53 Strategy, power and practice David L. Levy UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON This chapter elaborates a strategic conception of power and demonstrates its relevance in contemporary economic, environmental, and social struggles. We review traditional conceptions of strategy based on calculating rational actors in a predictable, highly structured world, and discuss various critiques, including ‘strategy as process’ as well as more critical approaches. We argue that strategy does have instrumental value in complex socio-economic fields that are sufficiently patterned to allow for purposive action. Indeed, the indeterminacy of these fields is key to understanding the potential and limitations of a strategic conception of power, exercised through the coordination of material, discursive, and organizational resources. Senior managers practice strategy by setting goals and directing corporate resources, through political and market strategies, in the process shaping relations of production and meaning, societal norms, institutions, and governance mechanisms. Senior managers attempt to preserve the domain of strategy for themselves because it is a key domain of power. Critical scholars need to understand the strategic mechanisms of power because they offer the emancipatory potential for contesting contemporary issues. We suggest that complexity theory offers some theoretical grounding for this understanding of strategic power as the process by which agents analyze complex systems and attempt to effect change. Classical strategy The concept of strategy has classical roots stretching back over 2,500 years to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (1988), which describes not only timeless principles such as familiarity with terrain and analysis of adversaries, but also strategies for confronting more powerful foes, such as careful planning, building alliances, and avoiding direct confrontation: ‘What you gain by your calculations is much, so you can win before you even fight’ (Sun Tzu, 1988: 20). Many of these precepts have found their way into contemporary military strategy and underlie the concern in business strategy with industry and company analysis, particularly Porter’s (1980) focus on relative market power and avoidance of intense competition. Strategy is far from a unified field, however, as exemplified by Mintzberg et al.’s (1998) description of ten schools and five definitions of strategy. Perhaps the most common understanding of strategy, in business and beyond, relates to analysis, planning and positioning. Strategy begins with analysis of one’s own organization in relation 1111 2 3 4111 5111 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3EEE 4 5 6 7 8111 9EEEE 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 35 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8EEE 559 6556P COM PHIL ORG STUDIES-A/lb_246x174 mm 28/07/2015 00:59 Page 559 FIRST PROOFS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION