ABSTRACT
Firms that are successful talk differently than non-successful firms. Successful firms talk about their people (who is a strategist?), the content of strategy work (what is strategy?), and daily praxis (what do strategists do)? Thus, in the strategy-as-practice discourse there are three elements – practitioners, practices, and praxis—and the intersection of these three elements is called strategizing. A longitudinal empirical study was conducted to confirm that there is a link between strategizing and long-term performance. The authors combined these three elements and argue that the tacit knowledge generated or implemented through their interaction is the cornerstone of strategizing. A keyword-based measure was developed through computer-aided text analysis to evaluate the impact of strategizing on sustainable performance in a sample of Nordic large-cap and mid-cap companies through a longitudinal research design of 10 years. A curvilinear relationship between strategizing and sustainable performance was observed. This chapter contributes to a harmonized measurement model of strategizing with a novel approach. The authors tackle common method variance inherent in traditional methods of measurements such as surveys. Also, endogeneity, and unobserved heterogeneity are addressed through the use of system GMM as a method.
