ADOPTION OF STRATEGY GOALS EXPLORING THE SUCCESS OF STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL ACTIVITIES (A STUDY OF BOURDEX TELECOM MANAGEMENT SERVICES)

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ABSTRACT

This study is about the success of strategy implementation. Implementation, the conceptual counterpart of strategy formulation, has been  regarded  as  an  extremely  challenging  area  in  management practice. Still, strategy implementation has received remarkably less attention in the strategic management literature. The existing implementation frameworks are mostly normative and rather limited.

On  the  other  hand,  the  strategy  as  practice  research  agenda  has emerged to study strategy on the micro level, as a social phenomenon. Practice  researchers  have  introduced  an  activity  –  based  view  on strategy that is concerned with the day – to – day activities of organizational life that relate to strategic outcomes. Still, there is a clear need to know more about these strategic activities: what are they like, and how are they related to strategic outcomes.

This study explores the success of strategy implementation in terms of organizational activities, by focusing on two questions: how are the strategy goals realized through organic goal’s adoption? The research questions are addressed empirically.

The analysis produces a general strategic activity categorization consisting of numerous activities under five main activity categories of determining,  communicating,  controlling,  organization  and  interacting with  the  environment.  The  activities  divide  into  existing  and  desired

ones, which further divide into enhancing and novel one, the analysis reveals that successful adoption of a strategic goal is desired activities that  enhance  the  existing  ones  and  extensive  repertories  of  novel desired activities in addition, the scope of the strategic goals’ origin and its coherence with other elements of strategy is proposed to contribute to the adoption of the strategic goal.

The study contributed to the strategy as practice discussion by taking the activity – based view seriously and showing in detail what the strategic activities are like and how they are linked to the success of strategy implementation. The research reveals that strategy implementation is a much more complicated, creative, communicative, and external oriented phenomenon than the extant literature presents. Furthermore this study adds  to  the  very  limited  empirical  research  on  how  strategies  are adopted and enacted on all organizational levels. The practical implications  of  the  study  concern  critical  evaluation  of  existing  and desired activity patterns, as well as understanding the significance of the strategic goals’ origin and the coherence of the strategic whole.

CHAPTER  ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Although  strategy  has  been  one  of  the  main  interests  of  both organization theorists and practitioners for decades.

Porter (1991:95-117) states that the most central question in strategy research has been why some firms   succeed and   some fail. According to Tsoukas (1996:11-25) in   studying   firms’ behaviour, management researchers have  traditionally addressed two questions in what direction should  a  firm  channel its activities and how should a firm be organized.

On the other hand, business management and practitioners in private and public organizations as well as strategy consultants, strategy gurus, and business schools have constantly sought models and guidelines to ensure organizational survival and success as the basic motivation for all strategists. Strategy is about understanding and anticipating the nature of an organization’s competitive environment and its position within it. Barney (1991:99-120) states that   a strategy is about   understanding the organization’s  valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitable  internal resources,  and  core  competences..  Ansoff  (1965)  views  strategy  as about   creating ingenious plans for the future   to beat competitors to

serve customers  in novels ways, but it is  also about   organizational action,  taking  different kinds of actions step-by-step in specific way.

Though, this   research project is about   the success of strategy implementation. The processes by which  strategies are  created, that is, strategy formulation, or strategy making, have gained growing  attention since   the 1960s and   the early   authors have developed   different normative frameworks  and models  for building a successful  corporate or business   strategy. As a conceptual counterpart   to formulation, strategy implementation has been considered a process   of executing the  decisions made in the formulation process.

Hrebiniak and Joyce (2001:602) stress that strategy implementation has not  reached as much  attention as formulation and has even been labeled  as “a neglected area in the literature of strategic  management. Therefore,  formulation  and  implementation  f  strategy  have  generally been considered as separate, distinguishable   parts of the   strategic management process and the  conceptual separation of implementation and formulation can also be seen strategy write up or textbooks.

Snow and Harmbrick    (1980:527:538)”    even argue that, researchers have  ( …) reached  a general consensus on distinguishing between strategy formulation and strategy implementation. The advantage of   making this distinction is that the cognitive aspects of strategy formulation, can be viewed  as an important phases apart from

the action component (implementation)   But this work look at this distinction as myopic considering thinking  and doing. The believe here demonstrate that, implementation is more than pure mechanical execution, requiring cognition, initiative and interaction on the part   of various stakeholders throughout the organization.

Infact, the classical implementation literature is often laden with a rather mechanistic idea of man, which neglects the factor that organizational members are conscious agents with their own intents  and is manifested in terms such as “installing strategy” As Clegg et al (2004: 24) put it, the Cartesian split between the intelligible mind  and  the dumb  body that has  to be informed”.

Some groups  of authors like, “Bourgeois  and Brodwin (1984) Noble (1999) and   Hrebiniak   and   Joyce (2001 states that   the concept   of strategy implementation is   “elusive”   and strategy implementation research is “eclectic” being fragmented among   several fields   of organization and management study.

Thus, normative strategy literature is packed with models of successful strategy    implementation,  suggesting a  strategy    to  be  implemented through activities such as objectives, incentives, controls and structures. Alexander  (1991: 73-96) and Beer Eisenstat (2000:29-40) focused on the  problems  in  implementation  and    have  identified  a  number  of difficulties,  (weak  management  roles  in     implementation,  lack  of

communication, lack   of commitment   to the strategy, unawareness or misunderstanding of the  strategy, unaligned organizational systems and resources, poor coordination and sharing  of responsibilities, inadequate capabilities, and competing activities).

The majority of strategy implementation literature is normative, suggesting that strategy is implemented in a certain way. Even though it is noted that the type of strategy may potentially influences the implementation  action, the context is often ignored, proposing  that all kinds of organizations, in all kinds of situations and with any   kind   of strategic goals, should know the same model of implementation .

In other words, strategy implementation literature remains rather superficial and does not describe how  particular strategies  are realized. Whittington  (1996.  731-735)  recently  emerged  a  strategy  research stream that aims to look into the black box of organization to study strategy on the  micro level. This strategy as  practice research agenda explores strategy as a social phenomenon, by investigating   how the practitioners of strategy really act and interact. It calls of ran  “activity- based view  on strategy and proposes that value lies increasingly in the micro  activities of managers and others in organizations and seeks to understand organization’s   strategies and processes, and seeks   to understand  organization’s     strategies  and  processes,  and  what  is actually done  there and by whom.

Obviously, there are both theoretical and practical needs to understand strategy implementation better and there  is a growing  ambition to study strategy as an intra-organizational, micro level phenomenon. It is my believe   that in order to tackle the   numerous observed   problems   of implementation, we should create better more elucidatory, conceptualizations of strategy implementation, and to be able to concretize  what we want  to explore, what really happens in the name of strategy in organizations.

1.2    STATEMENT  OR  PROBLEM

As    discussed  above,  this  project  focuses  on  what  organizations actually do in their strategizing   efforts. Most specifically, its dealt with what kinds of activities organizations realize  their strategies and  which characteristics in these activities are related to successful   strategy implementation. A particularly  interest here is in  seeking to  reveal how strategy comes  alive in all organizational levels, in  the   actions and activities of all organizational members, not only those of   top management. By so doing, there is need to shed a little light on the roots of the various strategy implementation challenges.

Based on the above discussion, the general  research problem for the study is defined  as “ How do day to day organizational  activities reflect

the success of strategy   implementation and   what machineries   do organizations lack in the  adoption to the strategy goals.

This research problem will be operationalized into a set of research questions.

1.3    OBJECTIVES OF THE  STUDY

This study has the following objectives  as a target

(1)  To determine the main nature   of strategy and its adoption in organization

(2) To ascertain the linkage between the variety of ongoing organizational activities and the strategy of organization

(3)  To identify the  practical challenges of implementing strategies

(4) To suggest then certain measures to operationalize linkage between   mundane   organizational   activities   and   the   official strategy expressions in organizations.

1.4 RESEARCH   QUESTIONS

As  the aims of  this study is to describe strategy  implementation in a novel  and detailed way by exploring the repertoire of strategic activities and their  relationships  with strategic goals. The following are the operationalized questions.

a.      How are strategic goal realized through organizational activities?

b.      What kinds of strategic  activities are there in organization?

c.      How do different strategic   goals manifest themselves   in the activities?

d.      How are strategic   activities related to the success of strategic goal’s adoption?

e.      How are the strategic  goals being adopted?

f.       What  characteristics of the strategic activities reflect the adoption of the strategic  goal?

1:5   HYPOTHESES  FORMULATION

The  hypotheses of this study are as  follows:-

Ho: There is no distinctive nature of strategy adoption in organization

Hi:  There is distinctive nature of strategy adoption in organization

Ho: There is no linkage between the variety of on going  organizational activities and the strategy of organization

H2:- There is  linkage between the variety of ongoing   organizational activities and the strategy of  organization

H0:        There  is  no  practical challenges  of  implement strategies    in organization

H3:     There  is  practical  challenges  of  implementing  strategies  in organization

1.6    SIGNIFICANCE  OF THE STUDY

This    work  will of benefits  to numerous   private organization, individual, public organization, government and other works of like.

Firstly, private   and public   organizations through this work will gain more insight from what strategy entail, its impediments, reasons why strategies and activities are not inline which may lead    to unoperationalized and unconnected to the daily work and routines of organizations.

Generally, organizational strategies   and strategic goals, as well as their implementation are relatively interchangeable and were ought to be monitored or control in every organizational changes. In study, the harmonic  use and practicability of the concept  will enable  growth  of organization and successful implementation.

1.7    SCOPE  OF THE STUDY

The  scope of this study covers the three local government area that constitutes   the Enugu Metropolis and the Bourdex Telecom   Service Providers within the urban centres. The areas are, Enugu  North, Enugu

South and Enugu East Local Government Area in which   Users and

Telecom centre established  their locale.

1.8    LIMITATIONS  OF THE  STUDY

Perhaps, the research work should have covered the entire   Enugu State where the domain of Bourdex  Telecom situates, but  owing to the circumstances of both time and resources ( financial  incapacitation) the study then was limited to Enugu Metropolis.

Again, judging   to the economic   situation in Nigeria the   researcher was incapacitated financially that it cannot  allow him reach this whole required areas, material and  source. Also, it is well  known that time is nobody’s friend, therefore time is a constraint to the researcher.

1.9    DEFINITION OF TERMS

The  following  concepts was defined viz.

1) STRATEGY

Is the  determination of the basic  long-term goals and objectives  of an  enterprise,  and  the  adoption  of  the  courses  of  action  and  the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out   these goals. (Whittington 1996: 731-735)

2)  STRATEGIC  INTENT/GOAL

As those  long-term goals that reflect the preferred future  position of the firm, as articulated by its management (Porter 1991: 95-117)

3)  TO  ADOPT

To choose or take as one’s own, make one’s own by selection or assent, to accept or act in accordance  with (a plan, principle etc) to take over (an idea etc) from another person, to chose to follow or a course of action etc (Tsoukas 1996: 11-25)

4.  ACTIVITY

The state or quality of being active, or a situation in which  something is happening or a lot of things are being done (Snow and Hambrick

1980: 527-538)

5.  STRATEGIC  IMPLEMENTATION Is the act of operationalizing the task, goals and activities in order to  achieve the strategic  objective of an organizations



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