Stable, high-velocity, turbulent and high-velocity/turbulent environments

 

Emery and Trist (1965), Terreberry (1968) defined turbulent environments (TEs) looking at the problem from the standpoint of change in interactions between players (government, companies, external stakeholders).

Interested in the dynamics of change, Dess and Beard (1984) and Eisenhardt and Bourgeous (1988) introduced the notion of high-velocity environments (HVEs).

Jones and Mahon (2012) synthesized the above material and suggested updated definitions of TEs and HVEs. They also suggested the notion of high-velocity turbulent environments (HVTEs) and contrasted it to stable environments (SE). They wrote

High velocity environments are those situations where change is rapid, large and discontinuous (that is, changes occur at intermittent times and are not related to what occurred more recently).

Turbulent environments … are more long lived and reflect large (or small, but significant) changes in the interactions between and among players in an environment … AND where those changes impact on the processes of interactions themselves.

For Jones and Mahon (2012) high-velocity/turbulent environments are those in which the pace of changes, the magnitude of changes and the interactive effects of change and magnitude are significant.

They argued that stable environments do not present dynamic changes or noticeable variations in players’ interactions.

I  summarize the combinations in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The four types of environments

References

Dess, G. and Beard, D. (1984), ‘‘Dimensions of organizational task environments’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 29, pp. 52-73.

Eisenhardt, K.M. and Bourgeois, L.J. (1988), ‘‘Politics of strategic decision making in high-velocity environments: toward a midrange theory’’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 737-70.

Emery, F.E. and Trist, E. (1965), ‘‘Causal texture of organizational environments’’, Human Relations, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 21-32.

Jones, N.B. and Mahon, J.F. (2012), “Nimble knowledge transfer in high velocity/turbulent environments”. Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 16 No. 5 2012, pp. 774-788.

Terreberry, S. (1968), ‘‘The evolution of organizational environments’’, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 590-613.

Business succession landscape in the OB and HRM debate

 

The organizational behavior (OB) and human resources management (HRM) researchers seem to have been investigating the business succession problem mainly from a company perspective. Therefore, the measures they use are business performance variables (Serra and Borzillo, 2013).

In the past few years a human perspective has emerged in OB/HRM conversations on business succession. That brought in new measures reflecting stakeholders' satisfaction with succession processes and outcomes.

Both the established and emerging conversations occur in the natural realm of actor-focused organizational theories.

Figure 1 shows two dimensions of the business succession debate: theory (X) and perspective (Y). 10 organizational theories are placed on the X dimension. Classes of measured variables (business performance, stakeholders' reactions) are positioned on the Y dimension. Thus, Figure 1 maps the fields of the existing conversations and "unexplored/unexplorable" areas.

It is my intention to join the emerging conversation of the left upper corner by moving in from the foothold of the conceptual model based on the resource dependence theory with variables from the stakeholders' reactions class.

Figure 1. The map of the business succession debate

Abbreviations of organizational theories

RA - Rational actor

OP/LPS - Organizational process/Limited problem solver

C/BP - Coalitions/Bureaucratic politics

OA/GC - Organized anarchies/Garbage can

OL/KPM - Organizational learning/Knowledge-practice model

OC - Organizational culture

RD - Resource dependence

NO - Network organization

NI - Neoinstitutional

PE - Population ecology

References

Serra, Caroline Kaehr  and Borzillo, Stefano (2013). "Founder successions in new ventures: the human perspective." Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 34, No. 5, pp. 12-24.

McFarland, Daniel A., Organizational Analysis. Stanford/Coursera, Fall 2012.

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere gratitude to Audrone Nakrosiene, my fellow PhD student, for her help in framing my PhD research question.

A quest for the literature. Stage 1 of 4. Planning the review

 

This method is based on Erkko Autio's (Imperial College London Business School) materials of the Research Capacity Development Seminar at ISM (November 2013).

1.1. Articulating general ideas of the review

What is business succession in management research? Has it been researched in connection with firms' a) growth strategies and/or b) industrial specifics? What evidence is out there?

1.2. Scoping the study

This is about designing the search.

Search phase 1

Topic: business succession

Keywords: succession, business succession, succession management, founder succession, business turnover, ownership turnover, succession planning, leadership development, talent development, CEO replacement

Subject areas: management, business, economics, human resource management, leadership, strategic management, finance, organizational design

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

Search phase 2 (in the results of cycle 1)

Topic: growth strategy

Keywords: growth, growth strategy, strategic management, explorative strategy, exploitative strategy, ambidexterity, development strategy, business expansion, strategic directions, corporate strategy, generic strategy, competitive strategy

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will constitute the body of the debate on business succession from the perspective of growth strategies.

Search phase 3 (in the results of cycle 1)

Topic: industry

Keywords: industry, sector, value chain, success factors, industry competitiveness, industry attractiveness, industry specifics

Operators: OR for all keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will constitute the body of the debate on business succession from the industrial perspective.

Search phase 4 (in the results of cycles 2 and 3)

Keywords: all from cycles 2 and 3

Operators: AND for all combinations of keywords

Locations: everywhere.

The findings will be papers central to the review ideas.

1.3. Pulling together a review question

The draft of the review question currently looks like this:

Has business succession been researched from the industrial and growth strategy perspectives?

1.4. Documenting the review protocol

This is about questions to ask and steps to take in the literature review.

At this moment the questions are as follows:

1. What papers link business succession and growth strategy (located in the left inner circle in Figure 1)?
2. What papers link business succession and industry (located in the right inner circle in Figure 1)?
3. What papers are central to the review ideas (located in the triple overlay area in Figure 1)? 
4. What are the authors' propositions?
5. What are their research strategies, designs and methods?
6. What terminology and definitions do they use?
7. What terminology and definitions should I borrow from them to use in my work? 
8. What research strategy, design and methodology should I implement in my work?

And the steps to be taken:

1. Download papers, organize storage and statistics (with EndNote 8).
2. Read to expand the lists of keywords as per paragraph 1.2, refine search results.
3. Read to find additional papers through references, refine search results.
4. Build the reference map (what for, BTW? To be graphically compelling?)

Figure 1. The three topical domains arranged in accordance with the search design.

A quest for the literature. General approach

The goal of the literature search and analysis is to confirm or to re-frame the initial proposition:

Business succession efficiency depends on three independent variables: succession pattern, industry complexity, growth strategy.

Search and analysis structure

1. Keywords

Those are to be gathered for the three debate areas and then used with AND and OR operators to locate papers, books and other materials within the heartland research area (business succession + growth strategies + industry complexity), as well as in the three adjacent intersecting areas (business succession + growth strategies; growth strategies + industry complexity; industry complexity + business succession) as shown in Figure 1.

2. Reading

Firstly, this is to understand if the problem of business succession has ever been researched from the industry perspective and whether or not it has been studied in connection with the types of growth strategies companies implement. If yes, what papers are central to the debate, what the authors' propositions and methods are, what terminology and definitions they use.  If not, what terminology and definition I can borrow and/or design based on the separately debated research domains.

Secondly, this is to expand the lists of keywords and thus perform another cycle of searching.

Thirdly, this is to expand the list of references and go for another cycle of reading and reviewing.

These iterations will supposedly generate a satisfactory set of materials for reviewing.

3. Reviewing

To be compelling, a proper systematic method for analyzing and synthesizing the selected literature material may be needed. A descriptive mode should be taken, particularly, the thematic analysis, which is aimed at identifying and describing recurrent themes in the domain and summarizing empirical findings.