Andrew Pettigrew

University of Oxford | OX · Saïd Business School

System‐wide change is often challenging to achieve due to complex and fragmented institutions, dispersed and diffused power structures, confidence‐sapping histories of failure and the influence of multiple and overlapping fields. This study examines how a large complex system‐wide problem such as the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process was...

It is an appropriate moment to review research into the legitimacy and impact of business schools. It is more than a decade now since Pfeffer and Fong's (2002) provocative paper challenging the perceived orthodoxy of business school success in the very first edition of the Academy of Management Learning & Education.

The aim of this symposium is to critically engage with the ways in which business schools can create impact. The symposium brings together renowned scholars whose scholarly work has focused on the (lack of) impact of business schools. We invited scholars from three regions: North America (Jeffrey Pfeffer), Asia (Howard Thomas), and Europe (Michel K...

Purpose – There is little doubt that organizational identity – that which is central, distinctive, and enduring about an organization – mediates in adaptive processes. Exactly how this mediation takes place, and whether it is favorable or unfavorable to adaptation, must still be fully established. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literatu...

Students of innovation and evolutionary economists have long recognized the significance of organisational change, particularly as a consequence of technological production and adoption, but to many the organisational structure of firms (and changes to these) remain an unexplored ‘black box’. Organisational adaptation is vital in the transformation...

This essay offers a personal and therefore partial view of the possibilities of scholarship with impact. The challenge of scholarly impact is framed in the duality of scholarly and policy/practice impact. This is an aspiration that not all social scientists interested in the field of management may aspire to. However, at a time when the British Aca...

Technological, economic and market forces are causing organizations to make radical changes in both their strategy and human resource management (HRM). This study examines the impact of change on computer supplier firms using interviews with 11 personnel directors and executives and three industry experts, supported by secondary evidence. In respon...

This paper develops an analytical framework to depict the heterogeneity that characterises the role of board chair and demonstrate the potential variability in how chairs operate boards and exercise power and influence on strategy, control and resource related tasks at board level. Theories of power and influence, as applied to top management teams...

This article uses two case studies of family-owned firms to assess the organizational capabilities necessary for survival under conditions of environmental volatility. Both organizations belong to the edible oil industry and are among Argentina's leading oilseed processors and exporters. The most-adaptable firm undertook transformations involving c...

We propose a research agenda that can assist in developing a dynamic and comprehensive theory of boards of directors. It is based upon the concept of temporality, with time being organised around the life-cycle metaphor, and integrates research on agency theory, decision-making theory and resource dependence theory. We identify three key roles of b...

We propose a research agenda that can assist in developing a dynamic and comprehensive theory of boards of directors. It is based upon the concept of temporality, with time being organised around the life-cycle metaphor, and integrates research on agency theory, decision-making theory and resource dependence theory. We identify three key roles of b...

- This paper addresses three weaknesses in the literature on new organizational forms: the limited mapping of the extent of contemporary organizational change; confusion about how contemporary changes link together; and the lack of systematic testing of the performance consequences of this kind of change. Drawing on a large-scale survey of organiza...

The comparative method lies at the heart of social science research. In the field of international business it is national and regional diversity, the differences between places that influence business activities and management behaviour, that matter. This diversity demands adaptability in individuals and organizations, in response to cultural, soc...

This paper examines the challenge mounted against long established management accounting practices by Kaplan (1983) and Johnson and Kaplan (1987) from a public sector perspective. It seeks to determine the extent to which this challenge to the private sector - of a lack of innovation in management accounting practice in the face of a rapidly changi...

Conventional economic and management theories explain that business groups facing market-liberalization policy reforms (i.e., competitive shocks) would have incentives to reduce corporate portfolios and increase internationalization. This chapter empirically examines the strategic responses of Argentine Business Groups and, through an inductive the...

This article returns to address the strengths and limitations of Pettigrew 1985 and 1987. It then responds to two of the main deficiencies of those publications. These are the failure to link context to process to outcome in those studies and in process scholarship more generally and the limited treatment of the method of process analysis offered b...

This paper presents a novel and distinctive approach to the study of change within the NHS. Central to the paper's approach is the view that research on change in health care systems should be processual, comparative, pluralist, and historically based. Guiding such a view is a meta-analytical framework which contends that theoretically sound and pr...

The study of managerial elites is one of the most important, yet neglected areas of social science research. This paper synthesizes and critically reviews three intellectual traditions in the study of managerial elites. These are: interlocking directorates and the study of institutional and societal power, the study of boards and directors, and the...

Strategy teams have received little attention in the strategic management literature. The goal of this article is to fill this theoretical and empirical gap by studying the practices of strategy teams. Drawing upon an in-depth longitudinal case study of a FTSE-100 multi-business firm and evidence from 36 interviews, this study points to the importa...

Despite considerable and growing interest in the subject of academic researchers and practising managers jointly generating knowledge (which we term 'co-production'), our searches of management literature revealed few articles based on primary data. Given the increasing commitment to, and investment in, co-production by academics and managers, and...

This paper examines the roots of Britain's training problem, drawing links with long-standing industrial decline and lack of competitiveness. It is argued that training has considerable strategic importance in this context, but major attitudinal and structural obstacles are restricting the ability of British management to implement the necessary ch...

In keeping with an inaugural issue, we seek in this paper to do four things: to trace the origins of human resource management (HRM); to provide an explication and critique of it as a conceptual model; to outline the perspective which characterizes our own research programme at Warwick University, and in the process identify a range of themes and i...

This chapter examines the impact of adopting a global strategy upon leaders’ roles and identities in an engineering consultancy firm. Drawing upon process and social practice perspectives on leadership; our results explain leaders’ resistance to changing practices despite major process changes as due to the threats to their identity caused by the n...

This paper examines the processes of organizational adaptation and competitiveness of firms in an emerging economy. The study is set in the Argentinian context of the 1990s when a combination of economic and political change triggered a massive change in the competitive context of indigenous firms. Two highly flexible firms and two less-flexible fi...

Hierarchies, markets and networks have been described as three alternative styles of organizing, each of which may call for distinctive managerial orientations and styles. The question arises as to whether there is now a deep-seated shift underway from organizational forms based on markets and hierarchies and towards more network-based forms of org...

In addition to being characterized by the consistency of employment decisions one with another and their alignment with business strategy, human resource management (HRM) has also been deeply involved in the reshaping of organization structures in the 1980s, under conditions of increased external and internal complexity, and in managing other aspec...

This paper contributes to the timely debate on research into boards and their effectiveness by focusing on context, process and time, which are crucial to understanding board dynamics. It also explores key principles of board process research, and advocates the need to strengthen its theoretical and methodological foundations in order to challenge...

This article examines the process of organizational adaptation and competitiveness of family-owned firms in an emerging economy. The study is set in the Argentinean context of the 1990s when a combination of economic and political changes triggered a large-scale transformation in the competitive context of indigenous firms. Two family firms from th...

This paper examines the processes of organizational adaptation and competitiveness of firms in an emerging economy (Argentina). The empirical focus of this paper concerns the determinants of organizational flexibility during the period from 1989 to 1999, when a combination of economic and political change triggered a massive change in the competiti...

Complementary: Change towards global integration in four professional service organizations This chapter explores the transformation process in four professional service organizations (PSOs) as they seek to strengthen the ties between their international subunits and thereby integrate more effectively their global service provision to customers. Th...

Complementarities in organizational innovation and performance: Empirical evidence from the INNFORM survey Recent theoretical and empirical literature on organizational change has analysed the implementation of organizational practices in sets and clusters. The evidence on clusters or systems of organizational practices suggests that they are corre...

This book presents novel theoretical ideas and empirical findings where the fields of strategizing and organizing meet. At this boundary lie many of the most crucial theoretical and practical issues for management and managing. Innovative Forms of Organizing, the eagerly awaited sequel to The Innovating Organization (SAGE, 2000), draws upon the com...

Students of innovation and evolutionary economists have long recognized the significance of organizational adaptation, as a consequence of changes in production technology and adoption of technological innovations and in understanding transformation of firms in competitive environments. But changes in organizational structure and procedures of firm...

This paper explores the determinants of performance of research groups in the context of the emergence of knowledge as a key intangible asset. It focuses specifically on how best to configure knowledge producers for optimal effectiveness in the current research environment. It explores the under-researched area of the organization and management of...

If the duty of the intellectual in society is to make a difference, the management research community has a long way to go to realize its potential. The Starkey and Madan (2001) report is a useful entry point into the debate about what kind of management research, but it defines the issues too narrowly and seeks solutions too particularly. The big...

This article presents several studies that examine organizational change. The authors note that certain issues should be addressed when examining the studies including an examination of the multiple contexts and levels of analysis in studying organizational change, the inclusion of time, history, process and action, the link between change processe...

Andrew Pettigrew is professor of strategy and organization at Warwick Business School, U.K., where between 1985 and 1995 he founded and directed the Center for Corporate Strategy and Change. Professor Pettigrew received his training in sociology and anthropology and conducted his first research amongst the Sebeii people in Uganda. He received his P...

Recent writing on contemporary organisations is suggestive of extensive moves to create more responsive and flexible firms. Such claims often rest on studies of exceptional organisations or atypical sectors. Drawing on large-scale surveys of organisational innovations in Europe and Japan, this paper finds widespread but not revolutionary change in...

Recent writing on contemporary organisations is suggestive of extensive moves to create more responsive and flexible firms. Such claims often rest on studies of exceptional organisations or atypical sectors. Drawing on large-scale surveys of organisational innovations in Europe and Japan, this paper finds widespread but not revolutionary change in...

Theoretical perspectives on new forms of organizing -- Integrating a global professional services organization: the case of Ove Arup Partnership -- The role of social mechanisms in an emergin network: the case of the pharmaceutical network in Coopers & Lybrand Europe -- ABB: beyond the global matrix towards the network multidivisional organization...

This paper addresses three weaknesses in the literature on new organizational forms: the limited mapping of the extent of contemporary organizational change; confusion about how contemporary changes link together; and the lack of systematic testing of the performance consequences of this kind of change. Drawing on a large-scale survey of organizati...

Much writing in the field of strategic management remains an exercise in comparative statics. Cross-sectional research designs are combined with the static metaphors of contingency thinking to analyse the fit between the positioning and resource base of the firm and its performance in differing environments. However, the inadequacies of this tradit...

The seven articles that appear in this special issue concerning applications of complexity theory to organizations push our field forward significantly, not simply by importing ideas from an emerging interdisciplinary area, but by using them to inform rich, theoretically-grounded depictions of how organizations operate. Each emphasizes how the inte...

The paper examines the contribution to strategy by chairmen and non-executive directors in large UK companies. The collective label of 'part-time board member' is used to refer to individuals performing these roles. The paper asks 'how, if at all, do part-time board members influence strategy in UK plc's'?. Using data gathered from interviews with...

This book analyses changes which have occurred in the organization and management of the UK public services over the last 15 years, looking particularly at the restructured NHS. The authors present an up to date analysis around three main themes: 1. the transfer of private sector models to the public sector 2. the management of change in the public...

In this paper we suggest that the study of attempts to secure headquarters level change may now be of increasing significance. Evidence of a wave of HQ level change is beginning to accumulate and requires further investigation. the twin purposes of this paper are: (1) in descriptive terms, to gather such evidence as is already available about the n...

The paper compares the contribution, power and influence of non‐executive directors and part‐time chairpersons within large UK PLC's, using interview data collected for a pilot study. Two questions are addressed: What contribution, if any, is made by non‐executive directors and part‐time chairmen? How, if at all, do part‐time chairpersons exercise...

This paper presents the early findings of a pilot study of the power and influence of part-time board members in the top 200 U.K. industrial and commercial firms by turnover and the top 50 U.K. financial institutions. The part-time board members hold multiple roles of either chairman and/or non-executive director of these organizations. The finding...

The British National Health Service (NHS) is currently introducing far-reaching measures designed to introduce an “internal market” element into resource allocation processes previously dominated by planning and by line managerial heirarchies (CM 555, 1989). These are changes now apparent throughout much of the UK public sector but have a particula...

This essay discusses the character and significance of strategy process research. Process research in strategic management is paradigmatically diverse and empirically complex. Strategy process research has been narrow in its focus and its undoubted contribution has sometimes been obscured by the lack of explicit discourse about its analytical found...

This article explores the question of why the management of change has become an issue in the National Health Service (NHS). It reports the results of a study which explored reasons for variability in the observed rate and pace of strategic service change in the NHS. The metaphor of ‘receptive’ and ‘non‐receptive’ contexts for change is introduced...

The 1985 White Paper entitled, ‘Completing the Internal Market’, contains a plan to enact some 300 new rules aimed at dismantling all intra-European trade barriers by the end of 1992. Existing knowledge about the realities of the policy processes at national, never mind supra-national levels suggest there will be a gap between such strategic intent...

The recent health care reforms include major changes to the composition (and, it is hoped, role) of health authorities. The research team at the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change, Warwick Business School, will be undertaking a major study of these reforms, financed by the National Health Service (NHS) Training Authority. This study will need...

This paper reveals the author's theory of method for conducting longitudinal field research on change. The paper also discusses a range of practical problems in carrying out time-series research in organisational settings. The practical problems include dealing with time in longitudinal research; issues of site selection, choices about data collect...

The core of this paper is a case study of how a District Health Authority (Paddington and North Kensington, now Parkside DHA following a recent merger with Brent DHA) in Inner London responded to a major new health care issue of the 1980s--Aids, but the paper also seeks to locate this case study material within wider debates. What theories are ther...

The article draws on the experience of four sectors of the U.K. economy to suggest what the competetive conditions of the next decade might look like. The distinction is made between barries to entry and barries to success. Strategic management in the more successful companies appears to involve the common ability to sustain strategic flexibility....

This paper reports some early findings from a major research project which explores strategic service change in the NHS in the post-Griffiths era. We begin by briefly reviewing the relevant literature on change and general management in the NHS, and go on to outline the particular features of the research design. We then isolate some key emergent t...