Material tools, strategic arenas and temporal openness: Emerging phenomena linking information systems and strategy practice research

An increasing interest in human actions and practices in the social sciences, and in organizational and management literature, has led to a concentration of such practices in strategy literature. This paper reviews how the practice turn in social theory has influenced the information systems and strategy domains in joint research ventures. In particular, there is a synergy between information systems research and the strategy-as-practice domain, through growing interest in the practice perspective in the IS field and technology foci in strategy work. We focus on two broad research phenomena, where collaboration between the fields continues to emerge, and where connections between information systems and strategy work have been prominent in recent years. First, we review material tools in strategy and the ‘arenas’ or spaces in which strategy practice occurs. We then examine the emerging notion of openness in information technology-driven forms of strategizing. In doing so, we highlight facets of potential collaboration between IS and strategy researchers, and how this can encourage new novel research encounters to be brought to the forefront in the study of materiality and technologies in strategy.