From strategy implementation to strategy adaptation

Abstract

A strategy will not automatically create value unless it is transformed into practice throughout the organization. Drawing on strategy-as-practice, which focuses on how people do strategy, this paper shows how an organizational unit interprets and transforms corporate strategy into local practice by doing strategy adaptation. This strategy adaptation is done in terms of filling the local strategy implementation with content and activities as well as continuously prioritizing what parts in the implementation to focus on and when. As this adaptation is dependent on the corporate context, the paper shows how the corporate business performs the initial translation of how to implement the corporate strategy. In turn, the translation and thus the strategizing within the local organizational unit is limited to what the corporate business translates. In order to illustrate this, focus has been on the Group IT unit within the Volvo Car Corporation in Gothenburg, Sweden. Hence, it is illustrated how a strategy implementation is a process of translation, which results into strategy adaptation. By combining strategy-as-practice with translation theory this paper contributes to a greater understanding of how strategy implementation is managed in practice.