Pay fairness and intrinsic motivation: the role of pay transparency

The fairness of managerial pay can be judged in terms of its distributive justice properties (‘is my pay fair when compared to others’) and its procedural justice properties (‘is my pay fairly determined’). While both types of justice have been studied extensively in the organizational literature, their relative importance in predicting work-related outcomes is still open to debate. In this paper, we provide field evidence that the relationship between pay justice and managers' intrinsic motivation is moderated by pay transparency, which is the extent to which managers know each other's pay levels. In a homogeneous sample of 139 Slovenian bank managers, we find that procedural justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is low, and that distributive justice is a better predictor of intrinsic motivation when pay transparency is high. These findings that are congruent with fairness heuristic theory (Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt and Wilke 1997a) suggest the importance of considering pay transparency for understanding and designing fair managerial pay systems.     

Micro‐Practices of Strategic Sensemaking and Sensegiving: How Middle Managers Interpret and Sell Change Every Day*

abstract This paper looks at the workings of ongoing primary sensemaking and sensegiving micro‐practices by which middle managers interpret and sell strategic change at the organizational interface. Through middle managers’ routines and conversations related to the implementation of a strategic change in a top‐of‐the‐line clothing company, the article shows how they contribute to renewing links with stakeholders, in particular clientele, by drawing on their tacit knowledge. Interpretative analysis of these routines and conversations highlights four micro‐practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: translating the orientation, overcoding the strategy, disciplining the client, and justifying the change. The paper outlines a practice perspective of sensemaking and sensegiving. It ends by suggesting the necessity of looking at middle managers’ role as interpreters and sellers of strategic change at the micro level for a better understanding of their contribution in sustaining competitive advantage through their everyday activities.     

Managing transformational change: the role of human resource professionals

In the past decade human resource management issues featured prominently in debates over the competitiveness and human resource professionals were expected to ascend to positions of greater influence in corporate strategy making and implementation. Despite numerous calls for a paradigm shift towards a more ‘strategic’ focus for human resource management research, developments in both practice and research fell far short of expectations. Thus, the process of transforming human resource policy into a strategic asset for employees, individual firms or the American economy is not yet complete. The paper suggests that the ‘strategic’ human resource management models of the 1980s were too limited and reactive in character because they depended so heavily on the values, strategies and support of top executives and line managers. A model capable of achieving sustained and transformational change needs to incorporate more active roles of other stakeholders in the employment relationship, including government, employes and union representatives as well as line managers and top executives. The paper starts by reviewing the evidence on innovations in human resource management in the past decade and then outlines the implications of the change model for human resource management and industrial relations theory, policy and practice. Special emphasis is given to the role of human resource professionals as potential change agents or facilitators of the transformational process.     

STRATEGIC DECISIONS MADE BY TOP EXECUTIVES AND MIDDLE MANAGERS WITH DATA AND PROCESS DOMINANT STYLES

The influence of a manager's decision style in strategic decision-making is explored using simulations. The Jungian style classification is extended to identify ‘data and process dominant’ styles of decision-making. Managers with process dominant styles can use several types of data and managers with data dominant styles can apply various modes of data processing. Both the expanded and the traditional definitions of style are used as factors to explain how 79 top executives and 89 middle managers rated project simulations. Decision style is found to be a key factor in explaining the likelihood of taking strategic action and the risk seen in this action. Decisions made by top executives are more style dependent than those of middle managers. The extended definition of style reveals more about the preferences of top executives than traditional style categories.     

对企业战略管理的绩效评估

战略管理是对战略的形成与实施过程的全面管理,目前重视战略规划而忽视战略执行的现象严重影响了战略管理的效果,战略的有效推进必须依靠合理的控制。所以本文将重点研究容易被忽视的控制环节,详细剖析对战略管理进行绩效评估的内涵,从而介绍如何对战略管理进行绩效评估,及其相关理论方法与实践。     

Mixed signals: employee reactions to talent status communication amidst strategic ambiguity

Abstract

Given the sensitive nature of communicating talent status in an ‘exclusive’ talent management system and the complexity involved in simultaneously sending signals of exclusivity and inclusivity, some organisations avoid open communication and instead opt for ‘strategic ambiguity’ – intentionally maintaining an element of secrecy and information asymmetry. However, we know relatively little about the effects of this communication approach as a feature of the organisational context on the reactions of employees. Drawing on signalling theory, we examine the reactions of both talents and ‘B’ players on finding out about their talent status in the context of a company that adopts strategic ambiguity in its communication about talent. The data consists of 24 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals with experience of TM in a Finnish subsidiary of a large, US-based multinational corporation. The findings reveal that the contextual effects of strategic ambiguity in talent communication affected the reactions of talents and ‘B’ players in distinctly different ways, but had few long-term positive effects on the attitudes and behaviours of either group. These findings present important theoretical and practical implications for the role of communication and organisational context in employee reactions to talent pool inclusion and for talent management more generally.     

BSC——提升企业战略执行力

企业战略管理包含战略制定和战略执行两个方面。战略正确并不能保证一个企业取得成功,而成功的企业一定是具备了正确的战略和卓越的战略执行力。随着企业战略管理在我国实践的不断深入,如何提升企业的战略执行力越来越为中国企业界所重视。平衡计分卡(BSC)是一个划时代的战略管理和战略部署工具。它不仅提出了一项企业战略,而且在该战略的开发和实施中,能有效的调动和调整各种管理要素,通过积极的平衡创造一种增量保障能力,保障企业战略的有效实施和落实,提升战略执行力。     

The moderating effect of organizational change cynicism on middle manager strategy commitment

This paper focuses on middle managers as key actors in organizational strategizing. Through an empirical study we explore some of the barriers to effective implementation of strategic change initiatives. This research is motivated by the recognition that to understand strategizing in organizations we need to appreciate both when it is successful and when it is not, but that we still know little about the latter. To develop better insights into what lies behind the actions of strategists and to present implications for HR managers concerned about increasing the chance of successful change and reducing the prevalence of organizational change cynicism (OCC), we first explore antecedents to middle managers' strategy commitment. We examine perceptions of the workplace context, including procedural justice and senior management support for the strategy and middle managers' levels of strategy relevant knowledge, incorporating participation in decision-making and information available for implementation. We then investigate the moderated effect of OCC on middle managers' strategy commitment. Our study suggests that failure of a new strategy or strategic direction is due to the inability or resistance of individual employees to commit to a strategy and adopt the necessary behaviours to accomplish an organization's strategic objective.     

Aligning Manufacturing Strategy and Business-Level Competitive Strategy in New Competitive Environments: The Case for Strategic Resonance

abstract    In this paper we make the case for strategic resonance in the strategy making process within dynamic and highly volatile market conditions. We discuss how managers are faced with competing paradigms of resource-driven versus market-led approaches to strategy but we suggest that both paradigms have flaws and may cause strategic dissonance to occur. Moreover, we offer additional insights into why strategic dissonance can occur within the strategy process of the firm. We suggest that a key omission often lies in the neglect of operations managers' potentially important contributions to the strategy mainstream process.     

Recontextualising a strategic concept within a globalising company: a case study on Carlsberg's ‘Winning Behaviours’ strategy

A corporate strategy is often formulated on the executive floor at headquarters. However, in order to make it live in an organisation, middle management and employees must be involved and make sense of it. These actors thus contribute to, participate in and enact the strategy in processes where it may take on new meanings and forms. This article investigates how ‘Winning Behaviours’, a strategic concept developed on the initiative of top management at the Carlsberg Group in order to improve global integration in the multinational organisation, was recontextualised. It draws upon interviews and observations as well as documents collected at the company headquarters in Denmark and in its subsidiaries in China and Malaysia. Here, expatriate and local managers tried to give sense to the Winning Behaviours in various ways, and employees brought their own local leadership ideals into play when they tried to make sense of the preferred behaviours and turn them into daily practices. The process of creating a new strategic concept and making it live in other sociocultural contexts was facilitated by headquarters staff in the Human Resources and Communications departments, who thus played an important role as change agents in the ‘glocal’ strategy process.     

The Site of Diversalizing: The Accomplishment of Inclusion in Intergenerational Dance

In this study, we aim to revisit theorizing on inclusion by turning to practice theory. Challenging the individualist ontological assumption of most diversity and inclusion studies, we follow a practice-based theory of diversity to understand how an inclusive social order is accomplished. Our empirical case centres on the real-time practicing of a dance production where diversity was central to its production process as well as final performance. Using a research strategy of connected situationalism, we uncover and document three practices: mixing, inverting and affirming, that are recursively intertwined into a nexus, producing inclusion. We advance the inclusion literature by proposing the notion ‘a site of diversalizing’ that processually captures the accomplishment of multiplicity through practices and their associations in time and space, highlighting the necessity to understand ‘practice’ as the entanglement of bodily, discursive and material components, and approaching context as comprised of mutually constituting relations instead of micro/macro levels.     

Strategy in the Public Sector: Management in the Wilderness

ABSTRACT The central question addressed in this paper is ‘Why have organizational strategies emerged in the public sector?’ Two broad answers are suggested. First, ‘strategies’ profile the organization through identifying aims, outputs and outcomes. Public services must, now, provide such transparency in order to secure on‐going funding from government bodies. Once ‘strategies’ are being produced, they also offer an organizational vision that potential additional funding agencies can buy into (with both commitment and money). And public services are short of resources. Second, ‘strategies’ signal greater devolved responsibility in the public sector for both acquiring resources and achieving results. They enable the inclusion of managerial priorities and values in setting the direction of public services. And politicians desire more control over the professionals that dominate public services whilst, simultaneously, wanting to make them more responsible for outcomes. This article explores the growth of strategic planning in a particular area of the public sector – the national parks. Strategies as ‘dormant documents’ and strategies as ‘funding pitches’ are discussed. It is suggested that, in the public sector, strategies should be the object of strategy.     

Top Teams and Strategy in a UK University

This paper reports on the results of an in-depth study of how a top management team (TMT) puts strategy into practice in a UK university. A study of the top team in Warwick University was conducted to analyse how strategy was formulated and implemented. The results suggest that a combination of two broad theoretical lenses provides useful analytical insight. These are strategy as practice and strategy as process. The main elements of this university's strategy result from an interplay of localized routines and patterns of action within an organizational context, which both produces and is a product of such actions. The TMT itself was found to be clearly identifiable and stable in composition. The team exhibited identifiable patterns of strategic thinking and acting. However, the role of organizational structure was also found to be a key influence on the actions and processes of the TMT with strong central control tendencies in the team being counterbalanced by devolved operational control to individual departments. The data also reveal inter-relationships between organizational structures and the TMT in four key areas: direction-setting, monitoring and control, the alloca- tion of resources, and processes of interaction. The overall conclusion is that to understand how strategy is practised, analysis needs to focus on how patterns of action are associated with the characteristics of both the team and the wider organization. The nature and characteristics of these patterns can be related to how strategy is put into practice.     

Narrating strategy in the flow of events – Illusion and disillusion in strategy-making

Narrative strategy-making is useful in the mobilization of strategies because narratives impart coherence and linearity to our understanding of organizational events. Our paper examines the relation between narrative strategy-making and the flow of events. We present a longitudinal, participatory study of a software company seeking global growth. Specifically, we followed events preceding and succeeding construction of the strategic ‘success stories’ used by the software company’s managers in investor negotiations. We conceptualize the point of illusion and disillusion underlying the temporal construction and use of strategy narratives and show how the former enables strategy-making, while the latter constrains it. We add to narrative strategy research by elaborating the relation between the construction of strategy narratives and the flow of organizational events.     

A Critique and A Proposed Reformulation of Strategic Human Resource Management

Ken Kamoche, who lectures in human resource management at Birmingham Business School, argues that flaws in the assumptions underlying our understanding of ‘strategy’ are encouraging an inappropriate conception of strategic human resource management (SHRM). the notion of strategy which emanates from orthodox economic theory ensures that SHRM is subservient to a dominant ‘organisational imperative’. This process is reinforced by key socio-political factors which are diminishing the significance of the ‘human’ component of SHRM. He goes on to suggest how SHRM might be reconstituted to be a more useful concept     

Coping with an emerging market competition through strategy-human resource alignment: case study evidence from five leading Japanese manufacturers in the People's Republic of China

This paper documents how PRC-based Japanese affiliates can align their human resource management (HRM) policies and practices with their business strategies based on in-depth interview surveys of the five leading Japanese manufacturers in China. In particular, using a multiple-informant research design to interview both top and human resource managers in each site, the study has attempted to clarify the strategic fit between the business strategies pursued and HRM practices adopted in China. Our interviews with top management for each affiliate revealed three types of business strategies that the PRC-based affiliates adopt to gain competitiveness in the Chinese market. Separate interviews with HR managers further clarified that affiliates' HRM efforts are aligned with the strategy each affiliate is pursuing. The findings are used to suggest several hypothesized relationships between the particular strategies pursued and the HRM practices adopted in China. Furthermore, this study has provided some important insights as to how the choice of affiliate-level business strategies in China affects the ‘hybridization’ processes of the HRM policies and practices used in the cross-national business environment.     

A Survey of Transparency: An Intrinsic Aspect of Business Strategy

Well‐managed organizations must handle transparency strategically, but although research about transparency constitutes a great concern in businesses, management, society, and ethics, definitions are very diverse depending on the environment. The concept of transparency is revisited in this contribution, aiming to map the territory of transparency by surveying the terms and definitions in literature. The overview of these terms identifies two approaches of analysis: according to the content and according to the context. According to the context, two perspectives have been found: collective perspective and individual perspective. According to the content of the definition, two perspectives have been found: instrumental perspective and purposeful perspective. This survey helps to determine that transparency is an intrinsic aspect of business strategy since it is interweaved with all organizational components and systems of the strategic management process. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The Antecedents of Middle Managers' Strategic Contribution: The Case of a Professional Bureaucracy

abstract    Our study contributes towards a burgeoning literature that argues organizational performance is heavily influenced by what happens in the middle of the organization, rather than at the top. Examining the UK National Health Service, our study develops the work of Floyd and Wooldridge (1992 , 1994 , 1997 , 2000 ). It utilizes role theory to conceptualize changing experiences of middle managers in organizations as a role transition. Associated with this are problems of role conflict and role ambiguity ( Biddle, 1979 , 1986 ; Biddle and Thomas, 1966 ; Kahn et al., 1964 , 1966 ). Our study illustrates that there are limiting factors to a more strategic role for middle managers associated with the professional bureaucracy context. However, role conflict and ambiguity can be mediated by a socialization process, which values incoming identity and personal characteristics ( Van Maanen and Schein, 1979 ).     

Strategic interventions of management accountants: everyday practice of British and German brewers

A popular stereotype has it that German firms are somehow ‘long-term strategically oriented’ and British firms focus on short-term financial gain. Analysing ethnographic material from British and German brewers, this paper explores how management accountants in the two countries conceive of their relationship with processes of strategic formulation and how they seek to mobilize strategic arguments in their day-to-day contacts with operational management. The focus of this study is not on the strategy debates which one might expect among senior management, but on routine interaction between management accountants and managers in which the mundane events of organizational life are made to happen in the name of loftier ‘strategic’ priorities. From observations of such interaction and management accountants' reflections on them, contrasting ways of integrating management accounting expertise with operational knowledge of the firm are suggested for the British and German brewers studied. Those contrasts are developed by drawing on the relationship between time and the possibility for strategic intervention more generally.     

基于战略匹配成熟度的企业大数据战略实施研究

通过引入战略匹配成熟度概念,构建了企业大数据建设及应用水平提升路径的系统动力学模型,并对企业大数据建设及应用水平提升路径和关键影响因素作用进行了模拟。利用模拟结果对企业大数据战略实施评价,总结企业大数据战略在不同周期、不同成熟度级别的关键过程域和目标,确定不同级别贡献度指标,并对企业整个大数据体系进行关键元素分析,让企业能更清晰地知道自身当前大数据建设及应用水平所处的发展位置及改进方法,从而保证大数据战略与企业战略的良好匹配,特别是为后疫情时代企业的大数据建设和应用水平的快速科学提升提供了规范的理论和实证解释。