Managing strategy through business process

The work presented in this paper, following an in depth review of literature, developed a set of requirements for a Dynamic Strategy Management Process. Having evaluated the existing strategy management frameworks, models, methodologies, tools and techniques, the research concluded that although all approaches reviewed collectively met all the requirements, individually none of the approaches fulfilled all of these requirements. To fulfil these dynamic strategy management process requirements, PROPHESY (Process Oriented Performance Headed Strategy) was developed. The paper describes in some detail, the evaluation of the PROPHESY process and demonstrates its application through a case study. The paper concludes that strategy should focus on creating value that is independent for each business unit. This means developing horizontal strategies that have objectives of co-ordinating business processes and developing objectives that encourage the sharing of resources and skills

Implementing Process Writing Strategy Using Weblogs to Improve Students' Ability in Writing Descriptive Text

This research aimed at improving the ability of the X MIA 3 students of Senior High School 2 Lamongan in writing descriptive text through the implementation of process writing strategy facilitated by weblogs. This research was a collaborative action research which consisted of four stages: planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. The data required were gathered by using observation checklists, field notes, and questionnaire. The results of the above-mentioned instruments indicate that the students show their active participation and good interest in attending the learning activity. The group discussion regarding the assigned objects in the pre-writing stage and the implementation of media weblogs can make the students participate more actively when the learning procedure is implemented. Meanwhile, the writing ability of the students also improves as proven by the fact that every student can successfully increase his/her score in at least 10 points, which indicates an improvement to a higher level. It is also found that all of the writing aspects, such as content, organization, and language are improved due to the activity of pre-writing that the students do. The observation towards the assigned objects and idea generation makes the students have a clear plan regarding what to write on the draft

Strategy Research and the Market Process Perspective

We argue that strategizing fundamentally concerns disequilibrium phenomena, such as discovery, innovation, resource-combination, imagination - in short, entrepreneurship. Therefore, the understanding of strategizing is likely to be led astray by drawing too heavily on equilibrium theories. Arguably, the three dominant economic approaches to strategy - the Porter industry analysis approach, the new industrial organization, and the ressourcebased approach - are characterized precisely by their strong reliance on equilibrium methodology. We argue that the market process approach in its Austrian version offers much inspiration for bringing process issues to bear on strategy issues.Strategy, organization, competitive advantage.

Increasing regional competitiveness by network strategy case: The strategy process of Lahti University Network

In a network society different areas and cities are forced to compete with and against each other. The success of urban districts is partly dependent of the people`s level of know-how and the districts` capability to create, process and spread out knowledge. Although Lahti Region has been considered a declined industrial region, it is full of potential: There are a sufficient amount of inhabitants; its infrastructure is competitive; its logistical position in Finland is central; it is near the capital city, Helsinki; the nature is near in Lahti. The city has innovative enterprises in wood, metal and plastic industries. On the other hand, the lack of university leads to remote R&D-spending, low standard of education and to the fact that the flow of young, educated people is easily passing the urban district of Lahti. Although Lahti does not have a university of its own, it has been able to attract some Finnish universities to start up branch offices in Lahti. Nowadays, there are three units from different universities with nine professorships. The lack of the university emphasizes the need of local actors, like research and education organisations, companies, authorities and Lahti Region Centre of Expertise Programme to co-operate strategically with each other. One example of this co-operation is the Lahti University Centre (LUC). LUC is a network of independent university level organisations in the city of Lahti. According to the co-operation contract, it consists of the following actors: Helsinki University of Technology Lahti Center; Lappeenranta University of Technology; University of Helsinki, Palmenia Centre for Research and Continuing Education; Helsinki University, Department of Ecological and Enviromental Sciences. The basic task of the LUC is to raise the university level know-how capacity in Lahti region and serve its economic life in areas of research, development and education in order to increase regional competitiveness. Although Lahti University Center has been established it does not have a proper strategy or an action plan. The network of these independent university organisations needs a strategy which guidelines and supports their actions and is compatible with the regional innovation system. The study focuses on the strategy process of a network organisation. Research problems are: - how leadership will be decentralized in a network - the roles and commitment of actors - how to formulate a viable vision - what are the main areas of strategic co-operation The study is an action research, where researchers also be actors in the strategy process. The strategy process will be understood as a learning process of the network. Some traditional strategic analyses such as feasibility analysis and benchmarking as well as some creativity tools like vision workshop will be tested. Leadership will be decentralized among all the actors in order to get the full engagement of the actors. The network strategy of the Lahti University Center gives information and serves as a possible benchmarking partner for other similar network organisations in Europe. This case will be one part of the researchers` study project to develop a model for the strategic planning of the network.

Machining strategy development in 5-axis milling operations using process models

Increased productivity and part quality can be achieved by selecting machining strategies and conditions properly. At one extreme very high speed and feed rate with small depth of cut can be used for high productivity whereas deep cuts accompanied with slow speeds and feeds may also provide increased material removal rates in some cases. In this study, it is shown that process models are useful tools to simulate and compare alternative strategies for machining of a part. 5-axis milling of turbine engine compressors made out of titanium alloys is used as the case study where strategies such as flank milling (deep cuts), point milling (light cuts) and stripe milling (medium depths) are compared in terms of process time by considering chatter stability, surface finish and tool deflections

Creating and Sustaining a Maintenance Strategy: A Practical Guide

Manufacturing companies should create maintenance strategy and link it to the manufacturing and business goals but recent research in the North East of England suggested that few companies do this. It is unclear why this inertia existed but it could have been due to the complexity and variety of the advice on offer in relation to the formulation and implementation of strategy. The purpose of this paper was to provide a simple generic guide or roadmap for practitioners to follow. It began by highlighting the importance and benefits of a maintenance strategy and then considered literature appropriate to the topic. A key point arising from this review was that the three elements; process, content, context, need to be considered over the lifecycle of a strategy. Moreover, most strategic models converged to simple sequential models affording a generic functional process to be developed. This involved the integration of the “corporate hard systems” model and the “Plan, do, check, act, cycle“, forming a suitable maintenance strategy process. Accordingly, further guidance on policy assured the right “content”. The paper concluded with a short questionnaire used to audit the effect of “contextual factors” on maintenance strategy. The result was a comprehensive guide on how to formulate and implement maintenance strategy

Insights into the development of strategy from a complexity perspective

This paper provides an account of an ongoing project with an independent school in the UK. The project focuses on a strategy development intervention which, from the start, was systemic in orientation. The intention was to integrate simple systems concepts and approaches into the strategy development process to: address power relations in actively engaging a wide range of stakeholders with the school’s strategy-making process; generate a range of good ideas; and make the strategy-making process transparent in order to inspire stakeholder confidence in, and commitment to, it and its outcomes. This paper describes how seeking to meet these aims entailed a series of workshops during the course of which an awareness of the relevance, in our interpretation, of Complex Adaptive Systems concepts grew

Discourse revisited : dimensions and employment of first-order strategy discourse during institutional adoption

Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process