Global Strategy - blog

Relative to my recent critical account of public sector strategizing it is fair to offer at least some guidelines of what practical steps would be necessary for better performance in academic research and teaching. The key points deal with organizational architecture, strategic repertoire, personal development, and managing the past-present-future (illusory) continuum. Brought to the context of my own university, these would be the immediate actions I would undertake having the power:

As an occasional observer and sometimes an adviser in public sector strategy processes, one may easily ask to what extent business strategy is applicable in the strategic management of, for example, universities? Or to be more specific: what kind of strategic management would be of any help in public sector strategizing? The specification is important as (a) firms generally are a rather bad benchmark for any activities meant to last longer than three years. A statistical fact is that most for-profit firms die young; die painfully; or otherwise cease to exist. In this sense, there is not much to learn from the sudden success stories which may be explained more by random evolutionary processes than skillful strategic thinking. Even less we may learn from the constant failures of small and large firms. Also, what organizations optimize (profit, survival, efficient public good production) already makes for-profit organizations entirely different relative to non-profit organizations. The specification is also important because (b) strategy practices differ considerably from firm to firm. To keep things simple: there is two ways (bad and good) for strategic management. (1) many firms still follow 'old-school' strategy based on belief that top management have super-human skills in seeing into future, and acting accordingly. This 'old-school' approach respects strategic planning, control, heavy administrative processes, and other activities meant to hamper innovativeness and emergence. From a performance and survival perspectives, this approach is like flipping a coin because we still not have managers with those super-human qualities (called as 'psyches'’ in science fiction).

In ‘Holy Smoke’, a famous Jane Campion film, PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel) and Ruth (Kate Winslet) are engaged in an epic psychological struggle that eventually spoils the life of Waters yet also emotionally affects Ruth’s interpretation of life. In one central scene, PJ Waters requests Ruth to “be kind”. Linked to an academic context ‘being kind’ means respecting (a) earlier work done in the field; (b) giving value on the work of close-by faculty members; and (c) longer term academic traditions. Having good manners never hurts. However, ‘being kind’ specifically helps you to communicate with your supervisors, enhances your understanding of yourself as a part of academic continuum, and results in better research. Be kind!

Every time you step into edge.org you find something absolutely fabulous. This time, EDGE offers two hard core presentations closely related to Glostra visions. First, the founding father of theoretical treatment of path dependence and complexity in economics, Brian Arthur offers his view on technological change. Arthur's treatment of technology is closely related to research in dominant designs yet is far more comprehensive. What is more, it offers a philosophical understanding of what technology is, and how it evolves. If Arthur's speech does not offer any insights to strategic management of technology, the fault is not his. See the video interview and text here.

Universities are (certainly) not isolated from societies. The links are, at least, two kinds. First, the number and breadth of universities (e.g. as measured by teacher per potential student ratio) is primarily a function of the size of suitable population (i.e. how many literate inhabitants between ages 18-25 exist), wealth of the society (as measured by GDP per capita), and a number of more fuzzy factors such as policy decisions and international competition. Second, university education and research have certain functions in economic growth (which is needed for a larger number of professorships, for instance). Most noteworthy, universities educate a large number of individuals for different tasks in the society. What kind of education is given / needed is mostly a random process: as the future needs can not (logically) be forecasted it makes sense to produce excess capacity which may be needed in some future situation. For example, the investment to maintain certain humanistic areas such as languages is relative low vis-à-vis a situation in which those skills would be needed but no process would exist (I guess the CIA faced this problem after the September 11th 2001). In any case, individuals with a university education percolate into various tasks in administration, business, educational sector etc.; then, somewhat mystically, higher education emerges as an antecedent for economic growth. Similarly, the research conducted at universities may result in concrete improvements of knowledge and technology; at least most research is not harmful for societal development (yet see this: Reflections on a Crisis). And if we believe in Lucas, in a century or so, all economies would be equally rich with a large-scale university system (or similar) in each.

In strategic management literature, the human capital implicated in a firm's employees has already for a couple of decades been considered as an important strategic resource (or asset) for a firm. Obviously, in "knowledge economy", the value of this particular type of knowledge has become increasingly important, especially in knowledge-intensive and creative industries (such as financial services, IT, or biotechnology)

When national governments and politicians make decisions about economic policies, they often shape the viability of businesses at the industry level.

The arguments presented against "Lex Nokia" become increasingly odd (see also my earlier blog entry).

The protection of corporate intellectual properties is an important issue for any firm, and particularly so for globally operating high-tech companies. Unfortunately, part of the firm's challenge is to prevent its own employees  from leaking corporate information and secrets to competitors. Even if it was only a fraction of a firm's employees -- perhaps 1-5% -- who might have the unfortunate predisposition to make leaks under certain conditions, the challenge is real.

Facing the "need" to bailout the country's Finance Industry as well as Auto Industry, politicians and industrymen in the US are puzzled over an important question: To which direction one should next take the industry corporations, as the bailout monies effectively give the government control over them ? This debate is -- for sure -- interesting also to other national governments which are struggling with their own finance and other industries (such as that of Finland with its pulp & paper industry).