Strategy Management Processes:

University of Strathclyde, DMEM, Centre for Strategic Manufacturing, Research Presentation Day • Strategy Management Processes: • A Comparison Study Of Existing Strategy Models Of Managing The Trade Off Between Building New Strategy And Refining Existing Strategies PhD Student: Aylin Ates-Cantwell Supervisors : Prof. Umit Bititci & Dr. Jill MacBryde PhD Starting Date: 01/03/2005

Key Topics: • Background • Inspirational starting points to this research • Proposed direction (objectives, researchfocus) • Gap / Contribution • Consideration of the research methodology • Publications

Set Direction Monitor Ext. Environment Manage Strategy Get Order Develop Product Fulfil Order Manage Performance Support Product Manage Finance Technology Learning Personnel Support Corporate Manage Manage Change Background • The ongoing research project to answer ‘what makes the successful companies different?’(Understanding and Managing the ManageProcesses project) • ‘Closing the productivity gap in the UK’ Project. • how actually UK companies trade-off between increasing efficiency and effectiveness through the adoption of better practices and fundamentally changing their strategic position. • (Closing the Gap Research Proposal, 2005) • So what are these Manage Processes? CIMOSA Business Architecture, Childe et al, 1994; McCallum & Bititci, 2004

Industrial Problem • What makes companies create and sustain competitive advantage? • Tesco re-deployed their Balanced Scorecard within days of Wallmart’s takeover of Asda • Highland Spring changed to a winning business formula (brand management) they are the most successful mineral water company in the UK • Some companies are good at this and some are not – what is the Secret? • The processes behind these actions • The factors that make these processes capable • ‘Performance Indicators for Sustainable Competitive Advantage: The Next frontier’ pres. (Bititci et al.)

Background (cntd.) • Manage processes are performed by top management level in an organisation and deal with orchestrating, executing, defining goals and needs for shifting direction, foreseeing the future state of the business, developing strategies and making sure to put them in practice, allocating resources and supporting and enabling people who perform the operational and support processes. Manage processes do all of these by ensuring to stay competitive and to survive on the long term. Adopted from Peters & Waterman, 1995; McCallum & Bititci, 2004

Point of Departure • Deming’s PDCA cycle, Scientific Management • Bal’s (1998) perspectives • Functional • Behavioural • Organisational • Resource based • Decisional • Informational • Descriptive model • Normative best practice • model Models and Standards for TQM presentation, CSM Lecture Notes; Bititci

Point of Departure (cntd.) (Manage-Processes Project, 2005)

Proposed Direction/Objectives • Develop a rigorous understanding of strategy management processes from both existing theory and practice. • Find out whether managers’ decisions on strategic trade-offs are effected by external knowledge on business landscape changes or not. Articulate the relationship if it exists. • Identify the factors and processes that effect and shape company behaviour about strategic trade-offs. • Describe typical patterns. • Have a good understanding of the likely degrees of variation. • Correlations will be articulated in order to establish relations between particular patterns and their consumed outcomes in terms of trade offs and a range of contextual variables. (Easterby-Smith et al. 2004) • Build hypotheses and specific research questions • Test hypotheses

Contribution • Donaldson (2001) argues that causal regularities arise from situational constraints posed by both material and non-material factors. I see there is a gap in knowledge about how companies go about making these trade-offs in terms of activities, processes and capabilities. I also want to look at the regularities and patterns about determinants and constraints on these strategy review processes. • Contribution in the direction of extension and testing out of a theory (Business process view) into new areas (Strategy management) ...contribution to theory • Recommendations to companies. ...contr. to practice

Feasible Luck!! Research Design(cntd.) • Reading subject literature(Minzberg, Johnson, HBR etc.) • Using extant research (secondary data)(i.e. PROPHESY (Acur, 2001), Cambridge Approach (Platts & Gregory) ) • Accessing data (i.e. Shell Strategy Process, IBM Strategy Process, Nokia Strategy Process) • Formulate dimensions of strategic trade-off decisions as initial hypothesis • Conduct Descriptive survey • Dependent Variable (DV): Managers’ decision on either building new strategy or refining existing ones • Independent Variable (IV): Being aware of the need for building new strategies in case of change in business landscape / opportunities / threats / new trends in business • Case studies and Interviews(disembody the underpinning factors, constraints and resources effecting company behaviour in a certain way) • Collect data (raw and secondary data) • Delphi technique to capture expert opinion, Cognitive mapping to map interviews and articulate the causality relationships • Data Analysis (Correlation and Regression Analysis) • Writing Up

Publications • Business Process Approach to Management Practices: AStudy on Characteristics of Manage – Processesto be submitted for EURAM 2006 Oslo, Norway. • Manage processes have both hard and soft aspects, Manage processes are influenced by attributes and abilities of individual managers (Human Skills), Relational and holistic nature of manage processes, Manage processes operate in highly uncertain and complex environments, Universal and convergent nature of management functions, Evolving nature of manage processes • Modelling of the Manage Processes: A Study of Methodologies, Tools and Techniquesto be submitted for EUROMA 2006,Glasgow, Scotland. • A comprehensive analysis of a sample of selected BP modelling tools/techniques and methodologies are investigated in order to identify the shortfalls within existing tools.

Thank you for your attention!! aylin.ates@strath.ac.uk

Strategy Management Processes: