Framing Contest: Strategy Making Under Uncertanty Sarah Kaplan (2008)

1. Framing Contest: Strategy Making Under UncertantySarah Kaplan (2008) Xiangfeng Lei 469544 Dulce Barrueta 460365

2. Research target • Comm Corp situation: A communications technology company. • ”Bubble” on the fiber optic market in 2001-2002 • Layoffs and budget cuts • Decision process : Steering committee and the Review Board • Data: Interviews, protocols, observations, collected documentation, emails, spreadsheets, PowePoint documents, agendas. • Duration: 8 months • Scope limited to one department ATG The goal of Kaplan paper is to analize how managers take decisions in uncertainty periods from cognitive and political frames point of view.

3. Poor comprehention of other frames Projects involved Feeling of knowing better than the other • Last Mile Large project to identify market and technical opportunity in access technology • Engineering cognitive frame: • Positon Comm corp as a futur leader by turn the market around • Increase demand by giving end-users acess to high bandwith optical conections • Market opportunity • Economic analisys and Marketing cognitive frame: • Engineering department did not see the relevance of data that did not fit their frame. • The industry market was going down, no future on this market, at least in the short- term. Market threat • Multiservice • Effort to introduce a protocol technology that would allow service providers to offer multiple services to their customers with out having to scrap legacy equipment • Engineering cognitive frame: • Corpotative customers could not afford new technology intestments, but they needed to continue to upgrade their. • Bridge technology to customer with a less costly capital investing requirements • Economic analisys and Marketing cognitive frame: • The technology was threatening and cannibalizing • Market analysis of the industry. Different education backgroud Individual cognitive references

4. Framing contests Realign frame Bridge: Related but unconnected frames Amplify: latent frames Extending a frame to new issues Transforming frames to the deployment of these practices, coalitions are build around powerful coalitons can shape policy.

5. Conclusions • Managers tend to interpretate uncertanty situations based on individual cognitive predispositions. (Indivitual cognitive frames) • Managers used data and rational analisys to support their legitimacy battles. • Realign to make their frames resonate and to mobilize actions in their favor. • If framing practices were successful= predominant frame / If not resonated frames = frames remain divergent.

6. Critism • The period observe was not long enough to find sufficient evidence of managers behavior in strategy making. • Technology industry changes very quickly, so the findings here will not necessarly apply to other industries. • Uncertainty not always happend in challenging enviroments, so result can differ. • Due to its small sample size, this study does not cover different cultural approches in other countries. • We think that there is a lack of good understanding and comunication between departments, even before the presentation of a project.

7. THANK YOU Q & A

8. Case • You are the R&D manager of a German company that developed a new technology that happened to be excellent designed only for the Russian market. This will give access to massive economics of scale and thus fast growth of 60 % per year in 4 years. • With 10 years experience on the field • Market potential • The financial manager is not sure about investing on the production of this technology due to the current political situation in Russia, and their relations with the EU. Moreover developing a technology only for the Russian market will make the project very risky, in additional to the cultural and governmental barriers. Furthermore there is also a risk of losing some existing clients