The invisible micro-practices of strategists in social sustainability work

Abstract

Social sustainability has not previously been studied as a practice and is an understudied area with collaboration as an important practice. However, what constructs collaboration from a micro-level perspective is unclear. This paper looks at how collaboration is constructed by strategists' micro-practices informed by tacit knowledge. Through 25 interviews and 17 hours of observations, 10 micro-practices that constitute “strong collaborations” are identified and presented in a model. The study also shows how the micro-practices are informed by the strategists' socio-cultural and semantic knowledge to do the sensemaking and sensegiving necessary for building strong collaborations. The study contributes to the strategy-as-practice perspective as it shows novel micro-practices that constitute a new way of collaborating as a strategic direction for social sustainability.