Question 1:
a) Kaplan and Norton propose methods for implementing strategies without disrupting organizations. Give examples from your work experience of disruptive and non-disruptive strategy implementations.
b) Were the strategies that didn’t disrupt the organization deliberately designed so as not to be disruptive?
c) Is it sometimes appropriate–even essential–to design strategies with the intention of disrupting organizations? Can implementing disruptive strategies comprise a strategy for organizational change? How do disruptive strategies impact middle managers?
Question 2:
a) Mintzberg differentiates between ‘deliberate’ and ‘emergent’ strategies. What are the benefits of emergent strategies? Are they particularly suitable and efficient in certain types of organizations? In various kinds of environmental and competitive conditions? In tackling certain types of problems?
b) Comment on Rosabeth Kanter’s use of improvisational theater as a metaphor for emergent and flexible strategy.
Question 3:
a) Characterize the culture of the organization in which you work. How does this culture influence the work of middle managers?
b) Have you experienced deliberate interventions by senior management that was intended to refocus, refine or revise the culture of an organization? To what degree were such interventions successful or unsuccessful? Why?
Question 4:
a) What do you mean by organizational design? How is it like and how dissimilar design of a manufacturing process (for illustration, automobile production)? [You might wish to consider Jeanne Liedtka’s arguments here (“In defense of strategy as design”).]
b) Organizations have both formal and informal (tacit) structures. How can we predict the effects of compute and deliberate organizational change on informal networks and structures? How can we mitigate against unanticipated and unintended consequences of organizational redesign?