Opening the black box : how strategy practitioners develop their practices : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

While strategic management has been the focus of much research since the 1960s, there have been comparatively few studies on strategy practitioners, the human actors responsible for the process. These actors are often reduced to a set of observable demographic variables such as education level, work tenure, or job description. Consequently there is limited knowledge regarding strategy practitioners and, in particular, little is known about how they develop their practices, the knowledge and skills they use when engaged in strategic management. To address this gap in knowledge, this study, conducted within the strategy-as-practice (SAP) perspective, interviewed strategy practitioners identified by their peers as effective strategy practitioners. The responsive interviewing technique employed opened the so called ‘black box’, the subjective views of individuals, and allowed participants to reflect and, importantly, provide their meaning of what significantly influenced their strategic management practice development. Eighteen interviews were conducted and the analysis of the rich, deep data collected allowed an understanding of practice development from a practitioner’s perspective to emerge. The study revealed that this group of strategy practitioners see strategic management in holistic terms with a focus on organisational outcomes and not in a traditional, normative view which privileges the creation of a strategy. This contribution was not, however, a primary research outcome but participants view of strategic management impacted significantly on how they view themselves as strategy practitioners, the purpose of strategic management and, vitally, the practices they believe are needed to be effective. Within this context, the study shows that participants develop their practices idiosyncratically and learning from practice, notable literature and being involved with a broad range of people, were valued significantly in their practice development. It was through this meaning that participants were able to relate important aspects of their own development. This study contributes an empirical study to the SAP perspective that goes well beyond simple demographics in understanding how strategy practitioners develop their practices. In regards to research, the selection of strategy practitioners without considering their historical development has been identified as an area that may be problematic, especially for studies seeking to understand how strategy is practised. Business school education was not identified as a direct, meaningful contributor to participants’ development. This observation raises the interesting, and unresolved, question of the actual relationship between business schools and practice. The participants’ idiosyncratic career paths contributes to the viewpoints of authors who question whether the strategic management field should, or could, attain the status of a profession such as law or medicine

Discovery of quantitative trait loci for resistance to parasitic nematode infection in sheep: I. Analysis of outcross pedigrees

BACKGROUND: Currently most pastoral farmers rely on anthelmintic drenches to control gastrointestinal parasitic nematodes in sheep. Resistance to anthelmintics is rapidly increasing in nematode populations such that on some farms none of the drench families are now completely effective. It is well established that host resistance to nematode infection is a moderately heritable trait. This study was undertaken to identify regions of the genome, quantitative trait loci (QTL) that contain genes affecting resistance to parasitic nematodes. RESULTS: Rams obtained from crossing nematode parasite resistant and susceptible selection lines were used to derive five large half-sib families comprising between 348 and 101 offspring per sire. Total offspring comprised 940 lambs. Extensive measurements for a range of parasite burden and immune function traits in all offspring allowed each lamb in each pedigree to be ranked for relative resistance to nematode parasites. Initially the 22 most resistant and 22 most susceptible progeny from each pedigree were used in a genome scan that used 203 microsatellite markers spread across all sheep autosomes. This study identified 9 chromosomes with regions showing sufficient linkage to warrant the genotyping of all offspring. After genotyping all offspring with markers covering Chromosomes 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 22 and 23, the telomeric end of chromosome 8 was identified as having a significant QTL for parasite resistance as measured by the number of Trichostrongylus spp. adults in the abomasum and small intestine at the end of the second parasite challenge. Two further QTL for associated immune function traits of total serum IgE and T. colubiformis specific serum IgG, at the end of the second parasite challenge, were identified on chromosome 23. CONCLUSION: Despite parasite resistance being a moderately heritable trait, this large study was able to identify only a single significant QTL associated with it. The QTL concerned adult parasite burdens at the end of the second parasite challenge when the lambs were approximately 6 months old. Our failure to discover more QTL suggests that most of the genes controlling this trait are of relatively small effect. The large number of suggestive QTL discovered (more than one per family per trait than would be expected by chance) also supports this conclusion

An unusual codon usage pattern in the ciliate family Ophryoscolecidae and its implications for determining the source of cloned DNA

A bias in the codon utilization pattern of members of the ciliate family Ophryoscolecidae is described. A pattern of preferential use of AGA to encode arginine, and a bias against the occurrence of G in position three of codons for lysine, glutamine and glutamic acid, are described. Evidence is provided primarily for species of the Ophryoscolecidae family which are found in the rumen, but the general principle extends to a species found in non-rumen environments. Within those species found in the rumen, it appears to have the potential for use as a discriminatory tool for the identification of sequences against a background of possible contamination. The origin of such sequence contamination may be the host organism, plant material eaten by the host, and fungal material present in the host. Comparisons with other organisms possessing a similarly low GC content suggests that much of this codon bias is not solely attributable to the low GC content, but that a more complex phenomenon, such as strand bias, is in operation