The deregulation of financial markets has led to severe challenges for bank management and banking strategy. Investment banking is a sector that has experienced important and well‐publicized changes. London's celebrated ‘Big Bang’ helped to stimulate new banking strategies that were characterized by the formation of so‐called ‘bank financial conglomerates’. The October 1987 stock market crash, however, has precipitated strategic and organizational crises for many of these banks active in securities business and capital market products. This article re‐examines investment banking strategies in London and some of the lessons associated with the crash experiences.
This article adopts an ‘organizing’ perspective to examine the relationship between values and action. Drawing on case studies of organizing activity which is undertaken with reference to the core values of the autonomous women's movement, the essentially negotiated nature of this relationship is argued and illustrated. Variation is shown to occur in the terms and arenas of negotiation and attention is drawn to the dimensions of the characteristic ‘texture of organizing’ in the settings described.
In one stream of literature, organizational control has been observed to have two types ‐ bureaucratic and cultural ‐ and to be related to strategic adaptation. In another stream of literature, societal culture has been discussed as influencing the choice of organizational control types. This empirical study combines these two streams of literature. Drawing on Child (1981) we argue that the choice of organizational control types is a cultural choice. Within this context, the substitutability of one organizational control type for the other is examined using data from two culturally distinct sets of organizations ‐ Japanese and American. The results of canonical correlation analysis suggest that the substitutability hypothesis is supported in only a very limited sense and that the relationship between the two control types may be better viewed as balanced. Implications of these results for strategic managers are discussed.
This article analyses the link between research methodology and knowledge generation. It argues that the selection of a method of data collection and analysis determines the potential boundaries and depth of knowledge that can be generated. Choice of methodology, therefore, has major constraining or liberating potential. This is illustrated in an examination of three recent texts on transition. The first of these adopts an occupational psychology approach based on large‐scale surveys. It is argued that this approach runs the risk of ignoring key existential issues. The two other texts analysed are a clinical psychology approach to the major transitions in work and power occasioned by the introduction of new information technologies, and a novel examining key transition episodes in the ‘lives’ of its main protagonists. These two texts, it is suggested, provide an extremely rich source of data and are a pleasure to read. The article ends with an argument for the redefinition of the boundaries that constitute knowledge in management and organization studies.
This study examines the process of upward influence in a variety of strategic decisions. The study provides a list of categories and supporting data for the agents, methods, perceived outcomes, and perceived causes of success and failure of upward influence interactions that impact upon the strategic decision‐making process in organizations. The results suggest that: (a) middle‐level managers (MLMs) deal directly with their superiors and use rational or persuasive arguments in their upward influence interactions in strategic decisions; (2) MLMs are very successful in their influence interactions and attribute their successes to internal causes; (3) MLMs and their superiors view the influence episode similarly; and (4) upward influence activity in strategic decisions is quite similar to upward influence activity in non‐strategic decisions. The study also examines individual and organizational factors that are associated with success and failure in influence activity in strategic decision‐making.
Japanese manufacturing methods such as just‐in‐time production and total quality control are serving as a model of manufacturing organization which many UK manufacturers are currently emulating. This article describes the implementation of just‐in‐time production and its supporting practices in two factories owned by the same company. Empirical evidence demonstrates a profoundly political dimension to these innovations, requiring a significant rewriting of organizations’ political and cultural maps.
The strategic contingencies theory of power proposed by Hickson et al. (1971) has been tested and compared to an alternative perspective. In the alternative perspective, the theory has been modified to include control of strategic contingencies as a moderating variable in the relationships between power and its determinants. A field study, using questionnaire and interview responses of 54 administrators at five universities, partially supports the modified theory.
Private sector‐style management initiatives to ensure UK public services managers’ learning from private sector management practice are examined, and their rationale questioned. The lack of a coherent, systematic and agreed view of what constitutes ‘management’ and ‘managerial work’ in the private sector is discussed. It is argued that there are reasons for believing that the particular character and organizational contexts of public services will require different managerial behaviours. The manner in which experimental managerial initiatives in some public services have shifted into mandatory innovations is examined. Such innovations can be incompatible with the values of those managing in the public service, who frequently fail to recognize the advantages of late innovation, incrementalism and circumspection. In public services particularly, many managerial activities are the province of ‘non managerial’ staff. Though frequently not considered, the values of these de facto managers may be central to the progress of such innovations. It is further argued that risk‐taking as applied in a business context is inappropriate to the degree that public services managers must be concerned with the common weal, equity and accountability. The article concludes with a detailed research agenda to support the need to recognize public services management as a rich and varied area of managerial behaviour in its own right. Its character and variation warrants further investigation as a basis for formulating more appropriate management concepts against which to measure public services managers’ behaviour and performance.