns of poststructuralism. As Bertens(1995, p. 6) puts it:

. . . postmodernism rejects the empiricalidea that language can represent reality . . .[but rather adopts] the idea that languageconstitutes, rather than re¯ects, the world,and that knowledge is therefore alwaysdistorted by language, that is, by thehistorical circumstances and the speci®cenvironment in which it arises.

One outcome of this crisis of representationis that we are forced to challenge our under-standings of the ways that we see, hear, thinkabout, analyse, communicate and make senseof the relationships between ourselves and therest of the world. As Legge writes (1995,pp. 306±307), in postmodernism the profounddifference is that world is no longer ``̀ outthere'' waiting to be discovered, but is createdthrough discourses emergent from power/knowledge relations.'

It follows that in postmodernism therecannot be one unique representation of reality,one universally agreed truth about what con-stitutes reality. On the contrary, postmodernepistemology leads us to the view that there aremultiple representations of reality (Lyon, 1994,p. 7), each being equally valid; each beingcreated by their own discourse or `languaging'(von Krogh et al., 1994).

A related proposition is developed byDerrida's work on poststructuralism, wherehe demonstrates that words in themselves haveno meaning; rather the meaning of words isachieved by comparing one word to anotherÐfor example, hard/soft, tall/short, large/small,

5Of course, from their point of view stars don't knowthey're stars. Nor do they know they're members of aconstellation to which we've attributed an existenceand label. And even if the stars know that we haveattributed to them membership of a constellation, dothey want to be treated as if they are members of theconstellation?


440 Peter Franklin

man/woman. A word's meaning is thusdescribed by its difference with any other;and as this difference is never stable orconstant, but altered according to the succes-sive momentary circumstances of its useÐforexample, woman/man, woman/girl, woman/managerÐlanguage is therefore indeterminate(Lyon, 1994, p. 13).

Chia (1995, p. 590) makes a similar point; hewrites:

The apparent concreteness of the qualitieswe perceive in the social world are in reality[sic] attributes which we impute, throughlanguage, to that which we apprehend as away of ordering our experiences and organ-izing our understanding.

As signs, words themselves therefore merely`re-present' that which they're signifying. Butin representing entities (or more preciselysigni®eds), words are used apart from thephenomena which they're representing. Has-sard captures this space-time problem. Hewrites (1996, p. 52):

The sign represents the present in itsabsenceÐit is a `deferred presence'. Derri-da argues against the notion of a fullypresent reality that is directly available toour understanding. Instead he posits aworld that is continually deferred both intime and space.

In Derrida's thinking, the consequence ofthis is there is no unique meaning, onlydifferences.

The implications of this style of thinking tosocial and organizational analysis are explainedby Denzin (1994, p. 191). He writes:

A sign is only made up of differences andhas no stable center. Since structures canonly be represented by signs, for example,`society', then they too have neither ®xedpresences nor center points.

On this basis, words in themselves thereforehave no meaning: `meaning and understandingare not naturally intrinsic to the world . . . they

have to be constructed' (Cooper and Burrell,1988, p. 99). And as meaning is imposedmomentarily through discourse, meaning isessentially ambiguous, and ultimately undecid-able (cf. Legge, 1995, p. 302).6

Postmodernism as a debateabout science7

Science has created this cosmos of naturalcausality and has seemed unable to answerwith certainty the question of its ownultimate presuppositions. (Weber, 1970,p. 355.)

This ®nding of postmodernism, that there aremultiple representations of reality createdthrough discourse, stands in stark contrastwith the protocols of Western science whereexperiments are undertaken on the implicitassumption that prior ®ndings are suf®cientlydependable for subsequent work to proceed.

When taking a postmodern stance, however,this implicit assumption (that prior ®ndings aresuf®ciently dependable for subsequent work toproceed) is judged to conceal ¯aws in thescienti®c process. As one of the ¯aws, post-modernists have revealed the self-referentialnature of modern science: the notion that invalidating (scienti®c) results, scientists appealeither (a) to the internal consistency of theunderlying axioms, or (b) to the explanatory orpredictive power (or accuracy of outcomesagainst predictions irrespective of the elo-quence or internal consistency of the model),or (c) to comparison with others' ®ndings. AsAshley astutely notes (1994, pp. 64±65), inscience:

[e]ither a discourse refers us to anotherdiscourse, or it dogmatically insists that its

6In contrast to modernism. As Lyotard (1984) writes: `Allmodern forms of knowledge . . . whether positivist,hermeneutic, [interpretative] or Marxist guise, legitimatethemselves by making explicit appeals to some type ofuniversal standard.'7Here we have to be particularly careful that we do notattribute to science claims it does not make andconventions it does not adopt. On the other hand it isnecessary to lay out some of the ideas of postmodernismwhichÐby referring to Weber's, Derrida's and Lyotard'sworkÐquestion the validity of science.



internal and idiomatic rules of validity areabsolute and complete in themselves. But ineither case, the referent of a discourse is adiscourse.

As a second ¯aw, postmodernists also notethe increasing fragmentation and specializationof research where scientists engage in discretebut related areas of enquiry formulating andtesting hypotheses using models and languagespecially crafted for their particular ®eld ofenquiry and discipline. Taking a postmodernstance, this development not only reinforcesthe self-referential nature of science, butworse, deters one from being able to takean holistic perspective.8 Citing Lyotard (1984,p. 17), Lyon (1994, p. 12) pointedly remarks:

As science spawns disciplines and subdisci-plines . . . [e]ach form of discourse is forcedto generate what home-made authority itcan . . . All that remains is `¯exible networksof language games'.

It is clear that postmodernism therefore raisesserious concerns about scienti®c method andthe reliability of results.

Postmodernism also rejects logical positiv-ism as a dependable methodology, arguingthat the cause-effect relationships modelled inthe hypothetico-deductive approach, over-looks, ignores or conceals the interests andprejudices of individual researchers.

Far better, they argue, to be honest about theresearch method and the role of scientists inthe development of science. Postmodernistsare therefore critical of social scientists whohave adopted positivism unthinkingly in pre-ference to a narrow inductive approach whichinvestigates directly individuals' sense making,their behaviours and experiences (Gill andJohnson, 1991, p. 126).

Based on this analysis, science is derided bypostmodernists; what remains is then labelledas `postmodern science'. Citing Lyotard (1984,pp. 40±41), Ashley (1994, p. 65) proposes the

characteristics of postmodern science will bedifferent from normal science (Kuhn, 1970).For Ashley, postmodern science will emergewith

practices that are heterogeneous and varied.Postmodern science `plays its own game',and ìs incapable of legitimating [ground-ing] itself, as speculation assumed it could'.`Speculative' philosophy can now `relin-quish its [failed] legitimation duties' with asigh of relief. We do not have to be nostalgicfor lost certainties.

For readers (managers and theorists) whohave been brought up in the rational manage-rial model where, as Handy (1994, p. 17) soeloquently muses, the `myth of science' givesmanagers a mistaken con®dence that èvery-thing, in theory, could be understood, pre-dicted and, therefore, managed', the idea thatthere's nothing to hold on toÐnothing to relyonÐis undoubtedly an empty prospect. But toinsist otherwise, to imagine that there issomething to hold on to, something whichprovides a unique and dependable standard forcomparison and action, is `pure ®ction'; anìllusion' (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 122) whichbeguiles people into working with the imagesof reality rather than with the phenomena orentities themselves.

It is precisely this [modernist] linear,static and fragmenting style of thinkingthat the process-sensitive style of post-modernism is concerned to destructure.(Chia, 1995.)

Postmodernism as a concern for`process' rather than just structure

. . . we need to see organization as a process

. . . [where we explore] the productionof organization rather than the organizationof production. (Cooper and Burrell, 1988,p. 106.)

As a ®nal theme, postmodernism invites us tofocus on `process' rather than `structure'. Thishas the effect that our attention is shifted from

8Franklin et al. (1998) note the impact of fragmentationof language and disciplines on the possibility ofuniversities to become learning organizations.


442 Peter Franklin

the `big' picture to the `small' one; from meta-narratives to the micro-organizing processeswhich constitute ourselves as individuals, andthe interdepending communities of which weare a part.

In this style of thinking, entities becomesecondary, and what becomes important in-stead is a concern for developing an under-standing of the tiny details of the processeswhich enable the creation and continuedexistence of entities. In this style of thinking,assumptions and concerns for coherence,stability and structure give way to the studyof relationships, chaos and uncertainty and theendemic nature of change (cf. Featherstone,1991, p. 33). Instead of a hypothesized worldof `common sense structures' found in mod-ernism, postmodernism is concerned withexploring the processes of joining, remainingand separating: processes which continuouslyshape today's and tomorrow's membershipsand communities.

As Chia (1995, p. 9) writes:

The human world . . . is . . . invariablyconstituted in predominantly static termsthrough an organizing logic based on theprinciples of division, distinction and differ-ence. However, the alternative belief [is]that `all things ¯ow' . . . and is in acontinuous process of becoming, transform-ing and perishing . . .

An emphasis on `becoming' (Chia, 1995) shiftsour attention away from outputs and perform-ance. Taking another metaphor, in postmod-ernism the idea of `destination' is substitutedby the idea of `journey' where close attention isgiven to all aspects of the process in real andelapsed time.

Thus, each moment of duration absorbs thepreceding one, transforming it and with it

the whole, constituting at each stage of theprocess a novel and never-to-be-repeatedevent. (Chia, 1995, p. 10.)

This emphasis on process coincides, in partat least, with the recent contentions of Hamel(1997a) who claims that `the strategy industry

doesn't have a theory of strategy creation. Itdoesn't know where bold, new value-creatingstrategies come from.'

His concern with strategizing, and ourswith the modernist and postmodernistorientations of strategic thinking, serve tohighlight the need to reconsider the epistemo-logical foundations of the strategy discipline.

Indeed, analogous to the work of Chia(1995 and 1997), Cooper and Burrell (1988),Legge (1995) and other organization theorists,who propose a shift of perspective from theanalysis of organizations to the analysis oforganizing, strategic management can also bereconceived using this perspective. Thus, bybeing concerned with the analysis of strategiz-ingÐrather than the analysis of strategy (orstrategic analysis)Ðwe heighten the import-ance of the intellectual processes whichforeground visioning, speculating andscenario planning which enable the develop-ment of a shared process which engageshuman talent in the development of a com-munal strategic journey.

In summary then, in this theme postmodern-ism is therefore concerned with the `hows'rather than the `whats' of strategy. It is con-

cerned about the continuous process ofstrategy formation where the web of intricatechanging relationships pattern and re-pattern,shaping the creation of shared mental models,and the development of communities whichvalue shared learningÐi.e. organizationallearning. In postmodernism strategic object-ives and strategic outcomes therefore becomesecondary: what matters is how we get from`here' to `there'. Thus as we journey along our

The `hows' rather than the`whats' of strategy

Postmodernism invites usto focus on `process' rather

than `structure'



strategic route we remain ever alert to the needto change our pace and our `®nal' direction asnew events and unexpected futures cause us toreconsider, re-evaluate and re-strategize ourfuture destination and take a new route on oureternal journey.

VIII. Conclusion. Thinking ofstrategy in a postmodern way:provisional implications forstrategic theory and practiceof postmodernism

. . . the world is not already there, waitingfor us to re¯ect it. It is the result of acomplex process of a will to know whichorders and organizes the world . . . (Cooperand Burrell, 1988, p. 100).

Methodological and ontological issues

In this paper we have sought to expose someof the dif®culties and contradictions whichcan be found amidst the profusion of writingon strategy and strategic management.

In part, as we have sought to demonstrate inSection V, the causes for these dif®culties andcontradictions lie in unthinking and sometimesfaulty application of the rules and method-ologies used by scientists. In particular, asPrahalad and Hamel (1994, p. 10) and Franklin(1997) note, early work on strategic manage-ment and planning was in¯uenced strongly bythe hypothetico-deductive approach adoptedin economics, where causal relationships arehypothesized, and scant attention is given tothe dif®culties of operationalizing abstractideas and variables like `in¯ation' or `demand'or, in strategy work, `competition'.

One might argue that the consequences ofundue dependence on the methodology ofeconomics (cf. Blaug, 1980) were worsened byunthinking attachment to the rational manage-rial model developed earlier in the century; thenotion that men can be treated as machines,that `well trained managers can manage any-thing' (Peters and Waterman, 1989, p. 29) andthat the world is inherently predictable.

In the light of history, and work in othersocial sciences, including semiotics and thephilosophy of science, we might recognizetoday that the rational managerial model waslittle more than a rhetoric9 (Eccles et al., 1992,p. 29) of its time; a common language ofcommonly shared assumptions about howthe world behaves and how it can be con-trolled.

Attention to postmodernism pierces therhetoric requiring us, as strategic theoristsand doers, to regard the world as essentiallyundecidable such that well intended outcomesfrom the traditional tools of strategic analysisÐlike portfolio analysis, SWOTS and BCGmatricesÐare not dependable because theyare `created through discourses emergent frompower/knowledge relations' (Legge, 1995,pp. 306±307), and re¯ect `the ideologicalframeworks in which they arise' (Bertens,1995, p. 7).

We are, as theorists and practitioners, know-ingly or not, involved in an unceasing onto-logical endeavour where `the will to know'(Cooper and Burrell, 1988, p. 100) shapes whatwe are interested in and, hence, in¯uenceswhat we see. In turn this goes on to direct ourjudgement as to whether what we see issuf®ciently equivalent to the abstract variables,relationships, and modelling(s) (possibly cre-ated a priori) which are held in our minds10

(Friedman, 1953, p. 26; Franklin and Wood-head, 1980, p. 367) and, assuming an accep-table `®t', prompts actions based on our will toknow.

The postmodern project therefore differsmarkedly from modernism which `posits . . . analready made up mind' (Cooper and Burrell,1988, p. 94) where phenomena are waiting tobe found, analysed and classi®ed unproble-matically. This is, of course, the positivistapproach to the natural sciences where

9To view management from a rhetorical perspective is torecognize that the way people talk about the world haseverything to do with the way the world is ultimatelyunderstood and acted in, and that the concept ofrevolutionary change depends to a great extent on howthe world is framed by our language. (Eccles et al.,1992, p. 29.)10As Stephen Hawking notes (1988, p. 155) `a scienti®ctheory . . . exists only in our minds.'


444 Peter Franklin

statements made about the world àre directlyveri®able as true or false simply by looking atthe `̀ facts'' of the world' (Hughes, 1990, p. 36).

But the work of Kuhn (1970) in particular,suggests this approach to science, epistem-ology and ontology is naive and ¯awed. Thepolitical, social and human context of sciencecannot be assumed to have a neutral impact.Kuhn's (1970) essay is clear on this point:scienti®c revolutions are shaped by the con-texts of the period in which the scienti®cendeavours take place. What is acceptablescience, in terms of agendas and procedures, isnot merely self-referential (i.e. based on theacceptability of the logic of the axioms orthe consistency of empirical results with theunderlying theory), but affected by thesocial, political and economic contexts inwhich scientists are brought up and operate(Hughes, 1990).

The consequences for theory buildingand the practice of strategicmanagement

The consequences for theory building and thepractice of strategic management of this wayof thinking involve short- and long-runagendas.

First, we need to (re-) state how little weknow. What we believe we know is in part an

ontological illusion conjured up through aresearch methodology which has depended onprocedures adopted in the natural scienceswhere, in particular, the general has beenimproperly derived from the particular(cf. Popper's criticism, 1957).

Second, any prospect of the development ofa unifying paradigm needs to begin from theadmission that a theory of strategy (or for thatmatter, a theory of strategy creation) may take ageneration or more to develop. An agreedresearch programme needs to begin with the

expectation that any dependable improve-ments in our knowledge are likely initially tobe small and incremental. In the developmentof strategy theory, like strategy practice, wecannot and should not seek or expect quickwins.

Third, within the ®eld of managementeducation and development, where strategyand management appear, there's a strong casethat the ideas and techniques of strategy shouldbe located within a critical social scienti®cframework. Admittedly philosophy and socialscience are also open to critical review; butunless managers are given insights into theresearch and theory building process, whereresearchers' àngles' have impacts on theprocess and outcomes of research, managerswill be forever ignorantÐpossibly skilled inmanagement but certainly incompetent injudging the contexts and conditions where,using logic as a process, ideas and solutionsmight be considered to be most appropriateand helpful.

Fourth, a recurrent theme throughout thepaper, is the need for research and writing instrategy to take on the implications of post-modernism. Thinking of strategy in a post-modern way means recognizing that `views ofthe social world are never free of the effects ofvalues, interests and other presuppositionalfactors' (Antonio and Kellner, 1994, p. 145),including `power/knowledge relationships'.Thinking of strategy in a postmodern wayrequires researchers and writers to acknowl-edge their facts are value-laden, and that theirview of the world is only one of many possibleontologies. Such an admission may well lead toa ®fth implication, also found in Alvesson andWillmott (1996), namely the development oftheory which better accounts for the role andimportance of power (and gender) withinstrategic management.

But most importantly, thinking of strategy ina postmodern way relieves us from the tediousrecipes of the modernists; it frees us to think oforganizations as collectives of people ratherthan ìt beings' who exist apart from us. It ispotentially emancipating: it allows us tobecome free of the ìron cage' expressed byWeber. Thinking of strategy in a postmodern

We need to state how littlewe know



way gives added impetus to work of theculture-excellence school of management;those who see purpose, values, people andprocess being centred in the development oftheory and practice; those who have a missionto liberate managers from their right tocommand, and install, instead, obligations toa wider stakeholder community where sys-temic and ecological considerations become asimportant as the narrow interests of capital.

Thinking of strategy in a postmodern way istherefore revolutionary: a prospect for scien-ti®c revolution and a prospective feature ofstrategic change itself.

Postscript. Charity, hope,pessimism and irony: strategyand postmodernism

Before we close this paper it is appropriateto bring to the discussion some of the morerecent developments in strategic theorywhich, interpreted charitably, can be thoughtto have resonance with one or other of themeswe have been exploring.

In particular I want to cite the recent work ofBartlett and Ghoshal who, in a series of articlesin the Harvard Business Review (1994), and intheir recent book (1997), have brought intomanagers' consciousness a concern for people,purpose and process as essential features ofgood strategic management.

The work of Peter Senge (1990), Collinsand Porras (1996), and Hamel and Prahalad(1994) all, in their own way, also represent aconcern for the strategic process. Althoughtheir contributions are concerned mostlywith organization-wide developmentsÐwhatmodernists judge to be true corporatestrategyÐwe might take heart and hope thattheir subsequent work will acquire some of thecharacteristics associated with a postmodernstyle of thinking which looks at the `micro-logics of organizing' (Chia, 1995, p. 579).

But it's equally possible to be pessimistic.Not only is the rational managerial modelterminally embedded in our language, practiceand theory, worse still the idea of strategy hasbeen so abused that one might argue that it's

lost any sensible meaning. And as strategy isdevoid of meaning then possibly we shoulddiscard it, asserting loudly that its use ispotentially hazardous, and entailing healthwarnings throughout.

Taking a postmodern style of thinking, how-ever, I am forced to conclude that `strategy' isa good case for postmodern analysis, and thatwe should hold on to it. It is a term withmultiple meanings; a term which is ultimatelyundecidable. And in so far as `strategy' is nodifferent from any other concept, then whyshould strategy be canonized by martyring itinto extinction?

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Glossary

The aim of the glossary is to provide summary de®nitions/explanations of terms used in thepaper. Reference to more extensive de®nitions/explanations can be found in (for example) Gilland Johnson (1991) and Hughes (1990).

Term De®nition/explanation

a priori model an abstract model where variables and relationships have few or no empiricalcounterparts.

axioms/axiomatic a series of linked assumptions which provide the basis of any a priori theory. An initialtest of any a priori theory is NOT whether the axioms are `real' or ùnreal'; rather thatthe axioms are logically consistent with one another. Hence the notion of ìnternalconsistency' of a model or theory.

discourse the formal treatment of a subject in speech or writing involving information, knowledge,argument and communication.

epistemology a branch of philosophy which is concerned with validating knowledge; i.e. determininghow we know what we know.

foundationalism the belief that science can be built on observable facts (Lyon, 1994, p. 7).

hermeneutics a study of the past gained through texts and artefacts.

hypothesis/hypotheticodeductive reasoning

a research method which involves (1) the formulation of cause-effect hypotheses whichare then (2) subjected to rigorous testing through empirical observation.

inductive empiricism research which is based on observation without obvious regard to or foundation in anunderlying theory. Induction is a research method where general results are inferred (i.e.induced) and adopted from singular instances of an observation or experiment. Hencethe notion of the inductive fallacy; e.g. Ì have seen a large number of white swans; I havenever seen a black one; therefore all swans are white.' (Blaug, 1980, p. 15.)

interpretavism/interpretative research

usually associated with Weber, interpretavism is where the researcher interprets andgives meaning to others' action without prior or subsequent recourse to theory orhypothesis. It is therefore at odds with positivism.

metanarrative an explanation or forecast of a movement having potentially (world)-wide implications.Marxism is generally regarded as a metanarrative.

methodology governs the `rules' of research; governs how we collect information and in particularwhether we adopt a logical deductive process (where empirical observation is initiallyunimportant or ignored), or an inductive process which relies on observation to derivetheory, understanding, explanation and prediction.

modernism/modernist a period of time and an epistemology associated with the Enlightenment, thedevelopment of (Western) scienti®c thought and the repudiation of non-scienti®cexplanations of natural phenomena.

ontology ontology is concerned with the nature of reality, and in particular, aims to de®ne rules orcircumstances when we can concede or attribute existence to some entity or group ofentities.

paradigm following Loasby (1971, p. 866), a paradigm `de®nes the types of relationships to beinvestigated and the methods and abstractions to be regarded as legitimate within aparticular problem area.'

positivistic/positivism a research method based in the natural sciences where empirical observation ofphenomena (i.e. `things' removed from abstract thinking) provide scientists/researcherswith a basis for the development of theory.

postmodernism an epoch and an epistemology which follows modernism and queries the basis ofprogress arguing to alternative ways of observing the world and shaping the future otherthan positivism. In this paper, postmodernism is particularly concerned with theconcept of `reality'.

problematic some phenomenon or behaviour where there is a philosophical problem which isendemic to the class of phenomena being studied.

rhetoric the use of language to encourage or re¯ect (i.e. explain and understand) others' action.

rational managerial model associated with Fordism; where human beings are treated as if they were machines.

semiotics the study of signs and symbols.

theory a formalized system of assumptions, variables and cause-effect relationships whichprovide simpli®cations of the world, aid understanding, and offer the prospect ofprediction.

CCC 1086±1718/98/080437±12$17.50 Strategic Change, December 1998# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

448 Peter Franklin

thinking of strategy in a postmodern way. part 2

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