Coauthoring collaborative strategy when voices are many and authority is ambiguous

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Authors

In interorganizational teams, processes are more complex and structures less clear than in intraorganizational settings. Different perspectives come together and authoritative positions are often ambiguous, which makes establishing what to do problematic. We adopt a ventriloquial analytical lens and pose the question: How exactly do interorganizational team members build a collaborative strategy under these conditions, in their situated interactions? Our findings show how many different voices (individual, organizational, team, and other) shape members’ strategy-making and reveal these voices’ performative authoritative effects: Members established their team’s strategy and produced the needed authority to do so through three coauthoring practices, namely, the proposition, appropriation, and expropriation of voices. When members switched between the practices and different voices, these voices were either woven together or moved apart. We sketch a conceptualization of strategy as a relational assemblage and develop a process model of strategy-coauthoring to illuminate these dynamics.

Original languageEnglish
JournalStrategic Organization
Volume21
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)683-708
Number of pages26
ISSN1476-1270
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.08.2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially funded by the European Funds for Regional Development (EFRO) under project number PROJ-00729.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.

    Research areas

  • authority, CCO, interorganizational collaboration, multi-voicedness, strategy-as-practice, ventriloquism
  • Management studies