Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explain how leaders balance exploitation (incremental innovation) and exploration (discontinuous innovation).

A qualitative study with 11 senior leaders in Australian Defence Force.

The study identifies a number of factors that leaders take into account when deciding whether to focus on exploitation or on exploration.

The study concludes that transactional leadership is appropriate in the context of exploitation, while transformational leadership is appropriate in the context of exploration.

Although corporate portfolio management (CPM) has been a popular tool for strategic management of multi-business portfolios in the private sector since the late 1960s, it has received limited attention in the public sector. Accordingly, empirical research on the use of CMP in government organizations is virtually non-existent. The purpose of this paper is to partially fill that gap in the literature by highlighting and discussing some of the key points that public sector organizations may need to consider when adopting CPM.

Rather than deductively proposing and testing narrowly specified hypotheses, this study aims to answer a broad research question, namely: What are the key points that public sector organizations may need to consider when adopting CMP? Hence, the study adopts the qualitative interpretive research paradigm. The findings are based on empirical research conducted in a large Australian publicly funded research organization. Potential application of CPM was iteratively and incrementally explored with a reference group comprising 15 middle management representatives and several members of the senior leadership group over the course of one year.

Assessment criteria traditionally used in CPM (e.g. growth potential and market share) are generally not applicable in public sector organizations. This paper suggests that government organizations should instead consider past performance and future potential of individual business units, which may be operationalized via capability (a function of human capital and associated resources/infrastructure) and delivery (a function of the demand for, and the impact of, relevant business units). The paper also highlights the importance of organization-wide consultation, evidence-based decision making, and contestability.

From a practical perspective, the paper may assist public sector organizations with adapting and applying CPM. From a theoretical perspective, the paper highlights an important and relatively neglected research problem, and suggests several avenues for future research.

Although there is widespread agreement that organizational agility is increasingly becoming critical to achieving sustained competitive advantage, there is little consensus on what exactly constitutes organizational agility, or how it may be assessed and improved. The purpose of this paper is to contribute toward operationalization of the organizational agility construct through a high-level conceptual framework grounded in dynamic capabilities.

This is a conceptual paper that presents a new organizational agility framework, which draws from, and builds on, the existing literature.

This paper defines organizational agility as rapid, continuous and systematic evolutionary adaptation and entrepreneurial innovation directed at gaining and/or maintaining competitive advantage. The 5S Organizational Agility Framework proposes five dynamic capabilities (sensing, searching, seizing, shifting and shaping) underpinning organizational agility.

The framework presented in this paper contributes toward operationalization of the organizational agility construct.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss strategies for maximizing organizational absorptive capacity.

The views presented here have been derived from authors’ extensive research and professional experience. Support for the claims made is provided through anecdotal evidence and related literature.

The viewpoint discusses how organizational absorptive capacity may be maximized through actions and interactions of a wide range of individual, managerial, organizational, and inter-organizational factors.

The viewpoint may assist practitioners with developing strategies for improving vicarious learning. From a theoretical perspective, the claims made in the paper present fertile ground for future empirical testing.

In addition to requiring high absorptive capacity, contemporary organizations operating in highly dynamic and complex environments also require the ability to create knowledge internally, within the organization. While the organizational learning (OL) literature has produced a plethora of theories and frameworks, there has been relatively little empirical research on specific mechanisms for internal knowledge generation. Accordingly, this paper aims to answer calls for more research on mechanisms for internal generation of organizational knowledge.

This paper is an in-depth case study in the Australian Defence Organisation (ADO).

The paper presents a cyclical eight-stage knowledge generation process and demonstrates how agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) may be used to facilitate OL.

By detailing an in-depth case study of an ABMS mechanism for internal knowledge generation in the ADO, this paper provides a novel and relevant contribution to the OL literature.

The purpose of this paper is to adapt the traditional corporate portfolio management approach to the strategic management of multi-business portfolios in the public sector.

The approach presented in this paper is based on a research project conducted within the Defence Science and Technology Group, Australian Department of Defence. It was developed iteratively and incrementally over the course of one year with a reference group comprising 15 middle management representatives and several members of the senior management team.

The approach developed comprises a multi-stage process and an assessment framework designed to capture the complexity of the problem space, build a strategic narrative, and facilitate senior leadership decision-making. The process is aimed at eliciting the required information, promoting contestability of the results, ensuring appropriate consultation, and ultimately achieving senior leadership consensus on priorities. The assessment framework is used to assess and visualize the balance of organizational capabilities.

By synthesizing and visualizing information on past performance and future potential, the approach presented in this paper may be used to facilitate strategic decision-making by senior management in the public sector.

This paper aims to explore how situational variables jointly affect the choice of leadership style.

This qualitative study is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 11 senior leaders in the Australian Defence, including with the Chief of Defence Force.

The paper identifies four organizational factors (human capital, performance, time orientation and risk appetite) and two environmental factors (risk and stability) that are considered to have an effect on leader’s choice of transactional versus transformational styles. Furthermore, organizational human capital and leader’s training and experience are identified as prerequisites of leadership ambidexterity.

The findings explain how the choice of leadership style is contingent on internal and external factors, identifies several new contributing factors and explains how such factors may jointly affect the choice of leadership style.

This paper aims to answer calls for more research on how contextual factors influence the effectiveness of knowledge reuse.

The findings are based on an in-depth case study conducted in the sales department of a large white goods company in Australia.

Six contextual factors identified include purpose, time pressure, language, accessibility, author and date. A mismatch in purpose between knowledge creation and reuse is most likely to reduce knowledge reuse effectiveness. Time pressures may lead to an increase in errors associated with search question definition as well as knowledge search and selection, while unfamiliar language is likely to lead to misinterpretations of content. Knowledge accessibility issues are of particular concern in time-sensitive situations. Authorship and creation date information may facilitate knowledge reuse by allowing consumers to filter unwanted knowledge.

This study contributes to knowledge management theory by providing an exploration of the ways in which contextual factors influence knowledge and reuse effectiveness, and of the possible relationships between those factors. The paper also provides knowledge management practitioners with tangible guidelines on how to increase the effectiveness of organizational knowledge reuse.

Many organizations are seeking unicorn data scientists, that rarest of breeds that can do it all. They are said to be experts in many traditionally distinct disciplines, including mathematics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, and more. The purpose of this paper is to describe authors’ pursuit of these elusive mythical creatures.

Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with managers/directors from nine Australian state and federal government agencies with relatively mature data science functions.

Although the authors failed to find evidence of unicorn data scientists, they are pleased to report on six key roles that are considered to be required for an effective data science team. Primary and secondary skills for each of the roles are identified and the resulting framework is then used to illustratively evaluate three data science Master-level degrees offered by Australian universities.

Given that the findings presented in this paper have been based on a study with large government agencies with relatively mature data science functions, they may not be directly transferable to less mature, smaller, and less well-resourced agencies and firms.

The skills framework provides a theoretical contribution that may be applied in practice to evaluate and improve the composition of data science teams and related training programs.

This paper aims to investigate how and why foresight may affect individual and organizational learning.

This paper builds on prior research through a qualitative study with 13 foresight practitioners.

This paper derives four broad foresight capabilities that are underpinned by a number of interdependent factors and relates those to the wider literature on individual and organizational learning.

Practitioners may use this paper’s findings to enhance any individual and organizational learning effects of foresight activities. Deriving four broad foresight capabilities via a range of interdependent factors may assist practitioners with evaluating and/or enhancing the effectiveness of these capabilities in an organized fashion. Additionally, the findings show that foresight mode, with its strong relationship to foresight-related accountabilities and incentives, plays a central role in all four foresight capabilities. This stresses the importance of having a continuous foresight capability with strong top management commitment, effective governance and clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

This paper makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it contributes toward further operationalizing foresight. Second, it demonstrates a substantial overlap between the concepts of foresight and absorptive capacity, which suggests that foresight scholars and practitioners may benefit from a large and mature related body of literature. Third, it identifies explicit links between specific foresight and individual/organizational learning constructs.