General strategy concepts and the ecology of strategy discourses: a systemic–discursive perspective

Drawing on Wittgenstein, Lyotard and Luhmann the article develops a systemic–discursive perspective on the field of strategy and the respective role of general strategy concepts. The perspective suggests that the field of strategy should not be conceptualized as a unified field but rather as fragmented into a multitude of autonomous discourses. Owing to their autonomy, no transfer of strategy concepts across different discourses is possible. Instead, every single strategy discourse can merely construct its own discourse-specific concepts. Different discourses, however, draw on the same strategy labels, which leads to ‘productive misunderstandings’ (Teubner). On the basis of the particular perspective advanced here, the entire field of strategy is re-described as an ecology of strategy discourses.