Bjørn Hennestad

Global transfer of management practices across nations and MNC subcultures.

Executive Overview Our case shows how a Norwegian Multinational Firm (Norwegian Multi) introduced a new performance management practice. The initial starting point was a “best practice” developed by a U.S. consultancy based on the benchmarking of large global firms. Norwegian Multi chose to remove from this best practice the elements that were seen as most provocative to dominant cultural values. Over time more and more subsidiaries reintroduced elements of the original practice. The management practice we examine—performance management (PM)—can be regarded as an extension of the traditional performance appraisal, linking individual performance to corporate strategy.1 Researchers separate calculative PM (focus on individual contributions and rewards) and collaborative PM (focus on creating a partnership culture between employer and employee, for example through competency development).2 In the United States, PM practices contain both calculative and collaborative elements, whereas in Scandinavia the calcu...

Implementing human resource development best practices: Replication or re-creation?

Abstract Firms increasingly introduce HRD ‘best practices’ developed somewhere else, but results often fall short of expectations. Much of existing theory fails to guide the implementation of HRD best practices because it does not recognize how introduced practices interact with existing practices in the firm. In this paper, we contrast the dominant perspective ‘Implementation as Replication’ with a perspective of ‘Implementation as Re-creation’. Through four stages of the implementation process, we identify and discuss how these contrasting perspectives yield different implications for how firms go about introducing HRD best practices. First, when firms take up a practice, is this a process of adoption or translation? Second, is it assumed that new knowledge can be implanted directly and lead to new behaviour, or is active experimentation a necessary precondition to gain new knowledge? Third, are deviations from the intended plan considered errors to be corrected or sources for learning? Fourth, are introduced best practices treated in isolation or as integral parts of the firms management system? We argue that implementation efforts guided by the re-creation perspective increase the prospects of HRD best practices succeeding as a useful tool in the receiving firm.

Organizing, changing and learning: A sensemaking perspective on an ongoing ‘soap story’

This article adopts a sensemaking perspective to explore changing and learning in an organization that has been making the same product for more than 175 years. Using an insider/outsider methodology, this case provides evidence of dynamic, ongoing processes of changing and learning across time, albeit without formal change intervention. We conclude that organizational becoming, learning and change are found in the juxtaposing of order and disorder, frames of past learning and cues of present action. This balance between the past and emerging present is advanced as a way of seeing organizational learning, which is sensitive to process and time.

IS projects and implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to participate in the discussion related to why IS projects, both in Western and in Eastern European countries, e.g. Poland, often fail. One major reason is claimed to be poor implementation, and the article asks whether the stakeholders involved overlook the challenge of and the need for knowledge in change management (CM) when implementing complex IT systems.Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on observations of what is reflected in the CM, the project management (PM) and the IS literature. A basic assumption for the approach is that what PM and IS textbooks focus on strongly influences the views and practice of practitioners. A content analysis method was applied to examine empirically 22 textbooks to evaluate whether the IT/PM literature emphasizes relevant essential recommendations developed in the CM literature for handling changes. A mini‐case was used to illustrate how implementation is done in practice.Findings – The research reveals that in ...

Implementing Participative Management: Transition Issues from the Field

This article tells the story of an attempt to transform the management of Extrusion Company from a traditional to a participative form. It is based on a longitudinal study of this endeavor. The chief executive officer initiated the attempt in a way that created commitment but that led later to disappointment and frustration and, still later, to more relaxed expectations. After more than 2 years, however, the outcome of this transformation endeavor remains undecided. The article analyzes what happened and suggests the term instrumental change management to signify the insufficient attention that was paid to the change process, which seems in turn to account for the lack of change momentum. It further suggests that this term indicates the importance of a leadership dimension as well as a management dimension if organizational transformation is to occur.

Organizations: Frameworks or frame work?

Abstract This article presents a methodological suggestion for organizational learning and learning about organizations. “Framework” is employed as a fruitful organizational metaphor for the purpose of understanding and keeping in touch with change processes in the organization. The existence of change processes is seen to be a fundamental characteristic of organizations as social phenomenon. Organizations as framework are accordingly seen to be continously created and recreated by actors goverened by their cognitive frames. These frames and frameworks serve the contradictory function of both preconditioning creative activity as well as stabilizing and straightening — framing — human activity. The on-going change processes tend to take place “behind the back” of the organizational partipicipants due to the implicit nature of their frames, and the character of that change tends to remain within the basic prevailing assumptions of the focal organization. The ability to get in touch with these dialectics, also a prerequisite for the ability to manage organizational change processes, can therefore be seen to be dependent upon an ability to elicit and reflect upon the frames that the organizational participants make use of. A “frameworkshop” is proposed as one possible tool for frame work to help the participants of an organization explore the logic of their organizational life.

The board: a change agent?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into why shareholders often claim dissatisfaction with the results delivered by their boards. A central reason is that boards fail to get their critical decisions effectively implemented. The paper also focuses on whether boards apply essentials developed in the change management discipline.Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a study of board documents to capture what boards actually do. The documents were compiled from two Norwegian companies during the 1993‐2005 period. A content analysis was the analytic tool.Findings – The research indicates that boards apply rational and deterministic approaches to implement critical decisions. It also reveals that boards tend to overlook essentials from the change management discipline. The paper identifies the potential for improved board effectiveness in implementing critical decisions.Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of this research is that several observations ma...

Standardised leadership tools in MNEs – critical reflections on the conditions for successful implementations

The article is inspired by a paradox: why do MNEs like standardised leadership tools when everybody argues that the world is becoming more complex? Based on this paradox the article raises the question: under what conditions will standardisation of a leadership tool be most useful to an MNE? Previous literature suggests that standardisation of a leadership tool may have control and learning benefits, and the article explores these effects looking at external and internal contexts of MNE subsidiaries. The paper is conceptual, but draws also on examples from a case study within a Norwegian MNE. The article argues that external complexity diminishes the usefulness of standardisation to an MNE. Internal fit of the tool with other tools will increase benefits of standardisation, the article argues, whereas managerial autonomy is associated with higher subsidiary learning effects, but lower synergy and control effects.