Imp

Obstacles to implementation

people involved in making implementation happen

strategy/structure

managing strategic change

lack of definition

low status accorded to implementation

poor or vague strategy in the first place

trying to work against existing power structures

the failure of strategy formulators to play a role in implementation

assumption of strategy being domain of senior management

strategy consultants

Raisch

Structural seperation

parallel structures

temporal seperation

Recentralisation happened when organisations experienced declining profits during market downturns

Decentralisation was felt to be structurally appropriate when organisations believed they lagged behind their competitors in markets that were experiencing an upswing in demand

launched new businesses to generate revenue streams outside of what he describes as ‘stagnating core businesses’

Raisch argued that parallel structures concerned leveraging products into new markets

Segal-Horn and Faulkner

Low context

High context

view emerges that organisational forms increasingly resemble each other NESTLE

internal and external causes

The planned perspective (classical)

The incremental perspective

The punctuated equilibrium model of change

analytical and planned approaches to change can be useful as frameworks for thinking about change and its potential consequences, but planning alone will not address in-depth problems underpinning the process of change

Fundamental shifts in strategic direction that require drastic
readjustments in organisation and strategy are relatively rare.

series of decisions, compromises and adjustments subject
to both managerial, political and cultural influences

tend to reproduce the dominant strategy discourses through their decision making

convergent change over extended periods of relative stability

revolutionary change

changes to the competitive environment occur less frequently.

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Scale and scope of change

Balogun and Hope Hailey (2008) offer a matrix

Hrebiniak

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poor information sharing (both generally, and specifically to managers
about things going wrong)

unforeseen problems, and the fact that implementation tends to take longer and be more labour-intensive than expected

lack of management training in implementation

lack of clarity about changed responsibilities or roles

failure to link strategy to the practicalities of implementation

middle managers can impact on strategy

Void filling

Issue selling

Adapting strategy to make it workable

Contextualising

Managing emotion.

Ignoring strategy

Participating.

middle managers preventing merger

The strategic intent gave unclear prescriptions for implementation and contained inherent contradictions in the roles of the four middle management groups.

Senior managers were largely absent during the implementation process which contributed to middle managers forming distorted interpretations of the motives and reasoning behind the merger.