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The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a degree of nonsense in the idea that that an organisation has a strategy, since firms have no mind, heart or soul they cannot have a sense of purpose about themselves and their futures. The lecture considers the ways that those working in organisations, and those responsible for strategy, deflect their thoughts from this idea and the nonsense that results from it.

The paper recasts Whittington’s Schools of Strategy as deflection strategies, arguing that they are coherent means of displacing attention from the absurdities that result from attributing strategies to organisations rather than people. The key points are illustrated by quotes from Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, as the leader of the heroic band faces and overcomes most of the key strategizing problem experience in business strategy.

Important issues such rationality, benchmarking, learning, leadership, followership and corporate social responsibility crumble into nonsense when it is recalled that these are all human, rather than organisational qualities.

Most strategies do not succeed and most management of change seldom achieves the changes desired. The paper argues that this is chiefly because pragmatic stratagems are frequently idealised into truth claims and prescriptions of doubtful provenance. Scholars of management must bear some responsibility for the resulting nonsense.

The paper argues that it is not possible to do strategy and change without invoking nonsense. Yet, this is a remarkable achievement, nonetheless, for a creature that evolved to chase small game across a savannah.

The paper raises important ontological and epidemiological issues of strategy and change in ways that neither create impenetrable language barriers nor require a philosophical background to grasp.

The impact of bullying and undermining behaviours on the National Health Service on costs, patient safety and retention of staff was well understood even before the Illing report, published in 2013, that reviewed the efficacy of training interventions designed to reduce bullying and harassment in the outputs. The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of a good programme well evaluated.

The methodology follows a broad realist approach, by specifying the underlying programme assumptions and intention of the designers. Three months after the event, Q-sort methodology was employed to group participants into one of three contexts – mechanism – output groups. Interviews were then undertaken with members of two of these groups, to evaluate how the programme had influenced each.

Q-sort identified a typology of three beneficiaries from the Stopit! workshops, characterised as professionals, colleagues and victims. Each group had acted upon different parts of the programme, depending chiefly upon their current and past experiences of bullying in hospitals.

The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of using Q-sort method to identify relevant CMOs in a realist evaluation framework.

The paper considers the effectiveness of the programme to reduce bullying, rather than teach victims to cope, and how it may be strengthened based upon the research findings and Illing recommendations.

Workplace bullying is invariably implicated in scandals concerning poor hospital practice, poor patient outcomes and staff illness. All too frequently, the sector responds by offering training in resilience, which though helpful, places the onus on the victim to cope rather than the employer to reduce or eliminate the practice. This paper documents and evaluates an attempt to change workplace practices to directly address bullying and undermining.

The paper describes a new programme broadly consistent with Illing report endorsements. Second, it illustrates a novel evaluation method that highlights rigorously the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at the pilot stage of an intervention identifies contexts and mechanisms via factor analysis using Q-sort methodology.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Important issues such rationality, benchmarking, learning, leadership, followership, and corporate social responsibility crumble into nonsense when it is recalled that these are all human rather than organizational qualities.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper addresses doubts concerning the reliability of knowledge being created by double loop learning processes. Popper's ontological worlds are used to explore the philosophical basis of the way that individual experiences are turned into organisational knowledge, and such knowledge is used to generate organisational learning. The paper suggests that double loop learning may frequently create mistakes and fail to detect possible interesting lines of thought. Popper's work is used to suggest some solutions and an elaboration of the double loop learning process, but ultimately effective organisational learning is shown to depend on the undertaking of an epistemological burden by individuals above and beyond what is usually explicated in prescriptions for learning organisation and knowledge management.

The purpose of this paper is partly to complete Earl's framework, but more importantly to seek out the limits of what can be known and what cannot be known by each of the schools in his taxonomy, by addressing the absent epistemological foundation of what is being managed in his seven schools of knowledge management.

For each of the seven schools, the paper explores three related issues: the role of knowledge management systems in mediating between individual knowers and the community that needs to know; the context of Earl's knowledge management schools in terms of their focus on process and problems; and the consequences of the processes for identifying and validating knowledge.

Earl's framework survives this examination of its knowledge basis, suggesting that it is more robust, and captures more differences, than originally claimed. However, revelations about what can and cannot be known in each school suggest that knowledge management cannot be “done” until users and designers have greater sensitivity to the epistemological plasticity of what they purport to manage.

The paper's value lies in the re‐direction of knowledge management it suggests – a re‐direction away from technical solutions and towards examination of the epistemological and philosophical problems which are the chief reason for the continuing disappointment with knowledge management in many quarters.

In this paper it is held that a transformational learning organisation could be clearly distinguished from non‐learning organisations. This paper seeks to establish whether or not this is actually the case.

Case studies were developed for two organisations considering themselves to be learning organisations (Company 2 and Company 4) and two that did not (Company 1 and Company 3). To establish the balance of the learning behaviours within the firms according to Shivistrava's typology, a questionnaire was used to elicit information about learning behaviours and activities, and general understanding about what such terms as knowledge, information and learning meant to individuals within the firms.

The results of applying the Shrivastava model showed that most knowledge is action‐oriented and incrementally developed, in that it is developed in order to achieve a certain goal. Certain events will lead to a perceived need for certain behaviours and the organisational procedures and policies will encourage actions.

Shrivastava's typology outlines four perspectives of organisational learning: adaptation, developing knowledge of action‐outcome relationships, assumption sharing, and institutionalised experience. These definitions imply that they will reflect different knowledge bases.

To understand the effects of the best value regime on the public provision of recreation at the level of the leisure centre.

A strategic auditing device is applied to 87 leisure centres to investigate the strategic variables of environmental stability and attractiveness, service strengths and financial resources. The analysis produces a typology of leisure centres, and evaluates the prospects of each type under best value.

The findings suggest that a large number of leisure centres managed by local authorities will make limited headway in implementing best value. What is more, many face problems that will be exacerbated, rather than eased, by current policy. Leisure centres managed by Trusts generally face more benign local environments, which appear to offer greater prospects, but it is clear that Trust status itself offers few advantages outside a greater range of financial sources.

The research focuses on strategic choices as they face leisure centre managers. It does not directly explore the strategic and policy decisions made at other levels.

The paper argues for subtler recreation policy (and by implication, the provision of public sector services generally) that pays due regard to the local conditions of service providers. Policy that focuses only on general prescription of managerial (and often rhetorical) practices will frequently lead strategies towards satisficing performance indicators that may be arbitrary, rather than focusing on problems and issues as they face professional leisure managers.

The use of a formal strategy tool as the level of a service provider is novel, and augments work on hybrid firms facing strategic choices based not only on political factors but also private sector market‐oriented competitors. Further, useful comparisons are made between leisure centres managed by Trusts and those still controlled by a Local Authority. The data provided will also help to inform practical and academic debates concerning the application of quality standards and management practices in the leisure sector.

This paper explores the implications of paradigm diversity for understanding the strategic decisions involved in transforming organisations. It examines the conflicting conclusions that can be drawn from a well respected study into strategic change. It shows that evidence to support a variety of paradigms and contradictory conclusions is present in the data and arguments presented. By clarifying these, it is possible for strategic decision makers to understand better their own thought processes and become more critical of strategic solutions offered in the literature and in the narratives circulating in their own organisations. The paper then moves on to examine the ramifications of researching and advising on a subject that cannot agree a single paradigm, and argues that conflicting paradigms are not a feature of immaturity, as some writers have suggested, but rather a feature to be celebrated as it exemplifies, and can help to encourage, a high degree of critical reflection and originality about the how and why of making strategic decisions.

States that in order to remain competitive, organizations must scan and analyse environmental turbulence, formulate appropriate strategic plans and implement these through a change management process. In short, the organization must routinely learn and relearn about its environment, and learn new ways to change and implement policy and process. Examines how this organizational learning would need to be carried out as scientifically as possible in order to verify that incoming knowledge is demonstrably superior to the old. Attempts to sight the limits of the learning organization by asking questions about what organizations are capable of knowing and understanding. Explains that this is not intended as a critique of the concept. Hopes that such discussion will help to prevent the degeneration of the helpful ideas developed in the literature so far, into another trite managerial fashion and language.

Since Shapiro’s vexed question, “What the hell is market‐orientated?” several marketing scholars have revamped their concepts and found empirical evidence to demonstrate the superior performance of firms closest to their new prescriptions. This paper questions the ontology of market orientation and the evidence used to support it. It also challenges supporters of market orientation to show why it would be in the social interests to adopt it, even if their arugments concerning its efficacy were to be accepted.