Module 4
discussion
Strategy Implementation and Strategic Control
Week 1:
In order to properly implement a strategic plan,
organizations use structure, various control systems (budgets, variance
analysis, policies and procedures, company rules), and culture.
Let us revisit General Mills and determine the relative
effectiveness of the company’s strategic controls. Choose two implementation
controls, and discuss whether or not you believe the controls you’ve selected
effectively support the company’s strategic choices. Be sure to defend your
answer (critical thinking is required)!
Be sure that you respond to the postings of your classmates.
Week 2:
Respond to the following:
As you’ve learned from the background readings, a key
strategic control is that of organizational culture. Culture must fit with an
organization’s strategic choices. Poor alignment between culture and strategic
choice is a sure-fire way to doom any strategic choice.
Of course, some organizational theorists would assert that
an organization’s culture cannot be “managed” in the truest sense of
how one “manages” the processes and activities and things that exist within
an organization. David Campbell (2000, p. 28) says that an organization
Is being constructed continuously on a daily, even momentary
[italics added], basis through individual interactions with others. The
organization never settles into an entity or a thing that can be labelled and
described, because it is constantly changing, or reinventing itself, through
the interactions going on within it. [At the same time, an organization] does
have a certain character to it, such that, like driving on the motorway, not
just anything goes (p. x).
Do you agree or disagree with the above? That is, can
culture really be “managed”? What might this interpretation mean in
the context of our current discussion related to “strategic controls”?
A few comments on the above: Many individuals believe that,
while the notion of “culture” can be defined, no single individual
(irrespective of his/her legitimate power) is capable of single-handedly moving
an organization’s culture in one direction or another. These individuals
suggest that the sheer number of formal and informal groups, structures, tasks,
functional operations, and individual interactions that exist and occur within
organizations (even moderate-sized ones) render the “management” of culture
impossible (consider the potential number – and combination – of individual to
individual, individual to group, and group to group interactions that are
likely to occur within an organization at each and every moment (and then,
there are endless numbers of contacts / interactions with external stakeholders
as well). The possibilities are seemingly infinite — or at least they are
indefinite. In this view, an organization’s culture is abstract, fragmentary,
fluid — and even relative and momentary – how can such a thing be “managed” in
the same sense that we “manage” people and organizational processes?
Reference:
Campbell, D. (2000). The socially constructed organization.
London: Karnac Books.
