Keeys_Huemann_Turner3_Strategic Issue management in emergent strategy formation in projects.pdf (original) (raw)
Related papers
Project strategy: strategy types and their contents in innovation projects
International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 2008
Purpose of paper: Previous literature on project strategy has adopted the narrow view that a project is to be conducted under the governance of a single strong sponsor or parent organization. This study provides a critical analysis on prior project management literature addressing different context-specific strategies of single projects. Design/methodology/approach: Literature analysis Findings: There are two important determinants in the project's context that affect the strategy of a single project: a project's autonomy in its environment and the complexity of project's stakeholder environment. Based on these two determinants, we characterize four types of alternative positions that projects can have in their context: parent's a) subordinate and b) autonomous projects that occur in a stakeholder environment that is not complex, and projects with c) weak and d) autonomous positions in a complex stakeholder environment. The developed project strategy framework is applied in the context of innovation projects. The analysis results include strategy contents for different types of innovation projects in terms of the project's direction and success. Research implications: This study contributes to project management research by broadening the focus from mere tactical-level projects towards projects as strategic entities, and by suggesting the management of projects differently in different contexts. Further theoretical and empirical research is proposed on both testing the suggested framework and elaborating it for different project types. Originality/Value of the paper: The paper opens up avenues towards the development of new and context-specific project management bodies of knowledge.
That is not how we brought you up: how is the strategy of a project formed?
International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 2013
Purpose: The requirements of various participants of a project may be conflicting with the strategy of the project's parent organization and, consequently, the project may form its individual strategy independently to better align with the factors in its environment. We describe the formation of the strategy of a project as a response to the project's environment. We provide insight into a project's strategy formation, where the project does not merely reflect the strategy of the parent but where the parent is only one influential actor (of many) in the project's environment. Design/methodology/approach: To increase our understanding of the relationship between the project's environment, the strategy of the project based firm and the strategy formation of a project, we analyze a project of a metallurgy firm in the empirical case study. We use project literature and corporate venturing literature. We look for the dimensions of project strategy and the factors in the project's environment and we study how the factors in the environment shape the project's strategy. Findings: Our analysis suggests that factors in the internal and external environments affect the strategy formation with varying strength. The strategy of the case project was formed in a microlevel iterative processes, in interaction between dimensions of strategy of the project and factors in environment. The empirical case study suggests that a project initiated with factors having strong external influence has to face contradiction between the selected strategy and many related influential factors in the parent organization of the project. Originality/value: This paper contributes to our understanding of how the strategy of an individual project is formed through micro-level processes that are related to external and internal factors that affect the strategy formation.
Enacting strategy through projects: an archetypal approach
Project management is increasingly regarded as a strategic competency because projects play an active part in defining an organization's relationship to its environment. It is now widely accepted that projects and programmes are at the centre of strategy implementation. However, the conditions and underlying assumptions of this dynamic relationship are still unclear. This paper aims to clarify the dynamics of the strategy process, by defining traditional approaches (corporate/business) and introducing three strategy core logics (archetypes). Building on this 'archetypology' the authors demonstrate how project management, through enactment and sense-making of strategy, enables organizations to face the challenge of complexity and uncertainty.
Strategic initiatives as motors of change - a qualitative approach to strategic renewal
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2013
How do organizations adapt to turbulent environments? Possible answers to that question can be found in research on strategic initiatives which has moved to the center of attention of strategic management research, as initiatives can offer ways for organizations to engage in explorative learning while simultaneously improving their existing capabilities. While today we have a good understanding of which contextual factors and which behavior patterns facilitate initiative performance, there is a limited understanding about the micro-processes that determine initiative emergence and opportunity identification in established firms. Based on qualitative data from three medium-sized companies in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, the purpose of this grounded theory study therefore was to shed light on these microprocesses. Four behavioral patterns are identified as prerequisites of opportunity identification: (1) solution-driven search, (2) slack search, (3) networking, and (4) regeneration, all of which improve access to and availability of information. Findings also indicate that the availability of information facilitates opportunity identification through an interaction with sensemaking activities of organizational actors. Furthermore, for strategic initiatives to emerge, actors have to engage in issue selling activities to gain necessary attention and resources to pursue the initiative. Based on these findings, this study develops a model of strategic initiative emergence in established firms. The results of the study complement prior research on opportunity identification and strategic initiatives, however, they also steer the view towards a sensemaking and sensegiving perspective for research on strategic initiatives. Avenues for future research are outlined.
Business & Society, 2002
This dissertation abstract assesses whether strategic issues management activities contribute anythingworthwhile to corporate performance by reporting two studies on the issues management strategies of Dutch food firms during the recent introduction of genetically modified ingredients. The first study applied grounded theory methods to assess which issues management activities were used most prominently by industry incumbents. The results indicated that in the present setting, companies most significantly relied on stakeholder integration techniques and capability development. The second study used survey data to link these activities to a broad array of organizational outcome variables. The data showed that the adoption of issues management activities positively influenced firm competitiveness as well as the relative standing of firms among their peers.
The International Technology Management Review, 2015
Identification of strategic issues assists organizations to pay attention to what is actually important in their long term decision making. The domain of strategic issue identification is broad, disperse and unclear. Since strategic issues are not predefined, the process of assigning the meaning to these issues and finding solutions for them is dynamic. Thus, the type of strategic issues faced by the organization, as well as how these issues are diagnosed and are formed influence which issues are included in the organization decision maker's agenda and which ones are ignored. The present research aims to take a step to fill the research gab in this context through representing a coherent picture of the subject matter literature on strategic issue area and how they are formed. Through a review of the current literature, this research outlines the process of formation and identification of strategic issues in three main categories: Environment sensing, issue sensing, and agenda formation.
International Journal of Project Management, 2008
The concept of project strategy-referring to the strategy of a single project-has remained ambiguous in existing studies. In this research we review literature from multiple viewpoints to develop a novel definition and interpretation about the project strategy concept. Our definition is used to derive different alternative project strategies from literature, characterized by two important dimensions in a project's environment: project's independence and number of strong project stakeholder organizations. We introduce four types of strategies for a project along these two dimensions: obedient servant, independent innovator, flexible mediator, and strong leader. Existing research using the project strategy concept mostly assumes that there is one strong parent organization for a project; indeed, the parent is assumed to dictate an image of its strategy to the project, and the project is assumed to take an obedient servant's role, to serve as a tactical vehicle that becomes a mere part of its parent organization and the parent's strategic scheme. Our project strategy definition and the four project strategy types allow a more open interpretation about the content of alternative environment-dependent project strategies as well as the processes of strategy formulation and implementation. The wider concept of project strategy introduced in this paper recognizes more widely the various positions that a single project may take in its environment. This way, our paper contributes even to development of new and context-specific project management bodies of knowledge in the future. The paper suggests empirical research and further conceptual research on detailed contents of different project strategies.