مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد طراحی پروژه استراتژیک بین سازمانی از طریق روابط قدرت و متد استراتژیک – الزویر 2022

Abstract

     Power in interorganizational strategic projects, used for implementing strategic change, is essential but not well understood. This paper devises a conceptual framework in which power relations, strategic practices and an order and conflict view are integrated. An ethnoventionist approach, including ethnography and interventions, is used to show power relations and strategic practices in an interorganizational change project. This project aimed to improve the collaboration between nine organizations in the joint building of subsurface utilities and telecom networks. The findings show four relevant power relations and the delegating of power from top managers to shop-flow workers, which triggered middle managers to constrain the change process. implementation of these innovations. Theoretically, the study contributes to the debate on interorganizational strategic projects with a conceptual framework including power relations, strategic practices and the order and conflict view, demonstrating the long-term effects of strategic change projects.

Introduction

     Interorganizational projects and programs have frequently been used for driving strategic change in the collaboration between two or multiple organizations (Bresnen et al., 2005; Cropper & Palmer, 2008; Kornberger & Clegg, 2011; Sydow & Braun, 2018). The configuration of interorganizational projects as groups of firms that interact to coordinate their efforts for a complex service or product during a finite period of time (Sydow & Braun, 2018), may give rise to disagreement, discord and power struggles between project actors. Namely, in such projects interactions between actors and their power positions are situated within nested and overlapping institutional contexts, providing unclear guidelines for interaction and expectations on power, thus resulting in conflicts over multiparty strategic goals (Levina & Orlikowski, 2009). Notwithstanding their strategic intentions, the reality of interorganizational projects is one of continuing conflicts (Marshall, 2006), imbued with power issues (Huxham & Beech, 2008).

Conclusions

     In this paper we focused upon the research question of how power relations and strategic practices of project actors shaped the interorganizational strategic change project IA. To answer the question we used an ethnoventionist approach (Van Marrewijk et al., 2010) to study the IA from its inception in 2012 until its termination in 2017. To unearth and understand the power relations and strategic practices responsible for the failure of the interorganizational strategic project, we developed a conceptual framework in which an order and conflict view (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) is connected to the concepts of power as a relational effect (Clegg, 1989) and to strategy as a practice (Burgelman et al., 2018). This framework helped to reveal a multi-actor and multi-level strategic change process in which ordering and conflicting strategic practices of top managers, middle managers and shop-floor employees, all in their own way, finally contributed to the project’s failure to achieve its strategic goals. These strategic practices were triggered by, or tried to harmonize, four power relations in the project; (1) between public and private operators, (2) between operators and contractors, (3) between top management and shop-floor workers, and (4) between project and permanent organization.