The Dynamics of Strategic Actions in Australian Organisations

Wayne A Graham

doi:10.25907/00565

Strategic management researchers have long explored and investigated aspects of organisational strategy types, strategy development processes and contextual differences. The literature is extensive and spans more than sixty years. A multitude of content and process typologies exist as to the nature of strategies pursued by managers in all different types of organisations around the world. While this knowledge is beneficial, much remains unknown about the actual practice of strategy and how each individual action contributes to the larger strategy phenomenon. This study develops a theoretical framework that analyses managerial activity and identifies eight different types of strategic action that occur in organisations. The study traces the origin of each action retrospectively in an attempt to understand the antecedents of a set of experiences that are complex and important. The study takes this framework and then compares the organisational action against a modified framework of strategy-making processes, industry and organisational conditions and calculates their relationship against organisational performance. Particular attention is given to the examination of actions and processes in terms of their position along the deliberate-emergent continuum. Through the assessment of 250 Australian organisations and over 300 organisational actions the applicability of the framework is evaluated. The findings indicate that emergent processes are most evident in organisations that operate in service industries and that both deliberate and emergent processes are most prevalent in the private sector. The study found that industry dynamism is most evident in organisations that operate in service industries. Deliberate processes are most evident in large organisations and both deliberate and emergent processes exist in small organisations. Added to this, deliberate processes are significantly related to deliberate actions and emergent processes are significantly related to emergent actions. This confirms the validity and usefulness of the strategic actions framework developed in this research. The study found that deliberate strategy-making processes are significant predictors of an organisation's performance (against competitors) and multiple processes are significant predictors of an organisation's most recent performance (against previous years). Further, multiple processes are also significant predictors of an organisation's ability to undertake positive impact strategic actions. This confirms the results from previous studies that found organisations with multiple strategy-making processes perform better than those without multiple strategy-making capabilities. The study also found that emergent actions are most likely to occur as a result of responses to external circumstances and deliberate actions are most likely to occur asa result of new initiatives. Importantly, positive impact actions are most likely to occur as a result of partly emergent actions. Further, deliberate actions and new initiatives were significantly associated with higher levels of overall impact on performance. This highlights that deliberate and partly emergent strategic actions are an important contributor to an organisation's performance.

The Dynamics of Strategic Actions in Australian Organisations

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