Q1. Strategy Implementation & Disruption Qs:
• Kaplan & Norton suggest techniques for implementing strategies without disrupting organizations. Provide examples from your work experience of disruptive and non-disruptive strategy implementations.
• Were the strategies that did not disrupt the organization deliberately designed so as not to be disruptive?
• Is it sometimes appropriate - even necessary - to design strategies with the intention of disrupting organizations? Can implementing disruptive strategies constitute a strategy for organizational change? How do disruptive strategies impact middle managers?
Q2. Adaptive Strategy Qs:
• Mintzberg distinguishes between ‘deliberate' and ‘emergent' strategies. What are the advantages of emergent strategies? Are they particularly appropriate and effective in certain kinds of organizations? In certain kinds of environmental and competitive conditions? In tackling certain kinds of problems?
• Comment on Rosabeth Kanter's use of improvisational theater as a metaphor for emergent and ?exible strategy.
Q3. Organizational Culture Qs:
• Characterize the culture of the organization in which you work. How does this culture affect the work of middle managers?
• Have you experienced deliberate interventions by senior management that were intended to refocus, re?ne or revise the culture of an organization? To what degree were these interventions successful or unsuccessful? Why?
Q4. Organizational Structure & Design Qs:
• What is organizational design? How is it like and how unlike design of a manufacturing process (for example, automobile production)?
• Organizations have both formal and informal (tacit) structures. How can we predict the effects of calculated and deliberate organizational change on informal networks and structures? How can we mitigate against unanticipated and unintended consequences of organizational redesign?