Abstract/Summary

Purpose – To theorise how strategy practitioners use different communication practices to support sensemaking about the tensions inherent in IT portfolio strategy in fast moving IT services. Exploring the role of narratives texts and discursive activities in conveying salient tensions affecting current and future praxis. Findings – This study offers something novel by way of presenting how the conveyance1 of strategy process unfolds over time through a series of inter-related and flexible spaces that bridge the sensegiving-sensemaking process. The spaces act to assemble practitioners, practices, and tensions, exhibit flexible boundaries, and instil movement in a sequenced flow overtime. Each conveyance space is characterized by types of metaphors, sensegiver attributes, and sets of tensions that surface within or across spaces that become relevant and salient for sensegivers/sensemakers. Theoretical contributions – This study contributes to the calls for more focus on actionable knowledge for strategy practitioners (Jarzabkowski and Wilson, 2006; Splitter and Seidl, 2011), to study paradox as process and practice (Jarzabkowski, Lê and Bednarek, 2018), to decide what practices are strategic (Jarzabkowski, Kavas and Krull, 2021) and finally, begins to connect SAP research to other domains (Kohtamäki et al., 2022). Design/methodology/methods – This constructionist grounded theory longitudinal study was conducted in a Portfolio Management business unit of a large enterprise IT Services company, with data gathering via interviews, observation, and primary document analysis. Findings were emergent from the data and then analysed using bodies of literature across a combination of the Strategy as Practice (SAP), Organizational Space, and the Organizational Paradox domains. Research implications and areas for further research – This study illuminates strategy practitioners use of spaces to work through their understanding of tensions over time, and the entangled role that narratives and texts play within that process. It suggests fruitful connections between strategy as practice and the domains of organisation space, paradox and the socio material interdependence between agents and the artefacts they employ. Practical implications – Organizational leaders must comprehend that the conveyance of IT portfolio strategy is a process, one inherent with tensional ‘spaces’ throughout the journey. Leaders need to establish consistent narratives with supporting texts, using clear language and relevant metaphors, along with exhibiting a set of sensegiver attributes that work to highlight and mitigate tensions for the practitioners experiencing the process. Originality/value – This thesis offers some explanation of the organizational spaces, sets of tensions, and metaphors that affect the sensegiving/sensemaking of practitioners during the conveyance of IT portfolio strategy, and a conceptual framework illustrating the strategy conveyance bridging process (SCBP), itself an example of a socially interactive process.