This paper takes the long view on the development of strategy as a profession, from the 1950s to today. We identify strategy as a structurally precarious profession, subject to cyclical demand and shifts in organizational power. This precariousness has increased with the secular shift towards...

This themed issue commemorates the twenty-first anniversary of Henry Mintzberg's classic Harvard Business Review article, ‘Crafting Strategy’. With his striking image of the strategist making strategy as a potter crafts clay, Mintzberg crystallised a widespread reaction against strategic...

In this paper we use discourse analysis to investigate the process of institutionalization and change of strategic planning practices over four decades. We propose a model that connects the production and consumption of text to the process of institutionalization and its subsequent expression in...

So far, SAP scholars have explored the question of what strategists “do”, providing at least three different types of answers to this question: strategists talk, they write texts and they use various kinds of tools—models, methodologies, etc. The pervasiveness of ethnographic research in...

This paper traces the evolution of strategic planning practice through a content analysis of advertisements for strategic planning jobs in the New York Times from 1960 to 2003. We address two issues. First, responding to prominent criticisms of analytical approaches to strategic planning, we...

This paper traces the evolution of strategic planning practice through a content analysis of advertisements for strategic planning jobs in the New York Times from 1960 to 2003. We address two issues. First, responding to prominent criticisms of analytical approaches to strategic planning, we...