Strategy implementation is crucial for organizational success, yet it remains one of the most challenging aspects for business as many organizations struggle to translate their strategies into successful implementation. Furthermore, despite its importance, the exploration of strategy implementation has paradoxically both fascinated and eluded researchers’ attention who often view strategy implementation as a mystery. The study begins by addressing the significant gap in existing literature concerning the role of managers in strategy implementation, more precisely how their structural managerial actions influence commitment. Structural managerial actions include the strategic tools and practices managers use to guide the organization towards its strategic objectives. Additionally, existing research suggests that these actions influence employees’ determination and willingness to perform tasks to support the strategy implementation, a concept referred to as commitment. While acknowledged by some authors, the relationship between structural managerial actions and commitment remains underexplored and thus represents a significant gap in the current literature of strategy implementation. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to explore how structural managerial actions impact commitment during the strategy implementation process, thereby providing a deeper understanding to the current mystery of strategy implementation. In line with this purpose, the goal of this study is to address the following research question: • How do structural managerial actions impact commitment during the strategy implementation process? To improve the understanding of the strategy implementation process, and to promote its inclusion in strategy research, a single case study has been conducted. Through an abductive research approach, this study collects empirical data through seven semi-structured qualitative interviews with managers at the organization under study, focusing on their experiences and perceptions related to strategy implementation, commitment, and structural managerial actions. Furthermore, a thematic analysis was performed to code themes and sub-themes for the analytical chapter of the study to be able to answer the study’s purpose and research question. The findings reveal a two-step relationship where different structural managerial actions first impact factors like role clarity, organizational support, communication, feedback and involvement, common understanding and perceived contribution. In turn, these factors are critical for enhancing overall commitment during strategy implementation. Moreover, the study highlights that different structural managerial actions have different significance for different factors. Together these findings contribute to understanding of how structural managerial actions impact commitment during strategy implementation.

An organisation’s survival is dependent on the support of a number of stakeholders. However, professional service firms tend to lose the support of their most important stakeholders, which are their well-educated employees, also referred to as their ‘talents’. This study has used Harrison and Wicks’ (2013) framework of stakeholder value creation as its point of departure, which consists of four value aspects: goods and services, organisational justice, organisational affiliation, and opportunity cost. The framework states that managerial actions, related to these four aspects, are likely to create value for stakeholders by increasing their happiness. “Happy” stakeholders are further considered to keep supporting their organisation, which generated the principal research question of this study: How can professional service firms increase the happiness of their talents? Moreover, the study was limited to neo and classic-professional service firms, which include: consultancy, advertising, accountancy, architecture, and law firms. In order to explore what managerial actions increase talents’ happiness, a case study was conducted at a British law firm. Nine solicitors of three different levels of seniority were interviewed and the firm was observed for two days. This study not only confirms the validity of Harrison and Wicks’ (2013) framework but also extends it by identifying additional managerial actions, categories for analysing ‘talent happiness’ as well as a fifth value aspect: ‘job characteristics’. In a broader perspective, this study contributes to stakeholder theory by providing an empirical and micro-level illustration of the theory.