Now in its second edition, this extended and thoroughly updated handbook introduces researchers and students to the growing range of theoretical and methodological perspectives being developed in the vibrant field of strategy as practice. With new authors and additional chapters, it shows how the strategy as practice approach in strategic management moves away from disembodied and asocial studies of firm assets, technologies and practices to explore and explain the contribution that strategizing makes to people working at all levels of an organization. It breaks down many of the traditional paradigmatic barriers in strategy to investigate who the strategists are, what they do, how they do it, and what the consequences or outcomes of their actions are. This essential work summarizes recent developments in the field while presenting a clear agenda for future research.

One of the most intriguing questions since the time of Plato concerns what defines skillful performance in terms of specific capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise. As Frederick Taylor famously noted, an answer to that question would enable us to know what to focus on and what to do to improve the performance of individuals, groups, and organizations. Although we have come to know a great deal about the 'properties' of capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise at large, we know significantly less about how they are enacted in skillful performance. Thus, how skillful performance draws on knowledge, how skills develop, and how competencies and capabilities are put to action are still eluding us. Process thinking has not sufficiently explored skillful performance. This book aims to address this gap. It brings together scholars from different backgrounds, traditions, and disciplines whose common perspective is distinctly process-oriented. They seek to rethink capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise, not as if these phenomena were already accomplished but, on the contrary, as processes in the making - as performative accomplishments. Such rethinking opens up several new conversations and extends the range of inquiry about how capabilities, knowledge, competence, and expertise are accomplished in practice, and, consequently, how they may be improved.

Organization Theories in the Making aims to demonstrate how, over the last 25 years, the field of organization theories (OTs) has been providing stimulating, thoughtful, and innovative perspectives. The book offers a selective immersion in organizational institutionalism, convention analysis, network analysis, knowledge studies, discourse studies, and practice studies. For each of these perspectives, the book explores its different research streams and zooms in the research communities that give rise to them. In addition, it highlights how these perspectives all intersect with each other to form a mosaic of ideas that define today's organizations. Rouleau also invites graduate students and early career researchers to learn how recent theories view and portray the organization and, more specifically, to understand current research questions, conceptual resources, and methods. A deep knowledge of recent OTs is key when building a compelling literature review and making meaningful theoretical contributions. This book offers readers with the opportunity to develop their theory-building skills and more by taking a deep dive in the complexities and controversies of OTs. The main arguments of each perspective are illustrated by specific exemplars from academic journals. Each chapter contains a synoptic table summarizing the main scholarly components within each perspective and its research substreams.