Shaping Organizational Strategies: Future Perspectives, Concepts and Cases

Citation

Walz, J.T. (2007), "Shaping Organizational Strategies: Future Perspectives, Concepts and Cases", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 592-594. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730710781029

I am always a bit leery when I pick up a book that appears to be nothing more than a compilation of case studies written by a gaggle of emerging scholar “wannabes” for the benefit of faculty who are looking to keep ahead of the publish or perish game. My first reaction is to gag at the thought of these young, aggressive, moldable minds hoping to contribute something of great academic value to the bursting bubble of knowledge, and being drawn into the vortex of academic gaming. As I felt the gag reflex begin to rise, my perusal of the opening chapter brought me and my gag reflex to a screeching halt! Here was something of a surprise, something that, not necessarily extraordinary, but something that nevertheless sparked a nuance of originality.

The difficulty in writing a book of case studies is in the organization of the cases with an eye to flow, compartmentalization, comprehension, and generalizability. Scholars, working with graduate students, can find themselves in situations where they must organize thoughts, concepts, and ideas of their young protégés, so that the cases play a melody that builds a seamless flow of focused thought. This can be like herding cats. Well, allow me to announce that Gautam Raj Jain and Atul Tandan have achieved premier cat‐herding status!

Shaping Organizational Strategies: Future Perspectives, Concepts and Cases, looks at organizations through a fluid lens. What I mean by this is that most case study compilations ratify current theories or rest on textbook concepts; tell it like it was, not like it could be, or might be. Examining an organization in the real world is like looking into a brook of flowing water, seeing an object several inches below that keeps changing shape because of the liquid lens that is constantly undulating in the current. Boundaries of the object become blurred, the size is indiscernible, and the distance to the object is difficult to ascertain. But, this is the environment that organizations exist in, fluid, flowing, ever‐changing; not static, definable, closed systems. In order to emphasize this, the authors approach the discipline of “organizational behavior” (OB) with the use of the term “organizational dynamics” (ODy). Imbedded in the praxis of this moniker is the notion that people who develop dynamic thought processes will, “ … discover complex but ever‐changing patterns of relationship of the people with the organizational systems and its contextual environment, and respond to them creatively” (p. 19). In other words, they develop “systems‐scenario‐thinking”. Did I just coin a new phrase, and will it count towards tenure points?

The book is divided into eight chapters that begin with describing the concepts of organizational dynamics and providing the framework for perspective building. In essence, each chapter is a lesson plan with real‐life cases of organizations that provide illustrations so that students learning from each other achieve expected learning outcomes. These learning outcomes are listed at the beginning of each chapter. They are rational and easy to defend as part of an OB or ODy course, but they lack proper metrics and feedback vehicles to ensure learning has taken place. They had to leave something for the professors to do, for goodness sake! The chapters cover such issues as organizational politics, competitive games, interdepartmental rivalry, the influence of management practices on the functioning of the organization, personal ambitions, the need for recognition, dealing with conflicts, discrimination, disappointments, lackadaisical attitudes, conflicting values, developing personal potential, and nurturing employee's potential. The final chapter presents cases that describe and deal with crisis situations that can emerge from evolving workers' unions, internal security and communal and political issues.

The cases are written about real people, whose names have been changed to “protect the innocent” and whose situations mirror those that every manager will have to deal with at some point in their career. These are not ultra‐sensational studies of organizations to glamorize some inbred need to make business history through appealing to some voyeuristic tendency. These are real, these are every‐day, and these are accessible problems. This book should find a place on your bookshelf, if not for use as a recommended text in courses you may teach, but as a compilation of topics that flow along together in the current of everyday organizational instability.