A Foucauldian Perspective on Strategic Practice: Strategy as the Art of (Un)folding

Strategic management defines itself as the art, or science, of governing an organization with the aim of implementing intentions. In this way, strategic management presents itself as an exercise of will that includes the capacity to influence, to fold or have folded, the actions of other organizational members1 and the strategist is seen as someone deliberate, competent, and sometimes all powerful (Allard-Poesi 2006). Drawing on Foucault's work, some researchers distance themselves from this powerful, almost heroic concept of the strategic practitioner to develop a critical analysis of strategy (for example, Dick and Collins, 2014; Ezzamel and Willmott 2008; 2010; Laine and Vaara 2007; Laine et al., 2016; McCabe 2010; Mantere and Vaara 2008; Whittington, 2018). They mostly rely on Knights and Morgan's (1991; 1995) seminal work and define strategy as a discourse – that is ‘a set of ideas and practices which condition our ways of relating to, and acting upon, particular phenomenon' (Knights and Morgan 1991: 253). In this perspective, strategy is understood as what Foucault (1991: 61) calls a ‘discursive formation', or ‘body of knowledge' (savoir: Foucault 1969) – that is, a ‘limited practical domain…which [has] [its] boundaries, [its] rules of formation, [its] conditions of existence', and that defines ‘what is actually said' (Foucault 1969: 63). Researchers working from this perspective will therefore focus their attention on the performativity of strategic discourse, its power effects on the subjectivity of organisational members, on their relationships, and on the decisions and actions taken (see Samra-Fredericks, 2005; Allard-Poesi and Cabantous, 2021). However, Foucault (1969; 1991) insists that a discursive formation is not exclusively defined by the ‘things said'. Discourse forms knowledge, or savoir, to the extent that it is governed by specific rules of statements, and because it is related to what he calls ‘extra-discursive formations'. These designate the material conditions that make a specific discursive formation possible, in particular ‘the criteria used to designate those who received by law the right to hold a [medical] discourse' (that is, who has the right to talk about strategy?), the ‘scale of observation', which helps designate the object of discourse (that is, where and how does one look?) and the ‘mode of recording, preserving, accumulating, diffusing and teaching… discourse' (Foucault 1991: 67). In this perspective, strategy, as a body of knowledge, cannot be reduced to its discursive expression (that is, the things said). It is a specific assemblage (or diagram: Foucault 1969) between ‘seeing and saying' (Lilley 2001), between what Deleuze (1988: 49) calls ‘the visible and the articulable', so that the ‘things said' at a given time point depend both on the particular rules of statements of the time and the material conditions that make certain things able ‘to come to our attention' (Lilley 2001: 71). Following this concept of strategy as a savoir, three lines of analysis, which constitute the three sections of the chapter, can be developed. First, strategy may be viewed as embodied in a set of discursive and material social practices that actualize and reproduce its discourses, constituting in this way a ‘power-knowledge' system. Using Foucault's genealogy as analytical framework (Foucault 2001b [1978]; see also Foucault 1975; 1976), the first section of this chapter (‘genealogical practices') outlines the historical, contextual and accidental character of strategic discourses. Second, strategy may be seen as a discursive formation governed by a set of rules of statements that managers have to follow if they want to act as strategists. In the second section of the chapter (‘strategic practices as a body of knowledge'), we show that following Foucault's archeological analysis (see Foucault 1969; 1971), the task of the researcher is to uncover these rules and appreciate their ‘power-effect' in the organization. Finally, following Foucault's last works on the techniques of selves (Foucault 2001c [1983]; 2001f [1988]) and the history of sexuality (Foucault 1984a; 1984b), some researchers consider that strategic practices frame, if not inscribe, the subjectivity of the managers, who, in this way, become ‘strategists'. In my view, however, strategic practices cannot be considered as techniques of selves, as they do not imply work on oneself in order to create a specific subjectivity but, rather, involve the strategist's elaboration of a project. In this sense, strategic management is similar to a monitoring technique in which the strategist is led to ‘unfold' himself (Deleuze 1988: 110): to reveal one's intentions, say what is hidden and ‘objectify' one's subjectivity in order to enter into the relationships of knowledge and power. This is the subject of the third section (‘The strategist ‘unfolded': Say what you want'). In summary, the critical approach developed in this chapter distances itself from the idea of adaptability (which is prevalent in the current strategy-as-practice approach) by emphasizing the inscriptions that strategic practices leave on the practitioners and their behaviour. Strategic practices are seen more as techniques of control at a distance through which strategists are led to reveal their intentions. In this vein, this perspective underlines the linkage of strategic practices to the dispositives that allow 'to conduct the conduct' of individuals and populations in a society. The connection made here between the Foucauldian perspective and the approach(es) to strategy as practice reveals a contrasting conception of strategy, strategists and their volition, thus paving the way for new areas of research.