Abstract
In an ethnographic study of a strategy process in a Danish textile company, the paper investigates the strategy process as an entanglement of actors, devices and staged strategy arenas, and realized strategies are understood as inscriptions, prescriptions or conscriptions. We found three strategy arenas. 1) A traditional strategy workshop where the realized strategy is prescription and some inscription. 2) A second arena is an open space workshop, and the realized strategy is inscription, with prescribed staging. 3) A third arena comprises nine strategy projects running in parallel; project groups worked as expected, but one group constituted an exception, led to unanticipated events and the realized strategy became a conscription. Based on our study, we developed a framework for studying the actors’ devices and arenas in strategy processes.