Crafting Strategy: Embodied Metaphors in Practice

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The rationalist approach to strategizing emphasizes analytical and convergent thinking. Without denying the importance of this approach, this book argues that strategists must learn to complement it with a more creative approach to strategizing that emphasizes synthetic and divergent ways of thinking. The theoretical underpinnings of this approach include embodied realism, interpretivism, practice theory, theory of play, design thinking, as well as discursive approaches such as metaphorical analysis, narrative analysis, dialogical analysis and hermeneutics. The book includes in-depth discussions of these theories and shows how they can be put into practice by presenting detailed analyses of embodied metaphors built by groups of agents with step-by-step explanations of how this process can be implemented and facilitated. The link between theory and practice is further supported by the inclusion of several vignettes that describe how this approach has been successfully employed in a number of organizations, including BASF and UNICEF. Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgement s Preface Vignette A: BASF 1. Strategizing out of the box Vignette B: UNICEF 2. Metaphor and embodied realism 3. Analyzing embodied metaphors as an interpretive, hermeneutic endeavour Vignette C: Voltigo (Fribourg) 4. Crafting strategy as a practice of embodied recursive enactment 5. Play, analogical reasoning and dialogue in the crafting of strategy Vignette D: Hephata 6. Understanding organizations through embodied metaphors 7. Sensemaking through embodied metaphors in organization development Vignette E: Privatbank 8. Strategy as a crafting practice Vignette F: Worldvision New Zealand 9. The process of strategizing through crafting embodied metaphors Glossary Index.