Choice, Chance, and Unintended Consequences in Strategic Change: A Process Understanding of the Rise and Fall of NorthCo Automotive (original) (raw)
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2001
Scenario planning is management approach to deal with uncertainty in the business environment. The intention of the approach is to allow management of organisations to better understand and manage their environment. There are many examples of scenario planning in the practitioner literature that suggest that the approach works in practice. There is however little empirical evidence to support or explore the validity of such claims. The origin of this thesis was an exploratory study to understand the impact of interventions using scenario planning in the context of small and medium sized enterprises. In conducting empirical research, the researcher can reflect on what has become a 'learning journey', which identifies the cognitive processes managers employ to manage change ariSing from such interventions. The research identifies managerial recipes and transitional objects allowing volitional strategic change to occur. That is, the existing managerial understanding based on past experience and success acts as a bridge from the existing world to a new world, without which change cannot be rationalised and management would be incapacitated. I have called this the 'upframed recipe', expressing its elements of lasting validity, the transitional Object. Foreword to PhD Thesis Towards a Theory of Volitional Strategic Change: The Role of Transitional Objects in Constancy and Change Research data was captured during all these episodes. Research Methodology The purpose of this section is to provide details about the research setting and the design of the research methodology. The research design was guided by Eisenhardt's (1989) framework for theory building from case research.
REVERSAL OF STRATEGIC CHANGE SAKU MANTERE HENRI A. SCHILDT Hanken School of Economics
When planned change is canceled, managers may be tempted to reverse their organization's strategy. Our longitudinal case study documents an organization's canceled merger effort and a failed attempt to return to the organization's widely accepted premerger strategy. We trace the failure to contradictions in symbolic change management. The phenomenon of change reversal draws attention to the historical continuity of "sensemaking" and raises caution about the popular view that managers need to destroy organizational meaning to facilitate the realization of strategic change.
Strategic Inertia vs. Strategic Change
Quantitative Multidisciplinary Approaches in Human Capital and Asset Management, 2016
Increasingly dynamic, complex and unpredictable economic circumstances require continuous and systematic re-evaluations of business strategies and plans and coherent and effective strategy implementation. Adopting the Resource Based View theoretical framework this chapter is aimed at shedding light on the role of human capital in the strategic change process. Specifically, by adopting the case study methodology the chapter points out the relevance and critical nature of human capital in the complex process that has driven Fiat's competitive and financial turnaround since 2008. Through the lens of Fiat's case, the article contributes both from an academic and a practitioner point of view, to shed light on the relevance of human capital in organizational attitude change, strategy formulation, choices implementation, and more in general, in Fiat's business model re-definition. The chapter ends with case questions.
Change in organizations : a critique of the dominant assumptions of identity and determinacy
1996
The instituted assumptions of identity and determinacy are elucidated regarding their implications for our understanding of the sources of constitution and change of social and organizational action. Built upon these assumptions, mainstream organizational research locates these sources in exogenous environmental fortes and ascribes to the significative aspects of action and language a reflective-representational ontologital status. We question these assumptions and their implications upon two premisses. First, that practical aspects of action and perceived environmental constraints lack any intrinsic meaning, sinte meaning is ascribed to them by the significative aspects of action and language, mainly by the instituted central imaginary significations of society or civilization. Setond, that these latter lack any inherent determination of meaning, for they constitute magmas of meaning. An alternative approach is outlined upon these premisses.
Organizational choice and organizational change
Management Decision, 1997
Follows on from and develops the arguments presented in an earlier Management Decision article ‐ “No such thing as ... a ‘one best way’ to manage organizational change” (Burnes, 1996a). Begins by examining Burnes’ (1996b) Choice Management ‐ Change Management model which, in particular, draws attention to the influence on the choices an organization makes of the context in which it operates. Then moves on to discuss Miles and Snow′s (1978) classification of organizations into four strategic types. From this, argues that the choices an organization makes, regarding what to change and how to change it, will be significantly influenced by its strategic type. Concludes by maintaining that, on the one hand, organizations can create a virtuous circle whereby they can influence or control the circumstances in which they operate through the changes they make and how they make them. However, on the other hand, organizations can find themselves in a vicious spiral of decline and stagnation th...
Strategic change as creative action
International Journal of Strategic Change Management, 2012
This paper draws attention to a nascent stream of strategy process research in which action is seen as primarily creative, rather than rational or normative. It shows how creative action theory, which emphasises the importance of embodied expression, emergent intention and social interaction, might furnish valuable new insights into strategic change. In particular, the paper highlights the importance of considering the strategist as fully embodied, intuitive and expressive. The paper draws on a novel empirical illustration to demonstrate both the potential and challenges of using creative action to reframe our understanding of strategic change.
Strategic change decisions - doing the right change right
We use the case of German aviation Group Deutsche Lufthansa and its strategic change program, 'D-Check Maintaining Leadership', to illustrate how a large company was able to execute group-wide change in order to effectively secure its future despite a highly turbulent environment. In this context, we found that top executives must systematically make two decisions. First, they need to decide what the right change is for their company and second, they need to decide how to implement the change correctly. In the process of making these decisions, various critical factors also need to be taken into individual consideration in a methodical, deliberate way. Details of Lufthansa's program are provided and the benefits of and insights into pre-implementation decision-making processes are assessed for framing and subsequently implementing strategic change. The impact of leadership and management decisions for successful strategic change is discussed in the analysis. We round up our discussion with major lessons learned.