Managerial Dilemmas: Exploiting paradox for strategic leadership

by John Storey; Graeme Salaman

• ISBN13: 9781444316599
• ISBN10: 1444316591
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

More than ever, today's managers are beset by successive, fashionable, prescriptions concerning the structure, dynamics, processes and direction of the modern corporation. Unlike their earlier counterparts, the current areas of interest are less clearly associated with Human Resource issues (HR policies, processes, cultures and so on) and far more closely linked with issues more explicitly central to business activity and business performance. Managers need to develop an understanding of innovation, off-shoring, outsourcing, inter-organizational arrangements and other aspects of supply chain management. This book will assist executives and management students to make better sense of these different spheres of activity by exploring them in relation to each other. By helping them make sense of these ideas in relation to each other the book will also allow them to better assess if, and to see how, where and when, they could be of use. This is an invaluable guide to the most current management issues for advanced management undergraduates, MBAs and executives.

Table of Contents

Preface

List of case organizations

About the authors

Introduction

Exploiting dilemmas and paradoxes through a new mode of leadership

Meanings of dilemmas and paradox

The exploitation of paradox

Types

strategy and business models

organizational structuring

performance and control

innovation dilemmas

managers' knowledge

organizational change

The role of leadership

Conclusions

Organization of the book

The nature of dilemma and paradox

Dilemma and paradox

Experiencing dilemma and paradox

The organizational level

Visualizing dilemmas

The subjectivity of dilemma and paradox

Exploiting dilemmas and paradoxes

Managing paradoxes

Conclusions

The Six Dilemmas And Paradoxes

Dilemmas and paradoxes of strategy

Strategy and capability

Business and organizational models

Strategy and organizational design

Two case studies: EngCon and contract cleaning services

The engineering consultancy company

Commercial and industrial cleaning and support services contractors

Discussion

Dilemmas and paradoxes of organizational form and structuring

From bureaucracy to market

Project management

Process management

Joint ventures and alliances

Strategic outsourcing

Supply chain management

Networks and virtual organizations

Conclusions

Dilemmas and paradoxes of performance management

The meaning and implications of performance management

The paradox of control

The performance control process

The social complexity of the process

Types of control

Direct supervision

Technical controls

Administrative controls

Quality and Just-in-Time manufacturing

Incentive payments as a form of performance management

Self controls and social controls

Control and resistance

The vicious circle of control

Positive responses to controls

Reconciling control and autonomy

Performance and management systems

The wider context

Conclusions

Dilemmas and paradoxes of innovation

Introduction

Innovation issues

Business strategy and the management of innovation

Barriers and enablers

Exploration versus exploitation

The role of established cognitive structures and recipes

Our findings about managers' use of theory and the choice between two divergent models

Managers' interpretations of the nature and priority of innovation

Different interpretations and their consequences

The moral and affective dimensions

The illegitimacy of innovation?

Analyses of the source of the problem

Formal and informal systems

Informal systems

Organizational cultures

Mindsets and values

Approaches to innovation: a danger to be controlled or energy to be tapped?

Loose/tight

The value of searching

The role of leadership

Conclusions

Dilemmas and paradoxes of managers' knowledge

Fads, fashions and prevailing assumptions

Developing strategy: the role of executives' knowledge and thinking

Why are executives' ideas powerful?

Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge; consensual knowledge and differentiated knowledge

Findings about executive managers' strategic knowledge

common unexplored understandings

divergent, submerged/unexplored conflicts

negotiated action

manifest conflict

Conclusions

Dilemmas and paradoxes of organizational change

Introduction

The nature and sources of change paradoxes

The knowledge and role of managers

The nature of organizations

The objectives of organizational change projects

The paradoxes of change processes

Why change? The relationship between organizational capacity and organizational strategy

Why change? Basic systems

Why change? Core competences

Why change? The adaptive organization

Why change? Strategic capacity

Key change problems and solutions

Key change problems: organizational capacity to change

Key change problems: symptoms and sources

Key change problems: changing how we change

Key change problems: changing the organization or helping it learn to change?

Conclusions

Conclusions

Implications for leaders of organizations

Dilemmas and paradoxes of strategy and of business models

Dilemmas and paradoxes of organizing

Dilemmas and paradoxes of performance management

Dilemmas of innovation

The paradoxes of change

Cross-cutting applications and a summary of lessons for leaders

References

Index

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