Evolving efficacy of managerial capital, contesting managerial practices, and the process of strategic renewal

Abstract

Research Summary: This article examines the adaptation process of a large manufacturer in the Indian steel industry faced with radical sociopolitical shifts in the external ecosystem. It uses the Bower-Burgelman process model in combination with Bourdieu's praxis theory to explain the emergence of competing managerial initiatives and associated contests in the company's internal ecology of strategy-making in terms of socially acquired dispositions. It illuminates process-practice pathways through which top management's resource allocation supported changes in the efficacy of the different forms of capital of the contesting managerial classes, thereby legitimizing the daily "doings" of the rising class and institutionalizing a (re)defined adaptive rule structure. Managerial Summary: How do managers' early influences, including family upbringing and schooling, bear upon organization's renewal strategy? Our study finds that during discontinuities imposed by socioeconomic upheavals, when organizational performance flounders, managerial initiatives are driven by deepest dispositions derived from early age socialization. Competing managerial fractions jostle to impose practices favorable to their longstanding preferences by putting their weight behind preferred product-market choices and seeking appropriate changes in the ineffective internal rule structure. Administration's challenge lies in leveraging internal contests to iteratively allocate resources in search of winning dispositions and configurations aligned with evolving social relations in the external environment. Internal availability of managerial groups from diverse social origins is crucial for the administration to reclaim organizational advantage by arbitrating between contesting practices and practitioner fortunes.

An Ecosystem‐Level Process Model of Business Model Disruption: The Disruptor's Gambit

“…Given that our process model considers how the processes initiated by the BM innovator interact with the incumbent and other actors, such as customers, partners, media, etc., we consider the core processes to consist of the disruptor's and incumbent's framing . In the original model, the overlaying processes consist of the strategic and structural context, which make up the context in which change occurs inside the organization (e.g., Gilbert, ; Pratap and Saha, ). As we lift the level of analysis from organizational to ecosystem, we consider two contextual aspects: disruptor's and incumbent's ecosystems, which are originally separate from each other, but over time co‐evolve in an interlocking fashion as customers and partners migrate from the incumbent's to the disruptor's ecosystem.…”

The role of talent management in strategic renewal

“…Finally, competitors that possess fresh ideas and market-penetrating techniques make the sustainable competitive advantage of organizations a remote possibility, intensify the role of chance and luck as its likely explanation (Fitza, 2017). To survive in current times and in the future, organizations are required to strategically renew themselves (Ocasio et al, 2018;Pratap and Saha, 2018;Riviere et al, 2018). Strategic renewal has thus become a key capability in understanding organizational long-term survival and prosperity (Agarwal and Helfat, 2009).…”

“…More and more organizations need to transform themselves at one time or another to survive. Consequently, the capability of strategic renewal becomes a key consideration in supporting the organization's long-term survival and prosperity (Ocasio et al, 2018;Pratap and Saha, 2018;Riviere et al, 2018;Schmitt et al, 2018). To the best of our knowledge, none of the studies have explored the role of TM in the specific context of strategic renewal.…”

An Ecosystem-Level Process Model of Business Model Disruption: The Disruptor's Gambit

“…Second, we deepen the understanding of how disruptors can apply framing strategically in sequences of distinctiveness and leadership frames to create sustained impetus for the creation and growth of a new ecosystem. Finally, we add to our understanding of ecosystem formation and growth by extending the organization-level Bower-Burgelman (B-B) process models of entering a new business (Burgelman, 1983;Pratap and Saha, 2018) and exiting an existing one (Burgelman, 1996) to the ecosystem level. We elucidate the competitive dynamics of Salesforce versus Siebel in terms of the multi-level strategic leadership activities that determined the organization-level competitive stances taken by these companies during the disruption process.…”