Abstract:
The objective of this research is to investigate the way strategies are formed in a public
sector organization and to assess the role of the Board-members in shaping and
developing strategies.
The project consisted of the following distinct steps: (1) The collection and processing of
background information concerning the enterprise under study. (2) The collection and
analysis of the Board's past decisions over a period of nine years. (3) The interview
accounts of the members of the Board (4) The analysis of the interviews at the individual
level and the construction of cognitive maps. (5) The testing of the validity of the
cognitive maps of the previous stage by employing a quantitative technique in which the
interviewees scored on matrices and identified the influence between elements of the
strategy, the external, and the organizational environment. (6) The identification of
patterns in the cognitive structure of each individual, resulting from both the qualitative
(interviewing) and quantitative (matrix scoring) approaches. (7) The attempt to build
theory by integrating the different sources of data and generating propositions grounded
on data by relating the findings of this study to the existing literature.
The major findings concerned the notion of strategy according to the Board-members'
accounts. Thus, the majority of Board-members perceived strategy as something that
occured outside them, something over which they had little control. The Board-members'
role, as revealed in the strategy-areas studied, was a legalistic role concerning mostly
ratification of proposals without active contribution to initiating and developing new
strategies. It is also argued that this Board's composition, structure and processes
exhibited deficiencies. The real strategist of the organization was the new General
Manager who succeeded not only in creating an integrated strategy but also in getting it
institutionalized (that is in establishing commitment among the people of the
organization).
