Business Commons^™

Competitive Strategies In Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (Sme's): A Cross- Case Analysis Of Irish Construction Professional Service Firms, Oluwasegun O. Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

Strategy formulation aims to attain strategic fit between an organisation and its business environment in pursuit of competitive advantage. Although competitive strategy research is long established within industries such as manufacturing, financial services and IT, strategy within construction is still under-investigated by comparison. For construction professional service firms (CPSFs), the dearth of academic inquiry is even more apparent, partly due to the intangible nature of their service offerings, highly customised nature of their services and reliance on intellectual capital. The Irish construction sector is experiencing stable growth since following a prolonged recession, thus understanding the strategy process within professional service …

The Strategy Process Of Irish Quantity Surveying Firms Operating Within A Turbulent Business Environment, Michael Adesi, Roisin Murphy, Dermot Kehily

Conference papers

Rapid technological changes and market fluctuations create a turbulent business environment that poses significant challenges to the strategy process of Quantity Surveying (QS) firms. A turbulent environment refers to the existence of high levels of uncertainty, unpredictability, volatile demand and changing growth conditions within an industry. The strategy process is complex and becomes more problematic in the face of a turbulent business environment. To date, studies focusing on QS practices seldom investigate the impact of a rapidly changing environment on the strategy process within these firms. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the impact of environmental turbulence …

Austerity For All Seasons: Communicating On The Economy In Ireland, Brendan O'Rourke, John Hogan, Joseph K. Fitzgerald

Conference papers

What is clear is that in Ireland it has been a good crisis for economists, in the sense that the status and power of the profession has increased, especially in public discourse and state bureaucracy. This is not to deny that the academic critique and public questioning of the status of economics, that has followed the failure of the profession internationally prior to the crisis. It would be interesting to see if the rise of economists status has taken place in other countries and if there is a pattern to the profession’s fortunes in its different fields across, for example …

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 …

Strategic Management In Irish Construction Professional Service Firms: A Comparative Study Across Professions, Oluwasegun Seriki, Roisin Murphy

Conference papers

The Irish construction industry has undergone substantial change in the past decade. Following a deep, lengthy recession the improving outlook of the construction sector makes the inquiry into strategy within the firms both timely and appropriate. Determining how construction organizations successfully adapt in a highly turbulent industry is critical to ensure survival in a highly cyclical industry sector. Strategizing in construction professional service firms (CPSFs) is not well documented, and there is little understanding of the strategy processes, and implications of these processes in the firms. As part of an ongoing study, the strategic management process in CPSFs is reviewed …

Weathering The Storm Of Austerity, Deirdre Lillis

Conference papers

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) collaborate with public funding and quality assurance agencies to balance programme delivery with funding and quality. After the financial crisis in 2008, many countries are now emerging from economic recessions, providing an opportunity to reflect on how HEIs have weathered the storm of austerity. During the period 2008 and 2015 overall funding to publically funded Irish HEIs fell by 14% despite enrolment of full-time students increasing by 25% (HEA, 2015). Against the backdrop of a national Strategy for higher Education reform, the strategic choices made by HEIs are considered along with the effectiveness of quality assurance …

Examining The Factors To Knowledge Sharing Within An Organisational Context, Paul Mc Manus

Conference papers

Abstract

In a global economy, knowledge may be a company’s greatest competitive advantage (Davenport & Prusak 2000). As such, competition for this resource has driven an increased demand for “a conscious strategy [by organisations] of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time and helping people share and put information into action in ways that strive to improve organisational performance” (O’Dell et al. 1998). Thus, it is the aim of this paper to provide an investigative look at the factors influencing the willingness of employees to knowledge share (KS) within an organisational context. Separated into two …

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 & …

The Strategic Planning Process In Complex Settings: The Case Of Construction Professional Service Firms, Roisin Murphy, Iain Henderson

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

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 …

Making Sense Of Irish Health Care Management: The Street Level Public Organisation (Slpo)., Vivienne Byers

Conference papers

Public service reform in modern economies has placed an emphasis on effective planning and management of service delivery to the citizen-client. This paper draws on the concept of the Street Level Public Organization (SLPO) to examine the problem of government’s top down implementation of planning reform in the delivery of public services. It does so, by exploring the implementation of strategic planning in the health sector and drawing upon field work from such implementation in the health services in Ireland and Canada. The SLPO model (McKevitt 1998) is used as an explanatory tool to add to the public sector reform …

Consultancy Designer Involvement In New Product Development: Mapping A Novel Design Leadership Process, Fiona Maciver, Aidan O'Driscoll

Conference papers

The role of design and designers in new product development (NPD) has always been problematic and complex in its approach and in the extent of its involvement (Leenders et al., 2007; Murray and O’Driscoll, 1996; Veryzer and Borja de Mozota, 2005). As the industrial design profession seeks to confront the challenges of a recessionary environment, both the designer led ‘intuitive’ approach to NPD, and the marketer led ‘systematic’ approach become outmoded (Cross, 2001; Martin, 2007). There is shortcoming, even ambivalence, in the NPD and design management literature as to how design is involved in NPD (Cooper et al., 2003; Olson …

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 …

Interaction Of The Legitimate System And The Shadow System In Organisations, Caroline Halpin, Philomena Hanlon

Conference papers

This research examines the relationship between the Legitimate and the Shadow Systems in organisations: an interaction that can result in bringing an organisation into a state of bounded instability, and therefore increased creativity and innovation. The Legitimate System consists of the formal hierarchy, bureaucracy, rules, controls and communication patterns in an organisation. A properly functioning Legitimate System is vital for the conduct of business in an organisation in order to ensure its survival and efficiency. The Shadow System is a term coined by Stacey (1997) to describe the informal network of relations within the organisations that are evident in casual …

Engaging The Academic Heartland:A Key Factor In The Effectiveness Of Strategic Planning And Self Study Programs., Deirdre Lillis

Conference papers

Conventional wisdom in the literature attests to the importance of involving academic staff in strategic planning and self study programs but there is a lack of empirical evidence to substantiate this argument. This paper reports on the findings of an empirical investigation of the effectiveness of three strategic planning and three self study programs, undertaken in one Higher Education Institute (HEI), between 1997 and 2006. It was found that the level of engagement of academic staff was a key factor in the effectiveness of the programs – the more engagement the more effective the programs were. The research methodology was …

An Examination Of The Role Of Intuition In Individual Decision Making In Organisations, Rory Martin, Philomena Hanlon

Conference papers

The feeling of knowing without knowing has often been described as listening to your heart, trusting your gut, or using your intuition. As decision makers face more turbulent and complex environments, rational analysis may not always be able to assist in yielding optimal results. In cases where sufficient data is not available or the situation is one that the decision maker or the organisation has not faced before, the decision maker may utilise intuition to guide them through uncertainty (Lank & Lank 1995:19). This paper looks at the role that intuition plays in individual decision making in organisations. The primary …

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 …

The Systematic Evaluation Of A Strategic Management Program In An Irish Institute Of Technology, Deirdre Lillis

Conference papers

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) worldwide are investing significant resources in strategic planning and self-evaluation programs to improve institutional performance and to meet external stakeholder demands. Little empirical evidence exists however which demonstrates that these programs are effective in leading to improvements in institutional performance, let alone shed light on the reasons why. This paper reports on the systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of a Strategic Management program in an Irish HEI over a five year period in leading to improvements in institutional performance.

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 …