The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the successful strategy formulation process of a new purchasing department at an international engineering group.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the successful strategy formulation process of a new purchasing department at an international engineering group.
Design/methodology/approach
The strategy formulation was co-created by the department manager and employees at a storytelling workshop, facilitated with interview technique from narrative therapy, and later authorized by the business area director. The organizational intervention preceded the scholarly inquiry.
Findings
Employees’ retrospective storytelling about working at the company enabled them to formulate a joint mission statement using words and expressions from their own stories. Prospective storytelling enabled them to formulate a joint medium- and long-term vision and a corresponding action plan. This paper proposes interview technique from narrative therapy as a new practice-oriented strategic management tool and calls for further experimentation in rethinking best practices in strategy development.
Originality/value
Introducing narrative therapy interview technique in an organizational context is valuable because it may facilitate affinity of employees to strategy through storytelling thus contributing to contextualized strategy formulation and paving the way for subsequent implementation. This “from practice to research” approach can serve as inspiration for action researchers interested in driving organizational change.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a strategy implementation workshop design can be developed and tested while minimizing the time spent on developing the design.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a strategy implementation workshop design can be developed and tested while minimizing the time spent on developing the design.
Design/methodology/approach
This multiple case study at a diesel engine company shows how iterative prototyping can be used to structure the design process of a strategy implementation workshop.
Findings
Strategy implementation workshop design can be developed in resource-constrained environments through iterative prototyping of the workshop design. Each workshop iteration can generate value in its own right and at the same time the workshop design can be optimized until the final, most effective, design is found which can then be rolled out.
Research limitations/implications
In a strategy-as-practice perspective, this study shows how scholarly attention to micro-level strategy praxis at a company can be enlightening to strategy consultants who need to conduct strategy implementation workshops.
Practical implications
By selecting an iterative modular workshop design, the strategy consultant has at his/her disposal a strategy tool that is easily adaptable to organizational practice and one for which s/he can draw on his/her experience as well as add to his/her knowledge base.
Originality/value
Introducing iterative prototyping in an organizational context can facilitate fast yet structured development of a rigorous workshop design. Strategy consultants are provided with empirical examples of how an iterative prototyping process can be structured across multiple workshops.
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Keywords
Anders Kjær‐Nielsen, Anders Glent Buch, Andreas Emil Kryger Jensen, Bent Møller, Dirk Kraft, Norbert Krüger, Henrik Gordon Petersen and Lars‐Peter Ellekilde
The purpose of this paper is to describe a robot vision system which put rings on hooks that are moving freely on a conveyor belt. The hook can show a significant swinging which…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a robot vision system which put rings on hooks that are moving freely on a conveyor belt. The hook can show a significant swinging which can be well approximated by a pendulum movement. The problem is of large relevance for many industrial applications and the challenge is to compute a 3D pose that is sufficiently precise to allow for successful placements of the rings.
Design/methodology/approach
This requires a fast and precise tracking and a compensation for latencies connected to the processing of visual information as well as the actual robot action.
Findings
The authors achieve this through a precise pose estimation in a high‐resolution stereo setup, as well as a modeling of the hook movement as a combination of a translational and a pendulum movement.
Originality/value
The paper shows that under normal conditions close to 100 percent success can be achieved such that this technology now can be transferred into industrial systems.
The purpose of the paper is to pay homage to Dorothy E. Smith (1926–2022), and her lifelong significance for organizational ethnography. Building on Smith, the empirical purpose…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to pay homage to Dorothy E. Smith (1926–2022), and her lifelong significance for organizational ethnography. Building on Smith, the empirical purpose of the paper is to analyze professional boundary setting on behalf of innovation management as it occurred in the recent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committees (TC) 279 committee on innovation management.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is an ethnographic study of the drafting and publication of a novel international management standard on innovation management, the ISO 56000-series published in 2019. It is based on fieldwork from the ISO committee and integrates relevant standardization documents, observations and interviews.
Findings
The paper analyzes four occasions for textual professional boundary work ranging from negotiations of content and choice of ISO standard formats to the unprecedented high-level liaison agreements across international organizations. In each instance, the analysis depicts distinct textual features related to ISO standardization. The analysis shows how the standard becomes positioned as extending and complementing the ISO 9001, not as a radical, freestanding alternative to quality management.
Originality/value
The paper presents original data from the ISO standardization committee. It develops Smith's general textual ontology into a theoretical framework for analyzing how professional boundary setting occurs in the textually structured context of ISO standardization. It gives attention to the implications of questions of objectification and standardization as these apply to contemporary research into innovation and organization.