Maastricht University 2012, useful for anybody studying change managment, HR, leadership or is generally curious about this topic.

1. Managers, Corporations & Strategy
The HOW of becoming a
big (= successful, happy) fish
by
Eva Eisele
Franziska Becker

2. What the blockbook says…
Today at Manager @ work

3. What is Strategy?
Mintzberg’s Assessment of daily strategy
Heading towards Management 2.0
• Moon Shot
• Absorptive Capacity
• Reversal Change
Implications for education in/and Management 2.0
Conclusion & References
AGENDA

4. How do we get there?
AGENDA TODAY:
STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT 2.0

5. How would you define and describe
the term strategy?
Mintzberg‘s 5 P‘sforstrategy(1987)
Plan: developedconcsiously to determinecourse of action in advance
Ploy: maneuverintented to outwit a competitor
Pattern: consistency in behaviorwhetherornot intented
Position: a means of locating an organization in an "environment“
Perspective: an ingrained way of perceiving the world shared by
members of an organization through intentions and actions

6. INTRODUCTION TO STRATEGY AND
MINTZBERG INSIGHTS

7. Function of strategy?
(Pfeffer& Sutton 2006)
2 assumptions
-Organizations will be
better suited doing some
things but not others
-Resources (money, time)
are limited
Strategy provides
focus, helps setting
priorities and allocate
resources

8. Strategic Planning in Business schools
(Pfeffer & Sutton 2006)
Rise in the 1960s/1970s
1980s: Research on
whetherornotstrategyaffectscompanyperformancedissappeare
dlargely
Importance of strategytakenforgrantedquality
But: empiricalevidenceshowsweak and inconsistentplanning-
performancefindings
Emphasizing on strategy just one method -
and probably not the best - to promote
performance

9. Mintzberg on Strategy
Widely held view Reality
- Managers are strongly
Manager as oriented to action
- reflective systematic - hectic pace & lot of
planner interruptions
- architect of - Decomposition of
organizational purpose information due to analysis

10. Mintzberg on Strategy
Emergent
strategies,
Strategic informal
planning learning
 Successful strategists bounce back and forth between the
concrete & conceptual

11. “MANAGEMENT IS ONE OF
HUMANKIND’S MOST IMPORTANT
INVENTIONS”

12. Article in a Nutshell
Objective Road map for reinventing management
Conference of 35 management scholars &
Method
practitioners, May 2008
Keyresu 25 challenging moon shots for Management 2.0
lts

13. Management
Management 2.0
1.0 From prod.
from indep. Industrial labor
Farmers to to Information/
productive Knowledge
industrial labor Worker
Scientific Management Era
1. semiskilled employees to
perform: McCullum’s Idea of
Daniel
repetitive activities
Management How in a creative economy
competently, diligently, labor,
Discipline, Division of where entrepreneurial
and efficiently description,
Detailed job genius is the secret to success
promotion and pay-based do you inspire employees to
2. Coordinating efforts in
on merit bring the gifts of initiative,
efficient ways: imagination, and passion to
enableing complex goods and
“Henry Ford understood work every day?
services to bethe power of
exploited produced in
large quantities.
productivity”

15. TESTING THE 25 MOON SHOTS FOR
MANAGEMENT FOR APPLICABILITY

16. The new man on the moon in
Management can…

17. The new man on the moon in
Management can…

20. DEVELOPMENT OF
‘ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY’

21. Article in a Nutshell
Further development of a “process perspective” on absorptive
Objective capacity
Method Case study approach: WebCo, HealthCo, ChemCo
- Episodic power is crucial for the adaption and utilization of external
knowledge
Keyfindi
- To increase the ability to absorb knowledge across boundaries
ngs organizations progress from syntactic to pragmatic modes of
knowledge transfer

22. Absorptive Capacity
(Cohen & Levinthal, 1990)
= the ability to locate new ideas and to incorporate them into an
organization‘s processes
begins with individuals, but it is the organizational ability to acquire and
apply new knowledge that is of primary interest
• prior internal knowledge
• diverse background beneficial
• „gate-keeping“ or „boundary-
spanning“-roles
• too high overlap of internal
expertise „not-invented-here-
syndrom“
(Mintzberg, p.75)

23. Internal Processes of ACAP
(Zahra & George 2002)
External sources:
Aquisitions, licencing,
inter-organizational
relations
Internal sources:
- Past experience
- Learning by
doing
Org. Crisis, Social networks,
technological shifts, coordinators, etc.
policy changes etc.

24. Individual agency and ACAP
(Jones 2006)
Boundaries
Boundary
Change
Spanners /
Gatekeepers
Agents
Power Top Management / Strategic Choice

25. 2) The general manager of HealthCo claims
that „we are a copying organization based
on what‘s happening in Northumbria,
rather than us copying a model and
learning from that model and changing it..“
Do you think copying the strategy of a
successful organization is a wise strategy in
general?
What may cause failure rather than success?
Pfeffer and Sutton (2006)
„What actually provides competitive success
and what is difficult to copy is not so much
knowing what to do – deciding on the right
strategy – but instead having the ability to
do it“

26. 3) In the case of ChemCo the head office
initially rejected ProjectIvan because it did
not fit the current strategic priorities of the
company.
In your opinion, is strategy destiny or might
Sutton and Pfeffer:
a• strategic focus also has its downsides and
Resourcesconsumed in planning
– Averageplanning of budgetingconsumes 4-5 months
pitfalls?
– Consumes 20-30% of senior executives and financialmanagers time
– Ford motor: $ 1.2 billion per annum forplanning and budgeting
• Leadershipattentiondivertedfromsolving fundamental problems to
strategic and analytical issues
• Focus createsblinders – incubentsgetreplacedbynewcomersdue to lack
of knowledge&skills

27. What didwetake away from it
for Management 2.0?
We conclude:
1. Competitive Advantage
2. Unclear if suitable for soft-changes
3. Proactivity & Pragmatic communication
ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY AS A CHANGE
MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

28. MANAGERIAL LESSONS FROM A
MERGER EFFORT

29. Management in thechangecurve???
Uncertainty
Sense- Communic
aka
making lost ation
Resistance to
change Re- sense-
making

30. Article in a Nutshell
Deepening the understanding of sensemaking
Objective history in an organization to fully explain the success
and failure of strategic change efforts
Case Study: A (failed) governmental office merger
Method (IT, accounting, office service, statistics).
Strategy0 accepted
Strategy1
rejected
The dependence of change episodes
Keyresu The importance of communication in strategic
lts change
Balancing sensebreaking and symbolic Mngmt.

31. Organizational
Strategic Change Sensemaking
either a redefinition The managerial
of organizational communication of
The success lies in the
mission or a So why do we need new beliefs and
ability to
substantial shift in destructive
communicate and meanings to staff
overall priorities and sensemaking for
support of the shifted
goals to reflect new successful change?
direction
emphasis or PSYCHOLOGY:
"a motivated, continuous
direction
effort to understand
connections

32. DESTROYING, CREATING,
RECONSTRUCTING
FOR THE RADICAL CHANGE PROCESS

33. Change Management explained…
• Organizational Sensebreaking
• Meaning Void (unfreezing)
• Sensegiving
• Acceptance of Strategy
(Nascent freezing)
• Sensegiving Residuals
• Sensebreaking Residuals

34. “Recent research suggests that managers can avoid creating sensebreaking residuals
1. What were the main problems for the employees after the merger cancellation?
by avoiding sensebreaking altogether. External events make way for new meaning
even without managerial sensebreaking”

35. What the article says:
It depends….
S0
1. The time elapsed between
successive change episodes
2. Extent of organizational
sensebreaking used
3. Extent of realized structural
changes
4. Degree of staff acceptance and
commitment to previous change
S1

36. What did you take away from it
for Management 2.0?
We conclude:
1. great importance of communication
and transparency
3. Rising importance of symbolic
Management
SENSEMAKING AS A CHANGE
MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

37. What could schools and other educational
institutions do to develop curricula the better
handling of change?
The Independent (2010)

38. What to do aboutstrategic
Management 2.0?
(Pfeffer & Sutton 2006)
• Find also alternative ways of figuring out what to do (e.g.
Listen to customers & employees)
• Don‘t confuse operational or implementation problems
with the need for changing strategy
• Keep it simple and actionable
• Learn as you go
• Balance attention to strategy with attention to the details
of implementation

40. References
• Covey, Stephen R., 2004, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press: New York
• Cohen, W. M, & Levinthal, D. A. (1990)Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152.
• Easterby-Smith, M., Graca, M., Antonacopoulou, E., & Ferdinand, J. (2008). Absorptive Capacity: A Process
Perspective. Management Learning, 39(5), 483-501.
• Hamel, G. (2009). Moon Shots for Management. Harvard Business Review, Febuary, 1-9.
• Jones, O. (2006). Developing Absorptive Capacity in Mature Organizations. The Change Agent’s Role.
Management Learning, 37(3), 355–376.
• Mantere, S., Schildt, H. A., & Sillince, J. A. A. (2012). Reversal of strategic change. Academy of Management
Journal, 55(1), 172-196.
• Mintzberg, H. (1987). The strategy concept I: Five Ps for Strategy. California Management Review, Fall 1987,
11-24.
• Mintzberg, H. (2011). Managing. Prentice Hall, San Francisco.
• Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. (2006). Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting from
Evidence-Based Management. Harvard Business Press, Boston MA.
• Symonds (2012). The Art of being a good Manager. retrieved at May 3rd, 2012 from
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/mbas-guide/the-art-of-being-a-good-manager-
1938358.html
• Zahra, S. A., & George, G. (2002). Absorptive Capacity: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension. The
Academy of Management Review, 27(2), 185-203.