The event on May 10th was organised by the Strategic Management, and it was Professor Duncan Angwin, Head of the Centre, who introduced six leading scholars in the Strategy-as-Practice field who presented their views and latest research. These included Professor Richard Whittington (Said Business School, Oxford University), Professor David Seidl (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Professor Paula Jarzabkowski (CASS Business School, London), Professor Loizos Heracleaous (University of Warwick), Sotirios Paroutis (University of Warwick) and our own distinguished visiting scholar, Professor Eero Vaara (Aalto University, Finland).

Richard Whittington presented his insights into the recursive institutional work of change of the strategy profession which included thinking of ‘broadening' and ‘lengthening' our understanding of strategy praxis. David Seidl followed the theme of broadening our understanding of organisational strategy by focusing upon inter-organisational strategizing and then Paula Jarzabkowski considered whether there could be a social practice theory of competition. 

An important part of the day's proceedings was to hear papers that had been reviewed by leading journals. Two papers were presented by Dr Jeannie Holstein (Nottingham University) on strategy as intertextual narrative and Dr Robert Demir (LUMS) on Recruitment as a Strategic Practice. Dr Tatiana Mikhalkina (LUMS) and Dr Martin Friesl (LUMS) then acted as discussants of these papers before opening up to the floor. This reflective process elicited many valuable insights for the authors as well as those in the audience seeking to publish in similar journals.

The day finished with a panel session of leading speakers chaired by Eero Vaara to discuss the latest topics in SaP research and to give suggestions about where scholars in the area should seek to publish their work.

Professor Duncan Angwin said: “The Centre has been one of the founding forces in the rise of the Strategy-as-Practice (SaP) perspective and so we were delighted to have leading lights in this community present at LUMS. We continue to raise our external profile with running a SaP panel at the upcoming EGOS conference in Naples, holding a further SaP seminar at LUMS in June with guest speaker Professor Loizos Heracleous, University of Warwick, and also running SaP workshops with Ericsson in Stockholm in September.”