Questioning the strategic status of practices: A historical inquiry into the transformative capacity of seconda pratica through music, economy and society

Over the past three decades, the strategy-as-practice (SAP) perspective has shifted strategic analysis away from plans and resources towards the situated activities through which strategy is enacted. While this approach has convincingly shown that practices may become strategic, it has struggled to explain how such transformations occur and why some practices acquire strategic significance while others do not. This article addresses this impasse by adopting a historical perspective. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of the emergence of the seconda pratica (second practice) in Western music, and particularly the role of Claudio Monteverdi, the study examines how a set of micro-level practices progressively generated wide-ranging transformations across artistic, institutional, economic, and social domains. The analysis demonstrates that the transformative capacity of a practice cannot be understood in isolation but depends on its articulation with specific contextual conditions. Building on this historical case, the article proposes a heuristic framework organised around four dimensions—project, ideology, institutions, and appropriation—that helps to examine the ex-ante transformative potential of emerging practices. By reframing strategic practice as a contextual and historical phenomenon rather than a classificatory category, the article contributes to ongoing debates in strategy-as-practice research and highlights the value of historical analysis as a methodological resource for management studies.