Regulatory foci, a personality variable, differentially regulate the way in which individuals pursue goals based on different levels of pain avoidance and pleasure pursuit tendency. This variable is particularly relevant to entrepreneurial processes. This is because entrepreneurs, similar to other individuals, tend to frame many sub-tasks in the processes as either gain vs. non-gain or loss vs. non-loss games. Thus, the mechanism with which regulatory foci influence individuals’ decision making and choices similarly applies to those of entrepreneurs and their startup firms. Despite this high relevance, this variable has received inadequate attention from entrepreneurship scholars. This study tries to fill in this research gap by examining how an entrepreneur’s regulatory foci influence various aspects of strategy processes and strategy content of new venture development. / text

This thesis is an empirical exploration of supply strategy content and process. The investigation uses a single-sector case study methodology to explore the scope of supply strategy content, the interaction between supply strategy content and context, and supply strategy process within four aerospace sector companies. The research also uses an extant Integrative Framework to subsequently identify the ‘modes’ of supply strategy process that best describe supply strategy process in the case studies. While the scope of supply strategy content suggested by the supply management literature is theoretically broad, supply strategy process is represented in the literature as chiefly derived from business / corporate strategy. Recognising that details of the processes / practices that create supply strategy and the scope of content within supply strategies have been under-explored empirically, this investigation seeks to contribute to a developing understanding of supply strategy content and process ‘in practice’ and in particular, the role of actors in supply strategy process - which is largely absent in related studies. The research contributes to existing knowledge by finding that the opportunity / autonomy actors have to enact supply strategy process is broadly determined by contextual factors. Furthermore, the investigation finds that supply strategy process, actors and context all have a moderating effect on the scope of supply strategy content. It is also shown that different actors engage in the formulation and implementation stages of strategy process. Finally, the investigation identifies one dominant ‘mode’ of supply strategy process and distinctive combinations of ‘secondary’ modes in each case study. For practitioners, this investigation illustrates that the opportunity and facility to think / act strategically in supply is dependant upon more than just resolve and motivation; it is the product of a complex interaction of strategy context, content, process and actors. The thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations for practice and by identifying opportunities for further research in this field.

This thesis reports on an empirical investigation into manufacturing strategy (MS) formation in practice. The broad objective is to advance the understanding of MS processes through constructing consistent patterns in decision-making and action-taking relating to the manufacturing structure and infrastructure of the organisations studied. Using a combined "Grounded Theory - Case Study" approach, nine organisations within the metal products, machinery and equipment manufacturing sectors in Australia were studied, in order to address the following research questions: How are competitive priorities arrived at and translated into decisions and actions regarding the manufacturing structure and infrastructure? What are the consistent patterns of manufacturing strategy formation within specific organisational contexts and why those patterns exist that way? Qualitative data gathered through interviews conducted with the management staff - based on the sequences of events, actions and decisions, as well as other broader aspects of MS - were analysed by means of progressive coding. The themes, relationships and conceptual schemas emerged through the coding process are presented using narratives and graphical displays. The overall findings are presented in aggregate terms using a conceptual model, supplemented by several theoretical propositions. Deeper structures in MS processes represent linear and parallel, converging and diverging and sequential and iterative progression of strategic initiatives across four major phases identified as initiation, progression, commitment and realisation. The multiple modes of initiation, alternative paths of consolidation and differing forms of commitment and realisation are explained by the nature of strategic initiatives, the causal links between the modes themselves and the influence of certain organisational contextual factors. When enfolded in extant literature, these findings make two major contributions. First, apart from corroborating the complex and dynamic nature of MS formation in practice, they explicate the underlying patterns and alternative forms of MS formation. Second, they demonstrate some causal relationships between alternative forms of MS formation and certain contextual factors. These insights would inform future research, leading towards the development of a plausible mid-range theory of MS processes. They would also help practitioners to better understand the dynamics of MS formation and to nurture appropriate forms of MS formation within specific organisational settings.

This thesis reports on an empirical investigation into manufacturing strategy (MS) formation in practice. The broad objective is to advance the understanding of MS processes through constructing consistent patterns in decision-making and action-taking relating to the manufacturing structure and infrastructure of the organisations studied. Using a combined "Grounded Theory - Case Study" approach, nine organisations within the metal products, machinery and equipment manufacturing sectors in Australia were studied, in order to address the following research questions: How are competitive priorities arrived at and translated into decisions and actions regarding the manufacturing structure and infrastructure? What are the consistent patterns of manufacturing strategy formation within specific organisational contexts and why those patterns exist that way? Qualitative data gathered through interviews conducted with the management staff - based on the sequences of events, actions and decisions, as well as other broader aspects of MS - were analysed by means of progressive coding. The themes, relationships and conceptual schemas emerged through the coding process are presented using narratives and graphical displays. The overall findings are presented in aggregate terms using a conceptual model, supplemented by several theoretical propositions. Deeper structures in MS processes represent linear and parallel, converging and diverging and sequential and iterative progression of strategic initiatives across four major phases identified as initiation, progression, commitment and realisation. The multiple modes of initiation, alternative paths of consolidation and differing forms of commitment and realisation are explained by the nature of strategic initiatives, the causal links between the modes themselves and the influence of certain organisational contextual factors. When enfolded in extant literature, these findings make two major contributions. First, apart from corroborating the complex and dynamic nature of MS formation in practice, they explicate the underlying patterns and alternative forms of MS formation. Second, they demonstrate some causal relationships between alternative forms of MS formation and certain contextual factors. These insights would inform future research, leading towards the development of a plausible mid-range theory of MS processes. They would also help practitioners to better understand the dynamics of MS formation and to nurture appropriate forms of MS formation within specific organisational settings.

Legitimacy is widely accepted as an important resource for an organisation, strategy, or individual to possess. However, the process of gaining legitimacy has received limited attention in the academic literature. This thesis examines the strategies and actions that individuals employ in the process of legitimising their sustainability strategy within an organisation. Based on semi-structured interviews with 51 Heads of Sustainability, the research extends the existing ‘conformance, selection, manipulation’ legitimising strategy model, becoming one of the first to demonstrate how these legitimising strategies are interrelated both concurrently and temporally. It finds that multiple legitimising strategies are used simultaneously by individuals. Moreover, a pattern emerges whereby individuals begin with conformance-only legitimising when sustainability has limited integration, but employ all three legitimising strategies where sustainability integration is extensive. In addition to this, the research articulates two specific categories of actions that are used by individuals in the process of deploying these umbrella legitimising strategies: framing and developing coalitions of support. Framing actions comprise micro-reframing, disassociation, contextualisation, analogy, and differentiation and personalisation. Developing coalitions of support actions comprise leveraging sponsorship, networking, enhancing employee engagement, and continually promoting. From this empirical research a generalised legitimising pathway is proposed which demonstrates the progression of legitimising from using conformance-only through to using all three legitimising strategies, and the actions employed by the individual in these different stages.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2017-11-16T11:37:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Rafael Teixeira Nicolela_.pdf: 19694667 bytes, checksum: 730b938cca0bfa9dc538a7d03350fa51 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-16T11:37:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rafael Teixeira Nicolela_.pdf: 19694667 bytes, checksum: 730b938cca0bfa9dc538a7d03350fa51 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-27 / Nenhuma / Estratégia é um tema de alta relevância para a gestão, ocupando lugar de destaque seja em pesquisas acadêmicas, seja nas práticas das organizações. E também um tema complexo: são diferentes perspectivas, várias escolas de pensamento, algumas pesquisas focadas em conteúdo e outras em processo, algumas pesquisas enfocando a formulação de estratégias, outras a sua implementação. Talvez devido à complexidade, o índice de insucesso com estratégias é muito alto: estimativas apontam 60 a 70% de falhas em mudanças estratégicas. O objetivo desta pesquisa é ajudar as empresas a compreenderem sua habilidade de propor e implementar boas estratégias. Adotando um enfoque processual, a pesquisa propõe um artefato para medição da capacidade do processo estratégico, com a crença de que a medição desta capacidade é o primeiro passo para um plano de melhorias. Através de uma pesquisa qualitativa e quantitativa, o trabalho desenvolve um artefato de avaliação da maturidade do processo estratégico de uma organização e o aplica em população de empresas gaúchas de diferentes segmentos industriais e diversos portes. O modelo inicialmente proposto é parcialmente validado num primeiro teste. A contribuição desta pesquisa para a comunidade prática é genericamente a recomendação de uso de métodos de gestão de processos para a melhoria da capacidade do processo estratégico, e especificamente a proposição de um modelo para avaliação de sua maturidade. Não encontramos nenhuma pesquisa com esta intenção. / Strategy is a highly relevant topic for management, occupying a prominent place in academic research, and in the practices of organizations. It is also a complex theme: different perspectives, several schools of thought, some research focused on content and others in process, some research focusing on the formulation of strategies, others on their implementation. Perhaps due to this complexity, the failure rate with strategies is very high: estimates point to 60 to 70% of failures in strategic changes. The purpose of this research is to help companies understand their ability to propose and implement good strategies. Adopting a procedural approach, the research proposes an artifact to measure the capacity of the strategic process, with the belief that measuring this capability is the first step towards a plan for improvement. Through a qualitative and quantitative research, the work develops a maturity evaluation framework for the strategic process and applies it to a population of companies in Rio Grande do Sul of different industrial segments and different sizes. The initially proposed model is partially validated in a first test. The contribution of this research to the practical community is generally the recommendation of using process management methods to improve the capacity of the strategic process, and specifically the proposition of a model for maturity evaluation. We did not find any research with this intent.

The strategy process is viewed as a result of deliberate and emergent events, affected from different factors. Existing research in strategy making and implementation has suggested different micro-level factors affecting strategic decision making, mainly through research in single companies. Some factors include cognition, organisational learning and the roles of the top managers. This thesis attempts to gain a better understanding of the strategic decision making process through the investigation of the impact of middle managers' politics in the strategy process within international partnerships of the high tech sector. An abductive research approach is used, to investigate four case studies, combining different qualitative research methods. The research focuses on the formal and informal activities that middle managers engage in, in order to affect strategic decisions before, during and after these are made, through the different phases of a partnership. The organisational context of the study, this being international partnerships, enables the investigation of 35 decisions, 15 of which are in intra-organisational level, and 20 in inter-organisational. Findings suggest that the impact of political activity, between individual employees and groups of them in the intra-organisational environment, can be either integrative or fractious. This however appears to depend on three different factors: firstly, the tactics being applied during the decision making period; secondly, the phase of the partnership in which these decisions are being made; thirdly, the level of autonomy that middle managers enjoy during the formal and informal communications surrounding the decision making process. This study contributes in the strategy area as it suggests a coherent framework on investigating the causes and impact of political processes in organisations. Rather than using the criticised as abstract notions of 'positive/negative' impact of politics, it focuses on the way they integrate or fragment decision makers. This impact however appears to depend on the three aforementioned factors. The study contributes in strategy research, as it stretches the need for inquiry in the emerging strategic relationships area, by focusing on firm partnerships. Moreover, it stretches the need for abductive approaches, having as a departing point existing theoretical suggestions, in order to test theories and irregularities, and offer alternative explanations. The study concludes by suggesting two different frameworks to investigate the middle manager politics in firm partnerships, offering a meticulous way in investigating them through a processual approach.

The purpose of this research is to show how business and enterprise can align sustainability and sustainable development to create strategic sustainability (SS) procedures, which can be used for planning towards sustainability in an island context. Even with the 3Ps depiction of sustainable development (SD), the idea continues to be difficult to make operational (Azar, Holmberg and Lindgren 1996) and has failed in many of its applications (Baumgartner and Korhonen 2010). Moreover, businesses wishing to operate in perpetuity are challenged by the socio-ecological system that constitutes sustainability. But all businesses have materials, energy and waste flows, (MEWFs) and a more strategic approach to managing these flows can assist businesses with the sustainability challenge. Firstly however, sustainability described as a successful socio-ecological system must be understood. Secondly the process of reducing the MEWFs within the business, referred to as sustainable development actions must be seen as separate but congruent to sustainability. By adapting the framework for strategic sustainable development and using a mixed methods approach, the necessary strategy content for the SS procedures are researched in the tourist accommodation sector-Grenada. It is shown that in an island context, defined as an isolated system with scarce resources, (Deschenes and Chertow 2004) the challenges of sustainability, especially for businesses such as the tourist accommodation sector, are exacerbated. The research concludes with three important groups of steps for the SS procedures: 1) visioning and vision linking; 2) developing sector strategic actions and 3) monitoring and evaluation. A tourism symbiosis was proposed as a critical action for reducing MEWFs. Considerations for implementing aspects of a proposed green economy roadmap using the SS procedures are addressed. The research can assist both policy makers and business leaders to operationalise sustainable development and to do so with some degree of certainty of achieving sustainability in an island context.

Despite its contemporary relevance, we still have limited empirical knowledge about the forces underlying complex internationalization processes as when multinational corporations (MNCs) seek to enter new growing markets. Based on a real-time process study comprising ninety interviews and two hundred hours of observation made between 2009 and 2012, Atlas Copco’s entry into the Chinese mid-market was investigated. The intra-organizational analysis showed that three inter-related processes were underlying Atlas’ market entry and the results suggest that multiple interrelated motors may drive many contemporary internationalization processes. The processes identified are a sequential strategy process, an evolutionary process which shows that routines changed, and a political process. A somewhat surprising finding is that the main driver of internationalization according to received theory, the firm’s accumulated experiences, not only can drive internationalization, but may also hamper MNC managers’ possibilities to enter many of today’s new and growing markets. The findings add to our knowledge of the internationalization process in an increasingly complex international business setting, and especially highlight the need to distinguish between the sequential strategy process – more in line with received theory – and the other processes, in order to get a more full-fledged picture of what internationalization in large MNCs is all about.

This research was inspired by a particular business problem – the search for an optimal model of strategy-making process in Severstal, a major Russian metals and mining company going through a period of rapid growth and transformation. The research reports on the results of a longitudinal explorative case study based on two distinct empirical projects. The first project addressed strategy process nature, participants, roles of corporate centre, time perspective and impact of the external environment. Its results highlighted the importance of CEO leadership and personal traits, which became the principal focus of the second empirical project. The key empirical contribution of the research was definition of "leader-focused decentralisation" as a particular approach to strategy-making in a multi-business group. This approach combines decentralized, bottom-up, business units-led generation of strategic proposals and initiatives with a crucial role of a company leader as a deeply involved decision-maker, presiding over a small and lean corporate centre with minimal corporate rules and bureaucracy. In Severstal’s case, the "leader-focused decentralisation" approach to strategy was a good match to its volatile yet rewarding external environment. The suggested model can be seen as an empirically-derived step towards a theoretical synthesis of "activist" vs. "detached" views of corporate centre roles in relation to strategy process in multi-business firms. It exhibited some distinctive features which were not yet described in other contexts, including co-existence of strong entrepreneurial leadership and organisational decentralisation. From a practical standpoint, the research highlighted weaknesses and limitations of existing strategy-making model and offered a background for the discussion of ways to develop it in the future.