Academic literature on the topic 'Development strategy'

Published Article<br>Networking plays a crucial role in an academic's professional development. The reason for this is locked up in the process of taking advantage of contacts with other people for career and professional purposes. In the past the biggest misconception about networking was that it was unfair to take advantage of your personal and/or professional network to further your career. Although this has been denied by various authors, the perception remains present. The important qualities/traits needed for successful networking are confidence, initiative and comfortable interaction with other people.

Strategy offers regional stakeholders an opportunity to collaboratively influence the future direction of their region’s economy. However, limited research has been undertaken with respect to strategy processes that are being used by regional economic development organisations. While there are suggestions for the ideal content of regional economic development strategies, the processes by which these organisations develop and implement strategy have not been investigated. This thesis documents an exploratory research project that utilises a case study methodology to identify and consider the processes applied in three different regional economic development organisations. In order to appreciate the context of regional strategy development, theory on regions, collaboration and strategy is integrated to develop a detailed theoretical framework of twenty seven elements that are thought to contribute to implementation. The presence or absence of these elements in each of the three cases is explored deductively through a review of internal documents and semi-structured interviews with a mix of regional stakeholders. Elements are investigated within cases to understand how strategy is being applied within each particular context. Analysis across cases is documented, identifying both similarities and differences in the presence and absence of elements. The research found that relationships were important to the continuing future of the organisations. Long term planning was absent in all cases and this absence was attributed to contextual factors such as a dynamic external environment, and a dependence on government funding leading to short term planning cycles. There was also a lack of clarity regarding organisational goals. The processes utilised in all cases most closely matched Mintzberg and Waters’ (1998) umbrella strategy, however, all organisations lacked a strategic approach. A tentative model was developed to depict elements thought to be the most significant to collaborative regional strategy implementation. These elements are: leadership on strategic planning; good member to member relationships; realism; long term goals; performance measures tied to long term goals; ongoing review and updating of the strategic plan; relevance of the strategic plan; and consistency of activities with the strategic plan. The need for further research to investigate these potential relationships was indicated.

A large number of studies suggest that the content of strategy becomes more multifaceted and elaborate and characterised by progressive development over time. Recently, a growing number of researchers argue that strategy can become simple, stable and inert over time. This study investigates how changes of sociocognitive processes at individual, group and organisational levels influence organisational processes and strategic decisions. It adopts configurational approach to strategy development and its concepts (configurations, transformations, archetypes) as a framework. Thus, the purpose is to provide a characterisation of strategy development by analysing the integration of four key research dimensions (social, cognitive, organisational performance and contextual) into one coherent theoretical structure - the model of organisational archetypes. This four-dimensional model is developed from the analysis of fifty one Ukrainian organisations using quantitative and qualitative research methods (questionnaire, interview and group interview) according to the logical structure of configurational research (modelling the sociocognitive basis, modelling the "fit between research dimensions and modelling configurations and archetypes). Following on from this, the model of organisational archetypes is validated in four other organisations through the development of a test of organisational internal creative environment in order to identify their configurations (current conditions) and archetypes (strategic perspectives). The procedure of this test includes the following sequence of actions: identifying sociocognitive characteristics of organisational members and the organisational internal creative environment, identifying periods of transformation and configuration in the process of organisational development, researching characteristics of the business-environment, and identifying appropriate organisational archetypes. The model of organisational archetypes developed in this thesis allows the identification of current and prospective organisational conditions and making relevant strategic decisions that reflect and anticipate changes in organisational internal and external environments. Thus, changes in the organisational internal creative environment (sociocognitive characteristics of organisational members) reflect changes in the business-environment and organisational performance and transform the characteristics of strategic decisions from multifaceted and elaborate to simple and inert and vice versa.