Being a ‘strategist’: Communication practitioners, strategic work, and power effects of the strategy discourse

Abstract

This article analyzes communication practitioners’ accounts to interpret what power effects the strategy discourse has on their ‘way of seeing’ themselves and their work. Through an analysis of 26 interviews with communication practitioners, the findings show that strategy, understood as a discursive body of knowledge, has empowered practitioners by enabling them to produce an understanding of themselves as worthy ‘strategists’ possessing unique expertise and competencies essential to their organization, and empowered them to claim intra-organizational power and power over others. The article empirically shows how practitioners engage with the strategy discourse to construct accounts of themselves and their work, and makes a theoretical contribution by exemplifying the problematizing potential of the strategy as discourse perspective by discussing the power effects strategy has on the profession and practice. Thus, the article complements classical and emergent perspectives on strategy in public relations and strategic communication by offering an approach more attentive toward the constitutive effects of strategy on the practice of public relations and strategic communication.