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1. Introduction
The Strategy as Practice (SAP) approach seeks to understand the formation of strategy from an ontological perspective in which individuals, their idiosyncrasies, and cognitions are central to the strategic process (Whittington, 2006). This approach is based on epistemological foundations derived from pragmatist philosophy and social theory (Johnson et al., 2007). From this angle, strategy is not something that an organization possesses inherently; rather, it is something that the actors involved in the strategic process enact on a daily basis, socially constructed, and therefore occurs in an emergent way (Whittington, 1996; 2006), forming strategizing through the interrelationship between the elements praxis (how to perform), practices (what to do) and practitioners (who operationalizes) (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). The way in which organizations formulate, execute and adapt their strategies, that is, what happens in the day-to-day organizational routine, on a routine basis, starts to build an important organizational asset (Coyne, 1986; Lavarda & Leite, 2022). This discussion led this study to the concept of organizational routines, which could be analogous to an organization’s genes (Nelson & Winter, 1982), since they explain that organizational routines are propensities toward establishing specific organizational behavior, conditioned by the agencies of different actors involved throughout their routine activities within the organization (Hodgson, 2004).
In this context, we propose the appropriate theoretical approximation between the perspective of strategy as practice (Whittington, 1996; 2006) and the concept of organizational routines (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Hodgson, 2004), due to the perceptions of Belmondo and Russel (2014) regarding relationships between SAP elements and routines. Furthermore, Burgelman et al. (2018) , Mirabeau et al. (2018) and Kohtamäki et al. (2022) suggest in-depth studies of strategy as process and practice, given the incompleteness of approaches between perspectives.
To develop this association, we decided to address the environmental context and achieving competitive advantage, given that an organization’s impact on the environment results from its strategic practices. According to Coyne (1986) , although it is difficult to identify the constituents of sustainable competitive advantage, it is already known that it is the result of an integrated network of attributes and cannot be identified obviously or even as an isolated factor. In the current context, sustainability, understood not only in the environmental sense but also in economic and social terms, stands out as an essential component of this advantage (Chen & Xie, 2022). Coyne (1986) evidenced that the most important condition for competitive sustainability lies in the inability of competitors to reproduce the competitive conditions of an organization, which converges with the proposal of strategy as a practice.
This should be observed not only as a consequence of organizational dynamics but also as an inherent concern in strategic decisions (Alperstedt & Bulgacov, 2015; Hengst et al., 2020; Lavarda & Gomes, 2023). However, Alperstedt and Bulgacov (2015), Hengst et al. (2020), and Lavarda and Gomes (2023) note that the primary concern revolves around developing policies focused on sustainability rather than translating them into praxis, revealing a gap between thought and action.
Given the aforementioned scenario, the goal of this study was to comprehend the interrelationship between the strategizing process and the constitutive aspects of organizational routines. With the results of this research, we could find an intersection between organizational strategy and institutional economics not constraining to studying strategy solely for organizational performance but also involving a social cause inherent to organizations and society as a whole: sustainability strategies.
This study is divided into six sections. The first introduces the manuscript. Sections two and three review literature on elements of strategizing and organizational routines. Section four details the methods. Section five analyzes and discusses the results. The final section, section six, presents the concluding remarks.
2. Elements of strategizing
The strategy as practice (SAP) perspective redefines the way of analyzing organizational strategy, ceasing to concentrate efforts at the macro level and focusing on the activities of organizational actors in the micro-organizational context, emphasizing interpersonal interactions, expanding the classic view of organizational strategy (Johnson et al., 2007). Johnson et al. (2007) define Strategy as Practice (SAP) as an approach that focuses on the activities of organizational actors, emphasizing the mutual influence between them and the context. From this perspective, SAP redefines strategy as a set of micro-activities within organizations through interpersonal interactions, expanding the classical view of organizational strategy.
In this study perspective, Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) introduce the term “strategizing”, referring to the formation of strategy and the coordination of organizational resources for its implementation, which is constituted at the intersection between praxis, practices and practitioners. Simultaneously, Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) introduce the term “strategizing”, referring to the formulation of strategies and the coordination of organizational resources for their implementation. This concept encompasses actions, interactions, negotiations, and practices adopted individually or collectively, considering time and space as fundamental elements in the formation of organizational activities (Montenegro & Bulgacov, 2015).
To deepen the understanding of the elements that form strategizing, we begin with the concept of practices which is broad and encompasses routines, behaviors, ways of acting, norms, and procedures (Whittington, 2006), in addition to cognitive, procedural, discursive, and motivational aspects (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Thus, practices represent a set of knowledge and analytical instruments disseminated in a given context, socially legitimized, impacting what is understood as the organization’s know-how, prominently featured in its organizational routines. The complexity surrounding the concept of “practice” refers to the understanding of the concept of praxis, an expression that denotes the action itself (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007).
Praxis, in turn, is conceived as the flow of activities carried out in a social context strategically aimed at achieving a specific goal (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Praxis involves approaches at both the micro-level of individual action and the macro-level concerning the practices and understandings that determine the accomplishment of activities within a particular organizational context. The concept of praxis also includes meetings, conversations, presentations, and routine activities that contribute to achieving the strategy (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008), where the interaction between human and non-human actors unfolds (Latour, 2012). Ultimately, practitioners are the actors involved in the strategy-making process and, fundamentally, represent the link between practice and praxis. In essence, practitioners are those who “make strategy” through their decisions and the resources they adopt (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007).
The intersection between these three elements forming strategizing encompasses actions, interactions and negotiations adopted individually or collectively, considering time and space as fundamental elements in the formation of organizational activities (Montenegro & Bulgacov, 2015).
Two interrelated and complementary key concepts are crucial for understanding the role of practitioners: Sensemaking and Sensegiving (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Rouleau, 2005). Sensemaking refers to how actors understand, interpret, and attribute meaning to strategic changes, constructing meanings from information within a changing context. Complementally, Sensegiving is the process of influencing others’ construction of sense and meaning in a strategic process, aiming to impact the outcome according to specific interests. These processes help understand the adoption, incorporation, and legitimization of various management tools, as well as the modus operandi internalized by practitioners in the daily activities of organizations (Rouleau, 2005).
Whittington (2006) emphasizes the relevance of interactions within episodes of praxis, highlighting the movement between strategic practices and the strategy practitioners in both intra- and extra-organizational contexts. However, Latour (2012) cautions that non-human actors, referred to as actants, also play a role in shaping strategies, representing the artifacts utilized in activities that mold strategy. Thus, analyzing the various moments of praxis becomes crucial to understand the formation of a specific performance and comprehend how an organizational context is configured and sustained over time (Castillo-Esparza et al., 2024).
3. Organizational Routines
The idea of routines is fundamental to understanding why a given organization adopts specific behavior and, furthermore, comprehending how organizational strategies are established. It is essential to carefully examine how routines are constituted, maintained, and altered (Hodgson, 2004). However, for such an assessment to occur, it is necessary to establish a clear distinction between the concepts of habits, as volitional elements conditioning human agency, and organizational routines, their counterpart in the organizational realm, focused on organized collective action.
It is crucial to assimilate that habits are social constructions situated in temporal and spatial terms, where contextual conditions are decisive for stored behavioral tendencies to establish themselves (Hodgson, 2004). Habits are socially acquired, requiring the acquisition of skills, abilities, experience, reflection, and, primarily, learning. Therefore, it is understood that habits are encompassed within organizational routines, accommodating individual demands within collective interests.
Routines are adopted to specify a collective capacity for performing standardized actions, as per Nelson and Winter (1982) . As an adjective, routine indicates a critical view of a variable property of a given pattern of action, such as its repetitiveness, analytical potential, diversity, or even its lack of awareness and reflection. Thus, inherent in the perspective of organizational routines is the notion of the individual skills of the different agents involved in the organization. In this understanding, individuals are complex entities where there are similarities between the notions of routines and individual skills, differing only in the level of analysis.
A third perspective, proposed by Becker (2005a; 2005b) , suggests that the analysis of organizational routines should consider their fundamental characteristics and elucidate the antecedents influencing these patterns. These antecedents include task complexity, involved interdependencies, elements to be incorporated, tools used, time pressure, task-related uncertainty, and agent turnover. Thus, the identification and understanding of organizational routines are shaped by the frequency and variation of interaction patterns throughout subsequent stages, forming essential characteristics in a procedural manner.
Within the discussed conception, organizational routines are formed by an internal structure composed of the combination of ostensive and performative aspects (Pentland & Feldman, 2005).
The ostensive aspect involves the understanding of the actors involved regarding what they are performing in their daily activities, encompassing ideas, principles, and values through which individuals conceive a routine, conditioning the performance of a given activity and establishing specific practices. This aspect is characterized as the abstract, subjective, generalized, and predominantly tacit pattern that actors adopt to guide them on what to do, like a model or manual; to explain what they are doing and why; and also to refer to, identify, or name the pattern of activities developed that impact specific performances (Castillo-Esparza et al., 2024; Feldman, 2000; Pentland & Feldman, 2005).
The performative aspect pertains to human action, temporally and spatially situated, marked by improvisation (Pentland & Feldman, 2005). It is formed by specific performances observed from particular actions taken by certain actors - the performance - in specific periods and places, to carry out the activities inherent to what they understand as an organizational routine (Pentland & Feldman, 2005). In essence, it is what is actually done in the actors’ daily routines, particularly what is said and expressed within organizational routines (Cabantous et al., 2018; D’Adderio, 2011; Gond et al., 2016).
The actors’ choices of actions impact the performance of organizational routines, resulting in variations. The performative aspect can modify the ostensive aspect, meaning the principles and values that define the routine. Thus, actions and their results can originate, maintain, or alter the understanding of an organizational routine. In summary, routines are established when a pattern of action repeats over time, recognized by the actors, defining the abstract pattern that characterizes the ostensive aspect.
The relationship between these two aspects of routines creates an opportunity for the creation of new practices and the alteration of existing practices, expanding the possibilities of outcomes to be obtained with organizational practices. According to Pentland and Feldman (2005) and Koumakhov and Marengo (2023) , this situation drives changes, given the possibility of connecting micro and macro levels (Jarzabkowski & Wilson, 2002) and understandings of processes and practices (Burgelman et al., 2018; Kohtamäki et al., 2022).
As Belmondo and Russel (2014) explain, the notion of organizational routine resides at the meso level of analysis, that is, it contemplates what happens between the individual and the organization, reverberating in a theoretical articulation beneficial to the study of the relationship between practices and praxis. Similarly, Hübler and Lavarda (2017) present a theoretical approach between the strategy approach and the concept of routines originating from institutional economics. These notes converge with what was exposed in Jarzabkowski and Spee (2009) about the possible contributions of institutional theories to the study of strategy as a social practice.
Furthermore, it is essential to consider how artifacts and individuals interact and, together, create recurring patterns, generating fundamental insights into organizational routines and the dynamics that build and maintain them. However, by introducing artifacts as central elements to organizational routines, D’Adderio (2008, 2011) and Møller (2021) suggest this understanding not only encompasses objects and equipment used for routine tasks but also includes the regulatory and normative apparatus that conditions individual action for organized collective action, encompassing cognitive artifacts used to assist decision-makers, such as software and other technological tools, conditioning individual action in favor of organized collective action, that is, they would correspond, within the scope of the institutional economy, to the so-called rules of conduct proposed by Commons (1931) or even the rules of the game from North (1991) .
4. Methods
This research aimed to address the research question: How does the interrelationship between the strategizing process and the constitutive aspects of organizational routines occur? To answer this question, a qualitative approach was adopted, providing an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon within its specific context (Godoy, 1995). The case study method was used to deepen the understanding, focusing on the intensive analysis of a real organization (Stake, 1995), since it is a suitable technique for investigating aspects related to SAP and examining specific strategic situations that occur in the context of the organizational environment (Lavarda & Bellucci, 2022). The research focused on phenomena within their real context, with a transversal temporal perspective (Merriam, 2009).
The case study concentrated on the Port Authority of Valencia (PAV) specifically in its Environmental Policies area, during the period from November 2017 to May 2018, focusing on the organizational routines of the PAV’s Environmental Policies area, responsible for maintaining certifications and implementing the organization’s environmental strategy. This case was selected due to the following factors: (i) regional socioeconomic impact, as PAV is the second largest in Spain in terms of total cargo movement; (ii) first port authority in the world to verify its CO2 emissions, responsible for the Greenhouse Effect, in accordance with the provisions of ISO 14064:2012; (iii) level of regulation of the activities carried out; (iv) accessibility to internal and external data and the organizational structure; and, finally, (v) PAV’s prominent role at international level, being the first port to certify its CO2 emissions and implementing the ECOPORT project, aligning its practices with the requirements of the European Community to facilitate port operators in voluntarily obtaining environmental certifications after incorporating national, regional and international regulations.
Additionally, as a justification for selecting the case, it is worth highlighting that based on the requirements of the European Community, this project involved creating conditions so that, after the incorporation of the most relevant certifications and environmental standards of national, regional, and international scope by the PAV itself, it would be easier for port operators operating in facilities under its jurisdiction to obtain such regulations through voluntary adherence, rather than mandatory. Thus, the work was developed around the organizational routines inherent to PAV’s Environmental Policies area, which is responsible for maintaining environmental certifications and implementing the environmental strategy outlined by the organization.
Moreover, the selection of the study object met criteria related to (i) regional socioeconomic impact, as the PAV is Spain’s second-largest port in total cargo movement; (ii) the level of complexity and interdependence among existing routines; (iii) the level of regulation of the activities developed; and finally, (iv) accessibility to internal and external data and the organizational structure.
Regarding data collection, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, and document analysis were employed. Considering that evidence from different sources contributes to expanding the understanding of the phenomenon, data triangulation was applied following Eisenhardt’s recommendations (1989) .
In relation to the interviewees, their selection was based on convenience, starting from the moment they entered the field, with each interviewee succeeding the next until theoretical saturation was reached (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Eight face-to-face interviews were conducted with the following individuals: operations manager, administrative manager, maintenance manager, financial manager, vice president of strategy, director of safety and environment, management systems advisor, and head of environmental policies. Each interview lasted approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes and was conducted in Spanish, following a semi-structured script (see Appendix A). It is worth mentioning that during the interviews, we received no negative comments from the individuals contacted to participate. These interviews were translated for analysis, but the audio recordings and transcriptions were kept in the original language. Direct observation, coinciding with the interviews, utilized a digital notepad and the interview script to identify procedures, processes, and activities. The document analysis explored internal documents (meeting minutes, reports) and external sources (sectoral reports, publications, academic studies), including widely circulated journals.
For data analysis, the narrative analysis approach (Lieblich et al., 1998) and the pattern matching model (Trochim, 1989) were employed. Narrative analysis provides an interface between individuals, stories, organizations, and context. The pattern matching model is an abductive and recursive approach that compares theoretical patterns with empirical patterns from the data collected in the field. The dimensions of analysis were the constitutive elements of the study (CES): (i) Strategizing (practices, praxis, and practitioners); and (ii) aspects of organizational routines (ostensive, performative, and material), as shown in Table 1.
With the presentation of our categories and subcategories of analysis, we move on to developing our analyzes and discussing the results.
Table 1: CES, categories, subcategories and operational definitions for analysis
| CES | Category | Subcategory | Operational Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAP | Practices | Administrative | Organization and coordination of the strategy, characterized by management instruments (Jarzabkowski, 2005). |
| Discursive | Language and the cognitive capacity of actors to address representations, symbols and the different subjective elements that integrate the strategy formation process (Jarzabkowski, 2005). | ||
| Episodic | Temporal and spatial dimensions, consisting of events, situations and moments that involve different interactions with generative potential, in which the strategy develops (Jarzabkowski, 2005). | ||
| Praxis | Internal processes | Set of systematized and repetitive operational procedures. | |
| Technologies | Non-human resources used to carry out daily activities and that interact with human actors, thus being, by definition, mediators (Latour, 2012). | ||
| Artifacts | Set of symbols, representations and objects that characterize a given organization (Schein, 2001) being, above all, intermediaries (Latour, 2012). | ||
| Practitioners | Individual | Internal individual actor (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009). | |
| Internal Aggregate | Corresponds to the professional class or the same hierarchical level, at the intra-organizational level (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009) | ||
| External Aggregate | Consultants, gurus and other intervening actors, at the extra-organizational level (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009) | ||
| Actants | Human and non-human actors, who can assume the role of mediators (active) or intermediaries (passive) (Latour, 2012). | ||
| Organizational Routines | Ostensive Aspect | Sensemaking | It concerns the way in which actors understand, interpret and create meaning for themselves, constructing and reconstructing meanings, based on the information that involves a given intended strategic change (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Rouleau, 2005). |
| Sensegiving | It refers to the process that aims to influence the construction of meaning and meaning by the other actors involved, in order to influence the result around intended interests and gain support (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Rouleau, 2005). | ||
| Performative Aspect | Activities | Set of systematized and repetitive operational procedures. | |
| Actants | Human and non-human actors, who can assume the role of mediator (active) or intermediary (passive) (Latour, 2012) | ||
| Relationality | The nature of any phenomenon (object, idea, event, action) depends on the connections in which it is embedded (Feldman et al., 2016). | ||
| Multiplicity | It refers to the many different actual and potential actions, as well as the many different real and potential deep-rooted, embedded connections (Feldman et al., 2016). | ||
| Material Aspect | Technologies | Non-human resources used to carry out everyday activities and that interact with human actors, thus being, by definition, mediators (Latour, 2012). | |
| Rules | Set of devices composed of institutionalized aspects throughout the organization’s trajectory and which condition individual and collective action (Latour, 2012). | ||
| Norms | Set of devices composed of institutionalized aspects throughout the organization’s trajectory and which condition individual and collective action (Latour, 2012). | ||
| Artifacts | Set of symbols, representations and objects that characterize a given organization (Schein, 2001) being, above all, intermediaries (Latour, 2012). |
Note: Definition of the constituent elements of the study, description of the categorization and operational definition for searching for theoretical constructs in the field.
5. Analysis and discussion of results
Certainly, considering the objective of understanding the interrelationship between the strategizing process and the constitutive aspects of organizational routines, let’s present considerations regarding environmental policies at PAV based on the constituent elements of analysis. Following that, there will be an examination of the interaction between these elements involved in the ECOPORT project, revealing how, over time and through the aforementioned interaction, the sustainability strategy was delineated at PAV.
5. 1. Ece1: strategizing (practices, praxis, and practitioners)
The literature reviewed suggests that practices can be translated into behavioral, cognitive, procedural, motivational, and even physical factors, articulated to construct a practice (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007, 2010). This encompasses routines, concepts, and technologies that enable strategic work (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008). These were the points sought to be identified in this topic. What is observed in the field, in line with the literature, is that everything can be understood as practice, revealing the inseparability between physical structure, individuals, groups, and the cognitive and behavioral arrangements that support them.
Before delving into the research results, it is essential to highlight the distinction between understanding strategy as a process, conceptualized as a continuous flow of interconnected decisions (Jarzabkowski, 2008), and the perspective of strategy as a practice, where organizational strategy is comprehended through the interaction and relationship between practices, praxis, and practitioners (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). Under this understanding, we emphasize the primary administrative practices (discursive and episodic) and their respective praxis, as well as the professionals responsible for operationalizing them.
Strategic practices are understood and internalized as administrative practices, involving a series of management tools, integrated management systems, and technological apparatus that enable the achievement of strategy. There is also a continual practice of monitoring parameters required by organizations responsible for PAV’s environmental certifications, both internally and through external partners, a practice that directly impacts the practitioners’ praxis of strategy. It is a consensus among the interviewees that management systems shape a determinant strategic practice at PAV, conditioning the modus operandi of organizational actors, their praxis, as an effective mediator. Management systems are referred to as the ‘rules of the game,’ and knowledge of these rules is seen as something that facilitates dynamics in work.
The discursive practices involve legitimizing discourses regarding the adoption of specific tools and procedures for executing routine activities. Additionally, technical terms, jargon, and expressions common within the field characterize this typology of practices. Generally, these discourses are expressed both orally and in written form, codified through manuals, guides, and publications that focus on institutionalizing the ongoing environmental strategy at PAV, internalizing its principles and values in the minds of the human actors involved, and setting the agenda for the artifacts that mediate these interactions, as described by Interviewee 1 and Interviewee 2, respectively:
“We have guides for the implementation of ISO-14000 on environmental management system, for the implementation of ISO 50000 for energy efficiency, which we provide to companies to facilitate this path, this process. So that, when we have working meetings, we can consistently speak the same language”.
“Within ISO, they establish which procedures are necessary, all the operational control that must have been established, the objectives. Because that’s all we have in the documentation and we’re drafting it, we’re modifying it as things are changing, and every year we have to follow the objectives. They are a series of processes that we have to renew every year, whether the objectives are met or not and why”.
Based on the narratives, we observed that the development of environmental strategy as a practice exhibits a level of predictability generated by routine activities aimed at updating the ECOPORT certification. We comprehend that the predictability of the process ensures the attainment of certification within an uncertain and risky context that encompasses business choices and decision-making (Nelson & Winter, 1982). This predictability stems from the practices embedded in routine processes and the specific behavioral patterns of the PAV, as described in the preceding report.
In order to unify the discourse regarding standardization and predictability concerning expected results and performance, environmental certifications such as those in the ISO series are frequently mentioned. Indeed, discursive practices are deeply rooted in a consistent institutional framework that largely demands proper publicity for the environmental approaches undertaken by PAV. In this regard, environmental certifications like EMAS, established by the European Union, and ISO Standards are prominent due to the obligations they impose. Once again, the artifacts in play come to life and play an effective mediating role, assuming the status of entities that sometimes overshadow human actors’ agendas, as exemplified by the reports.
Finally, episodic practices encompass the spatial and temporal delineation that encapsulates administrative and discursive practices, giving life to praxis. These practices are represented by various types of meetings adopted by PAV, congresses, seminars, workgroups, and forums discussing port operations. These representations characterize the organization’s attempt to condition the performances observed by port operators established in the ports managed by PAV, ensuring some level of predictability. In summary, environmental certifications and current legislation set the agenda for the active players in the sector, assuming their effective mediating nature. According to Burgelman et al. (2018) , the notions of strategic episodes and practices are central to this analysis in the Strategy as Practice approach.
Understanding praxis refers to the notion of process, approaching the idea of routine, where individuals and artifacts interact in specific moments and spaces (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007). It is important to highlight the active mediating role assumed by the artifacts involved in the accomplishment of daily activities. The maintenance and monitoring of the flow of information that feeds into management systems are crucial in this process.
In the view of the leaders in the Environmental Policies area at Valenciaport, the expected performances of human actors from their daily activities, characterizing praxis, are established by the artifacts involved in a given process. The management system is a recurring point in the execution of PAV’s environmental strategy, especially regarding the predictability of expected performance from different actors involved in routine activities, as reported by Interviewee 3:
“We have a very mature management system. We have been using the management system for almost 20 years, as many things have been done and the mechanisms are very automated. So, everyone knows what they have to do in their daily lives, what their management areas are and, well, the truth is that we are very involved in this sense”.
The praxis at PAV is influenced and regulated by various national and international mechanisms that delineate its sphere of operation. To ensure consistency in the obtained results, standard norms, regulations, and procedures are strictly followed, ensuring the maintenance of environmental certifications embraced by the port authority and provided to participants of the ECOPORT project. According to PAV’s environmental area managers, the established rules must be respected, although there is some degree of perceived flexibility among the actors, particularly in the activities they coordinate (Mirabeau et al., 2018).
Regarding the practitioners, especially in the Environmental Policies area, it functions with characteristics akin to those of a bureaucratic organization. The team directly responsible for conducting operations in this area, tasked with implementing and maintaining various environmental certifications, consists of six members. Among them is PAV’s Director of Safety and Environment, responsible for overall coordination in this area and other activities under their supervision. Additionally, this team includes three members external to PAV, contracted through service provision agreements with partner companies, and three civil servants affiliated with PAV.
In order to describe the different practices, as well as their respective praxis and practitioners, we formulated Table 2.
The outsourced professionals in PAV’s Environmental Policies area have been part of the team for about a decade. This tenure reduces variability in outcomes, improves activity coordination, and provides cognitive efficiency in carrying out daily tasks, bringing confidence to team members (Becker, 2005b). This configuration avoids the turnover of members of the area, thus allowing the benefits arising from learning on the part of the actors involved in the different activities of maintaining environmental certifications to result in superior performance, in which it is noticeable that the low turnover is related to the tacit experience of the PAV actors, generating intellectual capital for the development of the strategy as a practice and routine (Kemper et al., 2013; Zhou et al., 2021). This duration of integration allowed the leaders in this area to gain experience and develop crucial skills for their daily roles, forming a foundation for establishing internal processes and strategic guidelines related to environmental issues. Social capital, in its structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions, is evident in this context.
This expanded perspective on strategy practitioners, influenced by Latour’s pragmatic view (2012) , considers that the agendas of various human actors involved in shaping the strategy are embedded within artifacts created to decode the deliberate strategy. This aims to minimize variability in expected performances, transforming these artifacts into effective mediators in interactions between different actors (Castillo-Esparza et al., 2024; D’Adderio, 2008; Møller, 2021; Perito et al., 2024). Therefore, the notion of practitioners in Strategy as Practice and in the initial approach to organizational routines should encompass the agency and protagonism of the actors, considering the material aspects that condition their actions.
Table 2: Discursive and episodic practices, and their respective praxis and practitioners
| Practice Types | Practices Description | Praxis | Practitioners |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discursive practices | Speeches legitimizing the adoption of certain tools and procedures to carry out routine activities. | They are expressed both orally and in print, codified through manuals, guides and publications, which focus on the institutionalization of the environmental strategy underway in the PAV, introducing its principles and values into the minds of the human actors involved. | Environmental and Security Directorate, Operations Manager, Administrative Manager, Maintenance Manager, Administrative-Financial Director, Vice President of Strategy, Management Systems Advisory, Head of Environmental Policies |
| Episodic practices | Different types of meetings adopted by PAV, congresses, seminars, working groups and debate forums about port activities. | They occur through systematic and regular events, where port companies join voluntarily, in which membership is supported by the financial benefits that current legislation provides them, as well as meeting the growing social pressure for organizations that are environmentally responsible. |
Note: Summary figure illustrating the main discursive practices and episodes of PAV, as well as the praxis and practitioners who carry them out.
5.2. Ece2: constitutive aspects of organizational routines (ostensive, performative, and material aspects)
Regarding the ostensive aspect of organizational routines in the case study, the statements provided by the interviewees indicate that their academic backgrounds and previous professional experiences are crucial in understanding how they perceive their daily activities. Thus, the ostensive aspect of organizational routines involves the actors’ understanding of their daily actions within the organizational context. According to Feldman et al. (2016) , routines encompass abstract patterns of both cognitive and behavioral nature among the involved actors. These patterns are responsible for guiding, attributing responsibility, and making reference to the performance observed at specific moments within the organizational realm.
The perspective presented, which encompasses cognitive abilities and skills, including discursive nature, aligns with the concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving proposed by Rouleau (2005) . Here, the interpretation provided by Interviewee 1 illustrates how meaning was attributed to the notions of sustainability and the environment within the Safety and Environmental Department of PAV:
“I translate sustainability and the environment as eco-efficiency. And we are now very focused on this concept. In the end, sustainability, with the myriad of meanings attributed to it, personally pleases me to translate it into something that is objective and measurable. This is because I have a great obsession with the concept that comes from engineering. So, what I cannot measure, I cannot intervene. In any case, eco-efficiency is leading us to try to include almost all parameters, especially movement parameters, since movement for us is a concept that we attribute value to and our objective in the coming years is to be able to make such measurements”.
In the excerpt from interview 3, the issue of the “impact” that arises from everyday activities stands out:
“For me, sustainability, or environmental sustainability, consists of the fact that we have an obligation to carry out our daily tasks with the least possible impact. What we will have to do is ensure that the energy consumed by them (the port operators) becomes cleaner and that the impact is smaller”.
Although this definition is no less complex than those to which it refers, the fact that it allows for effective control and monitoring through specific metrics highlights its importance in becoming understandable and replicable, disseminated by management to their team.
The concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving involve managers’ ability to “translate” the strategy deliberated by higher levels in the organizational hierarchy for their workforce, aiming for organizational results to be virtually achieved. At this point, it’s important to bring attention, as highlighted by Balogun et al. (2014, p. 2) , to the discursive practices of different actors involved in a strategic process. They suggest that “words, in their spoken forms and materialized in text, are some of the most powerful resources to create and give meaning to an organization’s strategy”.
When other managers involved were asked about their understanding of sustainability and environmental concepts implemented at PAV, the strategic practitioners unanimously referred to the notion of eco-efficiency. Furthermore, the process-oriented perspective stemming from the educational background at higher levels of management among these strategic practitioners emphasizes the relevance and pertinence of the economic and financial impact throughout their narratives. This helps to make the concept of eco-efficiency, adopted by these actors as the translation of the strategy, tangible and substantial.
The interaction with port operators involved with PAV involves a micro-practice related to the bonus applied to the port activity rate for these players. This bonus plays a role in disciplining the actors involved. The bonus applied to the port activity rate creates consistency within the discourse of PAV’s managerial actors by incorporating psychological and emotional elements capable of dramatizing the consequences, thereby sensitizing the interlocutors and obtaining voluntary support to achieve the ongoing environmental strategic process.
However, thought and action cannot be considered separately but rather simultaneous, recurrent, and recursive, where the understandings, convictions, and beliefs that establish the ostensive aspect of organizational routines reverberate in specific actions and performances, duly situated in space-time, referring to the performative aspect that integrates the dynamic vision of routines (Feldman et al., 2016).
Regarding the performative aspect, the dynamics involving organizational routines, understood as a locus of organizational change, encompass a performative aspect related to the performances of the actors involved in specific times and spaces, suitably situated (Feldman et al., 2016; Koumakhov & Marengo, 2023). Different accounts from the interviews illustrate the dramatic nature and strength employed in the speeches of the leaders responsible for environmental certifications and their maintenance to set the environmental strategy in perspective. For example: “When we talk about environmental issues, we are talking about incorporating processes, all these technicalities. A certification is not just a document in itself; it requires an entire process, an entire effort” (Interviewee 1); “We adapt our way of doing things in accordance with ISO procedures. Thus, the work becomes relatively simple because in the end, you’re not telling anyone ‘Hey, it’s just that you do it like this, but you have to do it like this’” (Interviewee 2).
Rotational organizational activities encompass an ostensive aspect that brings forth their principles while also encapsulating a performative facet, illustrating how routines are effectively expressed and put into practice (Cabantous et al., 2018). These organizational routines, perceived as recurrent interaction patterns (Feldman, 2000), along with episodic practices (Jarzabkowski, 2004), find expression and meaning in periodic meetings and workgroups established within the Security and Environment area of PAV.
General meetings within the Security and Environment area occur at longer intervals, while specific working meetings within the Environmental Policies sector of PAV take place more urgently, as reported by the executive responsible for the area. These meetings are structured and formatted to focus on the objectivity and precision of the proposed themes, led by the staff directly involved in their execution. These strategic episodes (general meetings) carry within them their own practices and particular routines, reflecting the notion of routines as recurrent interaction patterns, confirming Feldman’s proposal (2000) .
The institutional and normative frameworks shape the operating context of port sector players, serving as driving forces to enhance organizational performance, primarily through the optimization of their respective internal processes.
Regarding the material aspect of organizational routines, Valenciaport’s operating environment is characterized by a legal and normative framework that imposes constraints on bureaucratic organizations, particularly in the state sphere. From the entrance access to the PAV headquarters building, located in a historical building adjacent to the Port of Valencia, attention to security requirements common in the port sector established by the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (ISPS Code) is evident. Additionally, the requirement for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to ensure workers’ physical integrity within the port area is readily visible in the access spaces to the port area and in the Security and Environment directorate’s office at PAV.
Furthermore, within the same building, the offices of the different directorates are separate and have restricted access, properly monitored, and marked by objects and decorations specific to their occupants. However, the office housing the Security and Environment area presents a particular and somewhat disorderly dynamic, marked by PPEs scattered throughout the room, various informative materials, press releases, manuals, and publications related to their daily activities displayed on the meeting table. It’s important to note that this setting doesn’t signify disorganization but rather an intense activity aimed at meeting legal and corporate requirements regarding publicizing their results and commitments made. Each department, besides its regular safety-related activities, generates content to inform society about the environmental sustainability practices being carried out at Valenciaport.
Moreover, planning and management systems have been adopted to control and execute strategic processes, aiming to align the interests originating from the autonomy of APs with the interests of the state port system. These management systems broaden their reach and provide detailed information about the entire operation, having developed their specific methodology based on Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard (1997) . In summary, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) aimed to expand the scope of management, where decision-making processes were primarily supported by financial indicators. It assumed that other structuring aspects needed to be parameterized, measured, and monitored, such as internal processes, learning, and growth, making it evident that the achievement of the strategy results from the alignment between these constitutive dimensions.
Thus, PAV’s Balanced Scorecard incorporated the Environmental Management System (EMS) to integrate the entire operation, allowing alignment between its strategic objectives and those specified in the environmental regulations certified by the Port Authority and its partners. This perspective highlights the relevance of this artifact within PAV and the legitimacy it provides to the process of maintaining environmental certifications, assuming the role of an effective mediator rather than just an intermediary, consistent with Latour’s perspective (2012) , establishing the tasks performed during the daily work by different actors.
In this context, emphasis is placed on the management’s understanding of the importance of the EMS, which transcends its role as a management tool to become a mediator in the actions of the involved actors, conditioning their behavior. In this sense, it is legitimate to consider that this cognitive artifact results in better coordination among the actors, facilitates the interaction between the activities involved, enables the optimization of cognitive resources by those involved, and allows for the management of knowledge generated due to the experience curve (Becker, 2005a).
The skills of the PAV’s top-level actors, especially their tacit skills, have an impact on the development and integration of different artifacts, as outlined by D’Adderio (2011) , which are characterized by carrying within them the distributed agenda of the human actors involved. Occasionally, such artifacts are conceived marginally or in parallel, focusing on meeting specific purposes for the coordination activities of the leaders. However, once these emergently originated artifacts prove to be efficient, they become integrated into the organizational strategic process, which is translated, codified, and institutionalized based on the organization’s Balanced Scorecard (BSC), ensuring the economy of cognitive resources for the leaders, as highlighted by Mirabeau et al. (2018) .
6. Discussion: interaction between strategizing and organizational routines
Given the main objective of this work, which is to understand the dynamics between the strategizing process and the constitutive aspects of organizational routines-namely, the ostensive, performative, and material aspects-it is understood that strategizing, arising from the intersection of the three constitutive elements of SAP, is materialized by the notion of organizational routines. Therefore, the approach to organizational strategy, based on a routine-based view, characterizes organizational routines essentially as strategizing itself. Thus, in Table 3 we present a comparison concepts theoretically constructed after analyzing the results from the empirical field
Table 3: Theoretical propositions versus empirical findings
| Theoretical understanding | Empirical findings |
|---|---|
| The ostensive aspect of organizational routines is characterized by strategy practitioners (actants), the concepts of sensemaking, sensegiving (Rouleau, 2005), and discursive practices (Feldman, 2000; Pentland & Feldman, 2005). | The empirical field allowed us to understand how the worldviews of strategy practitioners in PAV, their values and principles, duly conditioned by the social capital aggregated throughout their life and professional histories, their academic training and personal experiences were decisive in providing meaning and meaning the discourses and narratives they adopted throughout the recurring interactions in order to achieve the intended environmental strategy. |
| The trajectory, skills, and capabilities of the involved actors determine the configuration of the constitutive aspects of the dynamics of organizational routines | The case of PAV indicated that the skills and capabilities of strategy practitioners, developed throughout experiences in companies linked to marketing and innovation, conditioned the actors’ understanding of the principles, values and habits rooted in what they committed to Perform. It was these individual skills and capabilities that, duly brought together in favor of a given organizational objective, allowed the emergence of fundamental aspects to go beyond the initially deliberate strategy to, in essence, become the effectively implemented strategy, with a significant increase in scope and depth. |
| The performative aspect of organizational routines corresponds to the concept of praxis characterized by ‘how’ the activities or actions are executed | It was possible to visualize that the understanding about the performative aspect of organizational routines, the action performed so that the flow of activities is expressed throughout the different interactions that occurred in certain specific strategic episodes, maintains adherence with the concept of praxis adopted within the scope of strategy as practice, even allowing this concept to be appropriated in a more intuitive way, enabling new studies and research. Understanding the performative aspect allows us to understand the strategy in action and, therefore, also allows the ostensive aspect of the routines, the strategy (as practice) in principle, conditioned by personal values and ingrained habits, to be unveiled. |
| The material aspect corresponds to the artifacts, technologies, and management tools involved in carrying out the actions or activities, playing a determinant role in assigning meaning to the construct and corresponding to administrative practices | It is worth highlighting the decisive participation that the material elements, called artifacts, throughout the entire study presented, presented with the human actors of the strategy the sense of attributing pertinence and relevance to the established organizational objectives, assuming the role of active mediators, sometimes, imposing their agendas on individual interests, conditioning both thought and perceived action. Likewise, such artefacts and artefactual representations adopted by the PAV allowed us to understand the path dependence that characterizes the organization’s own history, its trajectory, the way in which it has maintained itself and reached the present moment, highlighting the distributed agency that makes it notable. |
| Organizational routines consist of operationalizing the concept of strategizing, referring to the intersection between practices, praxis, and practitioners. | What was verified in the field was that the notion of organizational routines allows us to understand, inductively, the way in which practices, praxis and practitioners intersect, which refers to strategizing or, at the limit, strategy making. The organizational routine is the spatial and temporal locus where thought and action are established throughout successive recurring interactions with the artifacts that permeate the achievement of the possible strategy. |
Note: Comparative figure between theory and practice, comparing our theoretical propositions defined after the analysis with the data evidenced in the case of PAV.
Therefore, it is understood that the theoretical alignment between organizational routines and the Strategy-as-Practice approach, combining the perspective of Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) with contributions from evolutionary institutional economics by Nelson and Winter (1982) , is an acceptable path. This is because the concept of routines would be suitable for understanding the notion of practices in the Strategy-as-Practice, while ideas of instinct and habits would assist in understanding the concept of praxis. With this understanding and supported by evidence from the PAV case study, the permeability between the concepts of strategy as practice and organizational routines is empirically confirmed. Figure 1 illustrates the interaction observed in the field.
Note: Adapted fromJarzabkowski et al. (2007, p. 11)presenting that strategizing manifests itself through organizational routines, where the interrelationship between practices, praxis and practitioners occurs, highlighting the relationship between strategy process (routine) and practice (SAP) as indicated byBurgelman et al. (2018)andKohtamäki et al. (2022).
Figure 1: Connection between Strategizing and Organizational Routines
Figure 1 refers to the understanding that the concept of strategizing by Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) corresponds, at its limit, to the notion of organizational routines. In other words, strategizing occurs throughout various organizational routines, which serve as the locus for interactions among different involved actors and their representations. These routines are where the concepts of practices, praxis, and practitioners are effectively operationalized. Therefore, approaching routines as strategizing itself enables the development of empirical studies in the field of organizational strategy, particularly due to the analytical potential for understanding organized collective action (Feldman, 2000; Mirabeau et al., 2018).
Based on the data collected at the PAV, we understand that the strategic environmental management practices in the implementation and maintenance of environmental certifications reinforce Hodgson’s (2004) concepts, positioning them as the driving force behind the actual action. Consequently, this allows us to understand the aspects that shape habit, inherent in the professional trajectory, motivations, and expectations of the involved actors, which is crucial in understanding the ostensive aspect of organizational routines. Furthermore, it became evident that the established quantitative and qualitative metrics for meeting legal and certification requirements are the basis for the PAV’s environmental strategy to make sense to internal actors, attributing meaning, relevance, and importance to other external actors, especially those linked to port operators operating under the PAV’s jurisdiction.
In the PAV, strategic practices were identified and incorporated as administrative practices (tools, integrated systems, and technology to execute the strategy), discursive practices (legitimization through discourses in the adoption of tools and procedures), and episodic practices (spatial and temporal delimitation enclosing the practices). Concerning the practitioners, they exhibit typical characteristics of a bureaucratized organization, as the team directly responsible for operations and the implementation and maintenance of environmental certifications.
These practices are interconnected with the ostensive, performative, and material aspects of routines, characterizing a dynamic that involves the strategic practices carried out in locus by the involved actors in specific times and spaces adequately situated regarding environmental and sustainability issues reported in the focused case, corroborating the findings in Feldman (2000) , Hengst et al. (2020) , Diez-Martinez and Peiro-Signes (2022) , and Lavarda and Gomes (2023) .
Therefore, aligning with the studies of Burgelman et al. (2018) , we understand that the set of strategic activities, and the actions that stem from them, simultaneously characterize the set of routines that make up the day-to-day of an organization. Considering that each organization is unique because it is formed by practitioners who are unique in performing a specific set of activities, the implementation of the strategy arises from a specific intention and choice (strategic choice according to Child et al., 2005) that is only possible through the interaction of respective practitioners with the available artifacts for its accomplishment through the integration of human and non-human elements (Latour, 2012). Therefore, given the due emphasis on human agency, it is worth highlighting the role of effective mediators that the involved artifacts assume throughout different recurrent interactions (Latour, 2012), embodying the notion of distributed agency (D’Adderio, 2011).
In summary, understanding organizational routines as the amalgamation between actors, the process, and the content of strategy, the spatially and temporally situated locus where thought and action are established, dependent on its context and history, leads to the notion that it is indeed reasonable to start from the perspective of strategy as practice to broaden its scope and propose what can be understood.
7. Final remarks
The aim of this research was to understand the interrelationship between the process of strategizing and the constitutive aspects of organizational routines. Through a case study with the PAV, it was found that strategy is formed in a constant movement of back and forth, through the articulation of abstract elements over time, revealing the recursive and constant relationship among social actors, actions, beliefs, regulations, and environmental demands, which generates path dependence and, consequently, creates the most valuable asset of the organization: its own way of “doing strategy”.
Specifically, regarding sustainability strategies, it was observed that being sustainable was a consequence due to the context established by institutional change. The advent of global socio-environmental demand and Spanish port legislation referred to this need, which was incorporated into organizational practices, transforming organizational routines and, therefore, shaping strategy in practice.
In terms of academic contributions, this research advances the body of knowledge of strategy as practice (Whittington, 1996; Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; 2022) by bringing a new perspective to the study of strategy formation, recognizing organizational routines and institutional economics (Nelson & Winter, 1982) as fundamental parts of the strategizing process. Along these lines, we extend the initial vision of Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) when presenting the presence of routines (process) in SAP, providing evidence of the approximation between process and practice proposed by Burgelman et al. (2018) and Kohtamäki et al. (2022) . Furthermore, this study discusses the issue of sustainability within the theoretical framework of strategy as practice (Alperstedt & Bulgacov, 2015; Diez-Martinez & Peiro-Signes, 2022; Lavarda & Gomes, 2023), finding a starting point for investigations into sustainability strategies.
Regarding managerial contributions, the results gathered have the potential to enhance strategic processes in organizations by revealing the resource articulation within the context of strategic formulation. Furthermore, other organizations across different sectors may find valuable guidance to incorporate into their daily practices, seeking to align specific sustainability strategies with their operational contexts.
As limitations of the research, we highlight the limited number of interviews carried out, which may cause an analysis bias, as well as the cross-sectional nature of the study, since the interviews were carried out at a single moment. Another limitation involves the need to address computerized systems (ERP) and the current digitalization of processes, since the present research did not consider such aspects that can be understood as essential for the theoretical axis of organizational routines.
To further strengthen the development of research in strategy as practice, it would be beneficial to explore the connection between SAP and organizational routines in different cultural contexts and industries. It is recommended to expand investigations between the connection between process and practice, since thinking about a research approach based on the idea of Strategy as Routines brings to light a dynamic, integrated, holistic and epistemologically coherent perspective on the recurring interactions that unfold in determined context and space between the constituent dimensions that characterize the micro levels of analysis in studies from the perspective of strategy as practice.
