The Drivers for Intraprofessional Status Differences – The Case of Strategy Professionals

Although strategy often recognized as a profession, the ambiguity of required expertise, variety of involved actors’ identity, and high dependence of professional conduct on organizational context challenge the professionalism of strategy profession. On top of that, the multiplicity of roles that corporate strategists perform points out to the potential of intraprofessional division of labour while strategic management literature often treats corporate strategist as a homogeneous group of organizational actors. This study aims to understand the roles and relevance of corporate strategy professionals. We report a longitudinal case study of the corporate strategist teams in a large telecommunication organization Telco in the period of strategic transformation. Our study suggests the heterogeneity of strategy teams and provides attributes of intraprofessional differences namely the perceived value of distinct group expertise, level of task complexity, opportunity to influence strategy, and access to the communication channels with TMT. Besides that, we demonstrate that jolts in the strategy-making process have varied effects on perceived intraprofessional status of strategy teams. Finally, we explain the distinction between strategic planning and strategic issue work and how participation in these activities relates to the attributes of intraprofessional status.