As in the Composition of a Fugue: Capturing the Flow of Strategic Business Activities

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from classical music, the author introduces in this article a musical metaphor, the fugue, to capture a flow of strategic activities, highlighting the motion aspect. This particular metaphor connotes dynamism, constituted in themes that are repeated, expanded, and varied through human voices and their communication. By giving voice to people who share and participate in globalization, internationalization, and customization related to the efforts of a company to grow continuously, elevating movements inherent in these activities, a fugue is composed. As argued in the article, there is potential in “musicking” interpretation of human activity. The fugue metaphor could assist our efforts to methodologize strategy process as dynamic multidirection and multivoice construct. While directing more attention to a musical, arts-based form of communicating research, we could be able to listen more carefully to the moves inherent in a flow of human activity.