Impact of super-measure management (SMM) in service

This paper offers a refined conceptualization of consensus formation and demonstrates in three organizations how this conceptualization enables us to uncover new patterns of consensus building. It describes a longitudinal study which investigated consensus formation in three organizations undergoing major strategic change. The study explored whether consensus building occurred during the strategic change, and if so, how. Initial participants of consensus were also investigated as well as changes in the scope of participants in consensus. Consensus building did occur, but contrary to some views, less through an increase in the strength of consensus and more through an increase in the scope of consensus. Additionally, initial consensus was not located among members of the top management team, but more within an interest group whose members benefited from the given direction of the change.

This study approaches the strategy process using both grounded theory and qualitative statistical analysis to validate and uncover the suspected differences in the strategic behaviour of managers and corporate executives. While most strategy research offers either theoretical propositions or quantitative results based on fragmented constructs, they offer little in the way of rich, accurate knowledge (Fredrickson, 1986; Huy, 1992; Van de Ven, 1992). The grounded theory methods yielded significant differences between the strategic behaviour of managers and corporate executives, particularly in the domains of roles, responsibilities, and accountability measures. Common strategy terms were found to vary in meaning across the two types of cases as well. Results were validated with discriminate illustrations, textual examples, and statistical analysis. a