In this study interdependencies between dimensions of leadership and successful strategy implementation have been analyzed. As prerequisites both an integrative model of leadership and subjective parameters for successful strategy implementation have been developed and operationalized. Based on selected publications on leadership seven main dimensions of leadership have been derived.
Depending on how the sample was configured, different aspects of leadership proved to be good predictors for company success. For the whole sample the following dimensions and their relation to company success from an economic perspective turned out to be of particular significance:
• Focused activities in dealing with innovations.
• Economic sustainability as the guiding principle.
• Transparency regarding strategic decisions of the top management.
• The stability of decisions.
• The fit of the functional strategies to the corporate strategy of a company.
The empirical data suggested a slightly different dimensional structure for the leadership model as originally assumed. Given the high predictive value of the model regarding the success and futureability of a company the roughly fifty items operationalizing leadership can be reduced to the following ten dimensions:
1. Orientation and Direction.
2. Conflict and Caring.
3. Change Management and Enabling.
4. Decision-Making.
5. Sustainability.
6. Results-Orientation and Empowerment.
7. Innovation.
8. Authenticity.
9. Focus.
10. Active Involvement and Attentiveness.
Leadership is a multidimensional phenomenon in the mirror of a specific time spirit. Despite basic aspects may stay stable, future generations will come up with different requirements and challenges regarding the basic thing leadership is all about: the target-oriented influence of people on people.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
2 Thesis and Research Questions
3 Main Part
3.1 Orientation and Direction
3.1.1 Strategy Development and Implementation: An Integrated Approach
3.1.2 Decision-making
3.1.3 The Difference Between Management and Leadership
3.1.4 Change Management, Change Leadership
3.2 Sensemaking
3.2.1 Building a Vision
3.2.2 Communication
3.3 Innovation and Protection
3.3.1 Schumpeter´s Idea of Creative Destruction
3.3.2 Innovation as a Core Competence
3.3.3 Innovation from an Entrepreneur’s Perspective
3.3.4 Innovation from a Systemic Perspective
3.4 Politics and Conflict
3.4.1 Setting the Stage: Micro-Politics in Organizations
3.4.2 Functions and Dysfunctions of Micro-Politics
3.4.3 Micro-Politics and Leadership
3.5 Shaping Norms
3.5.1 Company Culture: Definition
3.5.2 Company Culture: A Structure Model
3.5.3 Company Culture: Descriptive Dimensions
3.5.4 Cultural Change: Options and Restrictions
3.5.5 The Role of Leaders as Cultural Agents
3.6 Enabling
3.6.1 Strategy Types, Manager Types and Leadership
3.6.2 Level 5 Leadership
3.6.3 Transformational Leadership and New Leadership Approaches
3.6.4 Empowerment
3.6.5 Principles of Leadership in a Strategic Context
3.7 Results and Sustainability
3.7.1 Activity-Orientation vs. Results-Orientation
3.7.2 Results-Orientation as a Method
3.7.3 Results-Orientation as a Cultural Competence
3.7.4 Sustainability
3.7.5 The Evaluation of Implementation Success
4 An Integrative Model of Leadership
5 Methodology and Methods
5.1 The Data Collection Instrument
6 Results
6.1 Descriptive Statistics
6.2 Data Structure (Factorization)
6.2.1 Data Structure of the Independent Variables
6.2.2 Data Structure of the Dependent Variables
6.3 Predictive Validity (Regression)
6.3.1 Predictors for Attenuation/Futureability
6.3.2 Predictors for Identification/Success (EBIT)
6.4 Significant Effects of the Sample
6.4.1 Gender
6.4.2 Disciplinary Leadership
6.4.3 Professional Experience
6.4.4 Company Size
6.4.5 Different Industries
7 Interpretation
7.1 Data Structure: Hypothesis 1-3
7.2 Data Modeling: Hypothesis 4-5
7.3 Sample Effects: Hypothesis 6-9
8 Conclusion
9 Bibliography
10 Appendix
List of Abbreviations
illustration not visible in this excerpt
List of Figures
Figure 1: Strategy development, process steps and deliverables -schematic. Own depiction
Figure 2: An integrative model of Organizational Development (OD). Own depiction based on the so called “Organizational Development Framework” of the BMW AG, Munich (BMW AG, 2007)
Figure 3: Profiles for two organizational options. Although “option 2” seems to be better from a structure perspective, the overall effectiveness of “option 1” is superior
Figure 4: Strategy development: Exemplary architecture ensuring a certain level of buy-in of different stakeholders
Figure 5: Classification of the “Mode respectively Type of Change”. Own depiction according to (Heitger & Doujak, 2008)
Figure 6: Evaluation of Change Impacts. Own depiction
Figure 7: Dimensions of Change Readiness. Own depiction
Figure 8: Generic Change Model. Own depiction
Figure 9: Core Elements of strategic communication. Own depiction
Figure 10: Structure Model for Company Culture. Own depiction according to Edgar Schein. (1The term “values in-use” is derived from the logic of Chris Argyris, differentiating “espoused theories” and “theories-in-use”). (Argyris, 1990, p.12 ff.)
Figure 11: An integrative model of leadership (own development)
Figure 12: Composition of the sample regarding different industries
Figure 13: Component diagramme for dependent variables
Figure 14: Resulting leadership model according to the empirical data. *Orientation/Direction including dimensions of Sensemaking and Organizational Alignment
Figure 15: Print version of the online questionnaire (German version)
List of Tables
Table 1: Success dimensions related to decision-making according to Neilson et al (Neilson et al., 2011, pp.148-56)
Table 2: Attributes to management vs. attributes to leadership
Table 3: Business Thinking vs. Innovative Thinking. Own depiction according to the “Center of Creative Leadership” (Center of Creative Leadership, 2009)
Table 4: Functions and dysfunctions of micro-politics. Own depiction according to Neuberger (Neuberger, 2006, p.40 ff.)
Table 5: Descriptive dimensions of Company Culture. Own depiction
Table 6: Characteristics of a Results-Driven Approach. Own depiction
Table 7: Main characteristics of the original sample
Table 8: Structure of the data collection instrument
Table 9: Structure of the resulting sample
Table 10: Descriptive statistics for the participants´ ratings. *Questions are negatively poled to fit the agreement scale
Table 11: Settings used to run the factor analyses and calculate factor scores
Table 12: Factor model for independent variables
Table 13: Rotated factor matrix for the independent variables
Table 14: Factor model for dependent variables
Table 15: Rotated component matrix for dependent variables
Table 16: Regression model for Attenuation/Futureability
Table 17: Regression model for Identification/Success (EBIT)
Table 18: Regression model for Success (EBIT) without Identification
Table 19: Regression models for Gender, Disciplinary Leadership and Company Size
Table 20: Significant differences in mean scores according to Gender
Table 21: Significant differences in mean scores according to "Disciplinary Leadership"
Table 22: Significant differences in mean scores according to Years of Leadership Experience
Table 23: Significant differences in mean scores according to "Professional Career"
Table 24: Significant differences in mean scores according to Company Size
Table 25: Differences in mean scores according to Industry
1 Introduction
The concept of leadership is discussed controversially in theory and practice. While certain authors think that “leadership” is often misinterpreted in the light of monocausal personalistic approaches[1] (Malik, 2006, pp.46-49) others are convinced that leadership is one of the most important key success factors for a company’s long term success (Kotter, 2011). The advocates of the leadership approach come to the conclusion that most companies are “[…] over-managed and underled” (Kotter, 2011, p.37). They clearly differentiate management from leadership and define the “real challenge to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other” (Kotter, 2011, ibid.).
For the whole study three premises are central:
1. Leadership in organizations should not be misunderstood as the charismatic work of single characters. It should be regarded as a common task of all leaders and cultural agents within a company, establishing an atmosphere of high performance “transforming strengths of people into results” (Malik, 2006, p.124 ff.). This leadership framework should be revised continuously and adapted to environmental requirements situationally.
2. Leadership should not be fragmented to a “people perspective” but will be regarded as an integrated, wholistic concept taking process-, structural-, people-, system- and cultural aspects into consideration. This will be done in the light of a Leader’s role to act as a “Change Agent”.
3. Successful companies often don’t differentiate regarding the quality of their strategies but regarding their capabilities and willingness to implement them. Taking corporate and functional strategies[2] into account, the focus in theory and practice most often is on strategy development. “Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today” (Bossidy & Charan, 2002). In this study the focus is much more pragmatic on strategy implementation.
According to Henry Mintzberg “strategy is one of those words we like to define in a certain way and [nevertheless] use it differently” (Strategie.net, 2012). Although background, history and different approaches of strategy development will not be described in detail, a few working principles using the term strategy should ensure a common understanding. Simon et al. describe strategy as the art of developing and allocating the forces of a company to ensure profitable and sustainable survival (Simon et al., 2000).
Generally a corporate strategy can be understood as an iterative process defining the strategic direction and the framework for decision-making regarding products, services, customers, markets, growth, innovation, core competencies and associates. Identifying respectively setting the right priorities and allocating the resources according to these priorities is designed to ensure a profitable and sustainable business, maintain the entrepreneurial independence and make a company future-proof.
This work is not designed to give an overview over background and history of basic leadership and management approaches[3]. Leadership addresses both strategy development and strategy implementation.
Direct (person-related) and indirect[4]. (system-related) leadership can be understood as the setting of a situative framework for communication and decision-making.
In this study, leadership will be pragmatically defined and operationalized on basis of seven central dimensions derived from current publications on leadership. Thereby the work refers to rather big companies than SMEs (small and medium sized companies).
Besides the theoretical basis also practical experience will be used to explain certain constructs of this empirical study. For explanatory reasons the organizational model of the BMW Group (“Organizational Development Framework”), which was established while developing the current corporate strategy “Number ONE[5] ”, will be introduced and further developed (BMW AG, 2007). Additionally the design of the strategy development process used for the strategic repositioning of the BMW Group in 2007 will be used to explain how a strategy process can be set up at an early stage to guarantee a certain level of involvement (BMW AG, 2007).
2 Thesis and Research Questions
The following questions should be answered by this empirical study:
Based on assumptions derived from the integrated leadership model the following 9 thesis are set up:
1. The dimensions postulated in the leadership model are highly interrelated indicating that leadership is a wholistic construct and cannot be fragmented to single dimensions without loosing significant levels of impact.
2. Aspects of transparency and clarity included in the clusters Sensemaking, Shaping Norms and Orientation/ Direction form a cluster of “higher-level dimensions”. “Higher-level dimensions” establish a basis for “lower-level dimensions”.
3. The success dimensions can be separated into past respectively present success and future success.
4. The postulated leadership model establishes a framework with a high predictive validity on dimensions of successful strategy implementation.
5. Different ratings of company’s success (e.g. current success vs. future success) will result in different leadership profiles.
6. No significant differences between different industries being part of the validation sample are expected since leadership is a general construct with cross-border validity.
7. The Size of the companies will result in different weights regarding the impact of leadership dimensions to company success. Additionally significant differences can be expected for certain dimensions (e.g. politics or entrepreneurial thinking).
8. Participants of the study with disciplinary leadership responsibility will show different profiles compared to participants without direct leadership responsibility. Significant differences can be expected for certain dimensions based on a general trend of participants with direct leadership responsibility to rate more positively (e.g. regarding the availability of relevant information).
9. Regarding dimensions like politics and communication, gender of the participants will result in different weights of single aspects.
3 Main Part
In the following section different dimensions of leadership will be introduced. The postulated dimensions will be consolidated to clusters and integrated to a wholistic model of leadership.
3.1 Orientation and Direction
The main part sets up the framework and will therefore be the most comprehensive part of this work. Roles and responsibilities within a strategic process will be outlined and a strategy model based on BMW`s “Organizational Development Framework” will be introduced. Both the process characteristics and the structure of a strategy process will be exemplarily described. The difference between leadership and management will be briefly discussed. Finally the role of “Change Management” respectively “Change Leadership” for strategy implementation will be outlined.
3.1.1 Strategy Development and Implementation: An Integrated Approach
The starting point of a strategy is an act of leadership. It is quite common that one of the first things a new CEO decides to do is to guide his or her management team through a strategy process. Working together on a company`s strategy can both be the basis for developing a common picture regarding future directions and also give an overview if the management team is aligned. At the beginning of many strategy processes the first decision which has to be made is if a strategy model should be used. Working with a strategy model brings both orientation and direction into the process of strategy development. Without going into details here is a list of common strategy models which often can be found in practice:
- The Boston Portfolio (Schneider, 2005).
- The Five-Forces Model, Supply-Chain Management and the Competition-Matrix (Porter, 1980), (Porter, 1983).
- The Concept of Core Competencies (Prahalad & Hamel, 1990).
- The Delta Model (Hax & Wilde, 1999).
- McKinsey`s 7S-Modell (Raps, 2008, p.54).
- The 4+2 Formula (Joyce & Nohria, 2003).
- The Galbraith „Star-Model“ (Galbraith, 2002).
- The Six-Box Model (Weisbord, 1976).
- The Theory of Mechanistic and Organic Systems (Burns & Stalker, 1994).
- Strategy Maps (Kaplan et al., 2004).
- The Keppner-Tregoe Matrix (Spitzer & Evans, 1998).
Most of the models mentioned above indicate fields for strategic decision-making and postulate that the alignment of certain dimensions lay ground for a company´s long term success. Some of the models neither take a process perspective nor do they take the phase of strategy implementation into consideration. Regarding strategy implementation most contemporary literature focuses on methods, structure, planning, monitoring and tools thereby often neglecting culture, leadership, Change Management or generally social dimensions of strategy implementation. Besides the guidance given by common strategy models the phase of strategy development typically follows a clear process.
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Figure 1: Strategy development, process steps and deliverables -schematic. Own depiction.
Figure 1 illustrates that each process step of strategy development should result in predefined deliverables. Deliverables could for example be the description of the “Competitive Advantage”, (e.g. low-cost, premium or niche product respectively service focus (Thompson et al., 2008)), a company`s USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) or a “Product-Market-Portfolio” defining which kind of products and services will be introduced at which point in time to certain markets. Continuous elements could be the company`s vision or cultural aspects (e.g. a “Corporate Philosophy” or “Basic Principles”) establishing guidelines for the discussion of strategic contents or directions. Continuous elements often have a strong relation to leadership. Statements like a “Corporate Philosophy”, “Credo” or “Basic Principles” address a cultural framework which should be consistently established by adequate contexts like structures, processes, people-dimensions and steering- respectively reward systems. Within these contexts it is the task of the leaders of a company to enable an organization to authentically implement the intended cultural directions. Typically the results of the strategy development on a corporate level establish the framework for the strategy processes run on functional levels of a company. It is the task of the functional strategies to define the contribution of a special organizational unit to the implementation of the strategy on corporate level.
The following model (see Figure 2) tries to integrate the perspective of strategy development, strategy implementation and Change Management as an enabler for successful strategy implementation. Leadership is defined as the core element both for the phase of strategy development and strategy implementation including the management of change, resulting from certain strategic directions. Official triggers for strategy development typically are:
- “Anticipatory Intelligence” (e.g. based on scenarios (Senge et al., 1997, p.323 ff.) or the analysis of trends),
- “Performance Gaps” (missed efficiency potentials measured by KPIs) and/or
- “Opportunity Gaps” (e.g. missed opportunities regarding products, services, markets, etc.).
The reference of all activities is the customer. At the end of the day it is the customer`s buying behaviour which determines, if the implementation of a corporate strategy can be considered to be successful[6]. A continuous monitoring should guarantee speed, quality and a fit regarding financial parameters of successful strategy implementation. In case of deviations, strategic assumptions have to be adapted or countermeasures have to be introduced to close unplanned gaps. Missed performance or opportunity gaps trigger another strategic cycle, clearly indicating that strategic decision-making is an iterative process rather than a single event.
illustration not visible in this excerpt
Figure 2: An integrative model of Organizational Development (OD). Own depiction based on the so called “Organizational Development Framework” of the BMW AG, Munich (BMW AG, 2007).
Successful strategy implementation significantly depends on how well on organization is “aligned”.
“Organizational Alignment” describes the level of fit regarding the dimensions: structures, processes, steering systems, HR, leadership and culture in order to serve the implementation of the defined strategy.
Additionally an important dimension is how well the organization is enabled in order to manage the change related to new strategic targets and frameworks.
Decisions for organizational options are typically structure- and process-driven. The strategic alignment of structures and processes expressed by statements like “structure follows strategy” (Chandler, 1995, p.14) or “process follows strategy” are quite common in the current strategy literature (Riekhof, 2010, p.125 ff.). The alignment of structures and processes with the strategy is by far not enough to guarantee a successful strategy implementation. Also dimensions like leadership and culture, systems (steering and rewarding systems), and HR (number and quality of associates, competencies, recruiting, development, succession planning and appraisal), have to be taken into consideration. Besides the role of leadership for strategy development, especially the role of “leaders as drivers for change (Change Leadership)” gets important during implementation. Empirical data underline the role of leadership in the strategy process. Leadership topics like insufficient coordination, bad instructions and inadequate enabling account for four out of ten identified major problems in the implementation of a strategy (Raps, 2008, p.41). The following figure is a schematic depiction, demonstrating how the idea of “Organizational Alignment” can be implemented in practice. The presumably medium solution (“option 1”) regarding the structural dimensions delivers better overall results than “option 2” because of a higher alignment factor with the dimensions “processes” “systems”, “HR” and “leadership”. Following the idea of the so called “Theory of Constraints” the overall performance is determined by the weakest link in a chain.
illustration not visible in this excerpt
Figure 3: Profiles for two organizational options. Although “option 2” seems to be better from a structure perspective, the overall effectiveness of “option 1” is superior.
A question which should be answered early is: How does the architecture of a strategy development process look like? Who is going to join the strategic discussions and how can the organization be involved to maximize the knowledge input and minimize potential formal and informal resistances? From an empirical perspective two insights of a study conducted by Robert Kaplan and David Norton seem to be remarkable: Roughly 54% of the study participants stated that in their companies´ strategy implementation follows a formal process. The quota of companies, stating to be more successful than its competitors is almost three times higher (58%) for those following a formal strategy process compared to those not following a formal strategy process (20%) (Kaplan et al., 2004, p.16 ff.).
The exemplary architecture in Figure 4 shows how a strategy development process could look like. The process on a corporate and the different functional levels are run on two hierarchical levels in parallel (e.g. Board members and level one leaders). Normative deliverables like a “Vision- or Mission Statement” or a “Corporate Philosophy” are solitarily discussed on corporate level. The corporate process is followed by processes on the functional levels of the organization. The white symbols indicate cross-hierarchical synchronization points respectively participants of other divisions ensuring the strategic fit between different functional strategies. The setup of the overall process has to be decided before the strategic work is started. It is a decision which has to be taken by the CEO respectively on top management level.
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Figure 4: Strategy development: Exemplary architecture ensuring a certain level of buy-in of different stakeholders.
3.1.2 Decision-making
In their famous publication “The Secrets of Successful Strategy Implementation” Neilson et al. identify two critical success factors:
- The clarification of decision rights and
- the ensurance of information flows where it`s needed (Neilson et al., 2011, p.145).
These two success factors were derived from a large-scale study conducted by the authors. Mainly dimensions of information flow and decision-making are addressed.
In Table 1, five dimensions or “traits” of successful company´s regarding strategy implementation are listed:
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Table 1: Success dimensions related to decision-making according to Neilson et al. (Neilson et al., 2011, pp.148-56).
Decision making probably is one of the most important activities of leaders in organizations. Malik comes to the conclusion that “the ones who make decisions are leaders regardless of status, position or title”. Conversely this means, “the ones who don´t decide are no leaders” (Malik, 2006, p.202).
An important cultural dimension in decision-making is how to deal with dissent. A constructive decision-making culture can be described by two aspects:
1. During the phase of shaping a decision, different perspectives can be openly discussed.
2. During implementation all parties adhere to the decisions made (exceptionally when the framework drastically changed and the decisions do no longer appear reasonable).
Malik postulates a sequence of steps good decisions typically go through (Malik, 2006, p.211):
- The precise determination of a problem.
- The specific requirements a decision has to fulfill.
- The identification of alternatives.
- The analysis of risks regarding the identified alternatives.
- The decision.
- The integration of implementation.
- The establishment of feedback-loops.
It is not always necessary to use complex methods like utility analyses, pair-wise comparisons of alternatives, etc. to come to good decisions. “Intuition” as the basis for decisions currently celebrates a comeback in business literature (Fleig, 2011). Coming back to the working definition of strategy, setting the right priorities are decisions as well as the allocation of resources according to certain priorities. From this point of view a strategy process can be understood as a problem-solving or decision-making process (Spitzer & Evans, 1998).
3.1.3 The Difference Between Management and Leadership
In theory and practice there is a lot of discussion how to differentiate leadership from management. For John Kotter management is about coping with strategy while leadership is about coping with change (Kotter, 2011, p.38). In Table 2 attributes typically used to differentiate management from leadership are listed:
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Table 2: Attributes to management vs. attributes to leadership.
A good and effective manager should also have leadership qualities. The same is true the other way around. In order to appraise leadership quality in an annual review it should therefore be a standard not only to evaluate the qualities regarding a “Managing Business-” dimension but also take a “Leading People-” dimension (with the same weight and focus) into consideration. Last but not least a dimension of “Leading Yourself” respectively acting as a role model is important because it`s simply not possible to lead others if one has not learned to lead her- or himself (Rosenstiel, 2012, p.47).
3.1.4 Change Management, Change Leadership
Change Management can be understood as “continuous adaption of strategies and structures according to changing conditions” (Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon, 2012). The OD Model in Figure 2 suggests also taking the adaption and alignment of additional dimensions like HR, steering systems, processes, leadership and cultural dimensions into account. As mentioned above, for John Kotter the essential attribute of leadership is to manage rapid change (Kotter, 2011, p.39). Klaus Doppler and Christoph Lauterburg describe future requirements to be met by managers with the headline “Leadership in Times of Change” (Doppler & Lauterburg, 2005, p.108 ff.). Besides classical skills especially social skills are pointed out to be critical factors for a company´s future success. There have been a lot of publications around the topic of Change Management. In this section the focus will be:
1. The identification of the so called “Mode respectively Type of Change”.
2. The derivation of “Change Targets”.
3. The evaluation of “Change Impacts” and “Change Readiness”.
4. The identification of success factors for change (establishing a “Model for Change” and a “Change Architecture”).
5. The evaluation of the effectiveness of measures (“Change Monitoring”).
All these dimensions are crucial in order to take the role and responsibility to act as a “Change Leader”.
1. The definition of Modes respectively Types of Change.
Before a company thinks about entering a strategy development process it should be clear why the strategy process is started:
Is the strategy process designed to continue the success story of the company or is it designed to be a tough turn-around process with strongly cost-down driven targets?
The classification of the Mode respectively Type of Change implicates which change strategy is appropriate. Barbara Heitger and Alexander Doujak therefore developed a portfolio to classify change processes (Heitger & Doujak, 2008, p.32). As indicated in Figure 5, generally two main “Modes” and several “Types of Change” can be differentiated.
The main Modes of Change are:
1. The crisis-driven transformation.
2. The evolutionary-driven transformation.
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Figure 5: Classification of the “Mode respectively Type of Change”. Own depiction according to (Heitger & Doujak, 2008).
For the top management of a company it is very important to come to a common picture regarding the Mode of Change very early. Both internal and external communication strategies vary a lot regarding to this classification. Especially in crisis-driven transformation processes the authenticity of leadership is very important. Leaders have to build a bridge out of the initial paralysis induced by announcing a crisis. Changing the internal communication strategy according to these modes has severe impacts on how capable and sincere the leaders of a company are perceived by their associates. Not rarely, leaders come to the idea that announcing a crisis in times of evolutionary change could help to activate employees. On the long run this strategy typically leads to a loss of credibility and capability to deal with real crisis-driven changes. On the other hand not having a clear position at the start and turning late to a crisis driven mode leads to disorientation, organizational exhaustion and a loss in credibility as well.
2. The derivation of Change Targets.
As for any other topic the existence of clear targets is crucial. This is also true if the implementation of a strategy is supported by a professional Change Management approach. As described in the wholistic OD Model in Figure 2, change targets address the dimensions: Structures, processes, HR, steering systems, leadership and culture respectively behaviour. The postulated dimensions are interrelated and should be aligned to serve the implementation of the strategic targets. Change targets follow the “from […] ètowards […]-logic“.
The following two examples illustrate the derivation of change targets on a generic level:
- From volume orientation (units at any price!) è towards a profitability orientation (produce only for what the customers pay, respectively a significant profit margin can be realized).
- From a decentral bottom-up steering (deficits on basis of high efforts for integration and coordination)è towards a central top-down approach.
In a next step these generic “higher order change targets” have to be broken down to the dimensions (structures, processes, HR, etc.) mentioned above, ensuring that all dimensions are aligned and support the realization of the generic change targets. The role of leadership in this process has three levels which have to be taken into consideration:
1. Leadership is initiating change and is subject to change itself in parallel.
2. Leaders should take responsibility for realizing a wholistic OD approach in order to make change efforts effective and sustainable.
3. Leaders should act as drivers for change by actively managing change, giving orientation, enabling others and act as role models.
3. The evaluation of Change Impacts and Change Readiness.
After the change targets have been defined the Change Impacts should be analyzed. Impacts are typically evaluated in the following fields:
- Impacts on people.
- Impacts on structures, processes and systems.
- Impacts on cooperation and relations.
- Political impacts.
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Figure 6: Evaluation of Change Impacts. Own depiction.
The evaluation of impacts is a necessary precondition in order to derive adequate change measures reducing resistances and promoting drivers for change. Typically the evaluation of “Change Impacts” is followed by the evaluation of the “Change Readiness” of specific target groups.
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Figure 7: Dimensions of Change Readiness. Own depiction.
The dimensions of the analysis lead to a comprehensive picture if the target groups…:
1. …Know the background and targets of the change initiative.
2. …Want to change. Is a target group committed?
3. …Have the capability to change. Are the relevant target groups enabled to perform the new behaviour?
4. …Encounter a supportive system framework like decision rules, political frameworks and cultural dimensions.
[...]
[1] For monocausal personalistic approaches (Schuler, 1995, p.338 ff.) often the term “Great Man Theory” (Stippler et al., 2011, p.16) is used.
[2] While the corporate strategy addresses the company as a whole, functional strategies define the contribution of certain organizational units like departments or resorts to the implementation of the corporate strategy.
[3] For an overview see (Stippler et al., 2011).
[4] Indirect leadership can be understood as influence indirectly exercised by norms, standards, values, reward systems, structures and processes.
[5] The strategy “Number ONE” was announced in September 2007.
[6] Therefore the Customer`s perspective is typically an important part a corporate BSC (Friedag & Schmidt, 2000, p.113 ff.).
[7] This topic is discussed in more detail introducing the idea of “Empowerment” in the chapter “Enabling”.
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