Context and action in the transformation of strategy scholarship

We revisit Andrew Pettigrew’s seminal ‘Context and action in the transformation of the firm’, first published in this journal in November 1987. In doing so, we not only review Pettigrew’s contributions, but contextualize these with respect to adjoining strategy scholarship. Our discussion concludes with some novel, and fairly speculative, ways forward, designed to advance strategy scholarship. Working with the ideas contained in Pettigrew’s article and drawing on insights from institutional entrepreneurship, we make a case for the processualization of strategy content research. This allows us to add the issue of effectiveness of strategy practices to current strategy-as-practice research while arguing for a further humanization of strategic management.