The Influence of Institutional Legitimacy and Design Affordance on Strategy Workshops

Brown, Trevor Alan (2024) The Influence of Institutional Legitimacy and Design Affordance on Strategy Workshops. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

Strategy workshops are a common and well-used tool within organisations. They are used to develop, focus, and communicate strategic aims and can frequently become a pivotal and critical strategic episode within an organisation’s planning and development. Extant research argues that strategy workshops assume an underpinning logic or rationality from the contributing actors. This thesis explores these assumptions by investigating the actors’ contributions and focus during a strategy workshop. The study explores organisations across a distinct set of fields, Health, Education and Local Government, using a combination of the strategy as practice lens alongside neo-institutional insights. Ten organisations undertook strategy-making workshops, following a directed causal cognitive mapping process. Three cross-cutting themes emerged from the data. Firstly, the design affordances of the strategy workshop had an apparent effect on inputs and cognition. Secondly, within hybrid organisations, the institutional drivers and legitimacy of the field resulted in actors exhibiting unquestioning support of their professional organisational field, rejecting the higher-order organisational field. Lastly, the actors used the workshop to influence the higher-order institution, reforming the strategy workshop into a form of institutional work.