Change Management Choices and Trajectories in a Multidivisional Firm

This paper draws on a comparative case study of the implementation of a planned change initiative across three different divisions of a multidivisional oil company to investigate the influences guiding division‐level change agents in their choice of a change management approach and the impact of different approaches on change outcomes. While the contingency perspective suggests that change management approaches should be chosen to fit with change content and context, we found that change agents navigated amongst three concerns: substantive concerns related to goal attainment, political concerns related to conformity to corporate demands, and relational concerns concerning relations with employees. We identified three different change management trajectories across the three divisions based on alternative ways of balancing the concerns. The data show that, regardless of the change management approach adopted, change tends to be diluted in implementation. However, the various trajectories have differential consequences for other important dimensions such as corporate approval and relationships with employees.     

Return to work still possible after several years as a disability pensioner due to musculoskeletal disorders: a population-based study after new legislation in Sweden permitting "resting disability pension"

Different strategies have been used to stimulate a return to work (RTW) among individuals suffering from long-term ailments. In Sweden a new law on "resting disability pension" permits disability pensioners to go back to work without jeopardising their benefits. In this study different variables related to RTW during 2000 by means of this legislation were identified among disability pensioners with musculoskeletal disorders. Individuals in the study group, when compared to a control group, had more often been disability pensioners for several years, had additional education, estimated their previous job to have been physically strenuous to a lesser degree, were more satisfied with the treatment at the social insurance office and had a more positive self-image. This study shows that it may be meaningful to continue/resume rehabilitation efforts and to try to motivate an individual suffering from musculoskeletal disorders to return to work even after several years as a disability pensioner.     

Strategy implementation: Taking stock and moving forward

Strategy implementation (SI) is a significant managerial, and organizational challenge as many practitioners struggle to make strategies actionable and to achieve intended results. Moreover, there is no unified body of research on SI. This is problematic for academics aiming to contribute to a research-based body of knowledge on implementation. To remedy this problem, we draw on the strategy-as-practice perspective and conceptualize SI as a particular type of ‘strategy work’, manifest in the activities, actors, and tools through which strategy is executed. This conceptual framework allows us to synthesize the fragmented literature into five implementation practices: structure and process matching, resource matching, monitoring, framing, and negotiating. We show how these implementation activities operate at different levels and involve different actors and tools. With its emphasis on what managers (and other people) do within specific structural, temporal, and material arrangements, the strategy-as-practice perspective offers exciting opportunities for future implementation research.