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The Exceptional Manager

Chapter 7: Adopting Promising Practices

More recent research has reinforced the focus on promising rather than best practices and in a way linked to this a lot of context and path dependency relating to the process of practice adoption as a whole in particular organizations. Recent AIM research argues first that 'good' practice adoption is to a large extent about knowing WHAT has to be managed. The what is captured as usable theory. But knowing WHAT is not enough; it is also essential to know how theory can be employed to support good practice. The particular orientation of the work is on the use of practice-oriented theory in the support of reflective practice (see Huxham, AIM and Huxham and Vangen, Managing to Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage, Routledge, 2005).

Understanding Practices as Bundles

It is important to see individual practices as bundles but more difficult to decide how to group them appropriately. For example, Voss et al. undertook a longitudinal study of two contrasting practices: Lean Production and Service Mapping. Each was been documented from their antecedents to the practices as they are used today (Voss et al., AIM and BERR). From this a life-cycle model of practices from emergence to maturity has been developed. A number of interesting propositions emerge. First it is very misleading to think of a practice as a black box with a name and reputation. A black box view ignores many important aspects of promising practices. First, practices must be considered at multiple levels. Major practices are typically a bundle of sub-practices. The interconnection of these is crucial to understand in all phases of the practice adoption process. Practices are dynamic, not static, and are continuously developed over time. A practice"s evolution may include completely new elements in the bundle, discarding of others and the incremental development of others and the whole. As the evolution slows down, a practice that is still successful becomes mature and in many organizations becomes part of the way we work. An interesting empirical observation of more than one practice is that the common name that it is known by and marketed disappears. Both practices studied went through an evolution involving three name changes. In one the name disappeared and was replaced by many companies using essentially the same practice, but each calling it by a different name. This part of the study is continuing with real-time observation of what is possible an emergent area: 'services science'.

Identifying Practices

This is a process of analysis, interpretation, and codification. Work on 'storytelling' (Huxham et al., AIM) has shed light on the nature of practice transfer by practitioners making presentations about successful practice to one another in forums ranging from major high profile speaker lectures to presentations by fellow practitioners in meetings. They broadly conclude that the transfer process is 'partial' in which the imagination of the 'receiver' is paramount in making use of the information transferred.

It is also clear that there are critical contextual issues to be considered in the identification of practices. In the area of Operations Management, for instance, it has become necessary to take a more fine grained perspective on the nature of these contingencies (Sousa, R. & Voss, C. A. 2002, 'Quality management re-visited: A reflective review and agenda for future research', Journal of Operations Management, 20(1): pp. 91-109; Sousa, R. & Voss, C. A. 2007, 'Contingency Research in Operations Management Practice', Working paper, London Business School.)

Another focus of AIM research has been the dilemmas and issue in transferring complex bundles of practices (Done, Rytter, and Voss, AIM). There is widespread use of short-term structured interventions to help companies introduce and develop new and best practices. Such interventions are particularly common in small to medium sized companies (SMEs). These interventions typically have both short and long term objectives, the short-term typically to make significant and visible process and performance improvements, and the long-term to embed new practices in the organization. There are a number of issues with best practice interventions. First, there is an implied interplay and potential conflict between these two objectives. On the one hand over-emphasis on short-term objectives may lead to the neglect of longer-term ones. On the other hand, successful short-term outcomes may be a major contribution to the visibility and acceptance of new practices. Best practice interventions are also often part of supplier development programmes initiated by large companies and are common practice in the automotive sector and other industries. In the US, UK, and other countries, public funded programmes have been created to offer SMEs support in learning about and adopting best practices.

Foundation Practices

In AIM research we have often balanced the so-called 'rational' model with issues of meaning and identity which links to continued questions of 'sensemaking', particularly as identified and described by Karl Weick (Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage, 1995). For an example of this, see Rouleau and Balogun, AIM.

From Promising Practice to 'The Way We Work'

The interaction between developing individual practice informed by the nature of codified promising practices and the need to achieve internalization and commitment. The research on the evolution of management and organizational practices provides new insights about the nature of practices in general, their multiple components and dimensions, and their ontological status in organizational fields. The issues of embeddedness and recursiveness of practices provide a different perspective on the notion of practices existing in bundles. It recognises the existence of sub-practices, meta-practices, and the connectivity between practices can help better explain why groupings of practices may emerge. The research also provides insights about the evolution of practices over time and the forces that influence the degree of change. The significance of locational factors (e.g. structure, authority, history, sectoral forces) and the power of the practitioner to shape a practice (leadership issues, but also practice as a political act) are two important dimensions that also spark innovation practices to emerge (see Antonacopoulou, AIM).

Some of the AIM research which addresses this question has looked at the extent to which particular practices which are enacted in particular ways within specific organisations seem to provide a more robust route to sustained performance rather than the more generic adoption of promising management practices (see Gratton, AIM).