Epistemological Alternatives for Researching Strategy as Practice : Building and Dwelling Worldviews

This chapter contrasts two major epistemological alternatives for Strategy as Practice (SAP) research. On the one hand, the building worldview leads to a detached, spectator’s apprehension of social situations which privileges a ‘knowledge about’ typically characterized by episteme (abstract, universal generalizations using propositional forms) and/or techné (precise, measurable, codifiable instruction). On the other hand, a dwelling worldview leads to an intimate, engaged and involved comprehension of the local mindsets and proficiencies required to skilfully perform the everyday practices of strategizing. It directs attention to the minutiae of tacit and almost imperceptible interventions that cumulatively produce the gradual transformation of strategic situations. An ‘unheroic’ stance is adopted so that research attention is redirected to the mundane everyday practical forms of intelligence and knowledge that are more associated with phronesis and mētis