The Element examines how organizational strategy is shaped by everyday coping and creative practices and what this means for strategists.

This Element maintains that increasing strategic effectiveness involves paying greater attention to the idiosyncratic capabilities and know-how already accumulated in an organization's shared practices and the modus operandi contained therein. An organization's modus operandi describes the practiced patterned regularities that enables it to achieve a consistency of response in strategic circumstances even in the absence of any clear, formalized strategic plan. This patterned regularity known as Strategy-in-Practices (SiP) draws attention to the tacit influence of an organization's shared practices on its formal strategy-making efforts. It emphasizes the need for both these to be aligned so that the organization is better prepared to cope with the challenges and opportunities it faces.