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How initiatives renew operations strategy and its linkage to competitive

strategy: A micro-level perspective

Article  in  International Journal of Services and Operations Management · January 2017

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2017.081488

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 How initiatives renew operations strategy and its linkage to
competitive strategy: A micro-level perspective

Emmanuel D. Adamides1 & Eleni Karfaki

Section of Management & Organisation Studies
MEAD
University of Patras
Rion, Greece 26500
1
adamides@upatras.gr
Abstract
The research reported in this paper aims at providing a consistent description of the
dynamics of bottom-up operations initiatives and their interaction with ongoing
operations strategy activity for facilitating their analysis with respect to producing
strategic renewal. Towards this end, using Actor-Network Theory, we first develop a
conceptual framework for analyzing the trajectories of bottom-up operations strategic
initiatives as they seek resources and legitimation in the organization’s strategic
processes, and then we apply the framework to analyze an operations-led strategic
initiative in a training services provider, focusing on its linking to the operations and
business level strategic processes.

Keywords: operations strategy, strategic initiatives, actor-network theory, training

services, House of Quality, strategic renewal

1. Introduction

Strategic renewal may be induced from the top, or may emerge from the bottom of an
organization’s pyramid (Balogun and Johnson, 2004; Garud and Van de Ven, 2002).
Frequently, bottom-up strategic change stems from the operations function (Kim et
al., 2014; Saunders et al., 2008) and is a result of ad-hoc micro adaptations, or of
more planned project-type processes (Klingebiel and De Meyer, 2013), expressed
through operations strategic initiatives (Burgelman, 1991; Lechner and Floyd, 2012;
Lechner et al. 2010; Noda and Bower, 1996; Wielemaker et al., 2003). Strategic

1
initiatives are specific forms of corporate entrepreneurship that start with the
recognition of an opportunity and end with a form of approval (Wielemaker et al.,
2003). Clearly, the successful deployment of an operations initiative depends on its
linking to operations and corporate-level strategic objectives. This is a dynamic
dialectic process, in which the initiative influences, as it is influenced and modified
by, the incumbent operations and corporate level strategic activity.

Individuals and groups associated with specific initiatives seek the promotion,
approval of, and resource allocation to their own initiatives at the expense of
competing ones, initiated by different agencies, internal or external to the organization
(Burgelman, 1994; Lechner and Floyd, 2012). As a result, in reality, the initiatives
and strategic renewal management processes are highly political processes, in which
the distribution of power among those involved plays a crucial role (Koch and Friis,
2015; Kreutzer et al., 2014; Pettigrew, 1987). Existing models of bottom-up strategy
and change, such as the Bower-Burgelman model, associate the strategic renewal
process with the competition among individuals, functions and departments and their
interests for obtaining organizational attention and resources (Adamides and
Voutsina, 2006; Noda and Bower, 1996). Nevertheless, these evolutionary models
(Jansson, 2013), as well as other “black-box” empirically-supported ones (Mirabeau
and Maguire, 2013), assume that organizations are static entities with deterministic
relationships between context and individual interests, social background, knowledge
and culture, as well as between formal positions and power (Golsorkhi et al., 2010).
Hence, they are mostly suitable for meso-level analyses of organizational phenomena
(Jarzabkowski, 2005), leaving aside issues of context-specific strategy formation
routines and micro-processes related to individual agency and specific
initiatives/projects, or resource management tasks.

Related operations strategy initiatives’ considerations concentrate on initiatives,

plans, structures, and organizational characteristics and their relations (e.g. Barnes,
2002; Chatha and Butt, 2015; Deichmann and van den Ende, 2014; Kim et al., 2014;
Kiridena et al., 2009; Saunders et al., 2008) and not on the activities and the identity
characteristics of the agents that are the carriers of operations strategic activity. They
undermine the individual organizational and occupational identities (Kenny et al.,
2011) that influence the power and legitimation potential of specific strategic
initiatives within the content of operations strategy, as well as in the organization’s
2
competitive strategy (Corrêa, 2008; Kim et al., 2014). As a result, their contribution to
providing insights on specific questions, such as, how operations initiatives interact
and influence ongoing routine (operations and competitive) strategy processes and
their outcomes remains weak.

Given the complexity and pluralistic nature of modern firms (Denis et al., 2007),
especially professional service providers, the answer to the above question is very
context-specific (similar strategic activities have different meaning in different
organizational contexts) and only an epistemological/methodological stance (how to
approach the issue) would be of any value (Boyer et al., 2005; Grand et al., 2010;
MacCarthy et al., 2013). A principally micro-level perspective that opens the black-
box of strategy creation (Whittington, 1996) and concentrates on the consistent
description of what agents actually do, and how they interact when they undertake
initiatives and develop operations strategies, would contribute towards providing an
answer to the question for each case individually (Koch and Friis, 2015). Given that,
so far, only very few studies have considered operations strategy formation at the
micro level, though not in a consistent way by relying on a concrete theoretical basis
(e.g. Chatha and Butt, 2015; Kiridena et al., 2009; Koch and Friis, 2015; Rytter et al.,
2007), a conceptual framework (model) that facilitates this micro-level description
and the ex-post analysis of individual cases, by providing guidelines on where and
how to look for relevant practical activities of individuals involved in initiatives and
in routine operations strategic processes and how to assess their outcomes, would be
of a particular interest to operations strategy scholars.

In this line, adopting a micro-level perspective, the aim of this paper is to provide a
practice-based conceptual framework for the description and analysis of the way(s)
initiative management activity interacts with ongoing operations and competitive
strategy activity (strategizing). That is, a framework that facilitates the description
and analysis of how practice-influenced activity associated with initiatives undertaken
by line and middle managers is linked to operations strategy process and content, and
how, eventually, initiatives are aligned with the organization’s competitive strategy
and produce strategic renewal. Towards this end, based on the tenets of actor-network
theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005) within a practice perspective, and after analyzing the
main issues on the relation between incentives and operations strategy, we arrive at a
conceptual framework that links individual initiatives to operations strategy formation
3
and its association with corporate and business level strategies through the dynamic
formation of a common context. The purpose of this framework is not to act as a
general theory of how operations-based strategic renewal is produced, but to provide
an analytical lens for approaching bottom-up initiatives and their relation with
operations routine strategizing. Its application in specific cases will surface patterns of
behaviours which may be then locally contextualized in individual situations
(Pettigrew, 2001). In the paper, the framework is employed for the description and
analysis of an operations-led strategic initiative to introduce the House of Quality tool
(Das and Mukherjee, 2008) in a training services provider.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The following section (Section 2)
argues for a micro-level practice perspective in the study of operations strategic
initiatives. Section 3 briefly presents Actor-Network Theory, the theoretical
background of our conceptual framework. Section 4 presents the conceptual
framework, whereas in Section 5 the framework is used for the ex-post analysis of a
case of strategy renewal induced by an operations initiative in a training services
provider. In Section 6, the main findings are discussed and the conclusions of the
research are drawn.

2. Toward a practice perspective on operations strategic initiatives

It was already indicated that strategic initiatives are forms of corporate

entrepreneurship that seek to acquire resources (capital and other assets) and create
knowledge that facilitates their deployment and increases the effectiveness of their
outcomes (Zahra et al., 1999). These outcomes are associated with organizational
change and the acquisition, or development, of novel resources and capabilities.
Initiatives resemble, but are different from, projects that have well-defined starting
and end times, and are more task-oriented (Saunders et al., 2008). It has been argued
(although not explained thoroughly) that the formation, approval and implementation
of initiatives are contingent to internal and external organizational conditions (Bower,
1970; Burgelman, 1991; Manning, 2008). Such conditions include the organizational
structure and power distribution, the managerial roles, the administrative and
incentive mechanisms (internal conditions), as well as the operation of the markets
and the general institutional environment (external conditions) (Wielemaker, et al.,
2003). Examples of strategic initiatives include the adoption of a specific process or

4
product technology (including administrative information systems), the development
of a new product line, the development or change of an important business process,
the development and implementation of a process improvement program, etc.

Initiatives stem from individuals, or groups, that seek to express their special skills,
their ideas, or simply advance their careers (Burgelman, 2005). Practices followed
during their generation phase are usually associated with the enhancement of
knowledge and learning of their proponents and supporters, such as database(s)
consultation, collaboration and brainstorming sessions, foresight, etc (Adamides and
Karacapilidis, 2006). As happens with routine strategizing, initiatives are usually
considered as having distinct formation/decision and implementation phases (Kreutzer
et al., 2014; Lechner and Floyd, 2012; Saunders et al., 2008). Nevertheless, in
practice, in the majority of cases, these phases overlap and are accomplished in an
iterative mode as the initiative adjusts to internal and external environmental
conditions (Bower, et al., 2005).

Operations strategic initiatives may follow a top-down or bottom-up trajectory within

the organization (Kim et al., 2014). Top-down initiatives may be directly associated
with the specific processes through which strategy is realized, i.e. with what has to be
done to implement a decided strategy, and they may be more suitable for deploying
disinvestment decisions (Sull, 2005). The challenge is to align these strategic
initiatives with the strategic themes (specific tasks or functional strategies, such as the
operations one), of which strategy is comprised of (Kaplan and Norton, 2004). On the
other hand, bottom-up strategic initiatives are interventions in the routine strategy
production processes and their outcome(s), and are more suitable for investment
decisions. In both cases, especially for explorative initiatives, alignment of the
initiatives and the interests that they represent with the organization’s strategic
direction is sought (Kreutzer et al., 2014; Lechner and Floyd, 2012). In the
conventional, meso-level evolutionary consideration of bottom-up strategy processes,
this alignment is accomplished by the structural context in the initiatives’ selection
mechanisms which are set by the upper levels of management (Burgelman, 1991).

Although such considerations acknowledge the fact that there may be many initiatives
competing for resources at a specific period of time, they assume that initiatives
(process and content) do not interact with each other, and that their proponents and

5
supporters do not modify, merge, or cancel initiatives as result of these interactions
(diffusion model). This partly explains why there is ambiguity about the exact form of
relation between initiatives and strategic renewal (Zahra et al., 1989). In reality,
initiatives are multi-stakeholder and involve organizational members with diverse
objectives and interests (Lechner and Floyd, 2012), that configure initiatives at a finer
level throughout their entire development and implementation cycle. Hence, the
formation and prioritization of various initiatives take place simultaneously through a
dialectic process, in which the nature of the agents involved, their social relations, and
the associated organizational practices play a crucial role and must be taken into
consideration in any analysis. This implies that initiatives are input to strategy process
and content simultaneously through coordinated strategic activity along tow
dimensions: initiative development and strategy making. The initiative proponent(s)
and supporters aim at bringing the organization (or part of it) at a new state that is
based on their own vision (formed image) of the organization, which differs from the
current one shared by the participants of the incumbent formal and informal strategy
and other managerial processes.

Operations initiatives are mostly associated with operational improvement or

redirection activities and programs. Such initiatives may not have a direct strategic
renewal objective, but can influence operations strategy as a side-effect of their
attempted implementations (i.e. have different outcomes from those intended). For
instance, an initiative to modernize production technology may eventually, through
increased precision processing capability, result in the adoption of quality as the
principal operations strategic objective. Operations strategic objectives are the main
constituent parts of operations strategy and play a significant role in the alignment of
operations strategy with other functional strategies (e.g. marketing) and business level
strategy (Brown and Blackmon, 2005; Laureano Paiva and Marques Vieira, 2011).
The process of operations strategy formation is directly and/or indirectly associated
with the prioritization of the performance objectives of cost, flexibility, (innovation)
speed, delivery dependability and quality, and its linking to competitive strategy by
adjusting of operations resources and developing capabilities in the areas of capacity,
supply chain, technology, and organization development and information
management (Slack and Lewis, 2008).

6
There is a rich literature, at the meso-level of analysis, concerning the alignment of
operations and business strategies (e.g. Barnes, 2002; Brown and Blackmon, 2005;
Chatha and Butt, 2015; Dangayach and Deshmukh, 2001; Hill, 2000; Kim et al.,
2014; Papke-Shilds and Malhotra, 2001). However, it mainly assumes a-contextual
strategy processes that place individual strategists’ characteristics and interest-driven
and emotion-condition influences, as well as dynamic power distribution processes
and organizational politics, in the background. Only recently, a niche stream of
research has started to consider micro-level organizational/social issues in operations
strategy formation (Adamides, 2015; Kiridena et al., 2009; Koch and Friis, 2015;
Rytter et al., 2007). An important role in the move towards this direction has been
played by the surfacing of the dual role of organizational attributes in the operation
strategy process as both input and output of the process (Slack and Lewis, 2008).

Operations initiatives management and strategy making in modern service

organizations involve multiple processes and multiple actors distributed in pluralistic
organizational settings characterized by multiple objectives, distributed power and
knowledge intensive processes (Denis et al., 2007). To understand the way initiatives
are related to strategy in such contexts, theoretical constructs that grasp the
heterogeneity of activities and agents and their complexity of interactions are required
(Grand et al., 2010). This leads to models of strategy production beyond the rational,
political and institutional ones (Denis et al., 2007), towards theories that open the
“black-box” of strategy creation in order to see the everyday life of the micro-
activities of strategists when they develop strategy (Whittington, 2007). Such theories
provide insights on how managers practically construct the links between the daily
micro activities on the one hand, and the macro-structure of their organization and its
environment where performance is eventually assessed, on the other (Johnson et al.,
2003; Regnér, 2003). The same holds for the development of initiatives and their
intended strategic integration (Blomquist et al., 2010; Manning, 2008). Toward this
end, the strategy-as-practice approach maintains that strategy is something that is
constructed by social processes, emphasizes the importance of revealing and
describing the interior of strategic processes for specific situations (Brown and
Duguid, 2001), and pays particular attention on the role of material artefacts
employed in the process (Orlikowski and Scott, 2008).

7
Practice-based analysis of strategy relies on social practice theory that claims that
there is a practical rationality rooted in the concrete detail of the daily life (Bourdieu,
1990; Denis et al., 2007), and the daily life and practical activity cannot be detached
from wider social, cultural and historical developments (Giddens, 1984). Although
daily (and organizational) life is generally associated with routine behaviours, the
contradictions of social life can activate change, i.e. practices/routines change
(Feldman, 2000; Hansen and Vogel, 2011). Practices are performed without a clear
rationale and made durable by being inscribed in human bodies and minds, as well as
in material objects and texts, and are linked to other practices (Nicolini, 2013). Hence,
practices can only be studied relatively as they are being made and interconnected to
other practices in the course of time and as mediate actual activity. The sociology of
translation (Callon, 1986), and more specifically Actor-Network Theory (ANT),
provides the basis for a methodology to accomplish this task. Although ANT is not
considered as a real practice theory (Nicolini, 2013), its epistemological orientation,
level of analysis, and action-oriented ontological assumptions make it suitable for
being associated with the practice perspective in the study of operations initiatives and
their strategic renewal effects.

3. Theoretical background: Actor-network theory

Actor-network theory (ANT) was initially developed for understanding the diffusion
of scientific ideas and technologies under a socio-technical perspective (Callon, 1986;
Latour, 1987). Its basic argument is that ideas and artefacts, such as texts, computer
models and presentations, are socially defined by various agents/actors and other
artefacts, as they interact with each other in non-deterministic dynamic ways. ANT
rejects the idea that the institutional and organizational context can be taken for
granted in explaining human action. Instead, it argues that the context is
simultaneously constructed with the idea or technical artefact and the associated
actions, and that the actors are not defined and understood a priori, but only in
connection with the human and non-human actors of the network with whom they are
related with, at a particular instance in time (indeterminacy of actors). This means
that, in the context of this paper, a proponent of an initiative without textual and
visual material supporting the initiative, office, e-mail address, computer, colleagues,
etc is not a proponent of an initiative (actor), and that what constitutes the initiative,

8
at a particular instance in time, is, in fact, the network of all these: human actors
(proponent, supporters and opponents), papers, computer files, presentations, etc.
Hence, in ANT, the initiative is being created with the development of the
corresponding network, as the actants (loose agents, potential members of the
network) become connected actors (connections create actors (Czarniawska, 2008)).
As a result, the fate of an initiative in the organization depends on the success of the
process of construction of the initiative network and its protection from attempts by
other parts of the organization to dissolve the network.

Network builders (mediators of practices), such as technology creators, or initiative

proponents in our case, assign roles to people, groups, technical objects and processes
(intermediaries), during the building of the network. Key activity in this attribution is
the act or translation that helps in the development of a common meaning and
purpose for the participants of the network. Translation is a four-moment negotiation
process of problematization (an actor-mediator identifies a problem and proposes the
delegation terms), interessement (negotiation of the terms of actors’ involvement,
assignment and commitment), enrollment (acceptance of discussed roles) and
mobilization of allies (representation and communication of the network as a unified
entity to entice new actors). The network expands until it reaches a critical state of
stability that makes impossible the return to a previous moment, i.e. it becomes
irreversible. Artifacts are considered to be the stabilizing factor of the formation of the
network (Grint and Woolgar, 1997) as they carry knowledge and inscribe use
practices and other associated artefacts that will protect actors' interests (Latour,
1992), and make associating links even more concrete and stable. It should be noted
that translation differs from diffusion in that, as the idea, technology or initiative is
translated it inevitably changes.

Translations are effectively acts of negotiation and persuasion that result in changes in
the form of the network: new nodes are added and the existing ones are modified.
Latour (1987) proposed a number of strategies, two of which are usually adopted by
translating actors when they are attempting to enrol other actors into their network by
appealing to their interests (Whittle et al., 2010). In the first, the translator is claiming
that both have the same interests, whereas in the second that the success of the
other(s) depends on the association with the translator (Callon and Latour, 1981). It
should be made clear here that the continuously reconfiguring actor-network is not a

9
static entity where each node represents someone or something. Instead, each node
represents action, i.e. the activity of an agent or the use of an artefact. In fact,
someone or something is a node of the network because it is related to action. A node
may represent the activity (practice) of a mediator, e.g. of an initiative proponent, or
of a strategist (what actually does), or the practices (habits, etc) followed by
intermediaries, or inscribed in documents and other artefacts, that influence (mediate)
the mediator’s activity. Please note the difference between practice (specific activity),
which is associated with the mediator, and practices (routine activities) associated
with intermediaries.

Having provided the theoretical background of our approach, in the following section,
we describe the operationalisation of the above theory into a micro-level conceptual
framework for the consistent description of the practice/activity of initiative
management and its linking with operations and competitive strategy.

4. An ANT-based conceptual framework for studying operations

strategic initiatives
In the majority of organizations, there are many sources of strategy (e.g. corporate
strategy, business or competitive strategy, and functional strategies (marketing,
operations, product development, etc)) organized in a hierarchical manner (Slack and
Lewis, 2008). Each source of strategy has its specific areas of concern, and its
managers that strategize influenced by local (routine) practices of strategy formation
and implementation. Practices are both interpretive (how agents/strategists understand
themselves and their context), as well as structuring (how they interact with their
environment and other actors to produce coordinated activity) (Jarzabkowski, 2005).
Inevitably, there is a certain degree of overlapping in these practices of strategy
development, as well as on the strategic objectives. Practices of competitive strategy
development usually use coarse grain information sources and include, among others,
brainstorming sessions, use of tools, such as SWOT analysis, scenario-based
planning, analysis of competitor strategies (benchmarking), etc (Coyle, 2004; Eden
and Ackermann, 1998; Jarzabkowski, 2005). On the other hand, operations strategy
practices are based on finer grain information structures and include the analysis of
operations metrics (e.g. quality standards attainment), the setting of targets to (sub-)

10
units (e.g. to the Maintenance and Reliability Unit), the setting of operations objective
targets (e.g. time response to customer demand), the use of simulation modelling, etc
(Hill, 2000; Slack and Lewis, 2008). Practices for linking operations and business
strategy include presentations of operations proposals, informal and formal
discussions between managers, reports with financial justification of proposals, etc
(Adamides, 2015). Clearly, all these practices have an interpretive part, as well as a
structuring part. They are historically developed and their exact form is contingent to
the cultural characteristics of the organization and the particular unit in which they are
practiced, as well as to the personal characteristics of the related practitioners.

Organization-wide, or function-specific, practices mediate actual strategic activity

(practice) at the corresponding levels (note again the difference between practice –
the actual strategy as flow of activity, and practices which may be though as
routine(s) that are frequently followed without a very clear rationale and may be
associated with tools and artefacts that people use in doing strategy, e.g. language,
meetings, performance indicators, etc). Artefacts and practices form the context,
through which the actors interact and enact the organization, its values, strategies, etc.
The same holds for the initiatives. The development and deployment of initiatives is
the responsibility of their initiators, who in order to form and promote them, need the
consent and support of other actors, as well as conformance with the ways of
employment imposed by material artefacts. To enrol in the initiative network actors
already involved in strategic activity, initiative proponents need to form a common
context that facilitates the promotion of their argumentation. To do this, they employ
their structuring practices for “translating” their activity and context (how they
interpret their environment and arrive at specific actions) so that it is accessible by the
actors of their actor worlds (for example, by using the tools they can understand). The
notion of actor-worlds indicates that mediators do not only build a network for
promoting their initiatives, but also a set of narratives and translations for holding
together the different parts of the network (Callon, 1986). For increasing their power
and influence in their enrolment endeavour, in addition to knowledge and experience
(Deichmann and van den Ende, 2014), they need to accumulate social capital in the
form of connections with other actors (Bourdieu, 1990).

To associate initiatives with ongoing operations strategy activity and to modify/renew

it in a direction implied by the initiative, the proponents of the initiative must merge

11
their initiative actor-network with the ongoing operations strategy network through
translation, resulting in an actor-network that represents the renewed operations
strategy. During translation, the initiative is being modified as new actors are entering
the network. Their own contexts and strategies are also being modified to form the
common (accommodated) context. As a result, the development and propagation of a
strategic initiative in the organization is accompanied by modifications in existing
initiative management and strategizing practices in a new process/procedure which
may be then institutionalized through repetition as a practice. The practices (both
structuring and interpretive) influencing the management of the initiative may be
similar to, or completely different from, those associated with ongoing strategizing.
Clearly, the degree of difficulty of association of the initiative with the strategy
content depends on this similarity distance between the two sets of practices
(contexts).

Since bottom-up initiatives are generated in synchrony with their context by particular
organization members or groups, to promote their individual ideas or group interests,
network (re)formation processes take place within functions for arriving, though
common practices, at coordinated actor-networks of functional strategies. The same
happens in parallel, or at a later stage, at the business strategy level, where
translations and networks involve human and non-human actors from different
functions of different organizational levels, as well as from top management. These
practice accommodations/integration take place through praxes (strategic episodes,
such as meetings and workshops), in parallel with the ongoing routine strategizing
practices, in which the network and its content, as far as strategizing practices are
concerned, remains unchanged (Adamides, 2015). In other words, managers use their
agency to shape the repertoire of strategy practices, while creating strategic agency
(activity) through reference to these repertoires.

Figure 1 below is a diagrammatic representation of the process of the linking of an

initiative with operations strategy activity. In the bottom left part of the diagram, there
is an operations initiative represented by a network of actors (human and non-human).
Actor B is the initiative proponent (mediator). In the upper left part, there is an actor-
network representing the ongoing operations strategy. All the nodes of both networks
inscribe the corresponding procedural and non-procedural activity sets in which they
participate, i.e. the actions of the initiative and the ongoing routine strategic activity,

12
respectively. However, different actors (nodes) of the network participate differently
in the common activity. The proponents that lead action are mediators, whereas the
other nodes the form the active context are intermediaries. Through the micro-
negotiations of translation (which are influenced by the existing negotiation
(structuring) practices that are also part of the network, e.g. node C) of the initiative
network’s mediator with the ongoing strategizing ones, and after forming a common
context (a common, or integrated, set of interpretive practices), the initiative is linked
to the operations strategy. A new actor-network, involving actors from the initiative
and the operations strategy networks (B/F and F/B), is produced by the modification
of the two existing ones as the outcome of the process of translation and the
development of an agreed process for deciding strategy (Rerup and Feldman, 2011)
(“common” context of nodes A′, E′ and G′). The new initiative-strategy actors are
engaged in a new set of activities which are constituted by elements of the initial two
activities and the associated modified practices (routines) of the two constituting
networks (Bloodwood, 2012). Depending on the success of argumentation translation
the initiative may renew, or may not renew, the ongoing strategy.

<INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE>

In more illustrative terms, suppose that actor A acts towards promoting and
implementing an initiative I1 (actor represented as A-I1). His actions are mediated by
the routine practices P1 which form part of its context that is being formed as he
pursues I1. At the same time an actor B carries out strategic activity towards an
operations objective S1(actor B-S1), and its activity is mediated by a set of practices
(strategy routines) P2. Actor A tries to “sell” I1 to actor B by translating initially P1,
to form a common context/discourse for mutual argumentation, and then I1 into the
logic and language of P2 arguing for their common benefit(s). The translation results
in a process P3 – the new common context of practices which may resemble, more or
less, P1 and P2 – adopted by both actors modified and connected, and through this
common process, I1 and S1 are accommodated into the coordinated strategic activity
(process and content) S2 (both actors become AB-S2, where S2 is the result of
accommodation of I1and S1 (I1,S1)) (Figure 2).

13
 <INSERT FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE>

As a more concrete example for the operationalization of the framework, we may

consider the following case: A group of actors are engaged in operations strategy
activity by analyzing functional performance metrics (routine practice) to support a
dependability-based strategy. A particular executive of the function (Special Projects
Manager) by benchmarking competitors’ practices (routine practice) arrives at a
proposal for adopting quality as a strategic objective though an initiative to implement
the ISO quality management standard (initiative management activity). Arguing that
the adoption of the standard will improve the performance of the metrics that the
strategy team has been considering (argumentation based on the dominant
argumentation logic of the function), and that the objective of quality will augment
the importance of the function within the organization, she enrols the routine
strategists into her network through translation. This is accomplished by persuading
them to adopt a practice of analyzing performance metrics and comparing them with
the outcomes of scenarios in which the best practices of competitors are adopted
(translated routine practice). Legitimizing these practices in a new process (formation
of a common context), they arrive at a strategic objective of dependability as part of a
wider quality imperative, i.e. the actors are characterized by activity towards the
integrated/common objective. The initiative penetrates operations strategy through the
process of strategy making (practice) rather than targeting directly its content. The
proponent used a different tool, or the same tool differently, for achieving her goal.
Inevitably in the process she needed to modify her initiative too.

In this logic, initiatives and operations strategies originating from lower levels of the
organizational hierarchy can travel up through the organization and become part of
corporate strategies if their initiators form actor-networks around them at the different
levels of strategizing. To strengthen the networks, the initiators of strategy try to
attract and connect actors from other functional strategies’ actor-networks, but mostly
actors from the actor-network that represents the current corporate strategy. Every
time a new actor is connected to the network, the practices inscribed by actors as well
as the activity per se are modified as a result of the process of translation. Hence, as
an initiative propagates towards approval by the top management, changes as the
intermediate strategies do.
14
This conceptual narrative provides a roadmap for approaching initiatives originating
from line management. It proposes that the study of such initiatives necessitates the
identification of the main initiative proponents (individuals or groups) and the
surfacing of the main activities and context (practices) that influence the shaping of
the initiative(s) and guide actions towards implementation. It also necessitates the
identification and codification of the main arguments employed for promoting the
initiative through the formation of a common context (translation), and the means
(material artefacts) the proponents employ in their effort. In addition, care should be
given to the active role these means/artefacts play in the formation of the initiative
and its propagation through the organization. Care should also be given to the
events/episodes that take place in the promotion of the initiative, to the strategizing
practices in which the proponents of the initiative intervene to give value to their
initiative, and to the modifications in the practices and content of the initiative(s) that
are made for its approval and integration in the strategy content.

For validating the assumptions, for revealing the details, for testing the applicability,
and for deriving the implications of this context-specific representation of initiatives’
development, qualitative case study was chosen as the research method (Barnes,
2001; Hakkinen and Hilmola, 2005; MacCarthy et al., 2013). Field research was
carried out in large training services provider in Greece. The particular company was
chosen because of its relatively large size and its pluralistic organizational
characteristics.

5. Case study: Operations and competitive strategy renewal through

an operations initiative in a training services provider

The conceptual framework described above was used for the ex-post analysis of the
data gathered and the observations recorded in the field/case study in i-Train (name
disguised for confidentiality), a training services provider organization in Greece. The
field research was undertaken for a period of eight months. The study concerned an
initiative to improve the design of training programs, and was based on the
identification of the main agents involved in the initiative, as well as the observation
of their strategizing practices and interactions, at the initiative, operations and
corporate levels, interviews, and consultation of related documentation. Formal and
informal meetings, interviews, educational programs design processes, teaching,

15
document creation, circulation and use, and formal and informal communication
between managers, trainees, managers and educators were put under the microscope
of our field research and analysis. The adoption of this methodology was consistent
with the strategy-as-practice agenda (Golsorkhi et al., 2010; Jarzabkowski, 2005;
Vaara and Whittington, 2012; Whittington, 2001) and with actor-network theory
(follow the actor) (Latour and Woolgar, 1986), and has been suggested by operations
strategy scholars for gaining insights on the process of operations strategy (Barnes,
2001). Such a research approach facilitates the surfacing of the initiatives, the actors
involved and the outcomes produced.

5.1. The context of the study

At the time of the study (June 2013 – February 2014), i-Train belonged to the largest
employers union confederation in Greece with branches in six large cities offering a
wide range of training programs all over the country. The structure and management
of the organization was characterized by participative decision processes. At the top
of the organizational hierarchy, the General Assembly was appointing the members of
the Administrative and Scientific Boards. Vocational training programs were offered
to owners and employees of small-sized enterprises that were members of the
confederation, as well as to other interested individuals and groups, from various
sectors using the infrastructure of the organization. Before the outbreak of the
financial and fiscal crisis that hit Greece in 2010, customers were mainly owners and
employees of small businesses with a personal motive to enlarge their knowledge and
skills base. The crisis changed the motives for training and revealed the need for more
focused, quality training programs, as formal training and specific skills were
considered to be the key factors that could help individuals and enterprises to survive
during the crisis. At the same time, as the economy shrunk, the competition among
training organizations intensified.

In this context, an initiative towards introducing a formal tool for the assessment of
training needs and for the design of training programs that meet the actual needs of
the customers was undertaken by operations level management. Following, we
describe how the introduction of the House of Quality (HoQ) intended for mapping
training needs to training programs resulted in the modification of operations and
business level strategies of i-Train though the mutual modification of the
corresponding strategizing practices. The chain of events was approached and
16
interpreted ex-post (for assessing which activities had strategic significance), in the
context of the abovementioned conceptual framework of initiative management and
operations strategy as actor-network (re)formation.

5.2. Strategic activity and mediating practices of initiative development,

operations, and corporate strategizing before the initiative
Before the particular initiative was undertaken, training programs were being
designed on the basis of a set of directives for specific mandatory educational content
according to existing government and EU funding for training. The strategy of the
organization was mostly being implemented in a top-down fashion, following a
mimetic attitude (“do the same that other training centres do”) and driven by the
requirements of the wider national institutional framework for training (business
strategy development practice(s) before, Pb1). The strategic direction was being
communicated nearly to all of the employees verbally in formal and informal
meetings.

The operations strategy activity was being principally oriented towards flexibility, as
there was a need to develop and deliver a wide range of training programs fast. In
fact, there was no great interest to whether the content of these programs
corresponded to expressed customer needs. The interest was to just have attractive
thematic areas of interest in accordance with national and EU-supported themes, so
that companies were spending on them the small percentage of employers’ labour
mandatory insurance contribution held for developing workforce generic capabilities.
The main task of the Department of Operations was the management of the
organization’s resources (trainees applications, lecturers and other human resources,
educational material, technical infrastructure etc) to flexibly modify and deliver the
services provided. The Department of Operations was being actively involved in the
development of the training programs. The operations strategy process (operations
strategy practice(s) before, Po1) was based on informal meetings with the Managers
of the Regional Training Centres, as well as with members and consultants of the
Scientific Board (operations strategy actor(s) before, Ao1 – in the analysis actors are
defined in association with the strategic objectives, the reason of the existence of the
network). This process (the meetings) was forming the context of strategic activity
towards operational flexibility (Ao1), which was being implemented through the
17
development and use of flexible resources with flexible interconnections among them
(e.g. trainers with a wide of skills that can travel to different training locations – also
part of the context of operations strategizing). The operations-business strategy link
that was implemented through formal meetings of the operations manager with board
members, as well as with members of the scientific board (operations-business
strategy linking practice before, Pob1), inevitably resulted in a business strategy
activity that was not focused on specific training thematic areas, neither on the
requirements of a specific sector.

The actual training program development (duration, teaching methods, etc) was being
accomplished by the Department of Operations by running informal meetings and
discussions with members of the Scientific Board and other experts in vocational
training, as well as with representatives of various sectors, employees and employers.
Being a member of the Scientific Board, the Operations Manager was aware of the
practice of training needs assessment and considered it inadequate and uneconomical
in the use of the firm’s resources. He thought that training needs assessment and the
design of courses can be the means to better organize the available resources, and, at
the same time, increase the quality of training services provided. So, an initiative to
design and introduce a new process for capturing customer needs was undertaken by
the Operations Manager (initiative actor, Ai1). Having an engineering educational
background, and after looking at product/service requirements capture processes in
other sectors (initiative development practice, Pi1), he thought that the introduction of
the House of Quality in the design of new training programs would provide a better
correspondence between the requirements of the market and what i-Train delivered.
The House of Quality is a tool used in the framework of Quality Function
Deployment (QFD), which is employed early in the product/service design process to
help determine what will satisfy the customer and where to deploy quality efforts
(Gunasekaran et al., 2006). In this direction, the HoQ is a graphic technique for
determining the relationships between customer desires and product/service offered
characteristics. For the case of i-Train, the characteristics that had to be “designed”
according to customers preferences included the qualifications and experience of
trainers on a subject, the training material provided and the cases to be discussed, the
nature of the multimedia presentations used, the scheduling of the courses, and the
places and forms of training.
18
5.3. The integration of initiative in the operations strategy activity
In the context of our analytic framework, the Operations Manager (initiative actor,
Ai1) introduced the initiative towards adoption of the HoQ by preparing a Powerpoint
presentation with animations, explaining how the HoQ was used with success in other
industries, and which were the benefits gained. He also prepared a case study of a
company that used HoQ and the benefits that it achieved. Then, he approached the
members of the Scientific Board and gained their consent by informally presenting the
Powerpoint slides, and distributing the corresponding material (operations strategy
practice before, Po1), arguing for his case on the basis of the success of other
organizations that used the HoQ (initiative development practice, Pi1), i.e. he
deployed the combined operations strategy process Po2 that resulted from Po1 and
Pi1. After these meetings took place using the tools to form a common context,
quality was introduced in the operations strategy activity and discourse, and all
participants became actors associated with this objective (operations strategy actor
after, Ao2 (A1, Ai1)) putting flexibility into the background. Following, the proponent
of the initiative organized a more private meeting with the Executive Manager of
Training Programs and the Projects Manager. They both had experience, knowledge
and the appropriate academic background: the former on managing training
operational issues and requirements and the latter on the bureaucracies and financial
handling of such proposals. Using the same approach, he persuaded the Executive
Manager to support the introduction of the HoQ by providing, in addition to
information on the workings of the HoQ and success cases, coherent well-presented
arguments that the company would survive only if it offered to the customers what
they really wanted, in the form they wanted, when they wanted it, where they wanted
it, i.e. only if used the HoQ, to which the Scientific Boards has already agreed. The
Projects Manager was a friend and supporter during the Operations Manager’s career
in the organization, and hence it was easier to be persuaded by the same means.

After this sequence of events, all the managers involved, provided their support to
further promote the idea of HoQ through the preparation of a use scenario. They
received the approval of the Financial Manager, again after an informal presentation
in his department took place, arguing that the adoption of HoQ would make financial
management easier and more efficient as the number of courses would be decreased,
19
and their preparation would follow a more systematic and planned way. More
importantly, the Financial Manager, as well as other managers would contribute to the
process by providing entries on the graphic tool related to their own function(s)
(active role of artefact of the network in translation: its introduction in the network as
well as its structure attracts managers to support its adoption). Managers from all
branches of i-Train were also approached and supported the idea based on the same
argumentation logic that sprung from the practices that formed the context, and
provided important feedback on how this practice (use of HoQ) could better take into
account regional differences and specific local trends.

5.4. Towards new operations and competitive strategies

Given the policy implications and the documented positive impact that the practice of
training needs assessment through HoQ could have on the performance of the
organization, it was easy to persuade and gain the support of the Board of Directors.
The bottom-up initiative was introduced using the same presentation and case study
material (operations-business strategy linking process after, Pob2), and was
immediately welcomed by the General Assembly, which identified in the practice of
training needs assessment and in the report that had embedded outputs of the
assessment the benefits justified by functional manager. This produced a shift of
corporate strategy activity towards quality (business strategy actor(s) after, Ab2 (Ab1,
Ao2)), and a document of the new strategy description with implementation
instructions was communicated internally and externally to all stakeholders through
formal communication channels. At the same time, meetings were organized at all six
branches of i-Train to diffuse the new strategy. Since then, the new operations-
induced strategy process that facilitated the formation of the new context (Po2),
reified in the practice(s) of training needs assessment, became part of the standard
practices of competitive strategy formation and a strong argumentation and
justification tool. Of course, until a new initiative managed to penetrate and alter these
practices successfully.

6. Discussion and conclusions

Operations strategy formation is a complex organizational process that runs in both
directions throughout the organization hierarchy. Strategic initiatives play an
important role in the strategic management of operations as enablers of strategic
20
renewal. So far, research on operations strategy initiatives has been carried out at the
meso-, or macro-, level, i.e. the focus of interest has been on objectives, plans,
structures, etc, and their interrelationships. This level of analysis can provide real
insights on how initiatives interact and contribute to operations strategy activity only
for impersonal, bureaucratic organizations. To gain insights about the initiatives’
motives and the social context that facilitates, or hinders, specific operations
initiatives in modern pluralistic – especially, service providing – organizations,
characterized by diffused power and knowledge-based processes, the focus of interest
must be shifted to the individual agents that participate in the context-specific
initiatives and the strategy formation processes.

Following the individual agents’ strategic (situated) activity, which is mediated by

historically-developed organizational/contextual practices, can provide answers to
questions such as “how initiatives interact and influence/renew strategy processes and
their outcomes” which was posed in this paper. To provide a response, we have
proposed a micro practice-oriented perspective relying on the theoretical basis of
Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT was used to develop a conceptual framework
that can be employed to consistently explain how initiatives renew operations strategy
effectively through assembling actor-networks that associate their supporters’ activity
with the ongoing activity of those involved in operations strategy at the time the
initiative is put forward. As it was indicated, the way this association takes place
depends on the individual agent(s) and their historically developed context (power
and knowledge attributes), in which the strategic activity is accomplished.

In the ANT-based conceptual framework proposed, strategy (process and content

simultaneously) and initiatives are represented as heterogeneous networks of human
and non-human actors. Actors are defined only in connection with the strategy, or the
initiative, they are associated with. Proponents and supporters of initiatives are
mediators that form actor-worlds aiming at attracting intermediaries (managers
involved in operations and competitive strategy) by persuading them to participate in
the same actions. Participation in the same actions is through shared practices that
allow them to develop a shared perspective, as far as the function, the organization,
and their associated values, strategies, etc, are concerned. This means that the success
of the initiative, as far as strategic renewal is concerned, is contingent to the ability of
21
the mediators/proponents to form and sustain a new actor network with participants of
having positional power and knowledge.

Although the main objective of the paper was to contribute methodologically in the
analysis of operations initiatives, the use of the framework to analyze ex-post a
specific operations initiative in a training services provider, revealed important issues
regarding the management of operations initiatives and their alignment with
operations and competitive strategy, which can be generalized, to a certain degree, as
follows:
1. Initiatives are aligned with operations strategies easier and more effectively when
their proponents manage to create a common context, a common discourse. This is
reified in the use of a commonly understood set of methods and tools to support
the strategic activity of both parties, mediators and intermediaries, and usually
implies modifications in the way tools are used, as well as modifications in the
strategic objectives and the actions undertaken to accomplish them. The closer to
each other the previous contexts, the easier the formation of the common context.
The inability to form a real common context risks the development of fragile
coordinated activity.
2. The enrolment of non-human agents/actors in the network, such as the House of
Quality tool in the case presented, is very important for the stability of the
network and for attracting more actors, as they objectify certain organizational
objectives. They provide a stable reference point for the human actors and
indirectly contribute to the coordination of individual actions.
3. There is a reinforcing dynamic in initiative and operations strategy network
formation. The more important actors are attracted in the network, the stronger the
network becomes, and further attracts more actors. This is because the context of
strategic activity (set of practices) becomes richer as far as tools and arguments
are concerned. In this way, the logic and timing of argumentation for enrolling
actors in the network becomes suitable for a wider range of stakeholders in the
strategy.

In summary, in this paper, we have provided a new practice-based approach that can
be used to analyze how specific initiatives renew operations strategy, and how, in
general, functional strategies contribute to competitive strategies. The micro-level
22
analysis of everyday strategic activity broadens the perspective of strategic renewal
research in two directions: First, it proposes a new way for approaching the process of
renewal of functional strategies and their association with competitive strategy.
Second, it shifts the focus of operations strategy research from the rational approach
to organizational life to the quality and dynamic character of knowledge creation and
translation. In this way, it complements the existing literature of organizational
aspects in operations that moves the focus of interest beyond stereotype behaviours to
the actual social practices of the agents involved in operations management and
strategy.

Funding
This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund –
ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and
Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) –
Research Funding Program: Heracleitus II. Investing in knowledge society through
the European Social Fund.

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 Figure Captions

Figure 1. How an initiative penetrates operations strategy through the

development of a shared context

Figure 2. Example of the process of translation

28
 Actor E
Operations strategy
Actor G

Actor D
Operations strategy and
initiative coordinated activity
(Actor-Network)

Set of activities actors

contribute to
Actor E’
Actor F
Actor G’
Actor A
Actor A’

Actor B
Intermediaries Actor B/F

Actor F/B
Mediator
Initiative
Actor C
 Actor A-I1 Practices P1

Actor B-S1 Practices P2

Network (re)formation by translation

P1ѳP2
Integration of strategy and initiative

Actor AB-S2

Process P3 P3 = P1ѳP2

Actor AB-S2 S2 = I1ѳS1

Fig. 2

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