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1 – 10 of over 2000Thomas Lawton, Tazeeb Rajwani and Conor O'Kane
This paper aims to illustrate how legacy airlines can reorientate to achieve sharp recoveries in performance following prolonged periods of stagnation, decline and eroding…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to illustrate how legacy airlines can reorientate to achieve sharp recoveries in performance following prolonged periods of stagnation, decline and eroding competitiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a qualitative analysis of five longitudinal case studies of legacy airlines that embarked on strategic change between 1997 and 2006. Data collection spanned ten years and included archival data, public documents, news clippings, accounts in specialist books and internal company documentation.
Findings
The paper identifies two distinct approaches for reorientation in the legacy airline industry. Companies that have fallen behind and are in risk of failure focus on regaining customer trust and loyalty, and restructuring route networks, business processes and costs in an “improvement and innovation” reorienting approach. Underperforming airlines, for whom growth has declined in traditional markets and who note that opportunities exist elsewhere, focus on product and service development and geographical growth in an “extension and expansion” reorienting approach.
Practical implications
The paper develops a framework for successful reorientation in the legacy airline industry. This framework encourages executives to focus on and leverage profit maximization, quality, leadership, alliance networks, regional consolidation and staff development during periods of strategy formulation and reorientation.
Originality/value
This research addresses the dearth of understanding and attention afforded to the concept of reorientation in the literature on strategic turnaround. The research also serves to emphasize the presence and importance of reorientation as a strategy of change within the legacy airline industry. Furthermore, in demonstrating how this strategy can be implemented in a sharp‐bending or performance improvement context, this study illustrates how reorientation is intertwined with the broader turnaround process.
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Abby Ghobadian and Howard Viney
Much current discussion of strategic content focuses upon the elaboration and refinement of existing strategies, rather than upon the demands of strategic reorientation. This lack…
Abstract
Much current discussion of strategic content focuses upon the elaboration and refinement of existing strategies, rather than upon the demands of strategic reorientation. This lack of attention is particularly in relation to organisations undergoing market liberalisation. Consequently, our understanding of the complex outcomes resulting from the deregulation of industries is yet nascent. This paper reports empirical research undertaken in the United Kingdom aimed at identifying viable combinations of corporate and business level strategy within a regulated environment, the recently privatised UK electricity industry. The conclusions reached by the authors suggest that despite the introduction of competition to the industry, companies seeking superior market performance face limited options in their choice of strategic content. Key success criteria for companies in competitive segments of the industry are the achievement of critical mass and of some form of integration, while companies operating in regulated segments may face a very limited choice of strategic approach.
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Kent Adsbøll Wickstrøm and Torben Eli Bager
This study examines the relationship between small-firm managers' propensity to participate in a growth-oriented training program and their subsequent program outcome in terms of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between small-firm managers' propensity to participate in a growth-oriented training program and their subsequent program outcome in terms of strategic reorientation. From a policy perspective, this relates to the important question of what benefit would come from recruiting managers who are normally not easily recruitable for training programs.
Design/methodology/approach
A control group design including pre- and post-training surveys is used to assess the effects of a large-scale management training program. Accounting for selection bias, the difference-in-difference method, together with propensity score matching, was applied to assess average program effects. The matching-smoothing method was used to assess heterogeneity in program effects associated with participation propensity.
Findings
Overall, program participation associated positively with change in strategic orientations. This effect was especially pronounced for managers with either low or medium to high inclinations for program enrollment, while diminishing in the modest to medium range.
Practical implications
The findings have important practical implications for selection of target groups and recruitment strategies in relation to small-firm management training programs. From the results, recruitment strategies may effectively include managers with either high or low participation propensities, rather than aiming to “fill up” with managers with moderately low participation propensity.
Originality/value
Several extant studies have examined average treatment effects from small-firm training programs. Yet there has been a lack of examination of the extent to which participation propensity modifies the effect of training on outcomes. This study brings new knowledge of the direction and magnitude of such heterogeneous training effects.
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Brian Joseph Biroscak, Carol Bryant, Mahmooda Khaliq, Tali Schneider, Anthony Dominic Panzera, Anita Courtney, Claudia Parvanta and Peter Hovmand
Community coalitions are an important part of the public milieu and subject to similar external pressures as other publicly funded organizations – including changes in required…
Abstract
Purpose
Community coalitions are an important part of the public milieu and subject to similar external pressures as other publicly funded organizations – including changes in required strategic orientation. Many US government agencies that fund efforts such as community-based social marketing initiatives have shifted their funding agenda from program development to policy development. The Florida Prevention Research Center at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida, USA) created community-based prevention marketing (CBPM) for policy development framework to teach community coalitions how to apply social marketing to policy development. This paper aims to explicate the framework’s theory of change.
Design/methodology/approach
The research question was: “How does implementing the CBPM for Policy Development framework improve coalition performance over time?” The authors implemented a case study design, with the “case” being a normative community coalition. The study adhered to a well-developed series of steps for system dynamics modeling.
Findings
Results from computer model simulations show that gains in community coalition performance depend on a coalition’s initial culture and initial efficiency, and that only the most efficient coalitions’ performance might improve from implementing the CBPM framework.
Originality/value
Practical implications for CBPM’s developers and users are discussed, namely, the importance of managing the early expectations of academic-community partnerships seeking to shift their orientation from downstream (e.g. program development) to upstream social marketing strategies (e.g. policy change).
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The purpose of this paper is to defend a social constructionist approach to conceptualizing and managing organizational change. This approach requires that one pays more attention…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to defend a social constructionist approach to conceptualizing and managing organizational change. This approach requires that one pays more attention to the relational qualities of ongoing interaction processes among the parties involved, and that the individual and the organization are conceptualized as inextricably linked rather than separate entities to be related. Specifically, the authors take the relationship as constructed by employees as the focus of analysis, illustrating that by focusing on the relational quality of the interface between individuals and organizations, new possibilities for dialogue among parties can be created and new ways of intervening can be contemplated.
Design/methodology/approach
To illustrate this argument, a detailed case study of a planned change scenario is described, looking in particular at the way employees construct the change as a basis for identifying the core elements of meaning construction in this instance.
Findings
The findings reveal that contrary to management assumptions, employees interpret change as either attractive or non‐engaging rather than as either a threat or an opportunity. The findings highlight the importance of actively managing the attractiveness of the new organization (its corporate identity and image) as an integral part of the change effort rather than focusing solely on strategic issues.
Originality/value
This paper tries to develop a better understanding of “relational perspectives on the construction of meaning” as they relate to organizational change, especially the kind of broad‐ranging, transformational change. Understanding change events of this type from the perspective of those involved is an important task for organizational scholars. Moreover, it tries to integrate a number of distinct but potential complementary theoretical perspectives, including the social construction of reality, negotiation and argumentation, the negotiated order perspective, sensemaking, personal construct psychology, thematic networks, and identity. Finally, it attempts to ground its inquiry in the words and constructs of those involved in the change process, rather than trying to impose pre‐existing organizational theories on the observed events.
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Argues that researchers need to recognize the importance of the temporal factor in research on strategic groups, paying more attention to interdependencies between a firm’s…
Abstract
Argues that researchers need to recognize the importance of the temporal factor in research on strategic groups, paying more attention to interdependencies between a firm’s strategy and its surrounding environment.
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Ekaterina Kozachenko, Amitabh Anand and Galina Shirokova
A strategic response to crisis research is a critical and growing area of study in management and business literature. Consequently, the sudden rise of COVID-19, that has a…
Abstract
Purpose
A strategic response to crisis research is a critical and growing area of study in management and business literature. Consequently, the sudden rise of COVID-19, that has a substantial adverse impact on the global economy in a relatively short period of time, brings into sharp focus on the possible and most effective types of strategic responses adopted by firms. In this context, this study aims to shed light on the types of strategic responses adopted by firms and the possible outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
To contribute to the advancement of knowledge around strategic responses in general for business, this study conducted a keyword bibliometric analysis reviewing 66 articles from highly ranked journals according to ABS list of journals published between the period 2006–2020 and synthesize the existing research on strategic responses.
Findings
This research enabled the identification of the novel typology of strategic responses to the crisis, such as revived stakeholders’ relationships, revived pricing mechanisms and revived organizational compliance, and their outcomes. Additionally, the analysis established many research areas for scholars who will deal with this topic in the future.
Originality/value
The literature review contributes to the management and business literature by providing a novel and comprehensive classification of crisis responses and synthesizing all new knowledge gained within a new conceptual framework.
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Executive leadership plays a crucial role in initiating, shaping and directing strategic reorientations. But it must somehow mediate between forces of inertia and fundamental…
Abstract
Purpose
Executive leadership plays a crucial role in initiating, shaping and directing strategic reorientations. But it must somehow mediate between forces of inertia and fundamental changes. This paper aims to address the unresolved paradox: how do executives address these conflicting demands?
Design/methodology/approach
This paper aims to interweave two streams of seminal research in organizational evolution and organizational culture to develop a typology of strategic reorientations. The four types of strategic reorientations are illustrated with the help of published cases and biographies of CEOs, mostly of high visibility international companies such as Heineken, Burger King and Starbucks.
Findings
Combinations of high and low levels of executive team consensus on its external adaptation tasks and on its internal integration tasks provoke four different types of strategic reorientations: chaotic, negotiated, muted and promising.
Research limitations/implications
Until appropriate methods of empirical research can be found to test this framework, one has to rely on some anecdotal support as preliminary and cursory evidence. This study can inform a wide body of research which incorrectly suggested that consensus among executives during strategic reorientation has a unidirectional, positive impact on organizational performance. Directions to explore how top executives may develop ambidextrous leadership are suggested.
Practical implications
Seeking high growth, executive teams must have a good mix of managerial and entrepreneurial cognitions. Therefore, executives having dissimilar skills and backgrounds should be inducted in the team periodically, instead of hiring hurriedly at the eleventh hour. Otherwise, the new executives may contribute too high or too low levels of consensus of each type needed for optimal strategic reorientation.
Social implications
The paper has not attempted this aspect.
Originality/value
This paper contributes a novel framework that combines two streams of seminal research, which, each by itself, would not sufficiently address the unresolved executive paradox.
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Shuaijiao Bai, Henrique Duarte and Dong Guo
The purpose of this paper is to convey how the transition to market-based orientations by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly the military sector, represents a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to convey how the transition to market-based orientations by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly the military sector, represents a coevolutionary process between business and regulatory institutions that has an impact on both the military and civilian markets.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a longitudinal case study of a military SOE, the Aosheng Group, between 1951 and 2012 to understand the dynamics between institutions and organizations. A comparative analysis between the main stages of evolution was completed, and conclusions about the main patterns of organizational and institutional change were reached.
Findings
The study reports evidence on the coevolutionary nature of change in big SOEs in China, demonstrating how institutional changes are bigger drivers in promoting reorientations than are market pressures. Within the framework of punctuated equilibrium theory, the determining role that managers may play in leading and implementing organizational reorientations is emphasized.
Research limitations/implications
A triangulated methodology was employed to analyse a long period; however, its application to just a single case might be questioned in terms of generalizing any of the findings.
Originality/value
The longitudinal perspective applied in this case study contributes to critical questioning as to how Chinese agencies define forms of control and the goals for SOEs under their jurisdiction and the importance of allowing managerial discretion to the assigned managers.
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