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This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study of middle managers’ perceptions of knowledge management (KM) implementation in NZ organizations. Data were collected in a survey of 71 attendees of a KM presentation. The data were analyzed using qualitative coding principles. Two core issues were examined – barriers and drivers of KM. Subcategories under barriers were primarily concerned with factors internal to the organization such as organizational culture, leadership, and education. Drivers were mostly external to the organization and included competition, peer pressure, and the need for increased productivity. The results indicate that the way managers manage themselves and their organizations are perceived to be the biggest barriers to KM implementation.

When an organization needs to use scenarios as a framework for logically discussing internal and external issues, it should be aware of the two predominant causes of failure of scenario projects: (1) a lack of agreement on the purpose of the effort; and (2) a lack of understanding about how scenarios might help different organizational cultures and styles. To avoid these pitfalls, leaders need to first assess the potential usefulness of scenarios using the culture of their organization and the goals of the effort as context. This article discusses three organizational cultures and illustrates how each uses scenario planning for three different purposes (directional strategy, contingency planning, and learning and team building). “Leader‐driven organizations”: if the purpose of scenario planning is for setting direction, then scenarios are used to structure debate; however, in the end, the leader decides the direction and everyone follows, leaving the debate behind. If the purpose of the scenario work is for contingency planning, then scenarios would primarily be used to sensitize the leadership group to possible changes; not decision making on a specific topic. When learning and team building, then the leader driven culture use scenarios to open up the idea space in search of the out‐of‐the‐box ideas. Ideally, leaders make scenarios a way for people to work new ideas into the planning and decision‐making system. “Plan‐driven cultures”: such companies value stability. If the scenario work is for setting direction, then the outcome will only be valued if the events leading to an endstate are treated as critical path lists. “Evidence‐driven cultures”: develop in highly capital‐intensive industries that have long time horizons. Because long‐term commitments cannot be changed quickly, real evidence is of paramount value to these cultures. Scenarios provide a framework of expectations to match up with the real world as it develops.

Scenario development has traditionally been an outward looking process designed to enhance awareness of potential change in the external business environment. A set of techniques is presented here for bringing the business and its internal issues directly into the scenario development effort from the beginning. By casting strategies as scenarios, companies can gain many of the benefits of traditional scenario planning while accelerating the strategic decision making for organizations in high change environments.

This case study of scenario planning at Digital shows how top management uses the process for testing, probing, pushing, and provoking strategic thinking about the future. Middle managers find the scenarios helpful for modeling their current businesses.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.