Helene Loe Colman

Long Range Planning 53(6) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2020.102064

Strategy implementation (SI) is a significant managerial, and organizational challenge as many practitioners struggle to make strategies actionable and to achieve intended results. Moreover, there is no unified body of research on SI. This is problematic for academics aiming to contribute to a research-based body of knowledge on implementation. To remedy this problem, we draw on the strategy-as-practice perspective and conceptualize SI as a particular type of ‘strategy work’, manifest in the activities, actors, and tools through which strategy is executed. This conceptual framework allows us to synthesize the fragmented literature into five implementation practices: structure and process matching, resource matching, monitoring, framing, and negotiating. We show how these implementation activities operate at different levels and involve different actors and tools. With its emphasis on what managers (and other people) do within specific structural, temporal, and material arrangements, the strategy-as-practice perspective offers exciting opportunities for future implementation research.

Journal of International Business Studies Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-019-00245-5

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) face simultaneous pressures for global integration and local responsiveness. While the extant literature acknowledges that most MNEs are neither entirely geared towards achieving global integration nor local responsiveness, scarce attention is given to how MNEs develop organizational flexibility to address multiple and shifting strategy pressures over time. In this paper, we draw on the dynamic capabilities literature to explore how the MNE develops the capabilities needed to achieve this flexibility. Through a qualitative, longitudinal case study spanning 12 years, we identify three recombination capabilities – legitimizing, leveraging, and launching capabilities – through which the MNE develops organizational flexibility. We find that these recombination capabilities improve the MNEs ability to sense and seize new opportunities and enable the MNE to overcome organizational impediments to achieve flexibility. Our study offers a process perspective that shows how the three capabilities together nourish the MNEs resilience to continuously balance between global integration and local responsiveness. Our findings have managerial implications, illustrating that launching new strategic initiatives may fail if the MNE does not have the capabilities to legitimize the new initiatives and to ensure that existing organizational strengths are properly leveraged to support the new initiatives.

Journal of Business Research 109(March) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.09.063

Through acquisitions, firms can access resources and capabilities they cannot develop on their own. Post-acquisition, a key managerial challenge is balancing the need for integration, to transfer capabilities, with the need for autonomy, to preserve knowledge-based capabilities. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, I find that this balancing involves managerial perceptions and actions that unfold in a reciprocal and dynamic process, resulting in capability transfer. I identify two distinct trajectories of capability transfer, one driven by the acquiring managers’ perceptions of valuable capabilities in the target, and one driven by the target managers’ desire to shield their capabilities from deterioration. This study contributes to the post-acquisition integration literature by conceptualizing the role played by target and acquiring firm managers in the dynamic, reciprocal, and sequential process of post-acquisition capability transfer.

Scandinavian Journal of Management 36(1) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2019.101090

This paper focuses on theorizing in the study of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), a globally significant inter-organizational phenomenon. We analyze 76 qualitative papers on M&As published in leading management journals between 1966–2016. We identify five modes of theorizing in the study of M&As. We find that M&A scholars make theoretical contributions using different theoretical positioning and research design strategies. The majority of the papers offer a contribution to middle-range theorizing (i.e., the literature on M&As), while a third of the papers also contribute to higher-order, or grand theories in management. In closing, this leads us to call for a rejuvenation of middle-range theorizing in management research.

Journal of Management 45(5) p. 2225-2253 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318759400

Long Range Planning Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2018.03.003

M&A scholars have generally assumed that post-acquisition integration is a self-contained process. However this ignores that this process rarely unfolds as the only ongoing initiative in an organization. We contend that post-acquisition integration is not detached from other simultaneous change processes in the organizational context and this has important implications for Our understanding of how integration dynamics actually evolve. To further understand this embeddedness we examine the unfolding of a post-acquisition integration process in a Company faced with an unanticipated drop in demand due to the global economic crisis. Through a qualitative,longitudinal study conducted over three years, we carried out 151 interviews to uncover the unfolding of the post-acquisition process. We find that post-acquisition integration is embedded in a set of co-evolving processes. We highlight four mechanisms coordination, cohesion, disconnection, alienation) that arise from the co-evolution of processes that either facilitate or impede integration. Our findings contribute to our understanding of post-acquisition integration dynamics by recasting the integration process as embedded in a set of co-evolving processes that shape its unfolding.

MIR. Management International Review: journal of international business 56(2) p. 171-194 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11575-015-0273-4

Many multinational enterprises (MNEs) seek to strengthen their competitive positions through internal integration. Socialization is a key integration mechanism to leverage advantages spread across MNEs’ geographically dispersed organizational units. Parent organizations often communicate a set of values intended to guide action throughout the MNE, referred to as espoused values, to initiate a socialization process. However, we have limited insights into how espoused values are endorsed and subsequently contribute to MNE integration. Through a case study, we analyze how espoused values are interpreted by the foreign subsidiaries and influence subsequent subsidiary behavior. Our findings suggest that the socialization process is complex, where the local context and perceptions of headquarter nationality provide the frames for interpretation. We identify that even though the espoused values may differ in their operationalization in local contexts, they can still contribute to MNE integration. This study contributes to existing MNE literature by conceptualizing the role of interpretive frames and the endorsement of values in achieving integration through espoused values.

Magma forskning og viten 18(7) p. 34-45

Cappelen Damm Akademisk

Economic and Industrial Democracy: an international journal 35(2) p. 267-287 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X13475829

Thunderbird International Business Review 55(4) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21553

Magma forskning og viten 16(6) p. 62-70

Corporate Reputation Review 15(3) p. 143-157 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/crr.2012.8

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities p. 251-270

Fagbokforlaget

Journal of Management 37(3) p. 839-860 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309354645

This study tells the story of two acquisitions made by a company the authors call Multifirm. Multifirm acquired two targets, Datagon and Teknico. The Datagon employees immediately identified with Multifirm, and the integration process was characterized by few conflicts and satisfied employees. The Teknico employees, on the other hand, failed to identify with Multifirm, and the integration process was fraught with disruptions and conflicts. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of identity threats, Multifirm reported that more value was created from the acquisition of Teknico than from Datagon. In this article, we try to understand why this was the case.

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities p. 37-37

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities p. 271-284

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities p. 17-26

A Merger of Equals? The Integration of Statoil and Hydro`s Oil & Gas Activities