In this edition of Journal of Management and Organization (JMO), we have selected a series of articles that will challenge the reader to ‘stretch and test’ traditional understanding of creativity and innovation management (CIM) and encourage reflection on the practice and practical experiences of CIM, by contrasting these with current and emerging theory. This edition is therefore designed to appeal to academics and practitioners alike. The contributing authors in this volume offer innovative insights on the ‘complexity of the shaping forces’ in some diverse settings for theorising and the practice of organisational and strategic change.
Our aim in this edition is to encourage a greater focus on reflecting on the extend and the impact of complexity and social reform on the future of management practice. It may be argued that social, and technological complexity appears to be shaping the contemporary economic, business and global environment far more rapidly than we anticipated. Arguably, a new operational, psychical and psychological reality has emerged over the past decade, one that is characterised by political and financial turbulence, social and organisational complexity. The causation can be speculated as deeply entrenched socio-political dissatisfaction and the lobbying for unprecedented boundary spanning social and economic change.
Management academics, researchers and practitioners, particularly those who are interested in or charged with the responsibility of providing theoretical and practical insights into this global phenomenon, are often confounded by the multiple layers shaping contemporary complexities. These shaping forces are often characterised or delimited by a series of dynamic and dialectic tensions, the emergence of disruptive technology, innovative business systems and flexible organisational design models, exposure to rapid and borderless knowledge diffusion. These challenges are further complicated by the fact that they are deeply embedded in multi-dimensional layers of social and environmental accountabilities.
The constraints created by adhering to a traditional approach to CIM theory building or implementing findings for the actual practice of CIM will encounter unexpected execution hurdles. These include encountering dialectic tensions between the formulation of an organisation’s mission statement, and the implementation of the designed strategy. This may in turn negatively impact on an organisations socio-economic performance, its control mechanisms and long-term sustainability. The ultimate test is adhering to the principles of responsible governance and satisfying or exceeding expectations of a broad-based stakeholders group.
A topic for critical debate amongst a growing number of scholars and researchers is a concern with the growing gap between the theory of strategy, the art of strategy implementation, and the actual practice of strategy, that is how managers enact strategy.
Arguably the platform for an organisation strategy is its ‘Mission Statement’. It is not unusual indeed almost inevitably, that multiple layers of complexity are encountered when implementing strategy and change in the contemporary global economy. We may speculate that because of the fluidity of innovation and digital technology, the future remains complex and uncertain. In the practice of strategy, the norm for management teams is that they forced to accept complex trade-offs which are often accompanied by the acceptance of unplanned and emergent compromises. Consequently, the projected and theorised process for the successful implementation of a (creative and innovative) planned mission statement is no longer achievable nor is it in alignment with its projected organisational practice. The original theorised plan now is now another complex and disruptive tension, differing significantly from the actual management practice.
The bases for selection of the various articles for inclusion in this edition of the journal are those contributions that this co-editor judged to be provocative, relevant, and non-traditional research that addressed one or more of the following topics. ‘Is there a broad solution to the problem of organisational and strategic complexity?’ ‘Are the traditional tools, techniques, and frameworks that we have researched, debated and continue to apply, still relevant and insightful?’ ‘Is it now the appropriate time to challenge and perhaps even reject the ‘old rules of the game’ given the complexity associated with the implementation of organisational and strategic change?
Before we progress further and introduce the eight articles selected for this edition, I would like to caution against adopting the perspective that in this edition we have adopted a singular out with the old and in with the new focused mindset, quite the opposite as this could be interpreted as advocating for a rather simplistic approach to a complex challenge. Another challenge we had was to consider whether we should favour an ‘inside out or outside in’ perspective when selecting the various contributions. Well given the contextual complexities at hand, I will let the readers be the judge.
It may be instructive however to introduce a brief intermezzo at this point and reflect briefly on ‘what is new knowledge and what is old practice’. Given the context of ‘out with the old and in with the new’ let us recall the contributions of Edith Penrose. The various propositions promulgated by Penrose were deemed at the time to be both provocative and revolutionary propositions, as outlined in her classic book, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (Penrose, Reference Dowling and Pfeffer1959). Penrose’ book is described by her contemporary peers as a major contribution to the theory of the firm and the development of strategy (Christos Pitelis). Penrose suggests that ‘for a firm, enterprising management is the one identifiable and necessary condition for continued growth’. Penrose was also a pioneering scholar for her recognition of the importance of knowledge in management. The very issue worth reflecting upon here, is that many decades after Edith Penrose made her original contributions, many contemporary scholars and students of firms, strategy and organisational behaviour are either consciously, or maybe even in some instances completely unaware that they are working on and developing their innovative ideas that were first put forward by Edith Penrose many decades ago (Richard Nelson, Columbia University). In summary the point we tried to make here is, what is new and what is old, is often held in the eye of the beholder.
Let us now resume our editorial review. The lead article in this issue of the Journal of Management and Organisations, The Real Mission of the Mission Statement: A Systematic Review of the Literature, addresses one of the important challenges confronted by modern management when constructing a Mission Statement therein identifying for stakeholders, ‘who we are and what we do’. The Mission Statement is a popular framework adopted and focused on by many managers and academic leaders alike yet understood by few. This article underscores the complexity of devising an effective ‘Mission Statement’ for managers in either for profit or not-for-profit organisations. The article suggests that an organisation must be able to identify its own internal strategic knowledge gaps then in the mission statement articulate succinctly its strategic intent and build capabilities to bridge the knowledge gap between the actual knowledge required to execute its strategy and external knowledge gaps, knowledge that competitors have for competing successfully (Clarke & Rollo, Reference Clarke and Rollo2001).
The lead author, In’s Alegre, and his co-authors Jasmina Berbegal Mirabent, Adrian Guerrerro and Marta Mas-Machuca find that the mission statement is a widely used strategic tool that emphasises an organisation’s uniqueness and identification. The authors suggest that in the early 1980s academics, managers, and consultants first recognised the need for explicitly formulating a mission statement in organisations. Here I agree with the authors that the mission statements have remained as a popular strategic tool for organisations. The authors use an interesting methodology by conducting a systematic literature review to synthesise research on mission statements. The analysis of the 53 articles selected includes a bibliometric and content analysis. According to their perspective, the works selected were grouped into four thematic areas: (1) mission statement development, (2) mission statement components, (3) mission impact on employees, and (4) mission impact on performance. The overreaching conclusion they reached is that mission statements are widely used in practice, complex to execute and poorly researched in theory. The authors suggest that most articles adopt a managerial phenomenon-based strand, lacking a deep theoretical foundation. The article ends with useful suggestions for further research in terms of theory, practice, and methodology.
The next article is a study by Kyle Brink, Business Schools Learning Goals: Alignment with Evidenced Based Models and Accreditation Standards; this study contextualises Program Learning Goals and the Curriculum design process to ensure alignment with the Mission Statement as an integral part of the accreditation process. In this article Kyle Brink builds on a previous research study conducted by Palmer, T. B., & Short, J. C. (2008). ‘Mission statements in U.S. Colleges of Business: an empirical examination of their content with linkages to configurations and performance’. In his study however, Kyle Brink particularly emphasises are the program learning goals and suggest that these serve as the very foundation for an educational institution’s curriculum design and their assurance of learning processes. The purpose of Kyle Brink’s study is to determine the relevance or alignment of undergraduate business school learning goals. The researcher identifies the learning goals of US undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-International (AACSB) and then determine the extent to which the goals are aligned with (a) evidence-based competencies that are needed for managerial success (including the ‘Great Eight’ and the ‘hyperdimensional taxonomy’) and (b) content areas identified in AACSB’s Eligibility Procedures and Accreditation Standards for Business Accreditation. The findings of the study found that learning goals conform to AACSB Standards and evidence-based managerial competencies, but that the goals are most closely aligned with AACSB Standards, followed by the Great Eight, and the hyperdimensional taxonomy, respectively. The authors conclude with a discussion for the implications of their findings with respect to business schools’ assurance of learning processes and provide recommendations for AACSB, business schools, the broader academy, and future research.
Several of us no doubt had the interesting if not always exciting experience of being a participant in an accreditation process. We must have privately speculate during these meetings to what extend the opinions and reflections of our Business School colleagues were sought and actively considered when we were formulated the Business School’s Mission Statement. Of course, we were, it just must have slipped our collective memories, you may suggest.
Perhaps not totally surprising I therefore was drawn to the article by Tse Leng Tham and Peter Holland What Do Business School Academics Want? Reflections from the National Survey on Workplace Climate and Well-Being. This research discusses the findings from a study undertaken for an exploration of the critical issues around the working conditions, workplace climate, and well-being of business school (predominantly management) academics in Australia and New Zealand. With an ageing workforce, and almost half of the Australian and New Zealand workforce intending to retire, move overseas, or leave the sector within this decade, amidst rising demand in the tertiary education sector, the effective retention of this key skilled workforce is pertinent. With data from a survey conducted in 2017 involving 451 business school academics in Australia and New Zealand, this research note highlights several key issues around the areas of workplace climate and well-being which importantly, are within the control of management. Specifically, these salient workforce issues include work intensification, burnout, and poor work–life balance.
The next article examines workforce diversity and offers additional insights on aspects of management complexity. Women Managing Women: A Holistic Relational Approach to Managing Relationships at Work by Jane Hurst reflects on, Woman managing Woman, investigates these relationships in the contemporary workplace setting. Women represent nearly half of the workforce in Western countries, and it is likely that a woman will have a woman manager and/or employee at some point during her working life. In this study, the researcher worked collaboratively with 13 New Zealand women to develop personal and organisational responses when hierarchical relationships between women become strained. The study identified four interlinked strategies at the personal and organisational level: developing awareness of the existence and nature of the conflict, enhancing personal and relational skills such as confidence and communication, building support networks within and outside the organisation, and finding acceptance when change is needed. Taking a gendered relational perspective, we propose that responses to a strained relationship need to be considered within the broader personal, organisational, societal and temporal context within which the relationship is situated. Therefore, we propose a more holistic relational and context-focussed framework to create an environment more conducive to understanding and positive change.
The next article by Carol Flinchbaugh, Developing Employee Socio-technical Flexibility in a Multigenerational Workforce, introduces an innovative and complex study on the dynamics of the contemporary socio-technical multigenerational workforce. This paper identifies how management’s intentional use of participatory management practices can heighten knowledge sharing across a multigenerational workforce through the presence of socio-technical flexibility. In this conceptualisation, the researchers identify the value of socio-technical flexibility to effective employee knowledge sharing in three steps. First, they define the prominent characteristics of the current multigenerational workforce. Second, the researcher defines the behavioural characteristics of socio-technical flexibility. Third, the author describes how an intentional use of salient management practices, including reverse mentoring, flexible work roles, and self-managed teams optimises multigenerational talents to enhance employee socio-technical flexibility, which in turn, leads to multigenerational knowledge sharing. The paper summarises the believe of the researcher that by embracing the benefits of multigenerational workforce, management can take intentional steps to create a workplace that optimises effective knowledge sharing behaviours for improved service through salient participatory management practices.
Elizabeth Chapman article HRD and HRM Levers for Sustained Competitive Advantage: Combining Isomorphism and Differentiation focuses on sustained competitive advantage and discusses the relationship between Isomorphism and differentiation, Elizabeth themes dialectic relations and tensions in the context of the practice of strategic management. Dowling and Pfeffer (Reference Morgan, Taylor, Adair and Hermens1975) identified two types of isomorphism – competitive isomorphism and institutional isomorphism. In the first type, firms start this process as a consequence of the market’s competitive pressures, whereas in the second type, the isomorphism assigns the same importance to political legitimacy and market position. A great many studies have investigated human resources as a source of sustained competitive advantage, indicating that the high-performance work systems created by certain human resource development and human resource management practices lead to greater firm performance. Though the mechanism by which this link exists remains a ‘black box’, substantial evidence shows organisations benefit by adopting the human resource development and human resource management practices that lead to high-performance work systems. Elizabeth Chapman discusses two divergent perspectives, institutional theory and resource-based view, and their impact on high-performance work systems. It is argued that organisations adhering to tenets of institutional theory experience isomorphism in certain human resource development and human resource management practices, whereas resource-based view attributes create ways that firms differentiate their practices. The study proposes that to be competitive firms must balance the push–pull effect of institutional pressure with that of resource-based view differentiation.
The next article by Tim Mazzarol, Developing a Conceptual Framework for the Co-operative and Mutual Enterprise, offers a conceptual framework for cooperatives and mutual enterprises, a much under researched topic. The co-operative and mutual enterprise business model represents a unique type of organisation that has a dual purpose focused on both economic and social goals. For nearly two centuries it has played a key role in economic development, job creation, and addressing market failures. However, despite its potential importance to economic development it has been largely ignored within the mainstream economics and management literature. This paper provides an overview of the nature of the co-operative and mutual enterprise business model and also proposes a business model framework or ‘canvas’ that can be used for research, teaching, and strategic analysis.
The concluding article is a fascinating case study of two SME’s authored by Terry Quilty, focuses on the strategy of dynamic relationships within the community. Resource Management Compliance, Operations Planning, and Stakeholder Engagement: A Tale of Two SME’s. The focus of this paper is to analyse the performance of two similar small businesses in seeking resource consent to expand their operations. The proposed developments are examples of locally unwanted land use. Why did one project proceed as planned, and the other project experience expensive delays? The different outcomes are examined from three perspectives: stakeholder theory, the NIMBY phenomena and the legislative framework. The paper then suggests approaches to address the growing problem of community resistance that can threaten small business development. The paper contributes to the literature by providing new insights into the complex relationship between stakeholder theory, the NIMBY phenomena and the legislative framework.
I hope you enjoy reading this edition of JMO.
