Strategic as practice: what can methodological individualism teach us ?

Practice-based approaches are used in the field of strategy to help clarify the micro-dynamics that shape and transform frontline strategies, and whose aggregation engenders an organisation's macro-behaviours and strategic "outcomes". To overcome the challenges raised by this approach, the present report will be offering a conception of the notion of practice that is grounded in the premises of the sociological version of methodological individualism. We will start out with the observation that what is needed to study a microscopic phenomenon (like a practice) is a microscopic gateway enabling us to understand the "internal life" thereof. Said approach must also be capable of explaining microscopic phenomena's aggregation into mesoscopic and macroscopic phenomena. This is why we will be swimming against the tide of social sciences' currently dominant theoretical visions of "practice" by proposing conceptions that attribute a significant role to the individual, to be construed here as a committed actor, i.e., as a strategist undetermined by "institutions" and other "structural" forces. This actor has the ability to produce, preserve and transform strategic practices via games and local dynamics that, by the very fact of their aggregation, spark a global macroscopic dynamic translating the organisation's strategic behaviour. As such, our objective is to highlight a dimension of practices that is often neglected and which seems more than relevant enough to become a worthy object of analysis for (and to satisfy the ambitions of) a Practice-Based View.