Business Remodelling: How Civil Society Organizations Use Mise-en-sens Tactics to Shape Companies Strategy?

This paper examines the discursive mise-en-sens (Corvellec & Risberg, 2007) tactics civil society organizations (CSOs) use to influence strategic development of companies. Drawing on the case study of Suez- Environment, a major water distribution company in the world, we show that CSOs can play an important role in the definition of companies’ business model (BM). We show 16 mise-en-sens tactics that CSOs use in order to shape strategy development, the output of which being new strategic segmentation. Our research provides contribution for the Strategy-as-Practice field through a) highlighting the role of CSOs as practitioners in companies BM evolution b) identification of 16 mise-en-sens tactics in strategy development c) understanding which elements of strategy are addressed by mise-en-sens tactics.