Search results

The usefulness of the literature is questioned in terms of influencing and transmitting leadership behaviour. The limitations of literature as a literary form are exposed. It is shown that leadership can only be experienced and not acted nor emulated in the form of an artificial behaviour. By examining the consumers of leadership literature, it is demonstrated that the providers are satisfying their wants. Any weaknesses in the medium and the failure of developing a leadership technology are acceptable to the consumers. It is shown that identity, technology and leadership are strongly interrelated and that the new form of leadership which is evolving in the emerging era of discontinuous change emphasises identity creation.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/00251749510087614. When citing the article, please cite: Rainer Feurer, Kazem Chaharbaghi, (1995), “Strategy development: past, present and future”, Management Decision, Vol. 33 Iss: 6, pp. 11 - 21.

Sound design, planning and monitoring is critical to the operational and financial success of today′s sophisticated manufacturing and non‐manufacturing systems. Owing to their increasing complexity, discrete‐event simulation is becoming the most acceptable tool to aid planning the design and management of production and operations. This growing acceptance has led to the development of many simulators. Two fundamental criteria enable assessment of the suitability of these simulations in complex environments. First, the sophistication of their modelling capability to handle a wide range of problematic situations and second, ease of use. These two considerations, however, tend to conflict; resulting in flexible simulators being difficult to use and vice versa. DSSL II is an advanced simulation methodology with a well defined and user‐friendly modelling strategy. It has been devised to offer a versatile approach in modelling today′s sophisticated systems and policies. Features incorporated include a schematic modelling concept to represent the operational logic of systems, a set of software modules and an associated logical structure. Using the logical structure, the modules are combined to transform the concept of the schematic model into a representative computer program. Using DSSL II, models of manufacturing and non‐manufacturing systems are constructed readily to provide accurate and trustworthy answers to essential “what‐if” questions posed by decision makers, to determine which out of several scenarios would be the most appropriate. The purpose of this paper is to present the concepts and techniques employed by DSSL II. A simple case study and an example of a real industrial application are given in order to demonstrate its features and potential.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship between three concepts: organisations, transformability and the dynamics of strategy. These three concepts together with their interrelationships are central in explaining the life cycle of organisations, their survival and renewal.

The development of this explanation has been based on bringing together a diversity of perspectives. Each perspective provides a horizon of understanding by directing attention in a particular way. The benefits of this approach are that it avoids the pitfalls of one‐dimensionalism. This approach more accurately reflects the multi‐faceted reality within which organisations operate.

Discusses, compares and contextualises the findings and approaches of the papers in this special issue.

The perspectives considered represent a small sample of the diversity that exists. However, this sample as serves a starting‐point in developing a wider, more holistic debate that aims to bring theory and practice together.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate ways in which collective creativity and individual creativity exist in an “and/both” rather than in an “either/or” relationship.

This study uses and interrelates a number of dualities using “metalectics”, the principal task of which is to balance seemingly conflicting opposites by revealing them and locating them on their strengths.

Collective creativity, as a bridging metaphor, renders itself as an oxymoron, both literally and as an outcome: where individual and collective creativity are dichotomised, diversity is treated as a constraint, and collaboration is confused with coordination.

An essential of creativity is deviancy, and that this has to be valued to bring about change.

Heterogeneous communities of practice should not be confused with homogenous communities of practice because this causes artificial dialogues that destroy the very creativity they claim to ignite.

The paper offers an alternative way of thinking, arguing for a move away from simplified, unbalanced perspectives of creativity that focus on one‐dimensionality and asymmetry.

The paper seeks to examine the masculinist assumptions and effects of managerialism on public services through a trifocal model that considers their provision along professional, bureaucratic and managerial dimensions.

For the purpose of this examination, this paper uses the arguments put forward in a recent public debate on the audit culture which enjoyed the participation of a significant number of academic professionals who have experienced it and question its legitimacy, and those in the position of authority who promote and reinforce it. The evidence from this debate suggests that understanding managerialism requires not only an analysis that defines its factor but also a story, because understanding managerialism comes from experience that can be conveyed through accounts of how it feels and not simply by theorising it.

The paper finds that managerialism, by elevating management to an “ism”, has shifted the focus from performance, which is about results, to conformance with an emphasis on norm‐following behaviour rooted in masculinist ontology. In other words, it has shifted the focus from what professionals can do to what professionals cannot do. It demonstrates that audit, as a symptom of managerialism and as one aspect of managerialist practice, has its origin in the Utopian craving for an imagined ideal public sector. However, when they crystallise into a culture, they can be distorted to such an extent that they conceal more than they reveal with the result that the actual policy pursued is the exact opposite of the professed ideal.

The paper identifies opportunities for innovation, research and reflection by establishing the need for balancing the professional, bureaucratic and managerial dimensions and considering ways in which these dimensions can be located on their strengths.

The paper suggests that managerialism cannot be sustained indefinitely as it transforms public sector management from a moral endeavour to a self‐undermining amoral undertaking.

This paper introduces a radical shift in thinking, arguing for an end to managerialism not through a return to what preceded it but with an alternative that represents a way forward.

Although technology has always been, and will continue to be, the hallmark of human activity, it remains a poorly understood concept. There is little recognition that behind technology lies a technology, the accelerating application of which is making the presence of the technological revolution more and more visible. The most obvious manifestation of this is the increasing frequency in the redefinition of the way in which society lives and works. This article, while demonstrating humankind as technology creatures, provides an explanation of how society progresses or regresses by resolving or failing to resolve the paradoxes inherent in technology through uncovering both its mythology and economy.

The paper aims to question the post‐rational observations and traditional constructions of strategy in terms of what they achieve and what they fail to achieve, and seeks to reconstruct strategy as a multi‐dimensional, dynamic concept.

For this purpose, the study uses and interrelates the dualities between continuity principle and discontinuity principle, knowledge and imagination, opportunity exploitation and opportunity exploration, and conformist innovation and deviant innovation. The paper makes explicit, through the notion of performance paradox, the context for the framework that results from the mutual relation of these four dualities.

The paper finds that failure to understand these dualities and their interrelatedness will ensure that strategy will remain largely an illusive, unexplained and rhetorical concept. It demonstrates that the greatest benefit of understanding these dualities and their interrelatedness is that it can show how organisations should be by illuminating who they might be.

The paper identifies opportunities for innovation, research and reflection by establishing the need for balancing the seemingly conflicting opposites of these interrelated dualities and ways in which they can be located on their strengths.

The paper suggests that the understanding that emerges from the treatment of strategy as a multi‐dimensional, dynamic construct, allows organisations to align the corporate, business and functional dimensions more effectively in making progress and receiving more in terms of the results they want to achieve.

The paper introduces a radical shift in thinking, arguing for a move away from simplified, unbalanced, static constructions of strategy that focus on one‐dimensionality, asymmetry and post‐rationalisation.