Robin Holt is Professor of Strategy and Aesthetics and the University of Bristol Business School. He is the author of Judgment and Strategy (2018) and co-author of Strategy without Design, with Robert Chia (Cambridge, 2009). He was previously editor-in-chief of the journal Organization Studies. Mike Zundel is Professor in Organization Studies in the Strategy, International Business & Entrepreneurship Group, University of Liverpool Management School.

• Introduction: strategy as the basic question of organization?; Part I. Authenticity: 1. Strategy and the organization of authenticity in the polis; 2. Can the strategoi ever build a polis?; 3. Strategy in the lifeworld, and the problem with home; Part II. The Three Epochs of Strategy: Technē, Technology, Technogenesis: 4. Technē – creating organizational forms from the earth; 5. Technology, machinery and giving over to the general in strategic practice; 6. Strategy as world picture; 7. Who or what is running strategy?; 8. The apparatus of Napoleon's forms of communication; 9. Strategy no longer thinks in terms of human beings; Part III. The Open: 10. Impoverished by strategy; 11. Reaching for open – strategy unbound.

'This is a fascinating and important book, beautifully literate, very imaginative, stimulating, and challenging, especially for those under the illusion that 'strategy' is a straightforward term. The metaphor of the poverty of strategy, which essentially turns poverty on its head, is brilliant. For anyone who wants to see paradox enacted in practice, here is the place to look. This book is a gift to us all.' Jean M. Bartunek, Professor of Management and Organization, Boston College