Konzerninitiativen sind ein wichtiges Instrument des Corporate Managements. Dieser Beitrag informiert über das Management von Initiativen aus Sicht der Konzernzentrale eines diversifizierten Unternehmens. Die Autoren arbeiten konzeptionelle Grundlagen heraus und geben einen Überblick über empirische Ergebnisse. Sie grenzen Initiativen systematisch von Projekten ab, skizzieren das zugrunde liegende evolutionäre Strategieverständnis und stellen anhand von vier Handlungsfeldern wesentliche Herausforderungen und Praktiken des Initiative-Managements vor.
Welcome to the autumn/winter issue 2000 of the JMM - The International Journal on Media Management. Edited by the Institute for Media and Communications Management of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, the journal is dedicated to investigating the development and management of new media and innovations in worldwide communications. You are warmly invited to visit our website (www. mediajournal.org) for access to the digital archive of journal's in-depth reporting. This issue's focus theme is dedicated to legal, regulatory and governmental aspects of media management.
This paper uses a comparative case study of six multichannel retailers' adoption of new cross-channel solutions to explore how top managers empower their middle managers in top-down strategic renewal. Although there is significant research on how top managers maintain control over emergent strategy, we still have a relatively limited understanding of how top-managers empower their mid-levels in deliberate strategic change. Our study produces two empirical findings that somewhat contrast recent research: (i) While current studies recognize the limits to top managers' direct presence at middle levels in dynamic change settings and argue for an active role of middle managers, we find that top managers in firms with relative success in top-driven renewal personally engage with middle managers on a frequent basis, direct and evaluate their change activities through guiding mechanisms, and ensure accessibility to provide feedback to mid-levels. (ii) While prior research shows that middle management empowerment can result from top managers' symbolic invitation to play a broader strategic role, top managers in our successful cases revived hierarchies to maintain an active leadership function in the face of major change which, in turn, became a resource for middle management during deliberate strategic change. In contrast, in less successful cases, top managers refrained from playing an active leadership function, thereby refuting hierarchical relationships. Most fundamentally, we complement the recent focus on symbolic power as a critical means for empowering mid-levels in top-down change by showing how building relational power in the form of functioning hierarchies may be another effective way of fostering middle managers' contributions in deliberate strategic change.
The relationship between headquarters and subsidiaries has been the focus of many studies applying diverse theories. A common yet somewhat dormant perspective is agency theory, which views headquarters as principals and subsidiaries as agents. While this perspective has facilitated analyses on e.g., subsidiary-specific control strategies, it falls short in recognizing the complexities found in contemporary MNCs. It is argued that agency relationships are not limited to the ones between headquarters and subsidiary top managers, but can be found on many levels. We build on the traditional notion, and theoretically advance it by allowing for internal units inside headquarters and subsidiaries. As a consequence, we find multiple agency relationships, as well as multiple principals to the same agent. Theoretical implications are discussed and propositions put forward.
When applied in headquarters-subsidiary contexts, agency theory traditionally promotes behavioral vs. output controls for principals (headquarters) to manage their agents (subsidiaries). Existing studies, however, have both theoretically and empirically largely neglected the role of social controls. Two reasons support this: (1) Agency theory as-sumes within-subsidiary homogeneity when it comes to subsidiaries and control strategies, and (2) goal conflicts are not precisely conceptualized. In this study, we acknowledge within-subsidiary heterogeneity and advance a nuanced view on goal conflicts, differentiating between conflicts pushed by central vs. pushed by local units. Examining 131 function-specific dyads between a headquarters and its six subsidiaries of a European MNC, we find the distinction of goal conflicts to matter for the effects of socialization and choice of behavioral vs. output control strategies.
Value creation through the corporate strategy function (CSF) and its measurement has received little attention in strategic management research. This article should fill this gap by starting to develop the Strategic Impact Measure (SIM). Applying the strategy as practice perspective and drawing on an in depth case study of a global multi-business automotive company (AutoCorp) with empirical evidence of 43 interviews, we find that strategic impact is a collective and multidimensional construct consisting of a relational, cognitive and functional dimension. The extent of these dimensions is reflected in the four strategic impact levels ‘power', ‘rush', ‘poor', and ‘routine'. After having inductively developed the construct strategic impact from the data, we pilot measured the SIM at AutoCorp and validated the results in an exploratory factor analysis.
Research on incumbents' response to disruptive innovation suffers from a success bias. The primary focus being on success traps, failure traps have received much less attention. This study uses a case study of two polar episodes of business model adaptation at a large financial service firm to elaborate and re-ingrate theory on strategic innovation. We find that balancing associated with complementary roles of top and middle management, yet the division of labor differed between learning traps. We also find significant differences in the practices used to balance in single ventures. However, more fundamentally, we find underlying tensions and antecedents to be a common denominator of the incumbent's response, independent of the particular learning challenge. Our main contribution is an integrative model that goes beyond categorizations of learning traps as mirror-inverted situations,
elaborating both underlying differences and commonalities.
Die Doppik ist en vogue: Kaum eine Ausgabe der Verwaltungszeitschriften erscheint ohne die obligatorischen Erfolgsberichte der Doppik-Einführung in Gemeinde X oder Kreis Y. Es wird berichtet von den praxisnahen Produktkatalogen und den politischen Entscheidungsträgern, die sich "endlich" und "wirklich" auf das neue Rechnungswesen eingestellt haben und dies in ihre Entscheidungsprozesse mit einbeziehen. Der Leser der Artikel fragt sich oft, ist meine Kommune eigentlich die einzige, bei der das Ganze eigentlich nicht funktioniert? Public Value rückt die Wertschöpfung wieder in den Vordergrund und packt das Steuerungsproblem im Öffentlichen Sektor ganzheitlich an. Aus unserer Sicht ein lohnender Ansatz um die "richtigen Dinge zu tun".
Der Vortrag wird sich nicht mit den Systemkämpfen zwischen Kameralistik und Doppik aufhalten und die Überlegenheit eines Systems beschreiben. Es geht vielmehr darum, bei aller Begeisterung für Buchhaltungssysteme und Kennzahlenpyramiden, die eigentliche Aufgabe nicht aus den Augen zu verlieren. Gesellschaftliche Wertschöpfung ist "Grund und Grenze" öffentlichen Handelns. Führung und Steuerung sollten diese Wertschöpfung unterstützen und Kreativität und Ermessen sollten gefördert werden. Es wird dargelegt, warum die Doppik hierzu nur begrenzt einen Beitrag leisten kann und warum kennzahlenbasierte Steuerungssysteme in einigen Wertschöpfungsbereichen wirkungslos oder sogar schädlich sind.
