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This thesis investigates the concept of dynamic capabilities at both the macro and micro levels, using the study's findings at the micro level to explain phenomena determined at the macro level. In doing so, this provides more of a holistic approach to the discipline. Based on a 'black box' theme, this investigation provides an assimilated macro and micro operationalisation of dynamic capabilities from which it empirically examines such entities at the macro level using a general regression artificial neural network based procedure and at the micro level using an adaptec action research methodology. The findings suggest dynamic capability heterogeneity is as a result of differences in managers' ability to detect and comprehend the significance of incidents, differences in their ability to learn through trial and reflection and the degree of prudence managers demonstrate when implementing resource modification ideas.

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This thesis is a study of the experience of leadership. The aim throughout the thesis is to find ways of making sense of the idea of leadership by reference to the everyday routines of organisational life. The thesis is therefore preoccupied with the idea of "doing leadership" in the context of enacting specific job roles in organisations. Such an approach to studying leadership is in contrast with other possibilities that may be more theoretical or speculative in their view of what being in a senior leadership role in an organisation is actually like. I completed this thesis whilst working as a principal/CEO of two large inner city colleges in the tertiary sector of the UK. My thesis therefore reflects also the experience of enacting a leadership role bound up with the wider agenda of public service reform. In making sense of this context I apply and develop the idea of "performativity" as signifying a particular culture (rooted expectations, ways of working, generalised assumptions about practice) that are pervasive in public sector organisations. I explore the significance of this culture for the way in which those in leadership roles (and inter alia, their subordinates) experience identity. I suggest too that the cult of performance management makes contingent a pervasive sense of ontological insecurity for those working in political, administrative and organisational leadership roles enacted in this context. Against this background, I propose four key themes as a way of understanding what doing leadership in organisations entails: the administration of power and authority; the practice of ethics; an iconographic role of significance to others in an ongoing generalised process of identity formation; creative action. Finally, in reflecting upon the idea of leadership development, I argue that development should be understood as a movement in the emotional responsiveness (emotivity) of individuals to their situation and context. This I suggest arises from the practice of reflexivity. It is the ability to do this with rigour on the part of those in leadership roles that creates also new possibilities for an ethics of relating in organisations centred on the ideas of participation and emergence. The thesis comprises four project studies. The first is a reflective narrative account of how I came to join the DMan programme in 2002. The second explores issues of leadership relative to thinking about group processes and traditions of group analysis. The third study examines issues of identity as they emerge in the ways in which processes of power relating emerge in group interactions. The fourth study explores these same themes but in relation to the tensions that emerge in the interplay of norms and values informing human actions and conduct. The thesis includes a fifth study which focuses on issues of methodology and the significance of personal narratives of experience to a wider process of academic research. This thesis is explicitly one written by reference to a particular theoretical perspective. This perspective is best described by reference to the idea of complex responsive processes. I account for and describe this perspective in each of the project studies. It was with a view to working explicitly with this perspective that I joined the DMan programme. The work in this thesis is intended to constitute an active intellectual engagement with the idea of complex responsive processes. It is not the intention of the thesis simply to exemplify a fixed set of ideas. The thesis is therefore aiming also to be a contribution to the thinking of complex responsive processes as a set of ideas still in development. I remain committed to the view that the idea of complex responsive processes provides a powerful medium of critical ideas through which life in organisations and patterns of human relating can be understood. Whilst the thesis does not set out to justify a case for the idea of complex responsive processes, a recurrent theme is an exploration of the implications for understanding organisational life in general that arise from adopting the perspective of complex responsive processes relative to those presented by other traditions of thinking.

Les changements environnementaux de ces trente dernières années, impliquant un dynamisme et une flexibilité accrue des organisations et des individus, ont conduit à faire évoluer la notion de mobilité interne. Autant la littérature que le discours des entreprises partent du postulat que les nouvelles formes et enjeux de mobilité sont mutuellement profitables aux entreprises et aux individus. Cette thèse vient questionner ce postulat, en prenant le cas de l’ingénierie,dans lequel ces nouvelles exigences de flexibilité posent des problèmes spécifiques en lien avec les caractéristiques contextuelles et structurelles de ce secteur. Elle amène à s’interroger sur le régime de mobilité qui serait soutenable dans un environnement d’ingénierie.Cette recherche prend place au sein d’une direction de l’ingénierie d’un constructeur automobile français et questionne la volonté de l’entreprise de déployer une nouvelle politique de mobilité. Dans un premier temps,la thèse caractérise et discute l’intention d’évolution du nouveau régime de mobilitéinterne. Puis, elle observe la mise en oeuvre de quatre évolutions liées à la gestion des mobilités, portant sur l’introduction de nouvelles formes de mobilité, de nouveaux acteurs et processus. La thèse vient ensuite questionner la cohérence entre ces evolutions et les attentes des individus en termes dedéveloppement de carrière, puis s’interroge sur la pertinence et la faisabilité de cette évolution du point de vue de la contingence vis-à-vis de l’activité et du contexte. Enfin, elle propose un outil d’accompagnement des mobilités à destination des managers. / The environmental changes of the last thirties years imply more dynamism and flexibility, has led to an evolution of the notion of internal mobility. The literature as well the discourse from the companies express that the new forms and issues are mutually profitable to the companies and actors. This thesis questions this postulate, through the case of engineering, in which this new requirements of flexibility pose some specific problems, linked to the contextual and structural characteristics of this sector. It brings some interrogations about the kind of mobility system tenable in the engineering environment.This research takes place in the engineering department of a French automotivemanufacturer and questions the will of the company to deploy a new internal mobility policy. First, the thesis examines and discusses the intent of evolution. Then, it notices four main evolutions linked to internal mobility policy, which are the introduction of new forms of mobility, new actors and process. It questions the coherence between theses evolutions and the expectations of individuals in terms of career development, and then, examines the pertinence and feasibility of this evolution from the point of view of the context and activity specificities. Finally, the thesis proposes a management tool to support of mobility process by the managers.

A partir d’une problématique de compréhension des mécanismes d’acquisition et d’exploitation des connaissances pour innover, nous avons initié des travaux de recherche ciblés sur les PME. Des entretiens semi-directifs auprès de consultants nous ont mené à considérer le rôle de l’apprentissage individuel dans la gestion des connaissances et à identifier six pratiques spécifiques soutenant les apprentissages organisationnels dans un contexte d’innovation. A partir d’un questionnaire en ligne, nous avons questionné les dispositifs de gestion des connaissances mis en œuvre sur chacune des six pratiques. Les analyses nous ont permis d’identifier cinq classes parmi les répondants et d’orienter la suite de notre recueil vers l’identification des liens entre dispositifs mis en œuvre et types d’activités innovatives réalisées. Nous avons investigué cette question à travers des entretiens semi-directifs auprès de chefs d’entreprises. Les résultats nous permettent de définir un nouveau cadre d’analyse des pratiques de gestion des connaissances pour innover. Notre proposition finale met en lien les activités de Création, de Développement et de Recherche avec des pratiques spécifiques des gestions des connaissances et les mécanismes d’expression des compétences, en appui sur les théories de l’activité mobilisées dans la didactique professionnelle / Aiming to understand knowledge collecting and using processes to support innovation, we initiated a research work focused on SME’s. Semi-structured interviews with consultants lead us to consider the role of individual learning in knowledge management and to identify six different and specific practices to support organizational learning in an innovation context. Based on an online survey, we investigated knowledge management devices implemented to complete each of the six practices. The analysis allowed us to discriminated five different categories among survey participants and guided further collecting with the aim to describe links between knowledge management devices and sorts of innovative activities. We questioned this point through semi-structured interviews nearby SME’s entrepreneurs. Results allow to define a new analytical framework for knowledge management practices to innovate. This final proposal links Creation, Development and Research activities with specific knowledge management practices and competencies mechanisms, supported by activity theory mobilized in professional learning