Building castles from sand: Unlocking CEO mythopoetical behaviour in Hewlett Packard from 1978 to 2005

Paroutis, Sotirios; McKeown, Max; Collinson, Simon

doi:10.1080/00076791.2013.838038

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Genealogical analysis of the development of strategic discourses can be seen as a particularly suitable method for this purpose since it helps to elucidate how prevailing discourses of strategy-making and strategic management more generally construct structures of rights and obligations for various actors, thus defining and redefining who can be seen as strategy professionals or who can be allowed to engage in strategy-making and on what terms. A part of all of this is how specific companies and managers may emerge as exemplars and heroes to be followed by others (Paroutis, Mckeown, & Collinson, 2013).…”

Section: Poststructuralist History and Embeddedness Of Strategic Discmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking Historical Embeddedness Seriously: Three Historical Approaches to Advance Strategy Process and Practice Research

Vaara

Lamberg

2016

AMR

157

137

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Despite the proliferation of strategy process and practice research, we lack understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes and practices. In this article we present three historical approaches with the potential to remedy this deficiency. First, realist history can contribute to a better understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes, and comparative historical analysis in particular can explicate the historical conditions, mechanisms, and causality in strategic processes. Second, interpretive history can add to our knowledge of the historical embeddedness of strategic practices, and microhistory can specifically help us understand the construction and enactment of these practices in historical contexts. Third, poststructuralist history can elucidate the historical embeddedness of strategic discourses, and genealogy in particular can increase our understanding of the evolution and transformation of strategic discourses and their power effects. Thus, this article demonstrates how, in their specific ways, historical approaches and methods can add to our understanding of different forms and variations of strategic processes and practices, the historical construction of organizational strategies, and historically constituted strategic agency. We are very grateful to special issue editor John Hassard and the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and guidance throughout this process. We want to thank Martin Friesl, Kalle Pajunen, Anniina Rantakari, Heli Valtonen, and Kustaa H. J. Vilkuna for their help when working on the manuscript and David Miller for language revision. We also wish to express our gratitude to colleagues at Aalto University, HEC Paris, and the University of Jyväskylä for comments on our earlier versions in research seminars and other occasions. We acknowledge the financial support of the Academy of Finland as part of the "Discourse in Strategic Management" and "Reverse Path Dependence" projects and the Foundation for Economic Education.

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Section: Poststructuralist History and Embeddedness Of Strategic Discmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking Historical Embeddedness Seriously: Three Historical Approaches to Advance Strategy Process and Practice Research

Vaara

Lamberg

2016

AMR

157

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Rather, through an ongoing cycle of semiotic subprocesses, our theoretical model has the potential to explain an infinite set of strategic talk-visual interactions and variations that unfold between participants and across an organization. Our model, and semiotics-based analysis of visuals more broadly, addresses calls for the systematic study of historical embedded agency (Burgelman, 2011;Floyd, Cornelissen, Wright, & Delios, 2011;Vaara & Lamberg, 2016), by explaining how strategic agents such as consultants or CEOs (see, for example, Burgelman et al, 2016;Paroutis, Mckeown, & Collinson, 2013) use visuals to influence operational contexts (Knight & Paroutis, 2017;Pettigrew, 1992).…”

Section: Discussion and Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of PowerPoint: A visual perspective on meaning making in strategy

Knight

Paroutis

Heracleous

2018

Strategic Management Journal

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Research Summary: Relying on ethnographic data from two consulting engagements, we find that strategists use three visual mechanisms (depiction, juxtaposition, and salience) to create PowerPoint slides. These visual mechanisms prompt meaning-making through the conversations they stimulate, creating strategic visibility. As participants react to visuals, they enact revised interpretations of the strategy, reflecting strategic resonance. Based on the interactions among these three subprocesses (visual mechanisms, strategic visibility, and strategic resonance), we develop a process model for how visuals influence meaning making in strategy engagements. We contribute to existing strategy practice and process studies by explaining how visuals help broker divergent interpretations of a strategy and give rise to new understandings, especially when issues are politically sensitive or analytically complex. Managerial Summary: The purpose of this study is to understand how strategists use visual information (specifically in PowerPoint slides), and its effects on the strategy process. We find that strategy conversations are influenced by the techniques strategists use to create slides, which in turn shape the kinds of follow-up actions taken. The implications are that: (a) PowerPoint slides can be designed to help tackle complex issues, for instance, when participants have divergent opinions or in politically sensitive situations, and (b) those who craft and edit PowerPoint slides strongly influence the direction of the strategy. The skillful use of PowerPoint is therefore crucial in allowing managers to shape the nature and speed of strategy engagements. K E Y W O R D SPowerPoint, strategy consulting, strategy as practice, strategy process, visual semiotics Received: 29 August 2015 Revised: 31 May 2017 Accepted: 16 August 2017 Published on: 23 January 2018 DOI: 10.1002DOI: 10. /smj.2727 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In retrospect, it was great that we found a name so distinctive…it suggested our goal of putting power into the hands of the individual content originator. The "Power" in "PowerPoint" was thought of, not as in "Powerful," but as in "Empowerment." Robert Gaskins, Inventor of PowerPoint. (Gaskins, 2012, p. 165) | INTRODUCTIONHow do strategists create visual representations of strategy, and why does visuality matter? Despite the ubiquity of visuality in the social accomplishment of strategy, visuals have been relegated largely to the background in theoretical accounts of strategy processes (Meyer, Höllerer, Jancsary, & Van Leeuwen, 2013). Although Mintzberg (1994, p. 240) once declared that strategy cannot be "tangible," since it consists of abstract concepts in the minds of people, a growing body of work-particularly in the strategy as practice area-is focused on examining the role and impact of materials used by strategy actors to achi...

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“…Al revisar la historia de una gran organización, Paroutis, McKeown & Collinson (2013) encontraron que los CEO con frecuencia recurren al mito, que es una analogía usada para explicar lo inexplicable, y darle un sentido al caos. Encontraron en el nivel analítico cómo el CEO buscaba legitimar su discurso y cómo los actores respondieron al discurso.…”

Section: La Personalidad Del Ceounclassified

El discurso del ceo: el pensamiento de los ceo respecto a la visión del futuro de la sociedad en el ámbito económico

Orozco

2019

SIGNOS

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En el presente artículo se analizan las declaraciones de 24 CEO de empresas multinacionales de las más importantes en ingresos y en tecnología, según el listado de la revista Fortune, en busca del pensamiento que subyace a su discurso acerca del futuro económico de las empresas en el contexto internacional. Se tomó como material de investigación el texto de sus entrevistas a medios especializados, sus declaraciones a diversos públicos y sus discursos oficiales en reuniones empresariales. Con la ayuda de un método cualitativo de división del texto en unidades de pensamiento (Herzberg, 1959), y el empleo de comparaciones constantes con la visión de los especialistas en temas de futuro económico (Glaser y Strauss, 1967/2006), se obtuvieron seis temas centrales en donde aparece que en lo general los CEO están encaminando a sus organizaciones en el sentido que marcan los expertos en cuestiones de tecnología, medio ambiente, relaciones con los gobiernos y cambio en el modelo capitalista. Se hace mención de algunas excepciones. Los CEO advierten el paso de un cambio gradual en cuestiones tecnológicas, a una aceleración exponencial en las décadas a venir

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Building castles from sand: Unlocking CEO mythopoetical behaviour in Hewlett Packard from 1978 to 2005

Cited by 9 publications

References 74 publications

Taking Historical Embeddedness Seriously: Three Historical Approaches to Advance Strategy Process and Practice Research

Taking Historical Embeddedness Seriously: Three Historical Approaches to Advance Strategy Process and Practice Research

The power of PowerPoint: A visual perspective on meaning making in strategy

El discurso del ceo: el pensamiento de los ceo respecto a la visión del futuro de la sociedad en el ámbito económico

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