Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the relationships of culture strength and two substantive cultural values with corporate performance. Culture strength is measured by the consistency of responses to survey items across people and the two cultural values are measured by items on the survey that relate to either adaptability or stability. The data, from management surveys of 11 US insurance companies in 1981, were correlated with asset and premium growth rates from 1982 to 1987. Results indicate that both a strong culture regardless of content and a substantive value placed on adaptability are associated with better performance for two to three subsequent years on both criterion measures. The results support the findings of Denison (1990) that strength of culture is predictive of short‐term performance. The present results, however, suggest a more complex contingency model than that proposed by Denison.

ABSTRACTSince 1983 expenditure on acquisitions in the UK has more than doubled in real terms, despite the fact that the consensus of opinion in the academic literature is that acquisitions are not, on average, performance enhancing for the acquiring firm. Such literature, however, relates mainly to the acquisition of large, public companies. Drawing on survey evidence from 146 of the UK's top 500 companies, this article reports the results from a survey which encompasses all takeovers. The study revealed that is the expected reward of increased profitabililty which is used in ex‐post evaluation. The major finding of the study is, however, that managers firmly perceive that their takeover activity has been performance enhancing for their company. The evidence presented does suggest that the integration of small acquisitions into an existing organizational structure may be achieved without severe problems of loss of control, and the subsequent decline in performance which beset large acquisitions

ABSTRACTMuch organizational restructuring, at least in the UK and USA, seeks to replace organizational regulation by that of the market. These developments centre around an emphasis on relations with customers ‐ the ‘sovereign consumer’‐ as a paradigm for effective forms of organizational relations; they are apparent in, and underpin, a wide variety of organizational developments: just‐in‐time, total quality management, culture change programmes.Understanding these developments requires consideration of the discourse of enterprise of which the culture of the (internal) customer constitutes a key element. Defining internal organizational relations ‘as if’they were customer/supplier relations means replacing bureaucratic regulation and stability with the constant uncertainties of the market, and thus requiring enterprise from employees. This discourse has fundamental implications for management attempts to define working practices and relations and, ultimately, has impact on the conduct and identities of employees.Understanding these developments is not possible if analysis remains at the level of the organization. It requires that organizational restructurings, and the discourse which supports them, be located within the social and political rationality of enterprise. The certainties of management, the conviction that environmental challenge and competitive threat must be met by the cult[ure] of the customer, are due to managements’largely unquestioned acceptance of the normality and perceived good sense of the discourse of enterprise.

ABSTRACTRecently and independently, two dynamic approaches to organization and strategy have emerged in fields traditionally confined to static methods. One approach uses the cybernetic properties of collective cognitive maps to create a dynamic theory of organization and social system change. The other approach uses the hierarchic properties of collective cognitive maps to create a dynamic theory of strategy.This article discusses how a dynamic cognitive approach makes organization theory and strategy theory inseparable. The approach distinguishes between aggregate and congregate collective cognitive maps. The approach creates a unified dynamic theory of organization and strategy.In this unified theory, the hierarchic and cybernetic aspects of collective cognitive maps combine with the cryptic aspect of concepts and connections present in maps to further explicate the association between organization and strategy.In practice, the cryptic character of many concepts ‐ especially those responsible for the congregation of individual cognitive maps ‐ is exploited to generate both a potent interview technique and a powerful method for facilitating the initiation and development of strategy workshops.

ABSTRACTTaking agency theory and stakeholder theory as points of departure, this article proposes a paradigm that helps explain the following: (1) certain aspects of a firm's strategic behaviour; (2) the structure of management‐stakeholder contracts; (3) the form taken by the institutional structures that monitor and enforce contracts between managers and other stakeholders; and (4) the evolutionary process that shapes both management‐stakeholder contracts and the institutional structures that police those contracts.