The mission of the SAP Interest Group is to create a developmental community for academics and practitioners who wish to advance knowledge and understanding of strategy as something people do rather than something organizations have. We aim to offer opportunities for lively and stimulating engagement to scholars sharing this interest.

1. Enable the growth and visibility of a body of scholarship that is showing significant potential for scholarly contribution in opening up a venue for exploring strategic management as it is practiced within and across organizations
2. Enable further development of an emerging community of international scholars
3. Meet the development needs of this community of scholars through recognizing and advancing their particular methodological and epistemological traditions
4. Increase the vibrancy of the Academy through a body of scholarship that enables connections to, yet has no exact overlap with, many other divisions

The SAP Interest Group is a diverse community that values a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches. What unites its members is a shared conviction that organization studies can be advanced by focusing on the processes and practices that constitute the everyday activities of organizational actors and by relating these activities to strategic outcomes. This focus allows researchers to reassert the agency of actors and to critically interrogate assumptions that are often taken for granted within the broader field of organization studies.

With its emphasis on the work of strategists, the SAP Interest Group promotes a micro-level perspective on traditional areas of strategy process and strategy content research. It is particularly interested in the generic practices through which strategy is accomplished, such as planning routines, discourse, and the use of tools. Methodologically, this research orientation raises specific challenges, especially with regard to achieving sufficient closeness to strategic practitioners. In response, the Interest Group encourages methodological innovation, including collaborative and mixed-method designs, action research interventions, relationships based on executive development and coaching, as well as video-based and narrative approaches.

Theoretical pluralism is likewise encouraged, alongside an explicit recognition of the potential contributions of a broad range of sociological and organizational theories, including practice-based approaches, institutional theory, discourse analysis, sensemaking, routines, and cognition. At the same time, the linkage to strategic outcomes remains a central concern. Ultimately, it is necessary to connect the outcomes of multiple strategizing activities, events, and behaviors within organizations to macro-level organizational and institutional contexts and, where appropriate, to broader societal outcomes.

The SAP Interest Group was proposed and inaugurated by Julia Balogun, Paula Jarzabkowski and Richard Whittington in 2009. The first elections took place in summer 2010 and a formal Steering Committee was subsequently established. The interest group has been reviewed by the Academy of Management and approval has been granted for the following five years. Our continued growth depends on the activity of our membership and the number of submissions to our Interest Group. So if you want SAP to be successful, please submit to us!