Introduction

The past two decades have seen growing interest in the discursive aspects of strategic management (Balogun, Jacobs, Jarzabkowski, Mantere, & Vaara, 2014), especially in strategy-as-practice literature (Dick & Collins, 2014; Hardy & Thomas, 2014). Strategies and strategy work have come to play a significant role in businesses and such other organizations as universities, hospitals, schools, and central agencies (Pälli, Vaara, & Sorsa, 2009). However, so far not much work has been done from this perspective as regards public management (Pollitt, 2012), with the notable exceptions of Brandtner, Höllerer, Meyer, and Kornberger, (2016), Kornberger and Clegg (2011); Sorsa, Pälli, and Mikkola, (2014) and Vaara, Sorsa, and Pälli, (2010). Apart from Brandtner et al. (2017), these studies do not explicitly address the specifics of the public sector context in their analysis, even though this could be an important area of study. As argued elsewhere, we need to understand the unique traits of the public sector to understand strategy work there (cf. Andrews & Van de Walle, 2012; Elbanna, Rhys, & Pollanen, 2016; Ferlie & Ongaro, 2015; Hansen Rosenberg & Ferlie, 2016; Weiss, 2017). For example, previous research has shown that public organizations act in a pluralistic context where multiple internal and external interests must be met at once (Jarzabkowski & Sillince, 2007; Jarzabkowski, Lê, & Van de Ven, 2013; Johnsen, 2016), creating tensions within the organizations (Jarzabkowski & Fenton, 2006; Höglund, Holmgren, Mårtensson & Svärdsten, 2018). Studying discourses and discursive practices in relation to strategic management is important since strategic management—from a discursive perspective—can be understood as an assemblage of discourses about strategy work that “make up” particular versions of strategic activities and how they should be conceptualized and performed (Hardy, Palmer, & Phillips, 2000). As such, discourses contribute to the fact that a particular picture is painted of strategy and strategic work; a particular way of representing it (and its practices) in a certain light (Höglund, 2013). Some discourses also come to be privileged over others (Dick & Collins, 2014; Hardy & Thomas, 2014; Potter, 1996), to the degree of marginalizing or excluding other discourses (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). This, in turn, has direct consequences for strategic work, and therefore it becomes important to study what discourses are privileged over others in organizations. Berglund and Johansson (2007):79) argue the following: By way of communication we produce different “pictures” of the world, which makes language—in a figurative sense—our primary means of construction. However, there is always a diversity of versions, each telling a different story about the object in question. Some versions tend to become more dominating, fixed, and takenfor-granted than others. Simultaneously a dominating version can be challenged, questioned, and opposed by other alternative versions. In line with these ideas some discourse analyses within strategy research focus on the power of strategy discourse that influences the way people talk, think, and act (cf. Balogun et al., 2014; Carter, Clegg, & Kornberger, 2010; Dick & Collins, 2014; Hardy et al., 2000; Hardy & Thomas, 2014).