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The Impact Of Environmental Turbulence On The Strategic Decision-Making Process In Irish Quantity Surveying (Qs) Professional Service Firms (Psfs), Roisin Murphy Dr, Oluwasegun Seriki

Articles

Construction firms operate within a business environment characterized by uncertainty and a lack of predictability, increasing the complexity of strategic decision-making. Construction contractor firms’ strategic response to environmental turbulence is appropriately documented but evidence regarding Construction Professional Service Firms (CPSF’S) remains scarce. CPSF’s are characteristically different from contractor organizations due to the intangibility of services and high knowledge intensity. The purpose of the study is to ascertain the impact of environmental turbulence on strategic decision-making process characteristics in CPSF’s, specifically Irish Quantity Surveying (QS) practices. Using a mixed-methods research strategy, data collected over two dissimilar stages on the economic cycle …

Social Contagion And Knowledge Acquisition In Construction Professional Service Firms, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

The construction industry in Ireland, including professional service firms (PSF’s) operating therein, are undergoing a period of change and uncertainty driven by economic, demographic, political and technological factors. While considerable evidence exists demonstrating the relationship between environmental turbulence on organisational decision making, there remains a distinct lack of focus on behavioural patterns affecting decision-making process of construction firms. Social contagion (SC) theory asserts that the spread of ideas, attitudes, or behaviour patterns in a group is achieved through imitation and conformity, and is well established within social sciences research, and is increasingly being used to analyse organisational behaviour. However, limited …

The Power Of Words In Tension: Enterprise/Strategy As A Dilemma In Neoliberalism’S Persistence., Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

We address how enterprise is related to, another important discourse, strategy. From a discourse analysis of the talk of small firm owner-managers, emerges a view of strategy and enterprise as a single, integrated entity, bound together by some commonalities but more importantly by paired opposites reminiscent of ideological dilemmas (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton & Radley, 1988). This dilemmatic nature of enterprise/strategy discourse adds to explanations for the persistence of the neoliberal form of enterprise, with the entrepreneur as the heroic saviour of all, based on the entrepreneur as an empty signifier (Jones & Spicer, 2009; Kenny & …

Developing Strategy From The Middle:Subsidiary Strategy And The Role Of The Subsidiary General Manager, Donal O'Brien, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Patrick Gibbons

Conference Papers

The multinational subsidiary is a unique context to study management processes relating to strategy but so far, there has not been a coherent approach identifiable in the literature. It is recognised that subsidiaries evolve over time and through their own actions and initiatives have the potential to modify the power structures of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) but little is known about the role of the subsidiary manager in this process. We suggest that the tensions between the headquarters perspective and the subsidiary perspective have resulted in the application of inappropriate frameworks to the study of subsidiary managers. This proposal presents …

An Empirical Investigation Of Strategic Planning In Qs Practices, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

The benefit of engaging in strategic planning has been well documented over several decades of strategic management research. Despite the significant body of existing knowledge in the field, there remains a limited collection of empirically tested research pertaining to strategic planning within professional service firms (PSFs) in construction, particularly from an Irish context.

The research is an exploratory study involving in-depth, semi-structured interviews and a widespread survey of Quantity Surveying (QS) practices in Ireland. The aim of the research is to ascertain the extent of strategic planning undertaken within Irish QS practices, and to gain an insight into the characteristics …

Strategic Activity In The Today’S Multinational Subsidiaries, Donal O'Brien, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Patrick Gibbons

Conference Papers

This working paper presents an ongoing empirical study into strategy development at the subsidiary management level of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE). The multinational subsidiary is a unique context to study management processes relating to strategy but so far, despite the emergence of the concept, there has not been a coherent approach identifiable in the literature. It is recognised that subsidiaries evolve over time and through their own actions and initiatives have the potential to modify the power structures of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) but little is known about the role of the subsidiary manager in this process. We suggest that …

In Search Of Theory: Towards An Integrating Conceptual Framework For Subsidiary Research, Donal O'Brien, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Patrick Gibbons

Conference Papers

Despite the importance of the strategic choices taken by subsidiary managers to the long terms survival of their unit, little is known about the phenomenon. (Dörrenbächer & Geppert, 2009, Scott, Gibbons, & Coughlan, 2010). This paper analyses and synthesises the research streams on subsidiary management to date to provide critical conceptual insights and proposes a new theoretical approach to subsidiary analysis, applied to the critical routine of subsidiary strategy. The adoption of more global business structures by MNEs has led to additional strategic constraints on subsidiary managers (Buckley, 2009, Buckley & Ghauri, 2004, Mudambi, 2008), which we categorise as the …

Subsidiary Strategy And The Role Of The Subsidiary Manager : Integrating The Middle Manager Perspective, Donal O'Brien

Conference Papers

Subsidiary strategy is a concept which has emerged in international business literature but research has so far failed to explain how subsidiary managers develop strategy under the constraints of the paradoxical pressures they face in today’s Multinational Enterprises (MNE). On the one hand current trends suggest that (MNE) are developing into more global business structures which are reducing the power and influence of subsidiary managers (Buckley, 2009, Buckley & Ghauri, 2004, Mudambi, 2008). The result of these trends, are that the market orientated aspects of subsidiary strategy are becoming constrained and to some degree taken out of the hands of …

Dialogue And Roles In A Strategy Workshop: Discovering Patterns Through Discourse Analysis, Martin Duffy

Masters

Strategy workshops are frequently used by Executive management teams to discuss and formulate strategy but are under-researched and under-reported in the academic literature. This study uses Discourse Analysis to discover participant roles and dialogic patterns in an Executive management team’s strategy workshop, together with their effect on the workshop’s operation and outcome. The study shows how the workshop participants adopt different roles through their language and content. It then identifies a dialogic pattern in the workshop discourse, with the emphasis on achieving shared understanding rather than winning the debate. The workshop facilitator’s role is shown to bring discussion as a …

Examining The Inseparability Of Enterprise And Strategy Discourse, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

Small owner-managed firms are an interesting site in which to examine the deployment of strategy discourse. On the one hand, small firms offer a location where the holistic nature of strategy (Clegg et al., 2004:24; Liedtka, 1998:122; Lilley,2001: 75) is more likely to feature in daily practice On the other hand, owner-managed firms lack a key reason for the original emergence of the strategy discourse i.e. strategy as a discourse of accountability by professional managers to shareholders (Knights & Morgan, 1991). Small firm owner-managers are the ideological heroes of the enterprise discourse (Carr, 2000:101). This work looks at how owner-managers …

Exploring The Discourses Of Small Enterprise Proprietors, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Conference papers

Over the last three decades the discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed significantly in the context of large corporate organizations and increasingly within and for the public sector. The discourses of strategy and enterprise have developed in relationship with each other and are generative of various attributes and dilemmas for the identity of the strategist/entrepreneur. This study looks at how these important discourses are deployed by small enterprise proprietors in periodical publishing in Ireland as they construct their business identities with one of the authors. Interview data from one proprietor is subjected to a discourse analysis drawing particularly on …

Searching For Greater Variety In Strategic Thinking, Brendan O'Rourke, Martyn Pitt

Conference papers

This paper proposes a use of the discursive approach to explicate variety in ways of strategic thinking. Such an explication of variety is both useful managerially in increasing awareness of greater discursive resources and also theoretically in critiquing views of strategic thinking as homogenous and organizationally contained. Ways of strategic thinking have been investigated using a variety of approaches including expertise perspectives (Voss, Greene et al. 1983), cognitive mapping (Eden, Jones et al. (1979); Huff (1990) ) and upper echelon theory (Hambrick 1998). More recently the linguistic turn in organizational sciences (Alvesson and Kärreman 2000), and the study of strategy …