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Positioning the Executive MBA Product: Let's not forget the requirements of the corporate market
Abstract
The executive MBA qualification is much sought-after as an alternative to either full time or part time study for a postgraduate management qualification. Potential top managers and organizations alike have eagerly embraced it, with the former seeing it as a pathway to corporate success, and the latter as a solution to issues such as management succession and sustained competitive advantage. Business schools and educational institutions across the world have rushed to cater to this lucrative market, which has generally shown itself to be more resilient to price than other MBA market segments. However, providers face a real dilemma in positioning their offerings, as they realize that the two constituent groups – managers as students, and organizations as sponsors – can have very different agendas in pursuing, employing and funding the EMBA. This paper explores these issues and provides a framework for the consideration of various strategic positioning alternatives.
... Despite this, there often seems to be relatively little attention given to this type of student and study within traditional universities. For example, Page et al (2004) draw attention to the dilemma of designing EMBAs that are attractive to both students and their employing sponsors, suggesting that this does not seem to have been given sufficient attention by educators. This paper reports some findings from an ongoing longitudinal study of part-time students in an English university. ...
... This draws attention to a potential tension between the different stakeholders in occupationally and professionally oriented Higher Education especially when employers are more actively involved in its deliveryoften providing study leave and/or sponsoring employees. Page et al (2004) explore this issue further, highlighting a tension between stakeholder expectations roles in the part-time education environment, pointing out that students 'may be customers ... but may also simply be products ' (2004:2) suggesting employers may perceive themselves more as customers. Although such apparently marketing-oriented conceptualisations of universities catering to various types of customer do seem to be used increasingly, Hoffman and Kretovics (2004:103) do point out that many faculty are 'uncomfortable' with the customer metaphor. ...
... Thus, an individual's instrumental 'goal' associated with an activity (such as academic study) can vary considerably. For example, in the current study there was very little, if any, evidence of participation in business and management programmes for 'love of knowledge for its own sake' (ie the sort of intrinsically motivated study that might be expected in some academic disciplines), but there was considerable value given to course content from a professional perspective; as Page et al (2004) point out that a key 'benefit of EMBA programmes should be that participants are able to apply what they have learned almost immediately ' (2004:9). To this end, the university strives for focused relevance in many of its part-time business programmes. ...
Part-time study is an important and growing part of higher education especially in the delivery of vocational and professional programmes. This ongoing research explores the experiences of a sample of participants drawn from MBA, MSc Management and MAHRM part-time programmes (further recruitment from 'new' cohorts of students is planned). It takes a longitudinal approach, maintaining contact with participants utilising asynchronous, semi-structured 'e-interviews'. These participants engage in periodic e-correspondence with a mixture of standard questions and probes tailored to individuals. The data collection has been in progress for 18 months and a fifth round of e-interviews is underway. This paper explores the research design and its methodological implications, especially in relation to interviewee retention, while reporting the initial findings. Participants are encouraged to reflect on various aspects of their work and study and our data analysis has highlighted themes relating to professional learning and the challenges and benefits to students of managing formalised higher education while employed in demanding full-time management roles in private and public work organisations. One particular concern is the relevance of course content to their work and the perceived value of their studies. The latter is often viewed in a relatively short-term, instrumental manner and can be both specific (such as application of a theory or practice introduced in class or reading) and broad (such as the belief that colleagues and line managers can show more respect for someone studying or qualified in a management discipline) in scope.
... It is designed specifically for working business professionals so that students can complete a program with minimal work interruption. (Bevelander and Pitt 2004) EMBA programs are a by-product of non-credit management training programs. Early management training programs were designed for executives from large corporations and typically included four weeks courses. ...
... As the number of EMBA programs increases and traditional MBA programs step up marketing efforts to attract students, EMBA programs must become more proactive in recruiting both students and sponsoring organizations (Anna et al 2001). The EMBA market has continued to grow, and for many business schools the product may be the only star in a rather dismal universe (Bevelander & Pitt, 2004: 3) In the last decade Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) programs have seen a major growth in their student enrolment worldwide. This growth is caused by the increasing need felt by both large and small organizations for highly qualified professionals to manage in the increasingly complex and competitive global market place (Drew & Stephen, 2011). ...
... Since 2003, the number of institutions reporting longer EMBA programs of 21-22 months decreased. Bevelander and Pitt (2004) argue that the EMBA qualification is much sought-after as an alternative to either full time or part time study for a postgraduate management qualification. Potential top managers and organisations alike have eagerly embraced it, with the former seeing it as a pathway to corporate success and the latter as a solution to issues such as management succession and sustained competitive advantage. ...
The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing the enrollment of students into the Executive Masters of Business Administration (EMBA) Programme at Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Questionnaires were distributed to students, lecturers and administrators of the EMBA programme. The analysis showed one the factors hindering increased enrollment is cost. The fees are unaffordable given the fact that the majority of students pay from their personal savings. Moreover, there is emerging competition from other programmes offered by Africa University while other universities in Zimbabwe are offering similar programmes at a lower cost. The participant also indicated that quality of service needs to be improved and formal advertising and marketing efforts made as many participants indicated that they got to know about the programmes through informal means such as from friends.
... It appears that even in the top ranked executive MBA programs that the schools position themselves to address the student constituents, and to a far lesser degree, their employing organizations even though estimates show as high as 84% of executive MBA students have their programs funded by their employer. (Page, et al, 2004) The research of Page, et al, (2004) lists a number of criteria programs need to address to better serve the needs of the employer. Listed first on the criteria list is "maximize the organization's competitive advantage" (p.8) and specifically addresses problem solving and strategic thinking while also listing a proficiency across a number of selected business disciplines. ...
... It appears that even in the top ranked executive MBA programs that the schools position themselves to address the student constituents, and to a far lesser degree, their employing organizations even though estimates show as high as 84% of executive MBA students have their programs funded by their employer. (Page, et al, 2004) The research of Page, et al, (2004) lists a number of criteria programs need to address to better serve the needs of the employer. Listed first on the criteria list is "maximize the organization's competitive advantage" (p.8) and specifically addresses problem solving and strategic thinking while also listing a proficiency across a number of selected business disciplines. ...
The faculty of the Executive MBA program ("EMBA") are investigating a change to the EMBA curriculum. The motivation for a change is to provide a unique, applicable and experiential- learning opportunity. Participants will experience a threaded, experiential-learning component to the curriculum, and second, to advance regional technological research from laboratory to marketplace. In that process a new course focusing on technology assessment and product/service commercialization will be added to the curriculum. In addition, each course offered in the EMBA cohort program, where appropriate, will offer a discipline-specific "thread" to support each team's commercialization project. Each EMBA class will be expected to assess 3-5 technologies over the course of the 18-month program. Every 12 months a new class is introduced therefore, as many as 10 projects maybe active at any time. Executive Education Executive education is the "hottest product in the growing MBA market" and is forcing universities to heighten their focus on the quality of their executive MBA programs. (Tyler 2004, p. 105, Page et al, 2004, Filbeck and Webb, 2000) In 2004, 53% of executive MBA programs around the globe showed an increase in interest from perspective students, while traditional MBA programs, reported a decline in applications. (Logue, 2005) Sihler (1993) found that students of executive education are more demanding and critical and value experiential learning more than other students. Cason (1993) asserted that executive education students prefer a results oriented program.
... To date, the literature relating to Higher Education management has focused on a variety of areas such as questions relating to internationalisation (Yu, 1996;Teichler, 1999;Dobson and Holtta, 2001;Altbach, 2004) and issues of quality assurance and control (Lloyd and Wiser, 2006;Fallshaw, 2003). With specific reference to business schools there has been growing interest in the sector as reflected in research relating to the changing nature of business school management at graduate level (Friga, et al., 2003) and the need to redefine and reposition business schools (Bennis and Toole, 2004;Pfeffer and Fong, 2004;Page, et al., 2004;Starkey, et al., 2004), the productivity and rankings in the popular press (Baden-Fuller, et al., 2000;Bickerstaffe and Ridgers, 2007;Dicher, 1990;Siemens, et al., 2005). ...
This article reveals an a priori link between the effective management of corporate brands and the strength of corporate brand identification by customers and stakeholders. The article introduces a model of corporate brand management and corporate brand identification. This research, undertaken within leading business schools, resulted in three propositions: (P1) corporate brand management is analogous to strategic general management and involves nine connate activities - adapting, communicating, embracing, endorsing, investing, leading, maintaining, reflecting, and supporting; (P2) a stakeholder and values approach is more likely to result in there being a strong corporate brand identification on the part of students; (P3) an institutional and functional approach to corporate brand management results in weak/indifferent corporate brand identification by scholars. The pivotal importance of corporate brands to contemporary organisations and to their policy advisors, are illustrative of the saliency of this study. This inductive study draws on insights from policy makers and scholars in top business schools. This article throws light on why and how general managers should accord importance to corporate brand management. In broader contexts, leading business schools are regarded as repositories of best practice in terms of scholarship in business administration and, in terms of operations, general management per se. As such, this study has an especial significance for general management of corporate brands among contemporary organisations.
A growing body of conceptual and empirical research has drawn on transactive memory systems (TMS) theory to understand the functioning of a wide range of teams, including top management teams (TMTs). At the same time, there has been increasing interest in how personality factors, and in particular chief executive officer (CEO) narcissism, shape corporate decision-making, and behaviour in TMTs. However, these streams of research have developed independently from one another. Leveraging a sample of 64 firms, we integrate TMS theory and upper echelons theory to explain how the performance consequences of TMTs are shaped by two competing dimensions of CEO narcissism: admiration-based narcissism and rivalry-based narcissism. CEO narcissism is an important area of research because of the strategic implications of the impact that this personality trait can have on the functioning of the TMT. We find that TMT TMS has a positive influence on firm performance at higher levels of admiration-based narcissism, but not rivalry-based narcissism. With this focus, we provide further substantiation of the firm-performance implications of TMS, and the critical role played by a dimensional focus on CEO narcissism in the TMS context.
A translated book from English to Arabic, covering all topics related to the training and development functionز
This article reveals an a priori link between the effective management of corporate brands and the strength of corporate brand identification by customers and stakeholders. The article introduces a model of corporate brand management and corporate brand identification. This research, undertaken within leading business schools, resulted in three propositions: (PI) corporate brand management is analogous to strategic general management and involves nine connate activities – adapting, communicating, embracing, endorsing, investing, leading, maintaining, reflecting, and supporting; (P2) a stakeholder and values approach is more likely to result in there being a strong corporate brand identification on the part of students; (P3) an institutional and functional approach to corporate brand management results in weak/indifferent corporate brand identification by scholars. The pivotal importance of corporate brands to contemporary organisations and to their policy advisors, are illustrative of the saliency of this study. This inductive study draws on insights from policy makers and scholars in top business schools. This article throws light on why and how general managers should accord importance to corporate brand management. In broader contexts, leading business schools are regarded as repositories of best practice in terms of scholarship in business administration and, in terms of operations, general management per se. As such, this study has an especial significance for general management of corporate brands among contemporary organisations.
This research note reports on a study using a previously published checklist to assess the brand management practices of business schools. Indications are that the perceptions of a sample of senior administrators regarding how well their institutions manage their brands are not positive, and that there is much room for improvement. While the checklist used seems to possess the characteristic of reliability, further development needs to be done on aspects of its validity and underlying structure. Implications for managers and further avenues for research are identified and discussed.
This conceptual paper examines how managers, acting as organisational agents, can influence their firm's level of engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR). With CSR considered as a strategic choice, this paper undertakes to model the largely under-studied processes through which managers proactively pursue the enactment of their identity - their self - and their social role in their position of power in the firm's management team. The study offers a new framework connecting these multilevel influences, suggesting that firms present the highest level of CSR when led by managers who intrinsically value CSR, who perceive their social role as a salient identity, and who have the ability to exercise power in their management team. Implications for managers and researchers complete this article.
Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors' mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors' mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.
The objective of this study was to assess the perception of the role of services departments i.e. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), library, registry and business office towards the EMBA program. Questionnaires were distributed to students, lecturers and administrators of the EMBA program. Record sampling and direct observations were other methods used to collect data. Responses from the questionnaires were entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. The analysis showed that there is need for improved quality of service in support departments to the EMBA program.
Decision speed has long been recognized as a critical determinant of firm performance, particularly in dynamic environments. Extending prior studies, which have largely focused on firm-level decision speed in small- and medium-sized organizations, this study explores how control mechanisms set by corporate headquarters in multibusiness firms influence decision speed at the strategic business unit (SBU) level. Using a multimethod approach, we first inductively derive six types of corporate control, before deductively examining their effects on SBU-level decision speed in five international multibusiness organizations. Our results suggest that three corporate control types enhance decision speed (goal setting, extrinsic incentives, and decision process control); two have no effect (negative incentives and conflict resolution); and one has a negative effect (strategy imposition). By integrating results from our qualitative and quantitative analyses, we are also able to identify transparency/alignment, outcome orientation, participation, trust, and timely feedback as the key mechanisms accounting for these effects.
working papers are produced by the Bradford University School of Management and are to be circulated for discussion purposes only. Their contents should be considered to be preliminary. The papers are expected to be published in due course, in a revised form and should not be quoted without the author's permission. ABSTRACT Purpose: We introduce a conceptual model of the corporate brand management and student identification interface. This is informed by our research into management cognition and student affinity towards a business school brands within the UK and Asia. Methodology: Exploratory case study research undertaken within 8 UK business schools and 1 Asian education institution. Findings: Our research resulted in four propositions (P1) Corporate brand management is analogous to strategic general management and involves nine connate activities-adapting, communicating, embracing, endorsing, investing, leading, maintaining, reflecting, and supporting; (P2) A custodial approach to corporate brand management is more likely to result in stakeholder affinity/emotional attachment to the corporate brand; (P3) An institutional and functional approach to corporate brand management is more likely to result in low affinity/attachment to the corporate brand. Research Limitations: The findings from our exploratory case studies are not, necessarily, generalisable.
This study contributes to the emerging empirical studies on roles and responsibilities of boards in nonprofit organizations by identifying competencies of volunteer board members. We identified how two types of constituents—volunteer board members and sports members—perceived competencies of volunteer board members in community sports clubs. We used the repertory grid technique to draw cognitive maps and to reveal the perceived reality of these constituents. Our results suggest that constituents within a group share similar perceptions of competencies of outstanding performing board members, while they agree less on perceptions of poor performing board members. This study reveals that cognitive (e.g., having a long term vision, having professionalism), emotional (e.g., being reliable, being honest), and social intelligence (e.g., listening to others, being jovial/nice to be with) competencies are necessary to be perceived as an outstanding performing board member.
The psychological analysis of strategic management issues has gained a great deal of momentum in recent years. Much can be learned by entering the black box of strategic thinking of senior executives and bring new insights on how they see, make sense of, and interpret their everyday strategic experiences. This chapter will focus on a powerful cognitive mapping tool called the Repertory Grid Technique and demonstrate how it has been used in the strategy literature along with how a new and more refined application of the technique can enhance the elicitation of complex strategic cognitions for strategy and Board of Directors research.
Previous application of the repertory grid technique in the strategy field has been noteworthy. However, all have been imprisoned by their adherence to strict element choice based on grid protocol. Elements in past studies have either focused on all competitor companies, or all strategic decisions, or all decision makers, or all strategic issues, inter alia, in an effort to learn more about how strategists see, interpret, and make sense of their strategy experiences. This research note outlines how current strategy research can be advanced by the use of more heterogeneous elements for grid applications, hence allowing researchers to go deeper into eliciting more complex strategic cognitions on how strategy is crafted and recrafted in a world constructed and reconstructed.
Purpose – The aim of this article is to investigate how managers see, interpret and make sense of their performance management system experiences and recommend the way forward for both policy and practice, in what makes effective appraisal systems. Design/methodology/approach – The study applied the repertory grid to elicit the personal constructs of how managers make sense of their appraisal experiences. The cognitive mapping methodology allows the researcher to go deep into the respondents' “theories in use” to provide new insights on how they “think”. This, in turn, allows a better understanding of the language managers use to make sense of the experiences. Findings – Core conceptual dimensions, cognitive maps and cluster diagrams were generated, providing implications for research, practice and new directions for future research. Researchlimitations/implications – Although the application of the grid technique was time-consuming, the finer grain level of analysis provided a deeper appreciation of managers' “theories in use”. The study provides a cross-sectional view of the current state of managerial cognitions. Findings open up new ways of thinking and new way of doing in appraisal research and practice. Practical implications – The findings provided very meaningful insights on what managers look for in appraisal system effectiveness, along with the documentation of how they make connections between their own elicited personal constructs on system effectiveness. Originality/value – The paper makes a modest contribution to both theory and practice from the perspective of managerial cognitions about the entire appraisal systems using a method originating from clinical psychology.
From institutional theory, we argue (a) that the competitive, or task environment may encourage divergence of management cognition between organizations, management functions and amongst senior managers, and (b) that the institutional environment may encourage cognitive convergence at the level of the industry, the strategic group and within institutionalized practices linked to management functions and level. Using management cognition of competition as a vehicle and two cognitive mapping methods, we test a series of competing propositions amongst 32 managers in the UK personal financial services industry, an industry that evidences both task and institutional characteristics. Our findings indicate neither the superiority of exclusively task nor institutional explanations of management cognition. However, the results do indicate some influence of the institutional environment, most noticeably through the convergence of mental models within middle managers across the industry. The results also indicate some influence of the task environment, through cognitive differences across organizations and greater differentiation amongst senior managers' mental models. We interpret our results by referring to the usefulness of distinguishing between task and institutional environments in management cognition and strategic management research.
Early work in strategic management emphasized single case studies, followed by research on corporate diversification strategy, firm heterogeneity, strategic groups, and generic business strategies. Intermediate work added the foci of environmental determinants and strategic choice, often using secondary data from large, multi-industry firm samples. Recently, the most prominent new theoretical paradigm is the resource-based view of the firm, using smaller sample studies. Future research is likely to integrate and contrast multiple theories and to develop more fine-grained and complex models. Quantitative research will emphasize longitudinal data, dynamic analysis, and greater focus on specific strategic decisions/actions. Future research will use more specialized tools such as panel data analysis, dynamic models of partial adjustment, logistic and Poisson regression analyses, event history analysis, network analysis, and structural equation modeling. Nontraditional research designs will also gain popularity, such as combined qualitative/quantitative data approaches and comparison of outliers.
Using recent empirical findings from an in-depth study in the Financial Services Sector in the UK, this article provides new insights into the association between training and learning from the individual’s perspective. The analysis provides an account of the perceptions of individual managers across three Retail Banks regarding the role, significance and impact of training as a learning opportunity and shows the multiplicity of factors affecting whether individuals actually learn from training. The findings challenge some of the assumptions which have guided our thinking in the management training and development field. The implications of the findings for research and practice are considered.
The Rise and Fall of the British Press takes an artful look at the past, present and immediate future of the printed newspaper. Temple offers a thought-provoking account of the evolution of Britain’s news consumption across the centuries, situating it within significant social, cultural and political currents of the time. Chapters cover: The impact of key technological developments; from the birth of print and the introduction of television, to the rise of the internet and digital media; The ever-shifting power play between political parties and the press; The notion of the ‘public sphere’ and how newspapers have influenced it over the decades; The role of news media during some of Europe’s most significant historical events, such as the French Revolution, the First and Second World Wars and the Suez crisis; The aftermath of the Leveson inquiry and the question of increased media regulation; The successes and failures of important media players, including Baron Beaverbrook and Lord Northcliffe in the nineteenth century, and Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the book, parallels are drawn between current issues impacting on the press and society and those from previous decades, further illuminating the role, both historic and ongoing, of the news media in Britain. Temple concludes the book by looking to the future of print journalism, calling for a reassessment of its role in the twenty-first century, redefining what journalism should be and reasserting its value in society today. This far-reaching analysis will be an invaluable resource for both students and researchers of journalism and media studies.
This isn't an abstract but a note in two parts.
a) I occasionally receive requests for a full-text of this publication, and have to decline. It consists of over 100 text files, graphic files, and tables comprising c29MB of data. IT'S A BOOK! It can easily be obtained as hard copy via your university library or (shudder– bought?) from a bookshop.
b) In place of an abstract: it provides a detailed, step by step account of repertory grid technique and some details of the underpinning theoretical assumptions, with dozens of examples and many exercises, with detailed answers; if you work through it, you'll gain a good working familiarity with the rep grid as an addition to your kitbag of research techniques.
Devi Jankowicz
The buying center has long been a focal point of study by academic researchers, and of concern to practitioners in the field of business-to-business marketing. Organizational purchasing tends to be a more complex process than consumer buying, not least because the procedure is one in which a number of parties impact on the decision in a variety of ways. Decisions to purchase within an organization are generally the net result of the inputs of various functional departments and specialists as well as various in-company political alliances and interest groups. Studying buying centers is a complex task, and tools that simplify this are in short supply. This article suggests the use of multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) techniques as devices that will enhance the understanding of organizational buying centers. Specifically, it illustrates the use of MDS as a tool for identifying coalitions within the context of overall buying group structure. Recent developments in the application of MDS to marketing problems are reviewed, and an example of an application of this tool to industrial buying centers is then presented. Implications for researchers and practitioners are drawn, and suggestions are made for ongoing research.
The authors empirically examine differences between automatic and controlled processing by executives in an increasingly dynamic industry. The results suggest that cognitive inertia affects judgments in both modes, but the effect is stronger with automatic processing. Specifically, the authors conducted two studies examining executives' cognitive maps of competitive positioning. First, they explored differences in ways strategists categorize competitors in a cross-sectional field study conducted during a period of significant environmental upheaval. They found that managers relied on cognitive maps that reflected obsolete industry boundaries rather than configurations representative of the deregulated marketplace. Hence, managers must be mindful to incorporate new information proactively from many sources and to actively discard old, automatic maps in order to develop reliable maps for changing environments. In a second study, managerial competitive schemas of competitive positioning were compared longitudinally across three research projects conducted in the financial intermediary industry. An eight-year time frame provided a unique opportunity to explore the content of mental models in an industry undergoing an accelerating rate of change. The longitudinal results indicate that change creates diversity of thought across managers in the same environment. Managers at competing firms are therefore apt to view competition quite differently in turbulent environments. Implications of the study findings for strategic decision making, consensus and conflict, and organizational learning and executive succession in turbulent environments are discussed. Issues are identified that warrant further research.
This study demonstrated that women EMBA graduates experience broadened perspectives. They “think more broadly”, “understand more comprehensively” and report the “life changing” outcomes expected by their sponsoring organizations. The focus was on the development of women managers from specialist perspectives to a more integrated generalist perspective. Personal development, and career development literatures provided the theoretical basis for this study. Data were collected using invited essays, and semi-structured interviews. Evidence of change appeared in the essays and the interviews. The essays indicated graduates experienced increased confidence, cognitive flexibility, and broadened perspectives. The interviews indicated: greater self-determination, more flexible approaches to roles, greater value of self and time, more process-oriented, increased understanding of self and others, the meaning of success was competence, and that competence was valued over political gamesmanship.
This article summarizes student and instructor experiences in an innovative MBA program designed for working executives. We describe the social aspects of this learning process, especially with regard to learning in the distance mode. We note the challenges and opportunities of distance learning for students and faculty, and we identify critical components of learning success in programs that aim to link traditional university education with corporate life at an international level.
This article reviews research on the process of strategic management reported over the last six years in seven leading journals. Nine " 'streams" of work are identified and critiqued. The field is described as giving continuing attention to the possibilities and problems of strategic planning and decision making, but also moving into new areas of research-especially the problem of how the attention of decision makers is directed toward specific agendas for action. We recommend more studies that simultaneously consider strategy formulation and implementation and more studies that attempt to integrate methods and concerns across the various areas of process research. Finally, we recommend that future research give simultaneous attention to the content as well as the process of strategy.
There is a high degree of uncertainty as to how well organisations are using management development to enhance their strategic performance. This article reports a survey which indicates that most managers believe there is, in reality, considerable scope for improvement in the way their organisations use management development. There appear to be a few organisations which create management development strategies or which lock management development activities into the strategic needs of the business. One solution would be for management development professionals to take a more proactive role than is currently the case in promoting its value.
This article chronicles the efforts and challenges to design and deliver a new executive MBA program at the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It explores the planning phase and process, the unique design and structure of the program, the trials of first-year implementation, overall learning from the experience, and future administrative and curricular challenges.
Following the lead of other contributors to cognitive organizational theory, this paper offers a sociocognitive network methodology that represents a sharp departure from traditional approaches to organizational analysis. After outlining the contours of a sociocognitive perspective of organizational dynamics, we present a highly flexible, but reproducible methodology that allows us to uncover and quantify differences in the content of organizational reference frames. We then demonstrate how the resulting indices of cognitive content may be merged with standard sociometric data, creating a network matrix that measures the sociocognitive connectedness of an organization's participants and enables us to identify and monitor barriers to organizational innovation and change.
It is now 15 years since the Journal of European Industrial Training published its first monograph on repertory grid technique (Volume 4 Number 2, 1980). Since that time many changes have occurred in both the use and the application of grids. Aims to bring the reader up to date with developments which have taken place in the application and analysis of repertory grid technique. Unlike the initial monograph, places greater emphasis on practicalities of completing a grid and the different types of analysis possible than on the applications of the grid. After encouragement from Roger Bennett, among others, this revised and expanded monograph capitalizes on the collaboration of the original author, Mark Easterby-Smith, with Richard Thorpe and David Holman. Their combined experience of the theory and use of repertory grid technique updates the original monograph.
The study of cognition in organizations has burgeoned in recent years. Top-down information processing theory suggests that individuals create knowledge structures to help them process information and make decisions. While the benefits of employing such knowledge structures are widely noted, there is a growing concern that they can limit decision makers’ abilities to understand their information environments and thus, compromise their decision making. This issue has captured the imagination of managerial and organizational cognition researchers. To date, their inquiry has been eclectic in focus and method. To order and advance this work, the author reviews extant research on the developmental origins and decision consequences of both the content and structure of knowledge structures at multiple levels of analysis. A host of research challenges are identified to help develop a better understanding of knowledge structure representation, development, and use in organizations.
Perceptions are important in determining performance appraisal system success. The growing body of research in this area has clearly documented the differences in perceptions between appraisers and appraisees. However, many of these findings are predominately based on aspects of the system in judging its overall effectiveness and rely heavily on self-report questionnaire responses with weak methodological rigor. Not much is known about the deeper cognitive perceptions of appraisers and appraisees in better explaining their attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. This paper breaks away from conventional questionnaire-generated perceptions and applies a unique clinical cognitive mapping methodology called the repertory grid technique to elicit the personal constructs of how real respondents perceive appraisal systems based on their real-life experiences. The method allowed the investigation to go much deeper than past research into the core perceptions that influenced respondents' attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Though the findings showed some commonality in personal constructions of appraisal systems with those found in the literature, new constructs, core perceptual dimensions, and collective cognitive maps were elicited for the very first time, opening up new questions and issues for further research. Implications to theory and practice are also discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In this paper, CEOs are considered as ‘cognizers’ charged with integrating views in the top management team; a role which should require high cognitive complexity especially in diversified multinational corporations. A methodology for studying top managers' cognitive complexity is described and then applied to a sample of 26 CEOs. The CEOs' cognitive maps of the structure and of the dynamics of their industry are analyzed in terms of their degree of complexity, in relation to the breadth of the business portfolio of the firm, its geographic scope and the links the firm has with foreign parents. The results of this exploratory test generally confirm the principle of requisite cognitive complexity, and reveal a new set of more precise hypotheses linking particular dimensions of the scope of the firm with particular dimensions of CEOs' cognitive complexity.
Decision-makers in organizations use dimensions implicitly or explicitly to sort strategic issues. This article compares the dimensions implied by three literatures and dimensions generated by an empirical study. While some similarities are identified, there are striking differences between what the literature assumes and what dimensions decision-makers in the NY/NJ Port Authority use to sort issues. Implications for theories of decision-making and interpretation in organizations are discussed.
The strategic group concept provides an attractive middle ground between firm and industry for both theory development and empirical analysis. To date, this concept has been defined by researchers in terms of secondary accounting and financial data, and a number of critics have questioned the validity of this work. Our research shows that industry participants share perceptions about strategic commonalities among firms, and that participants cluster competitors in subtle ways not reflected in extant academic research on strategic groups. Decision makers' perceptions and cognitions are phenomena that can be expected to influence industry evolution. They are of research interest as an additional source of data on firm commonalities which helps address concerns about previous strategic group research.
Recently, a number of researchers seeking to develop cognitive approaches for understanding processes associated with the development and implementation of competitive positioning strategies have drawn attention to the notion of ‘cognitive inertia’. Once established, there is a danger that actors may become overly dependent on their mental models of competitive space, to the extent that they fail to notice changes in the material conditions of their business environment, until these changes have become so widespread, or significant in other ways, that their organization's capacity for successful adaptation has been seriously undermined. While there have been several anecdotal accounts of cognitive inertia reported in the literature, and a number of researchers have explored processes of cognitive change in organizations more generally, to date there have been virtually no studies published which have investigated this phenomenon specifically within the domain of competitor assessment. This paper reports one such investigation, a longitudinal field study which explored the extent to which actors' mental models of competitive space in the UK residential estate agency (real estate) industry, an industry characterized by high volatility in recent years, remained stable or changed over time. An initial sample of 208 respondents from 58 firms completed detailed questionnaires at the onset of the recent recession in the UK property market. The questionnaires were designed to elicit the respondents' perceptions of their own organization and various competitors on a number of key dimensions. A sub-sample of 114 respondents from 41 firms returned a further set of completed questionnaires, 12 to 18 months later, when the recession had become deeply established. The findings are entirely consistent with the cognitive inertia hypothesis. The results indicate that the respondents' individual and collective cognitions remained highly stable, despite a significant down-turn in the property market from T1 to T2.
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-268). Available on microfilm from University Microfilms.
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