Journal of Management Studies

Preble, John F.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00671.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT New strategic initiatives often take several years to execute fully and relatively few succeed. Unfortunately, classical control processes have contributed to this situation because they have been designed as feedback systems that detect problems and deviations from planned results only after they have already occurred, and because the standards to which measurements are compared are assumed to be correct or good. Recent conceptual contributors to the strategic control literature have argued for anticipatory feedforward controls, that recognize a rapidly changing and uncertain external environment. These new systems are designed to operate on a continuous basis, checking and critically evaluating assumptions, strategies, and results. This article adds to these conceptual developments by providing and explicit strategic control component to deal with low probability, high impact threatening events, namely, special alert control. In an effort to make all the latest strategic control components operationally useful, mechanisms, methods, and approaches to their efficient implementation are presented and then summarized in tabular form. An overall strategic control process diagram is provided to act as a guide for future strategic control systems. The result is a more comprehensive and workable system of strategic control.

Pearce, John A.; Zahra, Shaker A.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00672.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT This study examined the association between corporations’environments, strategies, and past performance and the composition of their boards of directors as measured by size and outside director representation. The environment, strategy and past performance were viewed as posing a strategic contingency; each of these sets could determine the success or failure of the company. Data on 119 Fortune 500 industrial companies for the 1983‐9 period were used. Canonical analysis showed that increased uncertainty of a firm's environment, use of external growth and diversification; reliance on leverage as a means of finance, and poor past financial performance were associated with large board size and increased outside representation in subsequent years. Most important, board composition was positively associated with future measurements of corporate financial performance.

Kriger, Mark P.; Barnes, Louis B.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00673.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT In conducting a longitudinal examination of eight long‐term complex decision processes in two Fortune 500 heavy manufacturing companies the authors developed a six‐level framework of decision complexity. The levels range from: (1) instantaneous decision choices to (2) decision actions (3) decision events (4) mini‐decision processes (5) decision processes and (6) decision theatres. They vary in time, numbers of participants, and in the integrative effort required to formulate and implement them. Thus, one problem with the word ‘decision’is that it is used to mean many different things in organizational settings. Each lower level of ‘decision’was found to combine with ‘decisions’of the same level and to be embedded within higher levels, resulting in a nested hierarchy of simultaneously occurring processes.

Bloomfield, Brian P.; Coombs, Rod

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00674.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT This article addresses the conceptualization of power in relation to the use of computers in organizations. Commonly held views that the application of computer based information systems leads to either a centralization or a decentralization of power and control, or that computers merely reinforce the power of dominant actors, are criticized, and an alternative view is put forward which focuses on the symbolic and disciplinary dimensions of the development of information systems. This perspective is then illustrated in connection with the development of management information systems in the National Health Service.

Souder, William E.; Moenaert, Rudy K.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00675.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT Technological innovation within the firm can be modelled as a process of uncertainty reduction. The four major sources of uncertainty are user needs, technological environments, competitive environments, and organizational resources. Reducing these uncertainties is the responsibility of the marketing and R&D functions within the firm. Because these functions are reciprocally interdependent, their success in reducing uncertainty requires integration and collaboration between them. A contingency framework is developed which shows the effect and the determinants of interfunctional information transfer. It is argued that the synergistic results of integration can best be understood as a within‐role increase of uncertainty reduction, and a between‐role convergence of functional uncertainty reduction. The implications of the model are discussed.

Green, Sebastian

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00676.xpmid: N/A

ABSTRACT This study examines, from a cultural perspective, owner‐managers’and other stakeholders’interpretations of the partial fusion of ownership and control through high leverage in eight UK management buy‐outs (MBOs). Owner‐control and debt‐control are interpreted as having positive effects on managerial motivation, organizational decision‐making processes and implementation of cost reduction strategies and negative ones on fundamental changes in strategy and acquisition. These interpretations accord broadly with agency theory propositions but show that owner‐managers place less emphasis on wealth incentive effects and more emphasis on the enabling and facilitating roles of collective ownership and the freedom it gives from inappropriate corporate control.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00677.xpmid: N/A

Book reviewed in this articles. Womack, James P., Jones, Daniel T. and Roos, DANIEL. The Machine that Changed the World. Eli, Max. Japan Inc. Global Strategies of Japanese Trading Corporatiom. Kester W. Carl, Japanese Takeovers. The Global Contest for Corporate Control. Flood Robert L. Librrating System Theory. Lewis, Colin. Business Forecasting in a Lotus 1‐2‐3 Environemt. Nystrom, Harry. Technological and Market Innovation ‐ Strategies for Product and Company Development. Friedland, Roger and Robertson, A. F. (Eds). Beyond the Market place: Rethinking Economy and Sociefy. Reddings, S. Gordont. The spirit of Chinese Capitalism. Mead, Richard Cross‐cultural Management Communication. Cross Michael cHanging Job Structures: Techniques for the Design of New Jobs and Organisations.