Many critics of free-market liberalism argue that higher product-market competition and the “Anglo-Saxon” management practices it stimulates increases productivity only at the expense of employees’ work-life balance (WLB). The empirical basis of these claims is unclear. To address this...

This paper seeks to deepen the research on middle managers’ strategic sensemaking roles. Until now, little research has explored how middle managers use their practical knowledge to realize their sensemaking role during strategic change in their daily activities. Here, through vignettes drawn...

Given the increasingly popularity of strategy workshops within organizations, it is surprising that there are few accounts of this phenomenon. This paper addresses this issue through two in-depth case studies of organizations employing strategy workshops for strategic reviews. The paper builds...

Do “Anglo-Saxon” management practices generate higher productivity only at the expense of lousywork-life balance (WLB) for workers? Many critics of “neo-libéralisme sauvage” have argued thatincreased competition from globalisation is damaging employees’ quality of life. Others have...

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium sizedmanufacturing firms in the US, France, Germany and the UK. These measures of managerialpractice are strongly associated with productivity, profitability, Tobin’s Q, sales growth and survivalrates....

On 30th October 2003, at a joint Forum of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) and the Councilfor Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) academics, practitioners and policy makers discussed dimensions of theUK’s skills challenge. This report, which summarises the discussions that...

“Overall in the UK we do a lot of networking when trying to innovate, perhaps we don’t do enough to capitalise onit and our general infrastructure is not quite adequate to support it”.(AIM Review on Networking and Innovation, 2003).The major points discussed in the report are:On the...

This report summarises the discussions that took place during the AIM Management Research Forum on the 29th April 2003 and the subsequent work of four AIM scholars (Dr Kamal Birdi, University of Sheffield; Dr David Denyer, Cranfield School of Management; Dr Kamal Munir, University of Cambridge...

Organisational change is a fact of business life. With globalisation, increasedcompetition, and improved technology, organisations are moving towards flatterorganisational models.Managing the type of fundamental changes involved in moving from a hierarchical toa flatter organisational structure,...

Improving the competitiveness of the UK economyis a national priority. Recent studies – the PorterReport1 and the Department of Trade and Industry(DTI) Innovation Review2 show that the UKlags behind its major competitors in terms ofproductivity. There is a growing consensus thatclosing the...