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...

“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...

How do corporate legal departments and law firms make decisions about ‘making’ or ‘buying’ legal services? In what ways are their decisions governed by the usual criteria and factors identified in economic and managerial theories of the firm? And to what extent are lawyers’...

Recent strategy research explains why firms sometimes make-and-buy (not make-or-buy)products simultaneously, but lacks explanations of how they strike the make-buy balance. We respond by developing a framework featuring two determinants of the balance: resource cospecialization and supplier...

Among various theories of the firm, the dynamic capabilities approach has not fully drawn its implications for firm boundary and organizational design. Firm boundary and structural design are abstracted away when strategy scholars study capabilities and firm-level heterogeneity. This chapter...