Title: What does 'strategy-as-practice' look like? Is Coke it?

Authors: Deryck J. van Rensburg; James E. Schrager

Addresses: International School of Management, 17 Boulevard Raspail, 75007 Paris, France ' University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Abstract: The idea of strategy-as-practice is that actions taken in making and implementing strategy can occur through everyday tasks. This places a focus on the process, allowing involvement by participants at all levels. Adopting a qualitative research approach, we selected a successful global firm, The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC)¹, as a single case to uncover idiosyncratic evidence of strategy-as-practice (SaP). Data was analysed using a variety of sources including publicly available corporate documentation and websites, peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly books, and former TCCC executive conversations. Our findings revealed seven examples of strategy-as-practice that may have contributed to TCCC's prolonged success. Being restricted to a single case, this study enables only analytical generalisations to be made. Our assumption being that a singular, in-depth study of the SaP phenomenon within an iconic global firm would yield key insights useful to practitioners and scholars alike. Numerous implications are suggested. The most noteworthy is being the idea of 'walking the market' as an integral part of social strategising discourse.

Keywords: strategy-as-practice; strategising; walk-the-market; The Coca-Cola Company; TCCC; case study; Coca-Cola; Coke.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMP.2026.150633

International Journal of Management Practice, 2026 Vol.19 No.1, pp.55 - 81

Received: 26 Feb 2025
Accepted: 30 May 2025
Published online: 18 Dec 2025 *

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