Bringing strategy to time, studying strategy as experiential vectors

SummaryIn this paper, we explore the relationship between strategy work and temporality. More explicitly, we seek to understand time as temporality, i.e. as the negotiation and the organization of time as it is experienced and not as chronological time. Much of the previous research on time and strategy features researchers positioned as ex-post rationalizers who deduce behavioral patterns or competitive recommendations from events in the past. We examine managers engaged in the manifestation of strategy here and now, focusing not on ex-post strategy, but rather how managers experience strategy as in situ vectors of the future. We define these vectors here as experiential vectors of strategic temporality and further identify three broad groupings of such vectors in our research: unquestioned, resolute and fragmented experiential vectors. We argue that these vectors are constantly present in unfolding strategy work. They influence managerial conduct of strategy and hence the retroflex elucidation of strategy theory.

► We examine how managers experience time in a strategy process in a large North European utilities company. ► We identify three temporal vectors that capture this experience; unquestioned, resolute and fragmented. ► The experience of temporality affects how managers understand the need for change and the complexity of the environment. ► Temporality has a retroflex relationship with management studies, where scholars model their own temporal experiences.