City Research Online

Abstract

Supply chain strategy is increasingly recognized as a multilayered phenomenon, with firms strategizing not only within theirown boundaries but across supply chain tiers, jurisdictions, and wider regulatory and ecological systems. Yet most existingsupply chain management research tends to treat these tiers, jurisdictions, and systems as contexts for strategizing rather thanas something strategizing helps to constitute, leaving the cross-boundary character undertheorized. This article introduces thestrategy-as-practice (SAP) lens as an epistemic tool for theorizing cross-boundary strategizing in multilayered supply chains.Drawing on SAP's tripartite framework of practices, practitioners, and praxis (three Ps), we show that strategizing is inherentlycross-boundary, both implicitly through the knowledge practitioners draw on beyond their organization and explicitly throughdirect interaction with counterparts in other firms and institutions. We introduce three approaches SAP scholars use to concep-tualize the complex systems within which strategizing is situated: a “tall” ontology separating intraorganizational from extraor-ganizational practice, a “flat” ontology treating strategizing as a web of practices stretching sideways, and a zoom-in/zoom-outapproach tracing connectivity and identifying consequentiality across layers. Using a heuristic case of a European solar companyand its Chinese supplier network, we show how each approach can shape the research orientation and theoretical payoff. Weclose with a research agenda for cross-boundary strategizing in supply chains and argue that supply chains have the potential toextend SAP's own theoretical apparatus.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	Strategy-as-practice, supply chain management, qualitative research, theory development, research design
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads