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Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) Community Day 2025: “Celebrating 20 Years of Strategy-as-Practice at EGOS: Honoring the Past, Creating the Future”

Convenors:
Christian Bruck
WU – Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Jessica A. Crewe-Brown
University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand
Rebecca Lu
University of Durham, United Kingdom
David Montens
IESEG School of Management, France
Kristina Stoiber
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Winky Wu
University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Applications

Advisory Committee:
Christoph Brielmaier, University of Bamberg, Germany
Robin Engelbach, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Violetta Splitter, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Overview

The Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) Community Day 2025 is an inclusive platform designed to foster, strengthen, and extend relationships among multiple generations of SAP scholars within the broader EGOS community. This pre-Colloquium Workshop offers a unique opportunity for SAP scholars to connect informally, discuss emerging theoretical ideas and methodologies, and receive constructive feedback on their working papers from peers.
 
Marking the 20th anniversary of the SAP Standing Working Group and the 10th anniversary of the SAP Community Day, the 2025 event will be a special celebration, uniting scholars across all generations of SAP research. Through reflective insights and dialogue, participants will revisit two decades of SAP scholarship and actively co-create its future.

We sincerely thank our institutional partners and sponsors – University of Zurich, University of Oxford, The University of Queensland, JKU Institute of Strategic Management, Otto-Fredrich University Bamberg and Warwick Business School – for their invaluable support in making the EGOS Strategy-as-Practice Day 2025 a success.

In alignment with the theme of the 41st EGOS Colloquium – “Creativity that Goes a Long Way” – the SAP Community Day will celebrate the creative origins of the SAP approach, its major milestones, and the exciting opportunities ahead for advancing our understanding of organizing and strategizing in practice. – The SAP Community Day 2025 will consist of two sessions:

The first session features a panel discussion that will begin with a celebratory opening and overview of the day, including statements from key community members on the significance of this double anniversary. This will lead to an interactive panel discussion featuring insights from renowned SAP scholars, who will share their reflections on the creative and lasting impact of strategizing and organizing practices over the decades.

Panelists:

– Paula Jarzabkowski, University of Queensland, Australia
– Julia Balogun, University of LIverpool, United Kingdom
– David Seidl, University of Zurich, Switzerland
– Richard Whittington, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Moderator:

– Violetta Splitter, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

The discussion will invite dynamic audience engagement around key historical, contemporary, and future themes in the SAP field, such as:

  • How have two decades of SAP scholarship shaped our understanding of practice-based approaches to strategy, and what key lessons can we carry forward?

  • What are the most pressing and promising avenues for SAP research over the next decade?

  • How can SAP research help address emerging societal and organizational challenges to ensure its relevance in the future?

  • How can SAP research address the diversity of strategizing and organizing practices across cultural, institutional, and regional contexts?


This session will conclude with reflections from our panelists, whose perspectives on SAP’s creative past will help shape a collective vision for the field’s promising future.

We will then move on to a coffee break providing further opportunities for networking and exchange between the participants attending either the panel discussion or the roundtable session, fostering the collaborative and inclusive spirit of the SAP community.


The second session features a paper development roundtable, where participants have the opportunity to discuss their current research with leading SAP scholars. Participants will submit their papers prior to the session, briefly present their core ideas and the challenges they are currently facing, and receive feedback from the allocated roundtable hosts. The roundtable hosts will facilitate a collaborative discussion around the table. Ideas and/or papers on all topics and theoretical perspectives are welcome (thus, there is no need to explicitly relate to the focus topic of the panel discussion). We particularly encourage submissions that challenge, question, or propose novel directions for exploration in SAP and beyond.
 
Roundtable hosts:

– Waldemar Kremser, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
– Jane K. Lê, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany
– Sotirios Paroutis, Warwick Business School, United Kingdom
– Birgit Renzl, University of Stuttgart, Germany
– Virpi Sorsa, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
– Paul Spee, University of Queensland, Australia
– Mike Zundel, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

We are excited to welcome different generations of SAP researchers on this special day and to celebrate the anniversaries together!
 

Application

Please submit – via the EGOS website – by April 30, 2025 a single application document (.docx or .pdf file) that contains the following mandatory information:

  1. On the first page: your name + contact details (incl. title, postal address, email, phone number) and keywords that best describe your current research interests.
  2. Which part(s) of this SAP Community Day 2025 would you like to attend? – It is possible to either attend both sessions or only the panel discussion!
  • If you would like to attend the roundtable session (paper development roundtables): Please include an abstract of up to 1,000 words (incl. references) and an indication of your preferred roundtable host(s). Ideas and/or papers on all topics and theoretical perspectives related to Strategy-as-Practice Research are welcome! [Thus, they do not have to relate to the focus topic of the panel discussion] We welcome all types of submissions, including (but not limited to) conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative papers at any development stage; also, emerging observations from your data, such as ethnographic vignettes, can be submitted. There is no need to submit full papers later on; however, shortly before the SAP Community Day you will have the option to update your submission.
  • If you would like to attend the panel discussion (“Celebrating 20 Years of Strategy-as-Practice at EGOS: Honoring the Past, Creating the Future”): Please indicate your interest in attending this part.

 

Christian Bruck is a research associate at the Institute for Strategic Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. His research primarily addresses the formulation and implementation of Open Strategy initiatives in intra- and inter-organizational settings, selection and engagement strategies in energy transition initiatives, as well as collaboration and governance in B2B platforms. Christian employs qualitative and conceptual methods, using a practice-based perspective to explore these topics.
Jessica A. Crewe-Brown is a PhD student at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. Using practice perspectives and qualitative techniques, her PhD focuses on the boundaries in organi zations and their implications for participation in Open Strategy. Jessica is also a Senior Tutor at Massey University where she coordinates the School of Management undergraduate core paper for the Bachelor of Business.
Rebecca Lu is a teaching fellow at the University of Durham, United Kingdom, and recently completed her PhD at Aston Business School. She teaches a wide range of modules including strategy, innovation and qualitative research methods. Alongside teaching, she is a qualitative researcher with particular interests in longitudinal, video-ethnographic methods. Rebecca’s research zooms in on the micro-practices of strategy and how incorporating play into strategy making can help overcome complex challenges.
David Montens is a post-doc at IESEG School of Management, France, and member of the LEM CNRS UMR (9221) research laboratory and the ICOR research group at IESEG. His research focuses on different forms of openness within organizations and in the field of strategy. In particular, David studies inclusion and transparency (Open Strategy) and explores how to integrate the voice and place of Nature in organizations.
Kristina Stoiber is a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. In her research, she focuses on Open Strategy in financial distress conditions from a Strategy-as-Practice perspective. Kristina’s research has been awarded with the SMS best PhD paper award and nominated for the AOM Best Paper Award by the Strategy-as-Practice Interest Group.
Winky Wu is a PhD student at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on inclusion and participation within Open Strategy. She studies how participants experience inclusion and work collectively to solve complex organizational and societal challenges. Winky has also co-organized the Open Strategy Workshop.