Richard Whittington

Richard Whittington is Professor of Strategic Management at Saïd Business School and Millman Fellow in Management at New College, Oxford.

Richard is a leader in the field of Strategy-as-Practice research, having published the first paper in the field (1996). The Strategy-as-Practice movement has revitalised research on strategic planning, with formally-recognised streams in such leading conferences as the Strategic Management Society, the Academy of Management, the European Group for Organizational Studies and the British Academy of Management.

Richard’s own research is exploring the recent ‘opening’ of strategy, as it becomes more transparent internally and externally, and involves a widening range of people from inside and outside the organisation. For example, he has found that companies are increasingly communicating about their strategy, with significant impacts upon share prices, both negative and positive. His study has implications for current public policy debates on short-termism in business, supporting the case for more long-term strategic communications to external audiences by senior executives.

Richard is author of two highly influential textbooks on strategy: Exploring Strategy, the biggest-selling textbook in Europe, and What is Strategy–and Does it matter? winner of the Management Consulting Association prize for the best management book of 1993. Exploring Strategy has sold more than one million copies and its tenth edition is now in preparation. His research has featured in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times and People Management. He has published in leading journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies and the Strategic Management Journal.

Richard is currently Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal. He has recently served on the Board of the Strategic Management Society, the international scholarly association of the strategy field, and as Chair of the Strategy as Practice interest group at the Academy of Management, the leading international management association.

Richard has held full or visiting appointments at Harvard Business School, HEC Paris, Imperial College, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Toulouse and Warwick Business School. He has a PhD from Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, an MBA from Aston Business School and MA in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management.

Richard’s main areas of expertise are:

• Strategy
• Strategy as practice
• Organisational change
• Strategic planning