Strategy-as-practice (S-A-P) perspective aims at complementing process and content approaches of strategy by studying how specific communities (the practitioners) engage in strategic episodes (praxis) by drawing on socially accepted strategy practices, this process in turn leading to the change or reinforcement of practices. However, no study so far has tried to uncover how strategy practices are implemented within specific organisational settings, and how individual and collective praxis affect these implementation processes. In particular, the recursive link between strategy praxis and practices remains problematic. In this paper, we propose to answer the question of their interactions with a theoretical discussion of the links between praxis, and practices, by introducing strategy routines as an intermediate level between praxis and practices. In doing so, we draw on the insights provided by the micro-approaches of organisational routines to complement the S-A-P perspective. Our paper provides a conceptual model of the interactions between strategy praxis, routines and practices. It explains why and at which conditions the performative aspects of strategising routines can be associated with collective and repeated strategy praxis; and why and at which conditions their ostensive aspects can be associated with a situated understanding of a particular strategy practice. It also argue that strategy routines result from praxis’ institutionalisation and from practices’ appropriation, and gives insights on how those processes unfold. This research contributes to the current debates on the search for micro-foundations in strategy (Whittington, 2006a) and routines (Felin and Foss, 2011). It also addresses the need, within the S-A-P perspective, for exploring how strategy practices are instantiated in particular organisations rather than in individual praxis.
