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Large-scale transitional procurement change in the aerospace industry
Abstract
The importance of a socialised perspective when involved in a change programme is demonstrated through an empirical study of large-scale purchasing transition in an aerospace company. Alternative change management frameworks are employed to assist in the sense making of intended actions and realised outcomes to re-configure purchasing activities. Sequential stepwise frameworks are critiqued showing the context-driven political and social factors that impinged on the implementation of a planned change strategy. The findings illustrate the complexity of change, and conclude by highlighting the importance of synthesising shifting contexts with action.
... The other reason is what sequences and events never tell: Changes and events in the PSM function often occur at different levels and different times, compared to other organizational events. Variations can be attributed to a number of factors including: The reporting level of the PSM function (Pearson et al. 1996;Day and Atkinson 2004), alignment of organizational goals and PSM goals (Johnson and Leenders 2004) or in some cases, type of culture in which the PSM function is embedded (Rajagopal and Bernard 1994). This fundamental aspect of Matthyssens et al. (2003:322) propose a model of global purchasing change implementation. ...
... Second, they suggest that progression in international purchasing requires companies Bto balance the drivers for internalizing their supply networks against the inhibitors they might encounter while doing so^. Next, Day and Atkinson (2004) show that implementing change in PSM is a non-linear and unstable process; preconceived change models do not capture the social processes in which structural changes occur. Finally, Tchokogué et al. (2011) map ongoing change in supply structures over a period of time. ...
... Although the processual approach was the dominant method used in this study, which is consistent with studies of Day and Atkinson (2004) and Tchokogué et al. (2011), we gathered both historical and retrospective data as well as current data. The actual act of offshoring occurred in the past (during spring 2009) and the data collection began in the fall of 2011. ...
Many companies have resorted to offshoring in order to reduce costs and grow their global market presence. Yet it remains unclear what impact the offshoring strategy has on the purchasing and supply organization (PSO) of these companies. In this paper the nature and type of changes offshoring organizations make within the PSO are examined, i.e. how new purchasing and supply management (PSM) structures and practices emerge, are maintained or are discarded as production operations are relocated. The processual perspective is used to analyze empirical data from a rich, in-depth case study within a global engineering company. Results suggest that in line with the law of requisite variety the PSO changes thoroughly when the company relocates its production activities through the captive offshoring mode, but does so in a more disjointed and non-linear manner than the current stage models would suggest. The offshoring process provides momentum for PSO change and influences where and how the change happens. We present five propositions for further research and conclude that offshoring provides managers with opportunities to: (i) change and influence the strategic direction of PSM in their organizations, and (ii) build viable strategies of retaining and managing knowledge and PSM competencies in global operations.
... Some case studies of changes managed using Kotter's process do stand out (e.g. Springer et al. 2012;Lintukangas et al. 2009;Day and Atkinson 2004;Ansari and Bell 2009;Joffe and Glynn 2002), and it is to this small but important literature to which this research contributes. This research critically examines how Kotter's (1996) eight stage process of creating a major change has been used to manage an organisational change; a process that despite its popularity, has rarely been studied in the academic literature. ...
... Perhaps this was the case, although without specific comment to this effect it is not possible to say. The Process was also used to facilitate change in an aerospace industry study presented by Day and Atkinson (2004). In this case, the process was used as a planning tool and to communicate the nature of the change to procurement functions in the early stages of the change program. ...
Kotter’s eight stage process for creating a major change is one of the most widely recognised models for change management, and yet there are few case studies in the academic literature that enquire into how this process has been used in practice. This paper describes a change manager’s action research enquiring into the use of this Process to manage a major organisational change. The change was initiated in response to the organisation’s ageing workforce, introducing a knowledge management program focusing on the interpersonal aspects of knowledge retention. Although Kotter’s process emphasises a top-led model for change, the change team found it was necessary to engage at many levels of the organisation to implement the organisational change. The process is typically depicted as a linear sequence of steps. However, this image of the change process was found to not represent the complexity of the required action. Managing the change required the change team to facilitate multiple concurrent instances of Kotter’s process throughout the organisation, to re-create change that was locally relevant to participants in the change process.
... A great deal of attention is given to strategies to increase community college graduation rates (Calcagno, Bailey, Jenkins, Kienzl, & Leinbach, 2008), to scaling up reform efforts (Coburn, 2003), and to improving outcomes in STEM education in community colleges (Dowd, 2012). Unique to this project is the focus on bottom-up change spurred by faculty who are often Unlike those who are well-established with authority, power, and roles and already involved in the process of change and transitions (Day & Atkinson, 2004), faculty members at 2YCs often assume a less privileged position than formal positional leaders, which challenges assumptions made in many change models about the importance of controlling resources and exerting influence. Operating within their classes and often also with relatively small groups of peers, community college faculty have limited visibility on campus and often also choose to distance themselves from institutional power, engaging in what is known as proximal leadership (Nicolaides et al., 2014). ...
... The role of corporate culture has been amply documented as a key success factor of change (Aguirre et al., 2017;Day & Atkinson, 2004). It includes the implicit, informal beliefs, norms and values strongly held, shared and promoted in the organization that guide the behaviour of individuals (O'Reilly, 1989;Scholz, 1987). ...
Many digital transformation initiatives of traditional firms fail. This research proposes a framework that identifies the need for corporations willing to transform, to look beyond technology. This research moves beyond the firm-wide level recommendations to increase the likelihood of success of digital transformation initiatives. It focuses on two dimensions of corporate transformation: governance and culture, and analyzed across four identified stages of digital transformation, Discovery, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment. It identifies specific challenges at each of the identified stages. Therefore, it provides a useful structure for academics to further explore the challenges of digital transformation in firms and for corporate leaders to increase the likelihood of success to transform and capture the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence.
... Most studies on collaboration and integration in the supply chain focus on the interorganisational level of the project or on the supply side (Andersen and Rask, 2003;Day and Atkinson, 2004), rather than the internal organisation of the client. Moreover, research on purchasing strategies in the construction industry mainly focuses on the characteristics of a specific type of integrated project delivery method (Salcedo Rahola, 2015;Mesa et al., 2016), rather than the use of several parallel collaborative approaches (Oyegoke et al., 2009). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the barriers that Dutch housing associations encounter in implementing new procurement strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
Several aspects of purchasing, portfolio management, project delivery and supply management are discussed in relation to the changing role of housing associations as semi-public commissioning bodies in the Dutch construction industry, based on data derived from workshops with six Dutch housing associations.
Findings
Housing associations are adapting their procurement strategy towards a more integrative and performance-based approach to supply management. Due to the complexity of implementing this process, housing associations struggle especially with moving beyond pilot projects, increasing the maturity levels throughout the organisation and aligning new policies with daily practices at a tactical and an operational level.
Practical implications
Increased knowledge of change processes and seeing the potential of maturity models will be valuable for practitioners who are dealing with changes on the work floor.
Social implications
Client organisations are considered one of the key drivers of change in the construction industry. Insights into these particular organisational change processes contribute to the potential of industry reform.
Originality/value
Most studies on collaboration and integration in the supply chain focus on the inter-organisational level or on the supply side, rather than the internal organisation of the client.
... In addition to the abovementioned models, the most used model is Kotter's (1996Kotter's ( , 2007 framework. Originally developed in 1995 (Kotter, 1995) and published again in 1996 (Kotter, 1996) following a rigorous analysis of the change implementation approaches and subsequent management failures of one hundred different organizations, this model has been extensively tested by other researchers (Ansari & Bell, 2009;Casey, Payne, & Eime, 2012;Day & Atkinson, 2004;Goede, 2011;Gupta, 2011;Joffe & Glynn, 2001;Lintukangas, Peltola, & Virolainen, 2009; Nitta, Wrobel, Howard, & Jimmerson-Eddings, 2009; Sidorko, Table 1 Kotter 's (1996) model. ...
Although previous studies have highlighted the importance of implementing corporate entrepreneurship to foster innovation within organizations, little emphasis has been placed on examining the concept from a change management perspective. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the current study aims at understanding the mechanisms and tools that top managers can use in order to involve internal stakeholders in driving a change process to adopt a corporate entrepreneurship strategy. The paper discusses the findings that emerged from an exploratory study carried out within “Poult”, a French biscuit manufacturer, which has embarked on an organization-wide effort to instil a culture of corporate entrepreneurship. The findings are examined in the context of stakeholder theory and Kotter's (1996) change model with a focus on the importance of internal marketing strategy during the change process. The contribution of managerial and organizational mechanisms towards fostering corporate entrepreneurship are highlighted.
... There is broad support for the efficacy of the process in the literature (e.g., Cegielski et al. 2006, p. 311;Ansari & Bell 2009, p. 160). Several case studies can be found in the literature of changes that have been managed using Kotter's process (e.g., Ansari & Bell, 2009;Day & Atkinson, 2004;Joffe & Glynn, 2002;Lintukangas et al., 2009;Springer et al., 2012), and the process has frequently been used as a framework for post hoc analysis of why changes have, or have not, been successful (e.g., Casey et al., 2012;Goede, 2011;Gupta, 2011;Nitta et al., 2009;Sikorko, 2008;Smith, 2011;Yauch & Steudel, 2002). ...
Introduction Organizational project management can generally be considered to be the management of initiatives that contribute to the achievement of strategic objectives (Chia, 2013), involving the multilevel integration of portfolio management, strategic alignment, and governance issues (Aubry et al., 2007). It has also been described as an integration of project-related work throughout the hierarchy of an organization (Drouin et al., 2016). It can be argued that all projects involve an element of organizational change, as the larger organization expands and contracts around an internal temporary project organization. For example, Hornstein (2015) commented that “… change is an inevitable consequence of project implementations, and how the change is ‘managed’ impacts how successful the project will be” (p. 295). Söderlund (2010) identified that there are an increasing number of business projects that involve some element of change. Change is a fundamental part of organizational project management, and although in some cases the products of a project may be effectively distinct from the delivering organization, this is rarely the case in organizational project management. Both project management and change management have a role to play in the management and delivery of organizational changes. Many authors have identified the potential ways in which these two management disciplines can potentially collaborate to deliver organizational changes (Leybourne, 2006; Boddy & Macbeth, 2000; Levasseur, 2010; Pádár et al., 2011; Winch et al., 2012; PMI, 2013a). Parker et al. (2013) have stated that using a project-based approach is a business imperative, as it increases the chances for the success of organizational changes, while Hornstein (2015) has made a case for change management to be a fundamental part of the training of project managers, commenting that “… they are complementary and mutually supportive disciplines that contribute to the successful implementation of a wide variety of projects” (p. 295). It has also been identified that “Rigorous change management practices are essential for a standardized organizational project management practice…” (PMI, 2013a, p. 1). This suggests some need to integrate these approaches. Differences between the Disciplines Although there are an increasing number of advocates for greater unity between project management and change management, they are traditionally perceived as separate ways of delivering organizational changes. Practitioners are commonly associated with one discipline or the other, with a minority crossing this professional boundary.
... The process is top-led [29:12, 30:258]. The process is generally considered to be effective [31:160] and case studies of its use are apparent in the literature [30][31][32]. ...
... Review of the literature revealed only a few studies that examine the application of Kotter's process (e.g. Joffe & Glynn 2002; Day & Atkinson 2004; Ansari & Bell 2009; Lintukangas et al 2009; Springer et al 2012; Pollack & Pollack 2015), and in most of these cases the examination of Kotter's process remains more descriptive rather than critical. The majority of papers that make reference to Kotter's process do not present research on how the process can be used to effect organisational change. ...
This paper reviews the different ways that academics and practitioners write about and discuss change management, to develop an understanding of whether there is a divide between the theory and practice of change management. This research used scientometric research techniques to compare three corpora: one based on the most cited research in the general management literature on change management; one based on the most cited research in specialist change management journals; and one based on interviews with practising change managers.
It was found that the general management literature emphasised an abstract understanding of knowledge management and the learning organisation, while the change management literature focused more on issues associated with value, culture and social identity. The practitioners emphasised issues at the individual, project and team levels, the need for the effective use of targeted communication to achieve organisational change objectives, and the value of rapidly identifying key drivers in a new context. This research found significant differences between these three corpora, which lends support to other researchers’ claims of a divide between theory and practice in change management.
... This is characterized by the commercial airframe manufacturers giving their 1 st tier of selected suppliers directly below them, responsibility for complete systems (Giunta et al., 2000). Day and Atkinson (2004), argue that high impact suppliers have to commit themselves to cost reductions for long term business relationships, and create a culture of continuous improvement. However, to gain competitive advantage, more proactive responses are required. ...
The paper investigates three levels of learning-adaptive, reactive and expansive-for the transformation of knowledge to enhance innovation and competitive advantage in commercial aerospace supply chains. A perspective of supply chains as complex Activity Networks is used for data analysis based on in-depth interviews in a global setting. Themes for the interviews were identified through rigorous literature research. The paper provides evidence of levels of learning in commercial aerospace supply chains. We found that a) adaptive learning brings a supply chain up to present industrial standards only, b) reactive learning makes the supply chain competitive, and c) expansive learning gives the supply chain potential for competitive advantage. By considering supply chains as the interaction of different work activities, the forces of change can be better understood. The findings may be useful to practitioners in understanding the importance of different levels of learning to supply chain sustainability.
... Kotter's (1996) model is in many ways an archetype for managed change and provides an illustration of the prescriptive models available to practising leaders of change. It reflects the linear progression of tasks frequently captured in prescriptions for change and has had substantial influence in major change initiatives in both public agencies such as Centrelink (Halligan and Wills, 2008), and in private sector organisations such as Keele Aero (Day, 2004). Kotter's stages of change reflect a managerialist perspective within which change is represented as a linear progression based on managerial action. ...
This paper discusses organisational learning and change management in a major change in an Australian University. The qualitative data highlight the issues faced in the management of change, particularly in the institutionalised resistance of organisational members. Analysis suggests that the development and consolidation of shared genres of doubt about organisational information and leadership intentions accommodated entrenched resistance. In discussion, this paper revisits previous literature in change management and organisational learning that highlights the impact of the misalignment between learning and organisational imperatives. Discussion of the findings illustrates the ways in which organisational genres of doubt have the ability to undermine strategic intent in change. The findings may be used to inform change leaders about the factors that can contribute to change failure. It may also be used to alert managers to the complex relationship between change management prescriptions and organisational members’ learning and subsequent behaviour in times of change.
Local authorities’ transport departments face extraordinary requirements regarding future mobility planning that affects and disrupts their internal business models and institutional logic in substantive ways. In this chapter, we highlight how organisational change can be implemented in local authorities to allow organisational capacity to increase and to enable employees to cope with the increasing expectations and requirements of future mobility planning. Our bottom-up approach is based on a socio-technical approach, taking into account both social (e.g., changing social behaviours or values) and technical aspects (e.g., new technologies). Applying Kotter’s Eight Stage Process, we outline the implementation process of organisational change followed in seven local authorities in Europe as part of the SUITS project. The multiple case study approach allows us to indicate the crucial points along the path towards organisational change and to provide a step-by-step guide for successful implementation of organisational change in local authorities. We provide best practice examples from our work that may help other European cities increase their organisational capacity and be prepared to cope with the extraordinary requirements in relation to future mobility planning.
p>The definition of what constitutes advanced Purchasing and Supply Management practice has been well researched over the past twenty years. However, little contribution to this has been made by the contemporaneous research on methods used by business change leaders. This research addresses this gap by identifying the key change dynamics that enable the implementation of successful Purchasing and Supply Management development programmes. The design research is pluralistic. Action research is used to develop an organising framework while collective case study is used to identify and develop the content of the framework. The approach is qualitative in nature. The revealed implementation dynamics are organised within four distinct groups that are dependent on both the maturity and objectives of the organisation. The dynamics themselves identify enabling actions that appear to address both technical and behavioural inhibitors. This research codifies the methods that can be used to overcome barriers to change and may thus be used to support the implementation of development programmes. The value of this research is in its potential to replace the commonplace reliance on intuitive behaviour with explicit and knowledge-based applications of change management. Key Words Purchasing, Supply Management, Development, Implementation, Dynamics.</p
Although outsourcing has become a major trend since the beginning of the 21st century, it entails many risks and the possibility of failure. In this article, we define a model adapted to the outsourcing of purchasing activities that formalizes a process approach, by combining both pre-contractual and post-contractual views of outsourcing. The design of the research remains inductive and we develop an original exploratory model that identifies seven critical steps in an outsourcing process. We based our research on the benchmarking of leading businesses. The implementation of these steps enables a new perspective on outsourcing purchasing.
Government Linked Companies (GLCs) were underperformed due to various factors including a lack of focus on the bottom line, ambiguous social responsibilities, ineffective boards and poor talent management among many others. Besides, the Asian Financial Crisis which was happened in 1997 also has severely hit the performance of GLCs. Apart from the underperformance of GLCs, the urgent need for transformation was announced by the former Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi which lead to the official launch of the Government Linked Companies Transformation (GLCT) programme on 29 July 2005. In the GLCT programme, there are 10 initiatives have been structured to the GLCs which including enhance board effectiveness, strengthen director capabilities, enhance GLICs monitoring and management, improved regulatory environment, clarify social obligations, review and revamp procurement, improve capital management, manage and develop human capital, intensifying performance management and enhance operational improvements. With respect to that, it is clear that managing procurement become a part of transformation for GLCs via the The Red Book, Procurement Guidelines and Best Practices. Hence in transforming their procurement management and promote a strong platform for implementing best practices of procurement, GLCs were encouraged to adopt The Red Book as their primary reference. One of the five best practices of procurement is minimise Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
This chapter addresses a new perspective towards leadership, that of balanced leadership in organizational project management. The chapter starts with an overview of existing theoretical perspectives of leadership and leaders, where we introduce the distinction between leadership intent as an intra-personal process and practiced leadership as an inter-personal process of influencing. We discuss some of the popular theories in light of this distinction. Then we address the need for balanced leadership, which we propose as the temporary adjustment of leadership exercised by the project manager (vertical leadership) with leadership by one or several team members (horizontal leadership), and the situational particularities that emphasize the appropriateness of one approach over the other. We subsequently develop a four-step process of selecting, enabling, exercising, and controlling for balanced leadership and outline the intra and inter-personal activities for vertical and horizontal leaders in each of these steps. This provides an in-depth overview of the type and scope of inter and intra-personal leadership activities and their synchronization needs for coordinated balanced leadership to happen. Readers learn to look at leadership in and across projects as a combination of horizontal and vertical approaches, distributed in a coordinated way between vertical and horizontal leaders in organizational project management.
Purpose
– Little is known about how and why pilots are useful in the context of organisational change. There has similarly been little attention to processes of distributed leadership in organisational change. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical argument relating to how key aspects shaping organisational change can be addressed by distributed change leadership through the mechanism of pilots.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper contribution is to review extant literature on change management and distributed leadership to build a model of distributed change leadership.
Findings
– The paper outlines how the model of distributed change leadership can be applied through a pilot strategy to help engender commitment and learning, as well as contextualising the change to cope with the complexities of the situation.
Practical implications
– The paper concludes with a discussion on the opportunities distributed leadership through pilots can bring to the effectiveness of organisational change interventions. The paper identifies a series of research propositions to help guide future directions for research. Finally the paper explores practical implications of the suggestions.
Originality/value
– There is an absence of discussion on distributed leadership within the context of change management. Further the mechanism of pilots shaped by distributed leadership has not been explored. This paper is intended to provide a stimulus for exploring this important area in terms of shaping thinking and designs for organisational change to enhance effectiveness.
The paper sets out to explore the effects relationships in commercial aerospace supply chains have on innovation and competitive advantage. A perspective of supply chains as complex activity systems is used for data analysis. Competitive advantage is searched through product innovation facilitated by risk-sharing partnerships. This is characterised by expansive learning processes of creating instruments for initialising, implementing and nurturing these relationships. These processes take place in a terrain of complex power exercises. The long-term effects are totally dependent on the success of nurturing the relationships.
Purpose
– This paper aims to address the advantage of considering an evolutionary classification scheme for commercial aerospace supply chains. It is an industry wide approach. By going beyond the performance of the single firm and considering the whole supply chain for a product a better understanding of present states and performances of the firms within the chain can be achieved.
Design/methodology/approach
– The approach is presented as evolutionary steps by introduction of key supply chain characters. These steps are brought together by applying cladistics to classify the evolutionary relationships between supply chain forms.
Findings
– Key character states define the change of supply chain forms in the evolutionary adaptation to market realities and to proactive responses to increased competition.
Originality/value
– The potential benefits of this approach include a benchmark of best practice, a strategic tool for policy development, and the creation of future scenarios.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of commercial aerospace supply chains.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is presented as evolutionary steps by introduction of key supply chain practices. These steps are brought together by applying cladistics, a classification approach from the biological sciences, to classify the evolutionary relationships between supply chain forms. This is presented in two stages.
Findings
Earlier research produced a “conceptual cladogram” from secondary data that describes the evolution of aerospace supply chains. This paper expands on this through empirical validation and develops a “factual cladogram”, revealing a newly emerging supply chain form. Key practices define the change of supply chain forms in the evolutionary adaptation to market realities and to proactive responses to increased competition.
Research limitations/implications
The factual cladogram as such does not necessarily prescribe world‐class performance but may serve as a platform for discussing and monitoring the properties of the emergent supply chain in light of strategies for the future. As such it becomes a strategic bench‐marking tool for the change of practices, technologies and products.
Practical implications
In practical terms, the approach may be developed as a strategic tool for policy development, and a decision support tool through the creation and exploration of future supply chain form scenarios.
Originality/value
Theoretically, this paper elaborates on a framework for how and why evolution produces diversity of supply chain form.
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 collection and degrees of involvement the importance of clarifying research outputs. audience and presentation; and finally handling problems of complexity and simplicity associated with longitudinal comparative case study research on change. The paper concludes by discussing some ethical issues of longitudinal research field research, and managing a community of researchers.
For the entire firm to experience a consistent level of success in today's rapidly changing environment, purchasing operations and activities must be synchronized with the strategy of the firm and attuned with the variable external forces. No longer can purchasing serve the growing firm with “plain vanilla” service, utilize methods and procedures of a decade ago, and have one set of approaches for all possible tasks. As firms adapt to ever changing situations and move toward more proactive strategic modes of operation, purchasing must also progress through various stages of evolution. This article draws on extensive field interviews to present a road map outlining how purchasing can function as a productive contributor to the mission of the ever changing and increasingly sophisticated firm.
This book highlights the theoretical and practical value of using a processual perspective to make sense of organizational change. Featuring data collected over 20 years of fieldwork, it does much more than provide a simple overview of theory and change models and instead makes the processual approach understandable and accessible to both researchers and practitioners. The author's case studies of radical and large-scale change programmes include those from General Motors, Pirelli, Shell, Britax and Laubman and Pank, and considers aspects of processual research, the context, politics, and substance of change and finally the future of the processual perspective. This is an innovative and highly practical study that captures the truly complex processes of the changing organization and illustrates how best to understand them from a processual point of view.
This study analyzes organization of economic activity within and between markets and hierarchies. It considers the transaction to be the ultimate unit of microeconomic analysis, and defines hierarchical transactions as ones for which a single administrative entity spans both sides of the transaction, some form of subordination prevails and, typically, consolidated ownership obtains. Discusses the advantages of the transactional approach by examining three issues: price discrimination, insurance, and vertical integration. Develops the concept of the organizational failure framework, and demonstrates why it is always the combination of human with environmental factors, not either taken by itself, that causes transactional problems. The study also describes each of the transactional relations of interest, and presents the advantages of internal organization with respect to the transactional condition. The analysis explains why primary work groups of the peer group and simple hierarchy types arise. The same transactional factor which impede autonomous contracting between individuals also impede market exchange between technologically separable work groups. Peer groups can be understood as an internal organizational response to the frictions of intermediate product markets, while conglomerate organization can be seen as a response to failures in the capital market. In both contexts, the same human factors, such as bounded rationality and opportunism, occur. Examines the reasons for and properties of the employment relation, which is commonly associated with voluntary subordination. The analysis attempts better to assess the employment relation in circumstances where workers acquire, during the course of the employment, significant job-specific skills and knowledge. The study compares alternative labor-contracting modes and demonstrates that collective organization is helpful in enhancing the acquisition of idiosyncratic knowledge and skills by the work force. The study then examines more complex structures -- the movement from simple hierarchies to the vertical integration of firms, then multidivisional structures, conglomerates, monopolies and oligopolies. Discusses the market structure in relation to technical and organizational innovation. The study proposes a systems approach to the innovation process. Its purpose is to permit the realization of the distinctive advantages of both small and large firms which apply at different stages of the innovation process. The analysis also examines the relation of organizational innovation to technological innovation. (AT)
[examine] 3 approaches to research as participation . . . : cooperative inquiry, participatory action research, and action inquiry / take each approach separately and set out . . . its underlying assumptions and practice / explore some of the similarities and differences among the 3 approaches and make critical comparisons / attempt to show how the 3 approaches complement each other, so that together they stand as the beginnings of a robust "paradigm" of research with people (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Case analysis was used to investigate executive and purchasing leadership in purchasing change initiatives. The strongest demonstration of CEO support was hiring a new Chief Purchasing Officer (CPO) and/or publicly supporting an organizational restructuring. The primary findings regarding the new CPOs were they: (1) were not promoted from within purchasing in the same organization, (2) had a zest for change, (3) possessed a clear, articulated vision for change, (4) had a passion for the importance of purchasing, and (5) were well educated but had limited formal education in purchasing. The interaction of the CPO and CEO was also analyzed. The most important conclusion was that the CPO must be ready with a clear vision for purchasing to take advantage of the CEO's support. Finally, the analysis showed that it was not necessary for the CEO to have previous purchasing experience to support purchasing change efforts.
This paper recognizes the failure of management research to communicate with practitioners, and speculates over the reasons why this may be the case. It is possible that the researchers' interests may not always coincide with management practitioners'; however, even when such interests are congruent, it seems that relatively little management research is published in practitioner journals. We suggest that this is because academic research is written in a style that tends to alienate most practitioners. This paper isolates the stylistic conventions associated with research targeted to academics (typically published in academic journals) and research targeted to practitioners (typically published in practitioner-oriented journals). Such stylistic differences are illustrated through a study of organizational change whose findings have been published in both academic and practitioner format, namely in the Administrative Science Quarterly and the Harvard Business Review. We suggest that the gap between these two types of research could be narrowed through processes of translation (i.e. academic jargon could be translated in practitioner language). In addition we might consider greater use of Mode 2 research over Mode 1 research (academic). Mode 2 research presupposes that teams of academics and practitioners assemble to define the research problem and methodology in terms appropriate to a particular context and in a way that accounts for all existing interests so that translation processes are seamless. However, Mode 2 creates its own gap in that the knowledge is more contextual and may not reach a wide audience.
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 by Pettigrew in 1985 and 1987. The article then compares and contrasts the methods of five additional process scholars – Mintzberg, Burgelman, Langley, Van de Ven, and Eisenhardt – to highlight developments in the conduct of process research since the mid and late 1980s, and to identify a set of pointers for the conduct of future process research.
No abstract available.
There has been limited research into how different types of supply networks can be created and operated. This article develops a taxonomy of supply networks with a particular focus on managing network creation and operation. The taxonomy is based on a review of network literature from various academic perspectives and extensive empirical data across a variety of industry sectors including automotive, fast-moving consumer goods, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and communications technologies. The main differentiating factors for classifying a matrix of four types of supply network are found to be the degree of supply network dynamics and the degree of focal company supply network influence. Network characteristics and different patterns ofnetworking activities are identified for each type of supply network.
Purchasing is increasingly being viewed as a key strategic function with numerous articles describing programmes or technologies that can be implemented to help a firm achieve competitive advantage. However, what is lacking is research that focuses on the individuals who will be responsible for implementing these initiatives. This article considers the development of the purchasing function within a multinational aerospace company and applies Maister's Professional Service Firm model in an operational manner to outline the changing roles and responsibilities of the procurement function. This framework not only illustrates how planning and organising issues can be addressed using the concepts developed by Maister, but also provides an illustration of how one model propounded by management educators can provide a foundation for enhancing organisational performance.
The Ohio State Leadership Studies have been criticized on grounds that they lack a conceptual base, and fail to take situational variables into account. This article reviews the published literature involving the leader behavior dimensions “Consideration” and “Initiating Structure,” for the purpose of developing some situational propositions of leader effectiveness. Among the variables found by researchers to significantly moderate relationships between leader behavior predictors, and satisfaction and performance criteria are the following: subordinate need for information, job level, subordinate expectations of leader behavior, perceived organizational independence, leader's similarity of attitudes and behavior to managerial style of higher management, leader upward influence; and characteristics of the task, including pressure and provision of intrinsic satisfaction. The article concludes by presenting ten situational propositions, and linking them to form two general postulates of leadership effectiveness.
The influence of history on an organization is a powerful but often overlooked force. Managers, in their haste to build companies, frequently fail to ask such critical developmental questions as, Where has our organization been? Where is it newt and What do the answers to these questions mean for where it is going? Instead, when confronted with problems, managers fix their gaze outward on the environment and toward the future, as if more precise market projections will provide the organization with a new identity. In this HER Classic, Larry Greiner identifies a series of developmental phases that companies tend to pass through as they grow. He distinguishes the phases by their dominant themes: creativity, direction, delegation, coordination, and collaboration. Each phase begins with a period of evolution, steady growth, and stability, and ends with a revolutionary period of organizational turmoil and change. The critical task for management in each revolutionary period is to find a new set of organizational practices that will become the basis for managing the next period of evolutionary growth. Those new practices eventually outlast their usefulness and lead to another period of revolution. Managers therefore experience the irony of seeing a major solution in one period become a major problem in a later period. Originally published in 1972, the article's argument and insights remain relevant to managers today. Accompanying the original article is a commentary by the author updating his earlier observations.
Features include the selection and sampling of cases, the problems of access, observation and interviewing, recording and filing data, and the process of data analysis.
When sophisticated large organizations make significant changes in strategy, the approaches they use frequently bear little resemblance to the rational-analytical systems so often touted in the planning literature. Such systems are rarely the source of overall corporate strategies. Instead, the processes used to generate major strategies are typically fragmented and evolutionary with a high degree of intuitive content. Although one usually finds imbedded in these fragments some very refined pieces of formal analysis, overall strategies tend to emerge as a series of conscious internal decisions blend and interact with changing external events to slowly mutate key managers' broad consensus about what patterns of action make sense for the future. Based on a multi-year study of how large companies change their strategies, this article summarizes why strategic managers do proceed incrementally and how they manage the complex process of generating an overall strategy.
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