Thinking Strategically in Turbulent Times An Inside View of Strategy Making

An emergent approach to organizational strategy making assumptions that few organizations actually realize the goal of deliberative, top-down strategic planning, and that effective strategy making occurs on a continual basis and is a shared activity of the entire organization. This innovative book provides the first in-depth look at how real organizations are formulating and implementing strategic change under this new paradigm. The authors have dug deep into three large and varied organizations (Hewlett-Packard, the California State University system, and the County of Los Angeles) and identified each one's efforts to develop a new strategic planning process better-suited to match the current pace of change and environmental unpredictability. The book is filled with vignettes, quotes, and real-world examples that illustrate the trend toward faster, more adaptive strategic planning processes. It is relevant for a wide range of business, governmental, and non-profit settings, and should be required reading in any course on strategic planning.

Alan M. Glassman is professor of management and director of the Center for Management and Organization Development at California State University, Northridge. He received his doctorate in labor relations with cognate areas in social psychology and organizational theory/behavior from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research interests focus on the comparative assessments of strategic planning in the public and private sectors; the management of change; and the design of public-public partnerships. He has authored/coauthored four books and approximately 40 refereed articles; he has presented over 60 papers at professional conferences. Glassman has served as chair of the Managerial Consultation Division of the Academy of Management, president of the Western Academy of Management, editor of Consultation: An International Journal, and coeditor/editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry. He has been the recipient of several professional awards for innovative program design and contributions to the profession and has been an active consultant in both the public and private sectors in areas of (1) transformational and profound organization change, (2) strategic planning formulation and implementation, (3) leadership development, and ? organizational assessments., Deone Zell is associate professor of management in the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include organizational adaptation, strategic planning, and the diffusion of innovations. She specializes in the application of qualitative research methods to understanding phenomena underlying various types of organizational change. She is the author of Changing by Design: Organizational Innovation at Hewlett-Packard (1997) and the coauthor of Awakening the Academy: A Time for New Leadership (2002). She has published articles on organizational change in Organizational Dynamics, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, the Sloan Management Review, and the Journal of Management Inquiry. She has consulted in both public- and private-sector organizations. She teaches courses in management, organization theory, organizational behavior and organizational change. She received her doctorate from UCLA in 1994., Shari A. Duron has been a senior business strategy consultant at Hewlett-Packard and previously at Lockheed Corporation since 1986. She has also been an external consultant and managing partner for various boutique consulting groups, including The Graham Organization. She is an adjunct professor at Humboldt State University in the School of Business and Economics and teaches management courses. She specializes in consulting on strategy, scenario planning, organizational change, and leadership development in small- and medium-sized businesses as well as multinational corporations. She received her master’s degree from UCLA in 1970 and her Ph.D. from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, in 1993.