Alexander Wilson

Extreme events, organizations and the politics of strategic decision making

Purpose – Threats of extreme events, such as terrorist attacks or infrastructure breakdown, are potentially highly disruptive events for all types of organizations. This paper seeks to take a political perspective to power in strategic decision making and how this influences planning for extreme events. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 160 informants drawn from 135 organizations, which are part of the critical national infrastructure in the UK, forms the empirical basis of the paper. Most of these organizations had publicly placed business continuity and preparedness as a strategic priority. The paper adopts a qualitative approach, coding data from focus groups. Findings – In nearly all cases there is a pre-existing dominant coalition which keeps business continuity decisions off the strategic agenda. The only exceptions to this are a handful of organizations which provide continuous production, such as some utilities, where disruption to business as usual can be readily quantified. The data reveal structural and decisional elements of the exercise of power. Structurally, the dominant coalition centralizes control by ensuring that only a few functional interests participate in decision making. Research limitations/implications – Decisional elements of power emphasize the dominance of calculative rationality where decisions are primarily made on information and arguments which can be quantified. Finally, the paper notes the recursive aspect of power relations whereby agency and structure are mutually constitutive over time. Organizational structures of control are maintained, despite the involvement of managers charged with organizational preparedness and resilience, who remain outside the dominant coalition. Originality/value – The paper constitutes a first attempt to show how planning for emergencies fits within the strategy-making process and how politically controlled this process is.

The unfulfilled promise of management education (ME): the role, value and purposes of ME

Purpose – This paper aims to review the evolution of management education primarily over the last 50 years and seeks to identify the challenges and lessons learned in management education and to assess the potential for change. To gain insight into these issues the authors draw on the perspectives of around 40 key individuals from academia, professional bodies, media, business and students.Design/methodology/approach – The content of the paper is based upon a qualitative analysis of around 40 two‐to‐three hour interviews of key global players in the management education field.Findings – The key stakeholders in management education are identified as students, business and employers respectively. But in terms of relative stakeholder influence faculty, business and students are the top three influencers. Faculty represent the supply‐side whereas business and students represent the demand side of management education. There is evidence that higher tuition fees may increase the power of students and business r...

An analysis of the environment and competitive dynamics of management research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper examines some of the controversies facing business schools in their future evolution and pays particular attention to their competitive positioning as centres of management research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines and builds on current literature to provide an analytic overview of the environment and competitive challenges to management research in business schools. Findings – The paper assesses the impacts of a globalized environment and ever-changing competitive dynamics, for example in terms of the supply of high-quality faculty, on the activity of management research in business schools. It points out that research impacts must be judged not only in terms of theoretical development but also managerial and policy impact. However, managerial impact is difficult to measure and the “voice of practice” must be carefully identified. Originality/value – The paper identifies the current challenges for undertaking innovative research in business schools in light of their competitive environment. Three interrelated conjectures focusing particularly on managerial impact are raised which identify problems and limitations of current debates on management research in business schools.

Opening strategy through 'Jamming': exploring the process

Jamming is a term which is increasingly common in case studies and literature, both academic and nonacademic, especially where topics such as social technology, collaboration and innovation are a predominant focus. An IBM expression which represents their use of social technologies to connect actors to collaborate in an ‘online conference’ environment, these ‘Jams’ are usually focused, time-limited events surrounding a particular theme or set of topics. Jamming has also become an almost customary example presented in literature on the topic of ‘open strategy’, especially the IBM ‘InnovationJams’, which in the past have opened strategic conversation to actors across the entire organisation. Open strategy itself arises from increasing interest in the phenomenon of openness in strategy research and practice, and how this represents a paradigm shift from the more traditional, top-down role of strategic planning. In light of these developments, this short paper offers a brief overview of the Jamming concept, particularly in the context of a case study into its use in a collaborative open strategy initiative, involving IBM and a public defence organisation. It concludes with a selection of questions which could direct future research.

Future scenarios for management education

Purpose – Business schools are facing unprecedented challenges, ranging from financial sustainability in some quarters to waning demand for the MBA to the potentially disruptive impact of massive open online courses. Given these challenges, how might the future of management education unfold? The purpose of this paper is to better understand how leaders in management education perceive these challenges and their likely impact on the evolution of the field. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 39 experts, the majority of who were in leadership positions at business schools. Each of these in-depth interviews was tape-recorded, transcribed and then content-analysed. Findings – The authors asked the panel of experts for their insights on what they perceive to be the most likely, best-case, and worst-case scenarios in the next ten years. The modal response for the most likely scenario was one where intense competition pushes schools to specialise and better differentiate...

Collaboration and knowledge sharing in open strategy initiatives

Abstract: The purpose of this paper arises from increasing interest in the phenomenon of openness in strategy research and practice, and how this presents a radical change from established theories of business strategy (Chesbrough and Appleyard, 2007). In light of these developments, this conceptual paper intends to present a typology of methods being utilised to enable collaboration and knowledge sharing in open strategy initiatives, providing case evidence found within an emerging stream of open strategy literature. Involving a wide range of stakeholders in strategy is not necessarily a new phenomenon. There is evidence, within organisations such as IBM, that projects to increase participation in strategy processes have been ongoing for some time. However, such practices have been largely under researched and it was not until a seminal paper by Chesbrough and Appleyard (2007), based on Chesbrough’s earlier work on open innovation, emphasised the need for a new, more open approach to strategy. Subsequently the term “open strategy” was devised, and various scholars and consultants have taken an interest, directly and indirectly, in this concept. Examples include research under the guise of “Open-source Strategy” (Newstead and Lanzerotti), “Opening Strategy” (Whittington et al, 2011), “Social Software and Strategy” (Haefliger et al, 2011), “Democratizing Strategy” (Stieger et al, 2012), “Strategy as the Practice of Thousands” (Dobusch and Muller-Seitz, 2012), “Strategizing Open Innovation” (Fai and Roath, 2013), and “Open Strategizing” (Berends et al, 2013). Dobusch and Kapeller (2013) consider that “the basic idea of open strategy making is to pool the knowledge, ideas or opinions of certain audiences”, indicating that open strategy shares resemblance to other collaborative and open initiatives. Theories such as the open-source movement and collective wisdom are relevant to the notion of open strategy, underlining how collaboration, harnessing the power of the crowd, and thinking outside the traditional confines of the firm can produce positive outcomes. Furthermore, the development of the knowledge-based economy has implied an important change in inter-intra organisational processes, including implementation of collaborative initiatives and knowledge sharing in more dynamic environments. Such theories are now being applied to the formation and practice of strategy, enabling consensus to be built around organisational and strategic issues to support business ecosystems (Chesbrough and Appleyard, 2007). The sharing of knowledge through organisational networks, such as in open strategy initiatives, may arise intentionally or naturally. Cases of open strategy, as explored in this paper, also indicate evidence of social technologies and web-based networks being used to magnify the opportunities within firms for collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation, around organisational strategy. Keywords: Open strategy, Knowledge sharing, Social technology, Collaboration. Words: 433

Exploring the roles of external facilitators in IT-driven open strategizing

This paper examines the different roles external facilitators have in information technology driven open strategizing. Using a strategy-as-practice lens and drawing on two empirical cases of open strategy in organizations, our paper highlights four emerging roles of external facilitators which we call; structuring, promoting, moderating and analyzing. In concluding the paper we call for further research relating to external facilitators and open strategy.

Blind spots in African management education: An examination of issues deserving greater attention

There is reason to be optimistic about management education in Africa given the growth in the number of business schools on the continent and continued efforts at raising quality. There remains room for improvement in the field, of course, and the issues and challenges that need to be tackled have been written about elsewhere (e.g. African Management Initiative (AMI), 2013; AMBA, 2015; Thomas et al., 2016). The study reported here has the more nuanced purpose of understanding the blind spots that persist in the field. These are issues that are largely ignored or receive insufficient attention because their significance is underestimated. Through a series of structured in-depth interviews with leading management educators and stakeholders, we uncover three potential blind spots to do with a lack of demand-side orientation, unequal access to management education, and the need for glocalization.

Services offshoring: a microfoundations perspective

The objective of this paper is to shed light on the link between services offshoring strategy and its outcomes for the firm by developing a theoretical framework for examining the role of employee motivation in the implementation of services offshoring strategy. Our framework is built on two conceptual foundations: the Microfoundations view of strategy and Goal Framing theory. We analyze services offshoring in terms of (a) the attributes and (b) the outcomes of firm level offshoring strategies, and (c) the micro-level processes that are essential for realizing the outcomes. As part of these micro-level processes, we focus particularly on employee motivation for services offshoring strategy implementation. We argue that our framework should constitute the basis of future empirical research in services offshoring, as it aims to contribute a greater theoretical understanding and practical recommendations for the refinement of services offshoring strategies.