This paper sets out to answer the following research question: How do middle managers position themselves as strategists in order to navigate the strategizing contests resulting from professional rivalry? We, thereby, address open questions about middle management participation in strategizing by taking a theoretical perspective grounded within professions (Abbott 1988, 1991) and conceptualizing strategy contests as professional rivalry. Our study reveals the tensions resulting from professional rivalry and a disconnect between the idealized subject position of marketers seeing strategizing as a core activity at the heart of their professional project and rival professions, including sales, finance, business development functions and others, contesting this subject position by claiming strategizing powers legitimized through their professional projects. Drawing on positioning theory to structure our empirical findings, we specifically focus on the storylines that marketing professionals construct to position themselves as strategists within a corporate context and identify three specific types of positioning: (1) strategists-as-principled purists; (2) strategists-as-pragmatic champions; and (3) strategists-as-specialists.
