Dynamics of Strategic Agency and Participation in Strategy-Making: The Entanglement of Human Actions, IT, and Other Materialities

Although there are a few studies that have highlighted the role of material artifacts, tools, and technologies as part of strategy-making, researchers need a more profound understanding of the dynamic entangling of human actions and materialities, and the performative effects of this in strategy-making. In particular, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding how the co-constitution of the social and material produce strategic agency. The authors draw from sociomateriality as a practice philosophical perspective to examine the dynamic construction of strategic agency in and through the continuous (re)configuring of human actions, information technology, and other materialities. The authors' study is part of an ongoing ethnographic study of a Finnish entrepreneurship society that promotes startup entrepreneurship. Based on our analysis, the authors distinguish three strategy-making practices: informing the purpose of the entrepreneurship society, enacting startup scene membership, and providing IT services. The authors demonstrate how strategic agency is dispersed to humans, IT, and physical settings. However, the authors argue that it is not sufficient to focus on technologies or other materialities as such, but to acknowledge the whole sociomateriality of practices. Furthermore, the authors also argue that participation in strategy should be seen as a dynamic process of exclusion and inclusion.