| Acknowledging a growing relevance gap between the activities of organizational stakeholders and the formal strategic plan documents created by their leadership teams, strategy theory has undergone a shift from centralized analytical planning models to praxis oriented social process models. Unfortunately for strategy practitioners, current social process models favor descriptive theories of what strategy is over prescriptive theories of how to enact strategy. This action research study investigated the degree to which a conceptual model called "the strategic conversations framework" effectively translates recent social process theories into a comprehensive, creative, and relevant approach to strategy formation.;Participants from three organizations working with the framework constructed strategy through communicative interactions with organizational stakeholders. Participants formed strategy teams and worked with the researcher to apply, refine, and evaluate the strategic conversations framework during three overlapping action research cycles. The teams presented their findings and recommendations to their respective executive sponsors and a group of organizational stakeholders who provided feedback based on three qualitative criteria: comprehensiveness, novelty, and legitimacy. Semi-structured recorded interviews, recorded group discussions, self-scored questionnaires, and participant journals comprised the data sources for the study. Data were analyzed for themes representing comprehensiveness, novelty, and legitimacy while remaining open to emergent themes that might influence modifications to the framework or the method used to facilitate the framework. Participants from each of the three action research strategy teams collectively contributed to the analysis of the data. Additionally, A research assistant acted as an external coach to the researcher, triangulating data analysis and providing feedback on researcher bias.;The study found that the strategic conversations framework helped the teams reduce the perceived risk of missing something important, increased the perceived novelty of the opportunities they identified, and encouraged alignment of stakeholder priorities. Participant feedback and observation of the framework in action led to recommendations for the refinement of the approach used to facilitate the framework. In support of the premise that strategy formation enhances organizational learning, research participants demonstrated an enhanced ability to think strategically and to tolerate ambiguity. |
