Showing papers in "British Journal of Management in 2003"

Towards a Methodology for Developing Evidence-Informed Management Knowledge by Means of Systematic Review

Abstract: Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research project. The researcher both maps and assesses the relevant intellectual territory in order to specify a research question which will further develop the knowledge hase. However, traditional 'narrative' reviews frequently lack thoroughness, and in many cases are not undertaken as genuine pieces of investigatory science. Consequently they can lack a means for making sense of what the collection of studies is saying. These reviews can he hiased by the researcher and often lack rigour. Furthermore, the use of reviews of the available evidence to provide insights and guidance for intervention into operational needs of practitioners and policymakers has largely been of secondary importance. For practitioners, making sense of a mass of often-contrad ictory evidence has hecome progressively harder. The quality of evidence underpinning decision-making and action has heen questioned, for inadequate or incomplete evidence seriously impedes policy formulation and implementation. In exploring ways in which evidence-informed management reviews might be achieved, the authors evaluate the process of systematic review used in the medical sciences. Over the last fifteen years, medical science has attempted to improve the review process hy synthesizing research in a systematic, transparent, and reproducihie manner with the twin aims of enhancing the knowledge hase and informing policymaking and practice. This paper evaluates the extent to which the process of systematic review can be applied to the management field in order to produce a reliable knowledge stock and enhanced practice by developing context-sensitive research. The paper highlights the challenges in developing an appropriate methodology.

How the Resource‐based and the Dynamic Capability Views of the Firm Inform Corporate‐level Strategy

Abstract: Summary This paper explains that the resource-based view essentially addresses issues of competitive strategy, but by integrating some arguments from its evolutionary version, the dynamic capability view, it can be extended to inform our understanding of corporate-level strategy. We concentrate on the issue of value creation from corporate centres and ask how the centre can possess or provide resources. The primary dynamic capabilities identified by Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997) are elaborated into six distinct modes of resource creation. Each mode is considered in relation to a set of organizational design parameters. We then propose resource-creating configurations that are congruent with respect to the modes and the required states of the design parameters. We point out areas of tension that are likely to arise if corporations try to combine different modes of resource creation. We conclude that corporate centres may possess resources but must display dynamic capabilities otherwise they will destroy shareholder value.

From blaming the middle to harnessing its potential: creating change intermediaries

Abstract: Middle managers have been under attack as organizational downsizing and reengineering have reduced their number. They are also frequently portrayed as obstructive and resistant to change. However, recent research suggests that managers at middle levels in organizations may be able to make a strategic contribution. Data from research on how managers in an organization undergoing transformation experience change are used to build on this existing research to demonstrate that middle managers fulfil a complex ‘change intermediary’ position during implementation. The findings reveal that a key aspect of this position is the need for middle managers to engage in a range of activities to aid their interpretation of the change intent. This interpretation activity then informs the personal changes they attempt to undertake, how they help others through change, how they keep the business going during the transition and what changes they implement in their departments. The interpretation aspect of their role is often overlooked, leading to workload issues and role conflict. These findings offer an alternative perspective on perceived middle manager resistance and lead into suggestions for future research and organizational implications.

More than a Metaphor: Organizational Identity Makes Organizational Life Possible

Abstract: Recent papers by Cornelissen (2002a, 2002b) and Gioia, Schultz and Corley (2002a, 2002b) have debated the utility of organizational identity as a metaphor for understanding organizational life. In the present paper we argue that this debate is limiting because it frames issues of organizational identity purely in metaphorical terms and fails to explore the social psychological basis and consequences of the discontinuity between personal and organizational identity. Extending this debate, we argue that the power of organizational identity as a theoretical and applied construct derives from the fact that it has the capacity to be both an externally shared and negotiated product and an internalized aspect of the collective self. Consistent with recent research informed by the social identity approach to organizational psychology, we discuss how an appreciation of the identity-based dynamic between the social facts of organizations and the socially-structured psychology of organizational members is essential for both theoretical and practical understanding of organizational life.

Enacting leadership for collaborative advantage: Dilemmas of ideology and pragmatism in the activities of partnership managers

Abstract: Working across organizations has long been recognized as a characteristic of public management, but recent years have seen a worldwide intensification in partnership working. Rhetoric about the benefits is endemic but so are complaints about the difficulty of partnership working in practice. Understanding the way that collaborative approaches may provide value is therefore an essential element of understanding the changing roles of public-sector organizations. The particular aim of this paper is to contribute to a growing understanding of the way in which individuals enact leadership roles in such situations. The focus is on partnership managers, whose main role is to organize the activities of a collaboration. The way in which partnership managers enact leadership is explored and insight into the kinds of activities that typically occupy them, the types of challenges and dilemmas that they face and typical ways in which they respond to these is provided. We suggest that the main categories of activities split into two opposing perspectives on leadership. We propose an overarching concept which suggests that collaborative leadership involves the management of a tension between ideology and pragmatism.

Models of Change Agency: a Fourfold Classification

Abstract: Change agents often play significant roles in initiating, managing or implementing change in organizations. Yet these roles are invariably exaggerated or misrepresented by one-dimensional models that ignore the full complexity and scope of change agent roles. Following a review and theoretical clarification of some of the literature and empirical research on change agency, a new fourfold classification of change agents is proposed, covering leadership, management, consultancy, and team models. The four models reaffirm the significance of the multifaceted and complex roles change agents perform in organizational change, while underlining the importance of conceiving change interventions within organizations as processes that need to be coordinated and effectively managed.

Studying the Accuracy of Managers' Perceptions: A Research Odyssey

Abstract: Much organizational activity and academic research relies on the accuracy of managers' perceptions. However, few studies have assessed the accuracy of managerial perceptions, and these studies indicate that managers' perceptions are often very inaccurate. This article discusses an odyssey into the study of managerial perceptions spanning two decades and two empirical studies. It depicts the evolution of research questions, samples, study designs, problems with such research and inferences drawn. It also identifies some errors that tend to be especially large and suggests some corrective actions. These corrective actions include using education and training to inform managers about organizational and environmental properties, exploiting improved technology, helping organizations to identify and correct misperceptions and designing robust organizations that can tolerate misperceptions.

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

Abstract: As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the ‘typical’ article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health-care sector, using case-study methods within field-based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK-centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.

Bridging Scholarship in Management: Epistemological Reflections

Abstract: If the relevance gap in management research is to be narrowed, management scholars must identify and adopt processes of inquiry that simultaneously achieve high rigour and high relevance. Research approaches that strive for relevance emphasize the particular at the expense of the general and approaches that strive for rigour emphasize the general over the particular. Inquiry that attains both rigour and relevance can be found in approaches to knowledge that involve a reasoned relationship between the particular and the general. Prominent among these are the works of Ikujiro Nonaka and John Dewey. Their epistemological foundations indicate the potential for a philosophy of science and a process of inquiry that crosses epistemological lines by synthesizing the particular and the general and by utilizing experience and theory, the implicit and the explicit, and induction and deduction. These epistemologies point to characteristics of a bridging scholarship that is problem-initiated and rests on expanded standards of validity. The present epistemological reflections are in search of new communities of knowing toward the production of relevant and rigorous management knowledge.

New CEO Openness to Change and Strategic Persistence: the Moderating Role of Industry Characteristics

Abstract: Drawing on the upper echelons, managerial discretion and strategic contingency perspectives we examine the relationships between newly chosen CEOs' openness to change and firm strategic persistence in the post-succession phase. This study is different from prior studies on the consequences of CEO succession in that it focuses on specific characteristics of the new CEO (that reflect his/her knowledge-base and cognitive orientations) and the industry context rather than purely on the event of succession. Based on a sample of 132 successions in 118 firms in the US manufacturing sector, and after controlling for industry concentration, board power, firm size and pre-succession performance, we find a negative relationship between CEOs' openness to change and post-succession strategic persistence. Interestingly, our findings indicate that this relationship is moderated by industry characteristics in that the negative association between CEO openness to change and strategic persistence is significant in high-discretion but not in low-discretion industries. Contributions of the paper to the CEO succession and strategic change literatures along with the managerial implications of our findings are discussed in the concluding section of the paper.

Archetype Change in Professional Organizations: Survey Evidence from Large Law Firms

Abstract: This paper examines the proposition that the traditional archetype of the professional partnership is said to have changed into a more ‘business-like’ entity, the managed professional business. It broadens the restricted case sample base on which much of the evidence has been adduced, by developing a survey questionnaire through which 197 large British law firms were sampled. Change, consistent with the notion of a more commercially oriented and consciously managed organization, is concentrated in the market-facing area of the firm but coexists with areas of continuity in the governance of the firm and its strategic management. The findings reveal a more managerial form of organization in which the core elements of the traditional form of professional organization have not been transformed. These results contest the assertion of either transformational or sedimented change found in other, case-based research and suggest that archetype change needs theoretically to be distinguished from the general phenomenon of greater managerialism within the professional service firm.

Power and Competition in the UK Retail Grocery Market

Abstract: The UK retail grocery market is widely recognized as being oligopolistic. This has raised concerns over the level and use of power by the leading retailers. This paper considers the changes in the UK retail grocery market in the context of a discussion of power. This discussion focuses on the possibility of a dominant chain arising in the market. Vertical and horizontal relationships and price and non-price competition form the organizing principles of the analysis. Policy implications are suggested and other conclusions are drawn.

Management and Business Ethics: A Critique and Integration of Ethical Decision-making Models

Abstract: This paper critically reviews the literature relating to the management of ethics within organizations and identifies, in line with other authors, a gap between theory and practice in the area. It highlights the role of management (both as an academic discipline and from a practitioner perspective) in bridging this gap and views managers, with their sense of individual ethical agency, as a key locus of ethics within organizations. The paper aims to address the theory–practice gap by surveying the business ethics literature in order to identify, draw together and integrate existing theory and research, with a particular emphasis upon models of ethical decision-making and their relationship to work values. Such an endeavour is necessary, not only because of the relative neglect of management practice by business ethics researchers, but also because of the current lack of integration in the field of business ethics itself. The paper outlines some of the main methodological challenges in the area and suggests how some of these may be overcome. Finally, it concludes with a number of suggestions as to how the theory–practice gap can be addressed through the development of a research agenda, based upon the previous work reviewed.

The state of the field in UK management research: reflections of the research assessment exercise (rae) panel

Abstract: This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions.

Market-based Organizational Learning and Market Performance Gains

Abstract: Building upon the market orientation-performance thesis, many investigators are now concerned with broader organizational learning considerations and the antecedents that underlie the analytical properties of learning about competitors and markets Described as a process of market-based organizational learning, an empirical test of a model is provided which indicates that: when organizations exhibit more favourable learning values (three value-based constructs), their market information processing behaviours and analytical capabilities improve (three knowledge-based constructs), which thereby directly impacts upon market-based outcomes (a market performance construct) that the organization is able to generate This model is tested with a path-analytic approach from data generated in the UK financial services industry Discussion of these findings is made in the light of pertinent literature streams, and several implications for future research are provided

Board Composition and Performance in Life Insurance Companies

Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a renewed emphasis on the quality of board governance worldwide. In the wake of a series of governance reports, particular interest has focused on the role and effectiveness of non-executive board members. This study seeks to add to our understanding of the governance role of non-executive directors by examining the use and usefulness of non-executives in insurance companies. The focus on the insurance industry, which includes both proprietary (stock) and mutual companies, allows us to examine the importance of board governance in the context of different ownership structures. Furthermore, by focusing our study in a period prior to the widespread adoption of the recommendations of the Cadbury Report by UK companies, our findings should more accurately capture the true role of board composition in a less-prescriptive governance environment. Our results suggest that mutual insurers utilize a greater proportion of non-executive directors and are less likely to have CEO/Chairman duality than their proprietary counterparts. This evidence is consistent with mutuals using stronger board governance to compensate for weaker ownership control. Proprietary companies, which are subject to stronger shareholder and capital market control, place less reliance on non-executive monitoring. Using a number of performance measures, we find no significant difference in the behaviour of mutual and proprietary companies with the exception of executive remuneration, (which is significantly higher for proprietary companies); furthermore there is no evidence that mutuals have outperformed their stock company rivals. Overall, our findings suggest that insurance companies emphasize different governance mechanisms depending on the specific monitoring problems they face.

Managerial Perceptions and the Essence of the Managerial World: What is an Interloper Business Executive to Make of the Academic-Researcher Perceptions of Managers?

Abstract: I argue that the Mezias and Starbuck (2003) research programme misses being managerially relevant by investigating the extent of perceptual inaccuracies among managers rather than the more valuable question of from where these inaccuracies arise and what their consequences are in practice. As a sometime business executive, it seems to me that the closer one gets to an actual managerial position, the less significant some of the explanations and recommendations in the academic research literature appear as regards managerial concerns. To ensure relevance in the managerial research enterprise, I suggest that academics should make concrete efforts to become reasonably conversant with the managerial world before undertaking any empirical research. I also make the point that the discussion of the Mode 2 approach to knowledge production in the management field needs to move away from the current focus on straightforwardly ‘bridging the relevance gap’ and toward finding ways to improve the competence of Mode 2 researchers by insisting on a minimum understanding of the managerial world before embarking on management research.

Knowledge Complementarity and Coordination in the Local Supply Chain: Some Empirical Evidence

Abstract: Knowledge, managed or coordinated as a strategic resource, can help to internalize uncertainty or volatility and play an important role in generating and sustaining competitive advantage. One potentially important determinant of knowledge coordination between firms is the relative strength of the knowledge bases of the two partner companies. In the context of the local supply chain, this paper examines the extent of knowledge coordination between a group of 18 Northern Ireland-based MNE plants and their local suppliers. A typology of knowledge complementarity is developed and related to the extent of firms' knowledge coordination activities. The analysis suggests three main empirical results. First, and somewhat unexpectedly, the relationship between MNE plants and their suppliers is characterized by a wide range of configurations of knowledge complementarity. Second, clear differentials exist between the occurrence of knowledge coordination activities incidental to normal trading relations and more intentional knowledge coordination activities. Third, no direct link was evident between knowledge complementarity and the level of knowledge coordination. The implication is that firms' willingness to coordinate knowledge, something that may be strategically determined, is more important than capability in determining the extent of knowledge coordination.

Regionalizing Healthcare in Alberta: Legislated Change, Uncertainty and Loose Coupling

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the re-organizing attempts of the Alberta government in healthcare from the viewpoint of uncertainty, loose coupling and the frequently unrecognized consequences of such change. We suggest that our understanding of change processes can be enhanced by conceptualizing the impact of task and environmental uncertainty through the nature of coupling between organizational elements. Based on our findings, we propose that the greater the degree of loose coupling in an organization, the more difficult change is likely to be, and the more likely the occurrence of unanticipated consequences. The ‘reform’ of healthcare during the 1980s and 1990s has been at the centre of debates about change and transformation in the public sector around the world, and as such has been instrumental in re-shaping the healthcare organizational field and individual healthcare organizations. This reshaping has involved restructurings and reorganizations of health systems, and innovations and experiments designed to improve the delivery of health services. Coinciding with this restructuring has been an ongoing, more naturally occurring evolution of existing roles within healthcare as well as the introduction of new boundary spanning roles. All of these reforms are meant to produce more integrated services and better health outcomes as well as containing ‘out of control’ costs.

Redesigning Public Services: Challenges of Practice for Policy

Abstract: The paper observes a challenge within contemporary public policy to change professional practices and relations to improve public services. Policy-makers' advocacy of process redesign as a best-practice mechanism for effecting change in public-sector organizations is the particular focus of attention. In both theory and method the paper engages an interest in public policy and practice with mainstream developments in the field of organization and management studies. The theoretical framework links debate about process organization, organizational change, professional collaboration and business process re-engineering. The public sector is not immune from the hype of transformation that characterizes much current debate about organization form and change. Empirical data about several redesign interventions that occurred in the context of a hospital re-engineering programme are used to analyse the rhetoric and reality of change in public services. Contested processes and limited effects of re-engineering are discussed for what they reveal about the prospects and possibilities for redesign to effect change in public services.

Consumer Awareness, Understanding and Usage of Unit Pricing *

Abstract: Manchester School of Management, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QDCorresponding author email: vince.mitchell@umist.ac.ukThe debate continues over whether prescribed quantities or unit pricing offers the bestmethod to enable consumers to make value-for-money comparisons. In theory, the‘informed’ consumer should benefit from being given unit-price information to identifyoptimum purchases; in practice, however, it would appear that many consumers do notuse the data. Although unit pricing can reduce the level of confusion caused by largeproduct ranges and large numbers of unique size–price combinations, results of a surveyof over 1000 people showed that: 31% of the sample did not understand how unit pricingwas meant to help them compare products; 35% could not be bothered to look at unitprices and 28% stated that unit pricing was too difficult to use. Those least likely tolook at unit prices are women, the least educated and consumers aged 18–34. Theresearch investigated why consumers do not use unit-price information and found: someconsumers do not possess the cognitive ability to process the information and feel unitpricing is too complicated to use; some products are not comparable, which makes unitprices misleading; many shops do not provide unit-price information; unit-priceinformation was felt unnecessary when evaluating products with few or no alternativesizes or brands; unit-price comparisons take too much time; consumers use simplerstrategies for getting value for money, e.g. volume discount heuristic, own brands,special offers, x% free, reward points, etc. The paper explores policy and retailerimplications for unit pricing and examines recommendations for government.

Managing from the Inside Out: Drawing on ‘Receptivity’ to Explain Variation in Strategy Implementation

Abstract: With the rise of ‘New Public Management’ (NPM), government policy has encouraged public-sector organizations to downsize and outsource their services. There is, however, local variation in the use of outsourcing – this is ‘managing from the inside out’. This paper draws on the notion of receptivity for organizational change to explain variation in strategy implementation. Four receptivity factors are identified which seem to explain the success of two contrasting English local government outsourcing strategies: ideological vision, leading change, institutional politics and implementation capacity. The organization level of change is interconnected with two other levels of change (the public service and environment levels) to illustrate the dynamic nature of change.

Re‐appraising Managers' Perceptual Errors: A Behavioural Decision‐Making Perspective

Abstract: Findings reported by Mezias and Starbuck (2003), indicating that managers have inaccurate perceptions of their organization and its environment, are appraised in the context of work from the field of behavioural decision-making (BDM) on heuristics and biases. Drawing on theory, research and criticisms concerning calibration of human judgement, continuous versus discrete judgements and the adequacy of the normative solutions used, we identify issues that require further clarification and suggest lines of research to address them.

Receptivity to Change in a General Medical Practice

Abstract: In this paper, Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee's concepts of receptive and non receptive contexts for change are examined using data from an evaluation study of a general medical practice implementing a Personal Medical Services Pilot between 1998 and 2001. Four questions concerning the applicability, associatedness, temporality and dynamism of the eight factors Pettigrew et al. identified as constitutive of receptivity are used in the analysis, which extends the original model through an operationalization yielding 21 ‘focal questions’. Although the process of change at the fieldwork site was stalled, the receptivity model is shown to have been a useful tool in identifying the factors blocking change. The analysis shows that when the eight factors are conceptualized in terms of the strength, direction and continuity of their influence, the receptivity metaphor provides a distinctive tool for the analysis of change. The paper concludes that further refinement of the model could provide a basis for the derivation of change management typologies.

Decision‐making Autonomy in UK International Equity Joint Ventures

Abstract: This paper investigates approaches to decision making in international joint ventures (IJVs) from the perspectives of the transactions cost and resource-based theories of the firm. In particular, the concept of autonomy in decision-making in a sample of UK-European equity joint ventures is examined. The study adopts a multi-method personal interview and self-administered questionnaire approach to examine managerial perceptions of decision-making and autonomy in the parent firms and the joint venture. The findings show that there are differences in the perception of autonomy between each of the parent firms, and between the parent firms and the IJV management. When we unpack the nature of autonomy in detail, it is found that IJV managers have greater degrees of operational autonomy than strategic autonomy and that decision making by IJV managers takes place within the context of constraints set within the IJV's business plan. This confirms the transaction cost theory which posits that key internal markets (for management, technology and capital) will be under parent control and also supports the resource based view that key capabilities are protected under the business plan established by the parent firms. The influence on IJV autonomy of the moderating variables IJV performance and IJV duration are also examined.

Mistaken Perceptions: Cases and Consequences

Abstract: Mezias and Starbuck (2003) review previous work and report striking new evidence indicating that managers can be quite mistaken in their perceptions regarding some matters, even matters quite close to their jobs. This is reminiscent of much evidence on politicians and ordinary citizens that generally show a weak grip on basic facts. In assessing how much difference this weakness makes, it is useful to distinguish among four perspectives on managers as: (i) informants for academic research; (ii) performers of their normal work; (iii) problem-solvers in novel situations; (iv) strategic thinkers. Mezias and Starbuck's results suggest a negative assessment on (i) and (iii), but are less clearly relevant on (ii); some open questions regarding (iv) are put forward.

Sustained Monopolistic Business Relationships: An Interdisciplinarity Case

Abstract: Business-to-business relationships within sustained monopolies, such as those within UK defence procurement, have received scant attention by management researchers. This is unusual because under these market circumstances there appear to be few incentives to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes despite their strategic policy importance. This paper argues that an understanding of the monopolistic environment using a transaction cost economics theoretical framework and supply-chain management, relationship marketing and transaction cost economics concepts provides an innovative, interdisciplinarity approach to solving this problem as well as testing aspects of these disciplines empirically in a novel area. This paper describes the results from a substantial research project to test this hypothesis in the UK defence procurement situation. It reveals a number of key dynamics within the sustained monopolistic relationships surveyed and suggests considerable potential for further research.

Asking a Straightforward Question: Managers' Perceptions and Managers' Emotions

Abstract: Mezias and Starbuck (2003) raise a number of issues concerning the accuracy of managers' perceptions. In this commentary, I argue that research on managers' perceptions might fruitfully explore further (1) the functional and dysfunctional effects of managers' perceptions and (2) the role of emotion in shaping managers' perceptions and their responses to the environment filtered by these perceptions. Drawing upon research in social and cognitive psychology, I argue that there exist theoretical frameworks from which to frame questions and interpret data in these areas.

On Building the New Managerialist State

Abstract: D. Saint-Martin (2000). Building The New Man-agerialist State, Denis Saint-Martin OxfordUniversity Press, 0-19-924037-X. pp. 247.Internationally, there has been a wave of publicsector ‘reforming’ over the last twenty or so yearswith the rise of a new managerialism inside manypublic sectors. The growing role of managementconsultants in such public-sector reform is animportant phenomenon but one which has not sofar been subjected to sustained scholarly exam-ination. Saint-Martin refers in his recent book tothe rise of the ‘consultocracy’ in providing adviceto modern government. The consulting sector hasgrown considerably over this period out of itsoriginal base in accounting and audit services,and has developed a much stronger market andpresence within the public sector. Such consul-tants have more widely been an important vehiclefor importing ideas and techniques derived fromprivate-sector settings into the state, of courseunder political direction which indeed wantedpublic services to become more business like andoften mistrusted the advice of civil servants.Management consultants not only play a techni-cal function, but (Saint-Martin argues) animportant political function in supporting andstrengthening the hands of reforming Ministersagainst internal opposition.Saint-Martin (himself a Canadian academic)examines the increasingly close relationship be-tween an expanding consulting sector and govern-ment in this monograph. He examines thecomparative history and impact of managementconsultancy ideas in three jurisdictions: the UK;Canada and France. The UK is the high-impactcase (as it has been for wider managerialist ideas,Hood, 1995; Ferlie et al., 1996); Canada middleimpact and France the low-impact case. It is thefirst major empirical study in the role of consultantsin the marketization of State bureaucracies. It alsoadds usefully to the comparative literature which isemerging on international variation in publicmanagement reform (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000).His thesis is that the impact of managementconsulting ideas in any one country depends on (i)the organizational development of the consultingindustry itself and (ii) the legacies of past policies ofbureaucratic reform which facilitated (or impeded)the access of consultants to political power centres.Cycles of managerializing reform can be tracedback to the 1960s (e.g. the Fulton Report in theUK), although they became more intense in themid-1980s. So the book examines the interactionbetween the supply side (the nature of the manage-ment consulting industry itself which shows a laterand slower growth curve in France than in Canadaand the UK) and the demand side (the willingnessand ability of governmental reformers to useconsultants as a source of advice). This is adifferent interpretation of the rise of consultingthan that which has stressed the key role played byNew Right governments–(the Mulhoney govern-ment in Canada was New Rightist but distrustful ofmanagerialism which it found politically dangerousas managerial ideas were here aligned with keypower centres in the legislature rather than theexecutive, notably the Office of the Auditor Generalwhich reported directly to their House of Com-mons); the crisis of the 1980s or the economicincentives facing consulting firms.Saint-Martin draws on political science con-cepts, applying them to a historical and com-parative study of three states. The book presentsthree comparative case studies where the unit ofanalysis is the interaction between governmentand consulting, followed by cross-case compara-tive analysis. One key conclusion is the rejectionof the globalization thesis of international public-sector convergence on a dominant Anglo-Americanmodel: ‘there is, in reality, not only no one domi-nant or ‘global’ pattern of adaptation but differentreform trajectories’ (p. 165). France is an inter-esting low-impact outlier. ‘in France, managerialistBritish Journal of Management, Vol. 14, S85–S87 (2003)

Programmed, Autonomous‐Formal and Spontaneous Organizational Learning

Abstract: Organizational learning (OL) has been represented either as the systematic governance of collective expertise or as a relatively anarchic process of implicit transaction within and across fluid, dispersed communities of practice. Qualitative case-study research open to both perspectives was conducted in a not-for-profit service organization, a franchisee company and a vertically integrated company, all based in Hong Kong. Two forms of OL as systematic governance were found: ‘programmed’ OL (POL) and ‘autonomous-formal’ OL (AFOL), respectively. The relative emphasis on POL and AFOL appeared to vary from organization to organization, and to be influenced by management philosophy and by institutional frameworks such as professionalization and franchisee status. A ‘spontaneous’ and dispersed form of implicitly transacted OL (SOL) was also found. SOL appeared to reflect natural exuberance but was attenuated when colleagues regarded knowledge as a commodity. There appeared to be synergy between AFOL and SOL.