Mike Meldrum

Creating change from below: early lessons for agents of change

With existing approaches to change management failing to deliver results, different ideas are needed. New organisational forms require a greater focus on change that emerges from real business opportunities. The ooportunities can be the basis of pockets of good practice which act as influential role models for change. This paper investigates four case studies of change initiated in this way and identifies five key themes from this research: vision; the self insight and ambition required to take personal risk; positioning of causes; subversion; and political astuteness. The paper concludes with an assessment of why this approach to change is likely to be considered both relevant and practical for managers.

Meta‐abilities and the implementation of strategy: Knowing what to do is simply not enough

Implementation is widely recognised as one of the greatest Achilles’ Heels for all strategy initiatives. Many organisations have tried to overcome this problem through building the management competencies of their managers. What tends to be absent from the development programmes designed to do this is attention to any higher order or enabling competencies, sometimes referred to as meta‐abilities. Without greater attention to these more fundamental managerial attributes, most management development programmes will lose their strategic impact. A case study is used to illustrate the sort of pitfalls involved and some implications for using management development in this way are suggested. Finally, it is noted that using management development to improve strategy implementation demands a more sophisticated approach than tends to be used currently. However, this will also require organisations to break out of the vicious circle of unsophisticated usage and to challenge their current practices.

Critical issues in implementing marketing

The issue of implementation consistently appears in both academic and practitioner literature as a problem for marketing. Attempts to address this problem have often adopted the notion of antecedents to enhanced marketing practice as a means of better understanding the issues involved. Within this, however, the link between what needs to be achieved and how marketing knowledge and skills can be utilized to deliver appropriate outcomes remains unclear. Analysis of this gap yields a number of research propositions which require investigation if such knowledge and skills are to influence managerial behaviour. Central to this is the idea that there are a range of competences, which include attitudinal issues, about which greater understanding is required if the implementation debate is to be progressed.

Is management development fulfilling its organisational role

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.

Key Marketing Concepts

Understanding the Basis of Marketing - Understanding Different Forms of Marketing - Understanding Markets and Competitors - Understanding Product Management - Understanding Positioning - Understanding Marketing Relationships - Understanding Marketing Planning and Control

Consumer Buying Behaviour

As well as understanding a market in terms of trends, competitors, segments and so on, organisations supplying products or services also need to have an appreciation of the way customers behave when coming to a specific purchase decision. In addition, organisations need to understand how this behaviour varies between different groups of customers in order to ascertain the ways in which markets can be segmented. Without this knowledge, suppliers will find it difficult to choose between the alternative elements of the marketing mix to construct a product offering which will find favour with those customers it has decided to target.

Marketing High-Tech Products

Technology is becoming an important competitive tool for many organisations as a means of differentiating themselves from other businesses in the market-place. Where such technology is a significant part of the overall market offering, organisations must consider whether its inclusion requires a particular approach or whether the nature of the technology will have little impact on the way in which the product is marketed.

Developing New Products

A significant proportion of most organisations’ revenue is derived from products introduced in the recent past. However, new products can take many different forms and can be derived from a number of different external and internal sources. Their development or acquisition, however, is costly and there is a great danger of failure. This danger can be reduced if marketing principles and personnel can be involved at every stage of the acquisition, development and launch of new products.

The Boston Matrix

The Boston Matrix or, as it is sometimes called, the Boston Box is a vehicle for classifying and characterising an organisation’s activities in relation to the markets in which it operates. It can be used to represent strategic business units (SBUs), or product portfolios, which are then located on the matrix for analytical purposes. Such a presentation will enable the strategic management of an organisation to make judgements about how best to manage each business or product group, and to identify gaps or areas which may prove problematic as markets grow, mature or decline.

Marketing and Ethics

In recent years, dissatisfaction has been expressed by increasingly large numbers of people about a society which seems to have consumption as both its means and its end. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a growing consciousness of the problems that the age of mass consumption brought with it. A new awareness of the alternatives that might be possible, indeed necessary, became apparent. Such moves were supported by books like Charles Reich’s The Greening of America, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture. The message articulated by these and other writers of the movement was basically a simple one: that people could no longer be thought of as ‘consumers’, as some aggregate variable in the grand design of market planning. They were individuals intent on doing their own bidding.