Agency in strategy: linking social practice and co-determination

Abstract

The paper proposes a more pluralistic perspective for the study of agency in strategic management field, through the use of co-determination concept, aiming to contribute to overcome certain limitations its literature. The historical reasons that led the field of strategy to focus on the individual are addressed in the paper, putting focus on the prevalence of specific perspectives that address the relationship between individual-organization-environment. The authors argue that a substantial part of its literature is focused on a particular representation of organization and management [i.e. large corporations, managerial capitalism and its 'visible hand']; it has generated over the past decades false dichotomies [micro / macro, voluntarism / determinism] and promoted a conflation between the individual’s agency and the organization’s agency. In order to overcome these false dichotomies and address the agency's study, the authors revisit the development of some perspective that sought in the last decade to approximate to some important debates produced in organizational studies field, particularly in Europe. The article gives prominence to the perspective that considers the strategy as a social practice [S-as-P], mainly that related to Structuration Theory due to its extensive use. In Brazil, there is a growing interest in the S-as-P perspective and the concepts of strategizing, organizing e micropractices –as suggested in European literature–; nevertheless the agency concept remains inadequately addressed despite the significant progress made. The authors of this paper propose a perspective –based upon the concept of co-determination– in which the agency is constituted throughout processes of horizontal and vertical interaction, comprising actors and mechanisms that lie at micro-individual, meso-organizational and macro-structural levels. Co-determination’ potentiality is recognized in order to accomplish in S-as-P a ‘stratified analysis’ of agency and reveal the layers of influences deriving from different levels. Finally, the authors delineate some considerations about the viability of more plural perspectives to the study of agency in S-as-P and its importance to counterbalance the dominant literature and increase the relevance of the studies in Brazil.