Rationalizing branch banking

Large organizations and particularly organizations with the complex structure of branch banking, require time to change. The author does not suggest that there are any clear answers to the strategic planning problems facing branch banking. Today's advanced technology provides new tools to respond to change and progress. To do this accurate assessment of market segments, an effective internal management structure, efficient management and a level and quality of staff to use the new technology are required. This, in turn, will demand new recruitment and training methods.     

Systems innovation manager

Each year organizations spend a significant amount of money developing new products and processes in an effort to satisfy customer demands and manufacture high-quality products efficiently. Both development processes - product and process, are complex, resource intensive and thrive on innovation. They demand a variety of skills and resources, but in particular, participation among all staff in generating ideas, managing projects and implementing change. There are currently a number of software tools and methods that facilitate change in a systems environment. These range from complex modelling tools to information management tools. The tools have been developed around paradigms, e.g. world class manufacturing, total quality management and business process reengineering. They are often complex, requiring the efforts of skilled designers and managers. Current thinking within a systems environment reflects a more participative and less specialist approach to managing innovation and change. There is a need to create compromise between detailed project engineering and good management practice. This paper introduces a new paradigm centred on good management practice, and identifies the critical issues in systems innovation and change. The paradigm is articulated through a series of change levers and a methodology that guides managers and designers. It is supported by a series of software tools that together bring innovation management to life within the industrial organization.     

Engineering change: A theoretical assessment and a case study

The competitive playground where nowadays firms struggle to survive has rapidly become unforeseeable: product life cycle has shrunk, becoming even shorter than in the past, and world-wide market is suffering for a strong customer differentiation which led to an increasingly wide product mix. In this industrial environment, the engineering change process is getting more and more attention throughout the branches of industry, as it appears as a critical process which seeps into the operations management core, thus influencing the overall firm's performances. A brief state-of-the-art in the area of engineering change is firstly presented. Then a proposal of classification and a new methodology for an effective engineering change process management are suggested. The new proposed methodology has been successfully applied to a real-life manufacturing system and the related case study is reported at the end of the paper.     

Success through culture change in a Japanese brewery

The birth, growth and subsequent decline of Asahi Brewery is described up to the appointment of a new president of the company and the introduction of a new management concept. This brought a change in strategic direction and the development of new products. Changes in corporate culture at the top and middle level of management encouraged change in employee culture. Improvements of organizational structure and programmes are described and principles for change in corporate culture are extrapolated.     

The new rules of leadership and organizational politics

As the health care industry continues to experience unprecedented change, organizational politics are also evolving. Major changes are underway in the rules of engagement and how management and workers behave on the job. The new rules of the game include: Practice leadership, not management; practice inclusion with a vengeance; practice modesty and consideration and demand both; act on rumor, don't await confirmation; aggressively collect allies; understand the politics of voice mail; and know that position power isn't personal power.     

Action Learning - A Paradigm in Emergence: the Problems Facing a Challenge to Traditional Management Education and Development

This paper examines the proposition that action learning is a new paradigm in management education. Action learning is becoming widely accepted methodology for the development of managers and managerial competence. This is in both public and private sector organizations and within the context of certificated and organisationally based programmes. The paper seeks to use Kuhn's work on the nature of paradigms and change as a way of explaining the increase of interest in his approach. Importantly, although this approach promises to answer some of the problems of traditional management education, it is not without its own critics. Kuhn's criteria for a paradigm change are explained with reference to action learning literature and knowledge of practice. From this a framework is developed that compares a traditional approach to management education with an action learning approach on three levels. Our conclusion is that action learning is a new paradigm, but for the maximum benefit to be gained from the approach its application needs to be more carefully considered, particularly in relation to the provision of some wider external frameworks for the manager to use as‘tools for thinking’     

从传统行业到产业互联网创新实践--许毅刚变革管理思想的演化过程研究

采用纵向案例研究,基于许毅刚从传统行业跨界到产业互联网的管理实践,探究了企业家在不同时期的变革管理思想及其演化过程。研究结果表明,企业家在传统行业实践时期,主要采用计划式变革管理思维,在产业互联网实践时期则主要采用持续性变革管理思维。企业家需要经历“冲突-回溯”的过程,实现从计划式变革管理向持续性变革管理的演化。此外,在产业互联网实践时期,克制承接、角色后退和即时复盘是企业家把握新趋势和激发组织活力与创造力的3个重要机制。研究结论从过程视角回答了持续性变革管理思维如何从传统计划式变革管理演变而来,为致力于传统行业转型的企业家和管理者转变思维方式、促进互联网实践提供了启示。     

Revisiting management innovation and change programmes: strategic vision or tunnel vision?

The information systems (IS) and management literature, broadly conceived, is replete with management innovation and change programmes. All are designed to enhance business performance and competitive advantage. This paper examines five approaches which have been developed in the post-war period to improve business performance. They are Total Quality Management (TQM), Just-In-Time production management (JIT), Activity Based Costing (ABC), Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), and Process Innovation. By comparing and contrasting these approaches, it is found that considerable overlap exists in their scope, style, content, aims and objectives. In view of this, the paper argues that instead of re-inventing the wheel every few years with a new management innovation and change panacea or fad, a broader, inter-disciplinary perspective should be adopted which seeks to understand the wider ideological, historical and empirical perspective which underpins these ideas. This is instead of the tunnel vision approach which seeks only to place these ideas in a narrow organisational or managerial context.     

技术驱动的管理科学与工程研究

科技创新引领技术变革，加速变革的科技正在重塑世界政治、经济和社会发展的新格局、新形势。一系列新场景、新环境下的管理决策问题，如新一代移动通讯、人工智能、物联网、轨道交通与建筑工程、医疗工程、能源环境工程等，开启了管理科学与工程学科研究的新局面，并提出了全新的要求和挑战。本文通过系统梳理和总结相关文献和课题项目，阐述管理科学与工程领域的关键技术发展态势，并结合领域权威专家的问卷和访谈结果，立足新技术融合和新产业应用两个方面概括了技术驱动下管理科学与工程的主要研究方向。     

Organizational Transformation and Top-Down Change: The Case of the NHS

This paper analyses the effects of government-sponsored attempts to change the way that the NHS, one of the largest employers in Europe, is managed. The theoretical issues raised relate to the concept of transformational change and attempts at public-sector restructuring, which set the context for the presentation of data. The empirical research, carried out over three years, examines the changes since the most recent reforms (the NHS and Community Care Act 1990).
The research considers the extent of organizational change which can be seen as the outcome of these reforms in relation to: a multiple and inter-related change agenda; the creation of new forms of organization; the creation of new roles; the reconfiguration of power relations; and the creation of a new culture, ideology and organizational meaning. These are presented as the key variables which could indicate whether transformational, rather than incremental, change has occurred. The focus of this analysis is at local board level.
This article concludes that earlier analyses of the limited success of administrative reform are no longer the case. Our analysis of the key variables suggests that what is occurring at least at local board level goes beyond incremental change and may represent the beginnings of an 'organizational transformation'. This contains unintended as well as intended elements as an unanticipated 'hybrid' form of management may be emerging.     

Hitting the Target…but Missing the Point: Resolving the Paradox of Strategic Transition

Many firms are undertaking a strategic shift from cost leadership (through process management) to differentiation based on radical product innovation. Success in such transitions has been mixed, as have findings on the role of performance measurement and management in the process. This study explores the challenges of managing this transition, with specific focus on the role of performance metrics. Conventional wisdom indicates that top management can use metrics - measures, standards and rewards - to communicate new directions and priorities. Based on findings reported in this paper, this approach is found to be potentially fatally flawed when applied to a situation where both the corporate goals and the means of achieving these goals have changed. Using detailed data drawn from a multi-level analysis of a major international corporation undertaking such a strategic shift, this study explores the process by which metrics are formed and deployed, and the impact of this process on the ability of the firm to successfully achieve the change. Using measures such as the percentage of sales from new products, top management in the case study had the impression that the strategy was being successfully carried out by the various operating divisions. However, radical innovation (the desired result) had been replaced by incremental innovation. This study identifies the reasons for this situation. A major finding is that the performance measurement and management system can both allow and conceal this failure. Firms trying to significantly change their strategic directions must change their selection of performance metrics to focus less on the intended outcomes and more on the means by which these outcomes are to be achieved.     

Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation*

Top‐down total quality management (TQM) programs often fail to create deep and sustained change in organizations. They become a fad soon replaced by another fad. Failure to institutionalize TQM can be attributed to a gap between top management's rhetoric about their intentions for TQM and the reality of implementation in various subunits of the organization. The gap varies from subunit to subunit due to the quality of management in each. By quality of management is meant the capacity of senior team to (1) develop commitment to the new TQM direction and behave and make decisions that are consistent with it, (2) develop the cross‐functional mechanisms, leadership skills, and team culture needed for TQM implementation, and (3) create a climate of open dialogues about progress in the TQM transformation that will enable learning and further change. The TQM transformations will persist only if top management requires and ultimately institutionalizes an honest organizational‐wide conversation that surfaces valid data about the quality of management in each subunit of the firm and leads to changes in management quality or replacement of managers.     

Managing Strategic Change; The Role of Symbolic Action

As our understanding of processes of strategic management develop, it is clear that the problems of managing major shifts in strategy, which organizations face on occasions, are of a different order to the typically incremental strategy development they follow. It is also recognized that these problems are closely linked to cognitive and cultural dimensions of organizations. Research on the management processes associated with more fundamental strategic change is still sparse, but suggests that it requires substantial cognitive shifts in which intervention, often by new corporate leaders, and political and symbolic, as well as more substantial action, is likely. This paper draws together the author's and other research in related fields, to formalize explanatory models, which link organizational inertia of strategy, more fundamental strategic change, and in particular the symbolic management activities of corporate leaders as strategic change agents.     

Resistance to Change and the Language of Public Organizations: A Look at “Clashing Grammars” in Large-Scale Information Technology Projects

The management environment of large-scale agency information technology (IT) projects is used as a framework for examining the notion of clashing grammars as a form of resistance to change within public organizations. Such projects, rooted in new management disciplines from the private sector, are being initiated in broad mimetic fashion by agencies seeking improved performance. The common problems with these projects may be manifestations of resistance to the very management tools developed for their implementation. This resistance may occur inadvertently when new grammars characteristic to modern IT projects clash with more traditional grammars embedded in the culture of public organizations.     

ISO 31000:2009—Setting a New Standard for Risk Management

Last year saw the publication of IS0 31000:2009, a new globally accepted standard for risk management together with a new, associated vocabulary in ISO Guide 73:2009. These were developed through a consensus‐driven process over four years, through seven drafts, and involving the input of hundreds of risk management professionals around the world. The new standard supports a new, simple way of thinking about risk and risk management and is intended to begin the process of resolving the many inconsistencies and ambiguities that exist between many different approaches and definitions. While most decisionmakers seem to welcome the new standard and it has so far received very good reviews, it does create challenges for those who use language and approaches that are unique to their area of work but different from the new standard and guide. The need for compromise and change is the inevitable consequence of standardization     

Performance management change in archaeological sites: The case of Herculaneum Conservation Project

This study focuses on the issues relating to the implementation of management accounting systems in complex settings such as archeological sites. The aim is to understand the conditions under which the implementation of performance management systems (PMS) may enable cultural organizations to fulfil their multiple objectives and the factors which play a crucial role in such dynamics. Focusing on the Herculaneum Conservation Project (HCP) the study explains how PMS came to be implemented having been made acceptable to all parties involved. The Middle Range Theory as developed by Broadbent and Laughlin (Accounting control and controlling accounting: interdisciplinary and critical perspectives, Bingley, Emerald, 2013) was utilized to explore how the PMS change took place in the HCP, and focus on the factors influencing this process. The findings reveal that the change in the PMS benefited from the involvement of a multidisciplinary Specialist Work Group. This involvement reduced the natural tendency to resist the forces of change and increased the commitment of the various groups of stakeholders to the new culture. The findings reveal how PMS were developed in the context of a multifaceted approach to change, allowing us to draw both theoretical and practical lessons that may be brought to bear in other complex contexts.     

日本人力资源管理模式：挑战与回应

日本管理模式的最基本特征都体现在其独特的人力资源管理上。日本人力资源管理模式曾经对人力资源管理理论和实践的发展作出过十分重要的贡献。但是由于日本新一代劳动者的许多变化，传统模式的适用基础已经动摇，日本人力资源管理模式面临严峻挑战。在新的世纪，日本模式的改革步伐并不大，它在维持东方传统和适应新环境方面艰难地探索，这一模式的希望寄托在新一代劳动者身上。     

Data-driven operations management: organisational implications of the digital transformation in industrial practice

Abstract

The ongoing digital transformation on industry has so far mostly been studied from the perspective of cyber-physical systems solutions as drivers of change. In this paper, we turn the focus to the changes in data management resulting from the introduction of new digital technologies in industry. So far, data processing activities in operations management have usually been organised according to the existing business structures inside and in-between companies. With increasing importance of Big Data in the context of the digital transformation, the opposite will be the case: business structures will evolve based on the potential to develop value streams offered on the basis of new data processing solutions. Based on a review of the extant literature, we identify the general different fields of action for operations management related to data processing. In particular, we explore the impact of Big Data on industrial operations and its organisational implications.     

Managing the introduction of new technology

Most of the existing literature on the implications of new technology focuses on either its ‘impact’ or the social choices that lie behind strategies for its introduction into work organisations. The problems of managing the implementation of new technology have yet to be extensively examined despite this being one of the most critical aspects in the process of technological change. The findings from two case studies are presented which show how managers in the organisations concerned developed contrasting approaches to the problem of implementation in the context of opportunities and constraints presented by product markets and technological advance. Similarities between the two approaches are identified, in particular the role played by top management support in facilitating the acceptance of the new technology. The argument that management is able to develop a single unitary strategy towards the introduction of new technology is rejected in favour of a view of managerial actions as a series of flexible and changing sub-strategies associated with different stages in the process of change.