Through interviews with corporate strategists and eminent consultants at leading companies around the world, this book recounts the origins and development of Strategy as a profession, and explores how strategic management and open strategy have become important practices in contemporary organizations.

• 1: Opening Strategy: Practices and Professionals


• 2: Making Strategy: Theory and Practice


• 3: Corporate Strategists: Surviving the 'Fall'


• 4: Strategy Consultants: Knowledgeable Professionals


• 5: Strategic Planning: Choice and Competition


• 6: Strategic Management: Change and Implementation


• 7: Open Strategy: Transparency and Inclusion


• 8: Changing Strategy - for the Better


• Appendix: Sources and Methods

Richard Whittington is Professor of Strategic Management at the Saïd Business School and New College, University of Oxford. He has authored, co-authored or contributed to ten books, including the best-selling textbook Exploring Strategy (12th edition, Pearson, 2019) and the Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy (2019). He is an associate editor of the Strategic Management Journal and has co-edited six special issues in leading journals. He was previously a board member of the Strategic Management Society and past Chair of the Strategizing Activities and Practices interest group at the Academy of Management. His current research focuses on strategy-as-practice and 'open strategy'.