MBA Part Time

Managing in the Competitive Environment

The political and cultural contexts of strategy

A. INTRODUCTION TO SESSION
Many discussions about strategy implicitly assume a rationalistic model of the organisation
with the primary aim of the organisation being the search for competitive advantage.
However, organisations are comprised of individuals and groups who together tend to have
common assumptions about the organisation and the way their world works and individually
or jointly can influence the organisations strategy.
In practice, to be able to understand and assess strategies requires analysis of the soft
features of each organisation, particularly its corporate culture and the actions of those
groups and individuals that have an involvement with the organisation, its key stakeholders.
The aim of this Session is to understand the importance of corporate culture and
stakeholders within the strategy process and to present a series of tools and models that can
help to assess the impact of both.

Your Objectives
When you have worked through this Session and completed the assignments,

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO:

Understand the nature of corporate culture and its implications for strategy.

Use relevant tools and models to assess the key elements of corporate culture for an
organisation.

Identify the major stakeholders of an organisation and be able to evaluate the impact
they may have upon its strategy.

B.

DEFINING CORPORATE CULTURE

Corporate culture is a general term that is applied to some of these soft features of
management. Even to introduce the word culture into the discussion makes many
managers shudder - often with some justification, since this is often an excuse for posturing.
Nevertheless, it has become generally accepted that the experience of those within the
organisation have an important impact upon the way it functions. Indeed, groups within
organisations, and the organisations themselves, can be seen to build up experience over
time, affecting the way in which they view the world and the actions they take.
Corporate culture can be defined as:
the set of shared values, beliefs, habits of thought which interact with the structure, politics
and policies of the organisation to produce a set of behavioural norms.

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As one manager said:

Culture is something which makes members of an organisation behave more like each
other than non-members!
Edgar Schein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology amplifies this definition. For
Schein organisational culture is the pattern of basic assumptions which a given group has
invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with the problems of external
adaptation (i.e. business environment) and internal integration (i.e. competitive strengths and
weaknesses). These patterns have worked well enough to be considered valid. Therefore,
they have to be taught to new members, as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in
relation to those problems. According to Schein:
Culture is not the overt behaviour or visible artifacts that one might observe if one were to
visit the company. It is not even the philosophy or value system which the founder may
articulate or write down in various charters: rather it is the assumptions which lie beyond the
values which determine the behaviour patterns and the visible artifacts such as architecture,
office layout, dress codes and so on.
His understanding of culture is like peeling away the layers of an onion to find the central
paradigm. The outer skin is made up of the values of the organisation, these are often
written statements about what the organisation is there to do (its mission) and its objectives.
For example, the University of Durham states The mission of the University is to achieve
and sustain excellence in teaching and research in Durham as a collegiate university. At
the next level are beliefs, which are usually about more specific issues talked about within
the organisation. Within the University this may include views about the importance and
impact of issues like the Research Selectivity Exercise or the Institute of Teaching and
Learning, both external bodies set up to monitor performance within universities. At the
heart of the organisation is the paradigm, the taken-for-granted assumptions about what
really matters within the organisation and which as a consequence are rarely written down.
Within the University few would question the primary importance of learning and education
within a collegiate setting.

Influences on Culture
In trying to understand corporate culture it is worth exploring the influences upon the
individuals that make up the organisation. Often the taken-for-granted assumptions reflect
influences upon individuals in terms of what makes them similar to or different from others.
These influences can include:

National or regional culture within the North East of England there is a growing
sense of regional awareness, with campaigns to create a regional assembly and to
ensure the return of the Lindisfarne Gospels, an early Christian illuminated manuscript
written in the region but now held in London.

Professional/institutional culture groups like accountants, doctors, lawyers and

engineers often have particular ways of looking at issues, even their own language or
jargon to describe them. For example, it is not unusual for politicians in the UK to have
friendships which transcend Party loyalties - despite differences of policy and philosophy
there is a shared understanding of the world of politics, its jargon and rituals, of which
non politicians have little awareness.

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Industry recipes some industries encourage those within them to think in particular
ways about the way in which their industry operates and what is important, which may
not be shared by those with an external perspective. As a young management
consultant I had an immediate affinity with one of the senior partners despite working in
different offices and having different nationalities we had both worked previously in the
steel industry.

Functional/divisional culture even within organisations there may different

perspectives within different departments or sections. My colleagues working in the
Business School would argue that in some ways we are different to other departments
across the University of Durham: our students are predominantly post-graduate, often
with considerable work experience, and our teaching extends over the full year rather
than being confined to traditional academic terms.

All these influences and the conflicts that they may well create within an organisation are
likely to influence the paradigm at the heart of the organisation.

C.

ANALYSING THE CULTURE OF THE

ORGANISATION

In order to understand how the strategic management process will work within an
organisation, it is clearly important to identify the underlying assumptions which make up the
organisations paradigm. However, by their nature, these assumptions are unlikely to be
written down. Gerry Johnson uses the cultural web framework to highlight those aspects of
an organisation that are the more visible attributes of this taken-for-grantedness. By
identifying and assessing these components a better picture is likely to emerge of the
paradigm at the centre of the cultural web, as illustrated in Figure 8:1.

Stories

Rituals and
routines

Symbols

The
paradigm

Control
systems

Power
structures

Organisational
structures

Figure 8:1 The Cultural Web

Source: G Johnson & K Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall 1999

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Each of the elements of the cultural web can be broken down further in order to get the
fullest understanding of the organisations culture:

Rituals and Routines - the formal and informal ways in which things take place within
an organisation and the processes by which the different parts of the organisation
interact. These aspects can be encapsulated in the phrase the way we do things
around here. In an organisation like a University much emphasis is placed upon formal
committees and their minutes, as well as rituals like student registration and degree
congregations

Stories about major events and personalities past and present become embedded in
organisational folklore and through their repetition reflect those aspects of an
organisation that people within it see as being particularly important. In my local football
club, the stories of heroes passed from one generation to another are of the great centre
forwards who typified a style of game where entertainment was and is seen as more
important than results.

Symbols can indicate who and what is seen to be important within the organisation.
Things like the design of offices, the award of company cars and the use of titles can all
point to the way in which the organisation views itself. In one hierarchical multi-national
oil company a newly appointed manager was given an office with two doors, though his
position warranted only one. It took the carpenters less than 24 hours to block off the
surplus door!

Control Systems the measurement and reward systems are likely to reflect those
aspects of organisational activity that it is thought important to monitor or encourage,
even if rhetoric from other sources, like strategy documents or Chairmans statements,
may stress other issues. The extent of these systems can also indicate how much
management within the organisation is centralised or devolved. Within most UK
universities academics are expected to engage in teaching, administration and research,
but as promotion is largely based on research publication many feel the real priority lies
in one area.

Power Structures indicate who are the most important groups within the organisation,
the people who take the decisions. The importance of these groups and individuals
might not be immediately apparent from the formal organisational structure so there
needs to be an awareness of informal networks. Such power might come from seniority
or particular expertise. Within the UK electricity generation industry, engineers
traditionally had a more prominent role than in other organisations and the priorities of
the companies involved reflected this emphasis on engineering. Since privatisation,
more commercial priorities seem to be reflected in the changing backgrounds of key
decision-makers.

Organisational Structure is likely to reflect the way in which the organisation works,
as well as its power structures and important relationships. The levels of hierarchy, the
decision-making bodies and what is discussed within them, as well as the information
flowing within the structure will all point towards the priorities of the organisation. An
advertising agency may well have a flat structure with teams formed to deal with specific
projects in order to encourage innovation and focus on the clients needs.

Together these elements both reflect and provide an insight into the overall paradigm that
drives the day to day actions of organisational life. Further, the cultural web highlights the
way in which the corporate culture is reflected in both formal and informal elements of the
organisation. Lying at the centre, the paradigm also tends to preserve and reinforce the key

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of the cultural web and this has important implications for managing strategic change as will
be discussed below.
Illustration
DOES MARKS & SPENCER HAVE A FUTURE?
Marks & Spencers big store in London's Kensington High Street has just had a re-fit.
Instead of the usual drab Marks & Spencer interior, it is now Californian shopping mall meets
modernist chrome and creamy marble floors. Roomy walkways and designer displays have
replaced dreary row after row of clothes racks. By the end of the year MARKS & SPENCER
will have 26 such stores around Britain--the first visible sign that the company is making a
serious effort to pull out of the nose-dive it has been in for the past two years.
Things have become so bad that Marks & Spencer, until recently a national icon, is in
danger of becoming a national joke. It does not help that its first ever TV advertisements featuring plump naked women on mountains - met with an embarrassed titter; nor that a
leading TV consumer programme savaged Marks & Spencer for overcharging and poor
quality in its range of garments for the fuller figure.
As the attacks grow in intensity, so do the doubts about Marks & Spencer 's ability to protect
its core value: a reputation for better quality that justified a price premium--at least in basic
items, such as underwear. It is a long time since any self-respecting teenager went willingly
into a Marks & Spencer store to buy clothes. Now even parents have learned to say no.
Shoppers in their thirties and forties used to dress like their parents. Now many of them want
to dress like their kids.
Marks & Spencer 's makeover comes not a moment too soon. Compared with the jazzy
store layouts of rivals such as Gap or Hennes & Mauritz, Marks & Spencer shops look like a
hangover from a bygone era. The makeover aims to bring it into the present. The 26 stores
being overhauled account for around a fifth Marks & Spencer 's turnover. According to one
former director, the retailer makes most of its profit from around 40 stores. So it makes
sense to play to the company's strengths.
But Marks & Spencer will still be left with a long tail of some 270 relatively dowdy stores.
Before the company rolls out its new look nationwide, it will have work out how many of the
stores are even worth hanging on to. Marks & Spencer has always had difficulties with such
issues. When its profits were growing strongly, it was inclined to add floor space, such as the
19 stores it took over from Littlewoods three years ago--just before profits peaked. It rarely
closed down any of its high-street shops. Worse, the company had no satisfactory system
for evaluating which of its stores, most of which it owns outright, were making money: Marks
& Spencer did not, until recently, charge notional rents to its stores.
The rot began appearing in 1998, when Marks & Spencer announced a 23% fall in half-year
results and warned of further bad news. Since then profits have more than halved and the
share price has declined from a peak of 6.65 to less than 2.
Heads have rolled. Sir Richard Greenbury, the firm's autocratic boss, was forced to step
down last year, first as chief executive, then as chairman. His successor as chief executive,
Peter Salsbury (another lifelong Marks & Spencer man) laid out bold plans to overhaul the
company's supply chain, buying more stuff abroad, and spruced up the tattiest stores. In
September 2000 he was one of three executives fired by Mr Vandevelde, after a further
slump in sales.

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Behind this decline lie two basic faults. The first is the rigid, top- down, "head office knows
best" culture built Marks & Spencer 's proud record of success. This was fine so long as
customers kept coming and the competition lagged behind, but it also made it difficult to
question the Marks & Spencer way of doing things. Marks & Spencer is only now scrapping
outmoded rules that meant staff spent too much time on rituals such as checking stock or
counting cash in the tills, just because somebody at Michael House, its head office in
London's Baker Street, had decreed years ago that such tasks were essential.
Add to this in-bred top management. People tended to join Marks & Spencer straight from
college and work their way slowly up the ranks. Few senior appointments were made from
outside the company. This meant that the company rested on its laurels, harking back to
"innovations" such as machine-washable pullovers and chilled food.
Worse, Marks & Spencer missed out on the retailing revolution that began in the mid-1980s,
when the likes of Gap and Next shook up the industry with attractive displays and marketing
gimmicks. Their supply chains were overhauled to provide what customers were actually
buying--a surprisingly radical idea at the time.
Marks & Spencer, by contrast, continued with an outdated business model. It clung to its
"Buy British" policy and it based its buying decisions too rigidly on its own buyers' guesses
about what ranges of clothes would sell, rather than reacting quickly to results from the tills.
Meanwhile, its competitors putting together global purchasing networks that were not only
more responsive, but were not locked into high costs linked to the strength of sterling.
In clothing, moreover, Marks & Spencer faces problems that cannot be solved simply by
improving its fashion judgements. Verdict points out that overall demand for clothing has at
best stabilised and may be set to decline. This is because changing demographics mean
that an ever-higher share of spending is being done by the affluent over-45s. They are less
inclined than youngsters to spend a high proportion of their disposable income on clothes.
The results of Marks & Spencer 's rigid management approach were not confined to clothes.
The company got an enormous boost 30 years ago when it spotted a gap in the food
market, and started selling fancy convenience foods. Its success in this area capitalised on
the fact that, compared with clothes, food generates high revenues per square metre of floor
space. While food takes up 15% of the floor space in Marks & Spencer 's stores, it accounts
for around 40% of sales. But the company gradually lost its advantage as mainstream food
chains copied its formula Marks & Spencer 's share of the British market is under 3% and
falling, compared with around 18% for its biggest supermarket rival, Tesco.
Marks & Spencer has been unable to respond to this competitive challenge. In fact, rather
than leading the way, it has been copying rivals' features by introducing in-house bakeries,
delicatessens and meat counters. Food sales have been sluggish, and operating margins
have fallen as a result of the extra space and staff needed for these services.
Perhaps the most egregious example of the company's insularity was the way it held out for
more than 20 years against the use of credit cards, launching its own store card instead.
Only recently, did Marks & Spencer bow to the inevitable and began accepting credit cards.
To do this it had to give away around 3% of its revenues from card transactions to the card
companies, but failed to generate a big enough increase in sales to offset this. Worse, it had
to slash the interest rate on its own card, undermining the core of its own finance business
Source: based on an article in The Economist Oct 28, 2000

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SAA 1
Read the illustration Does Marks & Spencer have a future? and undertake a cultural web
analysis of the organisation at the time that problems started to emerge in 1998.
Rituals & Routines

Stories

Symbols

Control Systems

Power Structures

Organisational Structures

The Paradigm

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D.

IMPLICATIONS OF CORPORATE CULTURE

The last two sections have explored the nature of corporate culture and outlined the analysis
of the cultural web of an organisation. The main concern of this section is to understand the
way in which culture can affect strategy, in particular the significance of the paradigm on
strategy formulation and the management of strategic change.

The Importance of the Paradigm

The paradigm is a way in which those within organisations attempt to deal with complexity,
making sense of the world through a series of taken-for-granted assumptions about the way
in which things work. In strategic terms this means that the paradigm acts as a filter for
understanding the organisation and its environment. The implication of this is that external
forces and organisational capabilities have an indirect influence the strategy, whilst
potentially having a more direct impact upon the performance of the organisation, as
illustrated in Figure 8:2.

Opportunities
and threats

Strengths and
weaknesses

THE PARADIGM

Strategy
Organisational
capabilities

Environmental
forces
Performance

Figure 8:2 The Role of the Paradigm in Strategy Formulation

Source: G Johnson & K Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall 1999

The illustration shows how the paradigm is central to strategy formulation in most
organisations because it determines the way in which the people within organisations
believe the game of strategy is played. The interpretation of organisational strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats depends upon the paradigm, as does the
development of likely strategies formulated to meet these challenges.
This has implications for the speed of strategic change within an organisation. In most
cases, when companies face strategic problems implementation processes such as the
tightening of controls will be the first things to be altered, on the basis of right strategy but
poor implementation. Only if this tightening of implementation fails to improve performance
will new strategies be considered. At this stage, the strategic options identified are likely to

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be recognisable to those within the organisation and consistent with their view of what is
realistic. Only if performance continues to worsen is the underlying paradigm likely to be
questioned does the world really work in the same way any more? It is at this stage that
the paradigm is changed and radically new strategies developed that are consistent with this
new world view. This process is illustrated in Figure 8:3.

The paradigm

Development
of strategy

Implementation
mplementation

Step 1
Tighter control

Corporate
performance
if
unsatisfactory

Step 2
Reconstruct or develop
new strategy

Step 3
Abandon paradigm
and adopt a new one

Figure 8:3 The Process of Paradigm Change

Source: Taken from G Johnson & K Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy, 5th ed. Prentice Hall, 1999, adapted
from P. Grinyer & J.C. Spender, Turnaround: Managerial recipes for strategic success, Associated Business
Press, 1979

One consequence of the dynamics of this process is strategic drift where the strategy
increasingly fails to address the current strategic context. Even successful organisations
can maintain existing strategies when more radical change is called for - a situation referred
to by Danny Miller as the Icarus Paradox, after the mythical Greek character whose
success in creating wings led him to fly too near to the sun with feathers held together by
wax. In organisational terms, past successes reinforce the circular belief by managers within
an organisation that their strategies will always be right because they thought of them. As
with Icarus, this can lead to a rapid introduction to the physics of meltdown and gravity.

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SAA 2
Refer back to the illustration Does Marks & Spencer have a future? and discuss the extent to
which Marks and Spencer is currently engaged in a process of paradigm change.

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 Managing Strategic Change

Even if strategic change is recognised as being necessary for the organisation, the cultural
web points to the complexity of being able to achieve this change in practice. Changes to
the organisational structure and control systems, often the main elements identified in a
strategic plan, are unlikely to be enough to ensure the change is implemented - the other
aspects of the web are also important. Indeed, conflicts between the different aspects of the
cultural web are likely to lead to resistance to change.
However, this also suggests that the cultural web can be used as a means of identifying the
barriers and levers for change. By re-mapping the cultural web to show the desired new
strategy and comparing this with the original web, those elements that support the new
strategy and those that might impede its implementation can be identified and addressed.
One final comment on corporate culture. In Session 3 the importance and nature of
strategic capabilities were explored. Many key capabilities are embedded in the way in
which the organisation goes about its business and are critical because they are complex,
difficult to identify and copy or appropriate by competitors. The analogy to the nature of
corporate culture should be apparent indeed, in his typology of intangible assets and
resources Richard Hall identifies cultural capabilities as significant.

E.

EXPECTATIONS AND STAKEHOLDERS

Strategy involves the taking of decisions by those involved in organisations in order to meet
desired goals or objectives. So far in this course the underlying assumption has been that
the main goal of the organisation is to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This can
be a useful assumption but it is a simplification of reality as it implies that everyone within the
organisation has the same expectations. In reality, the strategy development within an
organisation involves a political process where the competing expectations of differing
individuals and groups can have a significant impact upon outcomes.
The rest of this Session explores the nature of this political process and how the political
situation within an organisation can be analysed for its impact upon strategy development.

Competing Expectations and Stakeholders

Economist assume that profit maximisation is the goal of most organisations. However, the
people involved with an organisation do not necessarily want the same things from it their
expectations are different.
Shareholders may want increased profits and dividends, but employees may want job
security which, in turn, could conflict with a bankers desire to secure debt repayment,
particularly if the discussion turns to cost reduction. Further, many organisations operate in
not-for-profit sectors where the profit may be seen as less relevant than other aims, for
example a local council or a charity. Even for organisations that aim to maximise profits, the
scope of the activities that they undertake is rarely decided by this one measure.
Most organisations have many different people who feel they have an interest in its activities.
Stakeholders are individuals or groups of people whose interests are affected by the
activities of the business. Most stakeholder groups represent coalitions of interest, and
alliances may form, from time to time, between the groups. The growth of international
businesses has inevitably widened the group of potential stakeholders. Every organisation

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will have a different set of stakeholders, but some of the most common groups are identified
in Figure 8:4.
External Stakeholders
Customers
Regulators e.g. OFTEL
City institutions
National or local government
Suppliers
Trade associations & professional bodies
Alliance partners
Trade unions
Banks
Creditors

Internal Stakeholders
Shareholders
Company directors
Managers
Employees
Business units, divisions or departments
Functional specialists

Figure 8:4 - Potential Stakeholders of an Organisation

A list of the stakeholders at the University of Durham Business School includes senior
University officers; students; academic staff; support and administrative staff; other
University departments; the trade unions; government funding agencies; regulatory bodies
like the Association of MBAs; local companies and industrialists.
Given the possible breadth of interests most organisations does not recognise a
responsibility to all potential stakeholders. An organisations constituency includes all those
stakeholders to whom the managers recognise a responsibility. The main constituents in a
public company would be the shareholders, but the banks and other creditors, managers
and other employees, customers and government may also have some say. The extent to
which obligations to these groups are recognised is a major issue of corporate governance
that lies outside the scope of this course.
SAA 3
Once again, refer to the illustration Does Marks & Spencer have a future? and identify the
main stakeholder groups interested in Marks and Spencer.

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F.

Assessing Stakeholder Impact

One way of assessing the impact of different stakeholders upon strategy development is
through stakeholder mapping which is discussed in some detail by Kevan Scholes in his
article Stakeholder mapping: a practical tool for managers.
Usually mapping is used to plot the positions of various stakeholder groups in relation to a
particular strategy, whether proposed or already implemented.
The relevant constituents for an organisation may well vary depending upon the issue
under consideration, but it is normally useful to plot all potential stakeholder groups that may
have an impact upon the situation. As each stakeholder group involves a coalition of
interest, it is sometimes dangerous to assume everyone in the group will react in the same
way to a particular issue in such cases the group should be sub-divided. Conversely,
some stakeholder groups may combine forces over a particular issue and this may well
affect their impact upon the situation.
The key dimensions of the stakeholder map are the level of interest and extent of power
that each stakeholder group can exert.
The level of interest of each stakeholder group is likely to depend upon the extent to which
a particular strategy will have an impact upon that group, so it is worth asking how
important is this strategy in terms of its impact upon their expectations? In addition, the
level of interest may be either positive or negative and needs to be recorded on the map
employees may well be opposed to redundancies, whilst the bank welcomes the reduction in
overheads.
The extent of power that can be exerted by both internal and external stakeholder groups
will depend upon the sources of power available to it, which might include:

Position in the hierarchy and/or the decision-making process e.g. key managers or
important shareholders.

Control of strategic resources e.g. important suppliers.

Possession of knowledge, skills or information e.g. employees with specialist skills or

knowledge about particular technologies.

Involvement in strategy implementation e.g. the marketing department involved in a

new product launch.

Informal links and networks e.g. personal friendships between key shareholders and
directors.

In conducting such an analysis it is also worth identifying the indicators of power that might
provide clues as to the importance of particular stakeholders. Some of these indicators
might arise from the cultural web analysis for example, symbols and status within the
power and organisational structures. However, other indicators might include claims upon
particular resources or the extent to which the organisation depends upon the resources.
Having made an assessment of the level of interest and extent of power of each stakeholder
group then these can be plotted upon a stakeholder map or power/interest matrix as
shown in Figure 8:5.

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LEVEL OF INTEREST
Low
A

High
B

Low

Minimal
effort

Keep
informed

POWER
C
High

Keep
satisfied

Key
players

Figure 8:5 The Stakeholder Map or Power/Interest Matrix

Source: G Johnson & K Scholes, Exploring Corporate Strategy, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall 1999

Once the stakeholders have been plotted on the stakeholder map then consideration needs
to be given as to how to manage the political process in order to ensure the specific
strategy development. Figure 8:5 suggests a range of tactics depending upon the position
of the stakeholder group upon the matrix. However, whilst this may give some broad
suggestions it risks limiting the options to a range of passive choices.
Rather than just plotting the existing stakeholder positions, it may well be worth drawing a
desired stakeholder map, indicating the most favourable alignment of the groups to ensure
the success of the particular development. It may well be possible to affect the positions of
particular stakeholder groups on the map by managing the level of interest and extent of
power available to them. For example, the opposition of a particular group might be met with
concessions on this issue or another, so moving them leftwards across the map. Similarly,
developing new sources of key components may reduce the power of a key supplier.
Ultimately, such an analysis may suggest that a particular strategic development is likely to
be politically unacceptable. In such cases the particular strategy may need to be modified or
even abandoned - strategy, like politics, is the art of the possible.

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SAA 4
Refer back the identification of the main stakeholder groups in Marks and Spencer
conducted in SAA 3. Use the stakeholder map plot the positions of these groups in relation
to the problems at Marks and Spencer.
Low

Power

High
Low

High

Interest
In what ways could the management team at Marks and Spencer try to influence these
stakeholder groups in order to ensure a more favourable reaction to their new strategy?

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G. SUMMARY
Strategic decisions take place within the context of organisations made up of individuals and
groups so the impact of corporate culture and stakeholders need to be considered as part
of a broader view of strategic analysis.
Corporate culture can be seen as the behavioural norms of an organisation that emerge
from the interaction of its structure, politics and policies with the shared values, beliefs,
habits of thought of the individuals and groups within it. These individuals and groups are
influenced by many factors including national or regional cultures, professional or
institutional cultures, industry recipes and functional or divisional cultures.
At the heart of a particular corporate culture is the paradigm, or taken-for-granted
assumptions shared by those in the organisation. The cultural web is a framework that can
be used to identify the more visible elements of culture that point towards the paradigm at
its centre, including the:

Rituals and routines

Stories
Symbols
Power structures
Control systems
Organisational structures

Within the process of strategy development the paradigm acts as a filter interpreting
understanding of those within the organisation so that external forces and organisational
capabilities have an indirect influence the strategy, whilst potentially having a more
direct impact upon the performance of the organisation. One consequence of this
process is that the organisation risks strategic drift if its understanding of the strategic
context is at variance with reality. The Icarus Paradox is a particular version of this problem
that can affect previously successful organisations. Never the less, an organisations culture
can be a key source of strategic capabilities.
Mapping and re-mapping of the cultural web can be useful in ensuring the successful
implementation of particular strategic developments by identifying those elements that may
form barriers to or levers for change.
Organisations consist of groups of stakeholders who all have different expectations that
they place upon it. Not all stakeholders will have an equal influence on the organisation, and
their impact might well vary according to strategic issues it faces, with coalitions of
stakeholders being a possibility.
Stakeholder mapping is one way in which the likely positions of different stakeholder
groups can be plotted in terms of their interest in a particular issue and the power that they
can exert. Stakeholder mapping can be used to help manage the political processes that
ensure the acceptance and implementation of particular strategic developments.

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