On the dynamics of fluidity and open-endedness of strategy process toward a strategy-as-practicing conceptualization

•Temporal relationality accounts for a philosophical contextualization of practice in the application of the lived experience perspective.•Practitioners entwine with activities that constitute a nonlinear fluid and open strategy process.•There is no being-in-itself, detaching the practitioner from the world and a cultural historical past or from activity.•Language (in the philosophical hermeneutical sense; Sprache) brings out temporal-relational dynamics.

The paper aims to contribute to the advancement of our understanding of how strategy practice processually unfolds. It directs attention to temporal relationality, accounting for a philosophical contextualization of practice in the application of the lived experience perspective. As pointed out, practitioners entwine with activities that constitute a nonlinear fluid and open strategy process. It accords to future-oriented movements a dimension of a past, and a dimension of a future to past-oriented movements. What is crucial are not linearity, event, cause, and an entity that moves but present future-oriented and present past-oriented movements, chiseled out by nouns and verbs and their interlinks. Present–future and present–past orientations also account for the iterational, projective and practical-evaluative dimensions of temporal relationality.