nan Sushil

Interpretive Ranking Process

Ranking of variables in any context is a central concern of the management process and decision-making. For example, the causes leading to defects/quality are to be ranked to identify crucial causes to be controlled on a priority basis; actions planned are to be ranked with respect to their influence/impact on the performance areas (or KRAs — Key Result Areas) for resource allocation and prioritization. The management process at large is concerned with selectivity and prioritization and is treated at the extreme either based on intuitive judgment or rational choice process. There are strengths and limitations of both the extreme approaches and there is a growing trend to synthesize and balance the two extremes in decision-making. However, in either of the approaches the interpretation is not explicit and there might exist some weaknesses on the front of knowledge creation, storage and utilization processes.Some attempts in past have been made to develop interpretive models of decision-making such as sense making, mental models, organizational culture and so on. However, still there is lack of a ranking process that is rooted in interpretive perspective. This paper presents an ‘Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP)’, which uses Interpretive Matrix as a basic tool and pair comparison of interpretations in the matrix. This results into interpretive logic — knowledge base and a dominance matrix. All the dominance relationships and interpretations can be diagrammatically represented in the form of an ‘Interpretive Ranking Model’. The process is illustrated by an example of SAP-LAP (Situation-Actor-Process-Learning-Action-Performance) interactions (Sushil, 2000).

Revisiting Flexibility in Organizations: Exploring its Impact on Performance

Today’s knowledge age organizations operate in more turbulent business and regulatory environments and managers need to take proactive stance in creating combating strategies for such environments and to adapt to such external turbulent environments. Incorporation of ‘Flexibility’ in strategic processes of any organization becomes very important at various levels in all the perspectives of the organization. This paper critically highlights the gap in flexibility research that flexibility is not merely related to technology but flexibility is more deeply rooted in strategic management processes of organizations. The paper reviews the developments in different types of flexibility studies such as organizational, technical, operational, strategic, marketing and financial flexibility. The area of flexibility and organization strategy is emerging and needs a lot of attention in order to understand its impact on various management processes within organization leading to enhanced competitiveness and better performance. This paper also emphasizes on how flexibility has evolved as a concept and taken a shape of strategic driver to improve organizational performance.

SAP-LAP Linkages — A Generic Interpretive Framework for Analyzing Managerial Contexts

The implementation of flexible systems management paradigm can be facilitated by SAP-LAP (Situation, Actor, Process, Learning, Action, Performance) framework and SAP-LAP models. The SAP-LAP models in vogue are atomic or naive models. In these models, the components of SAP-LAP are treated in isolation. This paper presents a generic framework to identify SAP-LAP linkages and develop models of managerial contexts taking into consideration various interrelationships along with their interpretation. The integrated framework is presented using self-interaction, cross-interaction and assessment matrices.

Cognitive bias in salespersons in specialty drug selling of pharmaceutical industry

Purpose – Specialty drug development is capital‐intensive and represents a new era for the entire health ecosystem. This “newness” has resulted in below‐par sales performance of these drugs. This paper seeks to explore the intricate relationship of product (or company), salespersons, doctors and consumers (patients) in the given scenario.Design/methodology/approach – The study makes use of grounded theory and total interpretive structural modeling (TISM). Grounded theory is used to explore various factors of cognitive bias in selling specialty drugs. TISM is used to create a hierarchy amongst the factors and interpret the relationships amongst them.Findings – The study proposes a cognitive bias amplification model explaining the phenomenon of cognitive bias in specialty pharmaceutical selling.Originality/value – The study fills part of the significant research gap and addresses the issues in selling specialty drugs. The cognitive bias amplification model is helpful in providing the starting point for sale...

The Flexible Enterprise

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Modeling strategic performance management of automobile manufacturing enterprises

Purpose – This paper aims to present strategic performance management modeling of the Indian automobile manufacturing enterprises. This will help to understand the hierarchical structure and linkages of different strategic factors related to enterprise performance in a better way. Automobile manufacturing industry is one of the top industries in India. It is of paramount importance to identify the strategic factors and their linkages to understand the strategic performance management issues better. Design/methodology/approach – Flexible strategy game-card, an evolving performance management framework, has been taken as the basis for the development of a strategic performance management model. Thematic content analysis is used to analyze semi-structured interviews and for identifying strategic factors related to performance. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) is used to develop the hierarchical structure of these performance strategic factors. Case-lets and statistical analysis are used to furth...

Theoretical Roots of Flexible Strategy Game-card: An Evolving Strategic Performance Management Framework

In the last two decades, many developments have been made in the field of strategic performance management in terms of performance management frameworks/models. The major developments are performance prism, Kanji’s business scorecard, holistic scorecard, system dynamics-based balanced scorecard, etc. One of the attempts made to propose an integrated performance management framework is named as flexible strategy game-card, which intends to support full cycle of strategy formulation, execution, performance measurement, and management. This chapter is an attempt to discuss about this evolving performance management framework in terms of its evolution, the theoretical roots, and application of framework by presenting an illustration. The outcome of the chapter is to share theoretical roots with the researchers and practitioners related to this recent development.

Principles of Flowing Stream Strategy

The continuity–change matrix presented in the last chapter has identified four types of strategies, viz., tree, mushroom, wind, and flowing stream strategy. It has been observed that though a large class of organizations either fall under the category of flowing stream or are heading toward it, strategic roadmap of balancing high continuity and high change forces is not yet adequately articulated. In order to evolve such a roadmap, guiding principles of flowing stream strategy are discussed in this chapter. First, the overall strategic thinking behind these principles (covering strategic dimensions and associated risks) is outlined. Subsequently, each principle is discussed so as to identify the strategic channel it supports leading to the evolution of key channels framework (to be elaborated in the next chapter).

Revisiting performance measurement and management: deriving linkages with strategic management theories

The interest in performance measurement and management (PMM) has notably increased in the last two decades. The purpose of the paper is to revisit the research and knowledge base of the last two decades related to performance measurement and management and exploring the linkages with theories related to strategic management. A critical analysis of existing performance management frameworks has been carried out and an attempt has been made to derive linkages with strategic management theories. Ten PMM frameworks have been selected for the study, and some classical strategic management theories have been chosen for exploring the linkages of two areas, i.e., strategic management and performance measurement and management. The linkages with strategic management theories help to reflect the relationship between strategy and firms performance. The analysis carried out in the study reflects that most of the PMM frameworks follow resource-based view theory, and developments happened post 2000 considered stakeholder theory by inclusion of all the stakeholders, but still the PMM frameworks lack strategic orientation which is an eye-opening result that came out of the study. The results of the study can be validated by one of the empirical studies by Thaker (2011) stating that still business performance management systems are satisfying tactical purposes and are lacking in strategic thinking.

Global Competitiveness of Informal Economy Organizations

This chapter presents a framework for informal economies in developing nations. It will explain linkages with the formal economies of both developing and developed nations as a function of national competitiveness . We develop propositions which explain how the dynamics and growth of the informal economy in developing nations are linked to the growth of the formal economy of developing/developed nations. The chapter illustrates the framework with the case of Jaipur Rugs and concludes with suggestions for future research in an under researched area of the informal economy.