Organizational Futurity - a hermeneutic phenomenology of organizational strategic being

What does it mean for organizations to be strategic? This question of the relation between organization and strategy is central in the field of strategy theory and is a matter of high practical significance for organizations. Yet, this relation has not been treated thematically in ontological terms. In theory, strategy is universally understood as an accidental property of organizations and is thus not accorded ontological significance. On the other hand, in practice, strategy is ubiquitous among organizations and is generally understood as normatively and existentially necessary, albeit in an unthematized way. It is in understanding organizations as temporal that brings out most clearly that they incorporate an inherent engagement with the future. Approaching strategy as inherent to organizational being entails a shift from only thinking about organizations being strategic in behavioural terms, to admitting the possibility that organizations are strategic beings in ontological terms. Thinking along this line of questioning leads to the focal question of this study: what is the nature of organizational strategic being as an ontological unity? This question is addressed in a hermeneutic phenomenology of organizational strategic being. Heideggers analytic of Dasein is aimed at interpreting the full-fledged temporality of human being and is thus an ontological analogue for interpreting organizational strategic being in terms of its distinctive and equally full-fledged temporality. It is also an alternative to the prominent Whiteheadian-inspired and Weickian process perspectives, which also espouse the temporality of organizing as a central tenet. However, whereas these retrospective process perspectives lead to the relegation of strategy to epiphenomenal status, hermeneutic phenomenology is eminently suited to giving a futural processual account which takes strategy seriously in ontological terms. In this study I develop, defend and explore the implications of the theses that organizational being (sein Gefragtes), as temporal, is an inherently strategic kind of being, and therefore, that organizational strategic being (ein Befragtes) is an ontological unity that is constituted in its distinctive temporality: organizational futurity (das Erfragte). The interpretation of organizational futurity discloses a productive new perspective at the intersection of organizational ontology and organizational strategy theory. Organizational futurity is a conception that helps us to better understand the gap between strategy theory and practice, and avails a new basis for theorizing that might help to ameliorate this persistent gap. The descriptions of organizational futurity, and especially of its modes, will be practically relevant to organizations that exist as strategic beings under the contemporary condition of higher-order contingency. However, it also avails more incisive potentials for the critique of both strategy practice and theory in an age of organizational strategy.