Lecture 4 - Learning school + Power school Flashcards
(!) Describe the learning school in general
General:
- Descriptive
- Strategy formation: Emergent process
- Beyond individual: Forces & actors
- Strategy emerge by continued refinement
- Small adaptions, experiments & learnings
- Small changes become major strategic orientation
- Much bottom up: All informed individuals can contribute
- Strategy in retrospect: Done forward
- No clear separation of formation & formulation
- Include order & conscious control in learning
- Learning by acting, doing & trying things: Also think on doings
- Informal & spontaneous: No plans & visions
- Respond to outside factors
- World seen as complex
- See which pattern that work: Ref. Pattern
Situations of use:
- Complex environment
- No central authority
- Dynamic & unpredictable environment
- New situations
Situations of non-use:
- Specific project: No room for other directions
- Big problems: Too many directions
- Crisis: CEO should lead
- Scare resources & time
Key words:
- Incrementalism
- Emergent
- Core Competence
(!!) How does the learning school differ from the other schools?
Cognitive vs. Learning school
- Sometimes we just try things
Design, planning & positioning vs. Learning school
- Strategy in retrospect
- Think-do-Think vs. Do-think-Do
________
Planning, entrepreneurship & learning:
Planning:
- Formulators & implementers
- Provide order
- Danger of reification: (Dansk:Tingliggørelse)
Entrepreneurship:
- Formulator implement or infuses
- Provide direction
- Danger of capture: Detached vision
Learning:
- Implementers formulate
- Provide initiative
- Danger of drift: Too many directions
Other:
- Learning vs. Entrepreneurship: Require experience
- Learning vs. Contingency: Active
(.) Describe the root dimensions of the learning school
Sources:
- Lindblom
- Cyert and March
- Weick
- Quinn
- Prahalad and Hamel
Base discipline:
- None
Champions:
- Experimentation
- Ambiguity
- Adaptability
Intended message:
- Learn
Realized message:
- Play
(!) Describe different forms of incrementalism & how to foster it
Logical incrementalism:
General:
- Internal decisions & external events flow together
- Manager guide streams & events toward conscious strategies
- Flow provide shared consensus among TM
Principles:
- Non-linear strategy process
- Take lead: Dont wait for formal info-system
- Reduce fear of change: Air & legitimize new viewpoints
- Engage in continuous change: “Tone at the top”
- Structure flexibility: Resource buffers & slack
- Build awareness: Study, challenge & question
- Build credibility: Symbols for complex messages
- Overcome opposition
- Attract options & concrete proposals
- Create & formalize commitment: Prestige & power
____________
Disjointed incrementalism:
- Policy making: No coordination, serial, fragmented & nibbling
- Mutual adjustment of actors
- Even a strategy?
(!) Describe evolutionary theory & emergent strategy
Evolutionary theory:
- Organization rely on routines
- Organizations replicate routines
- Routines control smooth flow of activities
- Routines ensure no process break down
Emergent strategies:
- Examine experience feedback loop underpinning learning
- Examine strategies over long periods of time
- Examine relationship between intentions & behaviour
- Examine how outcomes change intentions
(.) Describe strategic venturing
General:
- Judgement based on learning
- LLM input: Close to market: Customers, markets & practicalities
- Strategic initiatives emerge from front-line & middle managers: Bottom up
- TM shape structural context: Still signing
- Judgement based on learning
- Lot of negotiation
- Complex ressource allocation: Study, bargaining, persuasion & choice at multiple levels & across time
Positive impact:
- Highlight important internal entrepreneurs
- Encourage TM to establish mechanisms to capture & leverage learning
Negative impact:
- Assume coherent strategy by cumulative impact, yet no coordination
- Care & feeding of new ideas led to internal market-like process
(?) Describe Weicks model
General:
- Try things –> See consequences –> Explain –> Continue
- Learning not possible without acting: No thinking ahead
- Discover strengths & weaknesses through action
Sense making in retro perspective:
- Impose order on past experience
- World enacted: Active reflection is key
- Reality emerge from constant interpreting & update of past experience
(.) Describe the hothouse model & the grass roots model of strategy
Hothouse model:
- Ref. Top-down
- One strategist: Plant & pick
- Conscious controlled process
- Carefully read environment data: When to plant
- Growth monitored
- Strategies formally implemented
Grass roots model:
- Ref. Bottom-up
- Pick best grown weed
- Sow & harvest strategy
- Strategy spread by enforced behavior: Spontan or consciously
- (Recognition & encouragement > preconception)
(.) Describe chaotic self-organization & the learning organization
Chaotic self-organization:
- Learning school to the extreme
- Take advantage of disorder by maintained condition of instability
- High fluctuations drive cooperative effort
- Created & accumulated info transformed into knowledge
The learning organization:
- Learn from failure & succes
- Improve things that work
- Use LLM knowledge
- Spread knowledge in firm
- Look outside firm for knowledge
- Single & double loop learning: Single: Detect error & keep track. Double: Learn to learn
(.) Describe the knowledge spiral
(!) Describe strengths & weaknesses of the learning school
Strengths:
- Flexibility
- Commitment from democratization
- Highlight voluntary strategy formation
- Highlight deterministic tendencies of prescriptive schools
- Highlight importance of openness
Weaknesses:
- Costly & time-consuming
- Require past experience
- Danger of drift: Too many directions –> Unfocussed learning
- No unified purpose despite cooperation
- Risk of hidden strategies
- Political risk
- No coherent pattern
- Major commitment cannot be subdivided
(!) Describe the power school in general
- Descriptive
- Strategy formation: Process of negotiation
- Beyond individual: Forces & actors
- Silo thinking: Suboptimization > goal congruence
- Negotiation of conflicting groups internal & external
- Actors compete for resources: Self interest
- Strategy as political game
- Understanding > Tool
- Position/ploy > perspective
- World seen as complex
- Strategies emergent & not optimal
- Eg. Game theory
(!) Describe power & politics
Power:
General:
- Directly influence others behavior
- Eg. Hierarchy
Positive:
- Set guidelines
- Enforce rules
- Get results
- Set goals
Negative:
- Dictate
- Abuse
- Avoid responsibility
- Break conventions
__________
Politics:
General:
- Indirectly influence others behavior
- How power is used
Positive:
- Inform
- Persuade
- Support
- Partner
Negative
- Deceive
- Manipulate
- Double deal
- Betray
(!) Describe micro & macro power
General:
- (BU hard to place)
___________
Micro power:
- Power inside firm
- Internal actors
- Persuasion & bargaining
- Very emergent
_____________
Macro power:
General:
- Done by organization
- Firms interest
- Cooperate or compete
- Eg. Stakeholder theory or resource dependency
(!) Describe organizational politics & political tactics
Organizational politics
- Self-interest > Goal-congruence & best interest
- Not gentle/polite game
- Power solve conflicts: Most important resource in firms
- Conflict: Differences in interest, belief & values
- Conflict: Allocation of scarce resources
- Goals & decisions emerge from negotiation & competition for position among stakeholders
Political tactics:
- Managers support strategy: “Tone at top”
- Demote/fire protestors
- Manage communication
- Change strategy cosmetic
- Form counter-union
Benefits of politics:
- Check power abuse
- Highlight competent, eliminate incompetent
- Ensure debate of both sides of issues
- Stimulate change
(.) Describe the political process
(!) Describe different stakeholder contexts
General:
- Different interests to satisfy
- Possible stakeholder analysis
Organizational context:
- General: Treat of exit & important voice
- Managers
- Employees
Market context:
- Investors
- Shareholders: Vote as director
- Customers: Loyal?
- Suppliers: Loyal?
Broader context:
- General: Legitimacy, regulations & property rights
- Governments
- International bodies
- Interest groups
