Articles

Aligning Strategy and Talent in Creative Professional Service Firms

Deirdre Canavan et al. — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 05:25:13 PDT

Purpose: Reliance on individual talent and motivation renders creative Professional Service Firms (PSFs) highly dependent on their ability to attract and mobilise the right individuals. This paper builds an integrated framework showing firstly how creative industry PSFs can differ in their strategy for growth, and secondly how these alternative strategies for growth can influence the firm’s approach to organising and the type of talent required. Design/methodology/approach: Findings are based on a series of interviews with managing directors, senior management and practitioners of architectural organisations in a single country, combined with an extensive literature review. Findings – Our framework illustrates how the proposed growth strategies for creative PSFs are aligned to alternative professional talent profiles - a product portfolio strategy where the firm structures for efficiency aligned to a managerial talent profile, and an artistic competency strategy where the firm structures for creativity aligned to a technical talent profile. Research Limitations / Implications: The usual limitations apply in terms of generalizability of findings from case studies. Practical Implications – Our proposed framework represents a novel attempt to help management of creative PSFs to align their growth strategies with human resource practice to achieve the firm’s objectives, and provide valuable practical advice to managers on achieving this ‘fit’. Originality / Value- By linking the firm’s strategy and structure to identify the organisation’s human resource requirements, we provide a novel framework for how creative PSFs can attract and retain the type of talent profile and motivational characteristics best suited to consistently perform and contribute to achieving the firm objectives.

Risk in International Business

Deirdre Canavan et al. — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:10:11 PDT

Risk in international business can stress risk adverse behaviour to counteract foreign market uncertainty or individual entrepreneurial risk taking behaviour dependent on the characteristics of both the business sector and the individual. International business theory would suggest that the perception of risk may differ in situations including where new market entry is incremental, is taken in larger or earlier stages, or indeed whether it may be experienced in a continually fluctuating manner dependent on resources and changing market conditions. In this regard, managing international risk is neither static nor rigid involving factors from both within and outside of the business entity.

Developing Marketing Competence and Managing in Networks: a Strategic Approach

Aidan O'Driscoll et al. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:59:50 PST

Two important domains of scholarly investigation over the last decade, competency development and networks, share important common ground. These domains are also comprehended gainfully in terms of their wider strategic underpinning. This paper first contends that competence is considered best in terms of the particular strategy–structure–shared values constellation of a firm. This enables competence, including marketing competence, to be understood in terms of competency deepening (within the conventional marketing function), broadening (marketing activity which must be shared and co-managed with other parts of the firm), and of partnering (essentially, the ability to manage alliances, networks and relationships between the firm and other parties). It then explores this ‘partnering’ competence in more depth. To manage and develop networks involves nurturing expertise that has a strong marketing focus. On a tactical level, there is the ability to manage relationships and trust, to negotiate with partners, to establish legitimacy, and to monitor the ongoing costs and benefits of network involvement. On a more strategic level, there are issues of network choice, ‘network myopia’ and network disengagement.

Discovering Diversity in Marketing Practice

John Murray et al. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:59:48 PST

Marketing practice varies among firms. However, the prescriptive literature emphasises a universal view of practice, a “one-size-fits-all” view. This paper addresses the issue of explaining diversity in competitive space and over time. Diversity in competitive space reflects the existence of different routes to high performance. Diversity over time reflects some combination of change in the individual firm and change in a population of firms. In the former case, diversity is shaped by organisational change; in the latter by the disbandment and founding of firms in the population. Miles and Snow’s typology is taken as a main point of departure in the search for explanation, and ecological and evolutionary concepts are also drawn upon. The paper starts by examining the discussion of diversity in the literature of strategic management and organisation theory, and then finds evidence of an emerging interest in diversity in the domain of marketing. Based on a number of cross-sectional and longitudinal case studies, it proceeds to explore diversity in company marketing practice. How such variety evolves at industry level is then addressed. Finally, a view of industries as business systems with complex adaptive mechanisms, enabling both evolutionary and revolutionary changes in marketing practice, is offered.

Messianic Eschatology:Some Redemptive Reflection on Marketing and the Benefits of a Process Approach

John Murray et al. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:59:47 PST

States that a Messianic view of eschatology is one that directs its hopes to a salvatory or vindicating figure, event or philosophy. In applying the eschatology metaphor to marketing, makes the case that, despite apocalyptic forebodings about its shortcomings, marketing’s salvatory prospects are much improved by the adoption of some new concepts and practices. Suggests that it is now productive to add a strongly process-based view of marketing to more traditional perspectives. Comprehending marketing in terms of four core processes - a marketing strategy process, a marketing management process, an order generation, fulfilment and service process, and a new product development process - facilitates a redemptive reconceptualization of marketing activity.

The Competence Trap: Exploring Issues in Winning and Sustaining Core Competence

Aidan O'Driscoll et al. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:59:46 PST

The organisational struggle to maintain and refine, yet also necessarily to renew and replace core capabilities, is a complex, and at times paradoxical, challenge. This paper reflects on this managerial task and on the difficulties and tensions inhering in its possible resolution. In sum, it asks how can the need to leverage competence for today be balanced with the requirement to build competence for tomorrow?