LRP

Long Range Planning 37 (2004) 199200

long range planning

www.lrpjournal.com

Executive Summaries
Beyond Planning: Strategies for Successfully Implementing Strategic Decisions 201
Susan Miller, David Wilson and David Hickson Which decisions turn out to have been the successful onesand how were the successes achieved? This article demonstrates empirically that what managers do, and the kind of organization they lead, matter most. The authors track 150 strategic decisions previously studied by them back to the 1980s and examine 55 decisions which turned out well to isolate relevant variables. They find that neither decision process nor type, sector or size of firm are correlated with success, while failure may be associated with decisions which are irreversible when things go wrong?, are too big a leap in the dark, or take too little account of the firms social and political context. As far as success is concerned, they find that while managerial planning is no guarantee, organizational context is crucial, especially where the decision may lead the firm beyond plan-ability. Two major strands of organizational context variables may provide the background for success: either sound relevant experience or wholehearted readiness for change. They present illustrative case studies for each circumstance, as well as pointing to the importance of prioritising decisions, of ensuring their political acceptability, of avoiding unnecessarily organisational change, and of realising that each decision must be analysed on it merits: success in one decision does not guarantee success in the next.
doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2004.03.008

Transforming the Vodafone/Ericsson Relationship

Christopher Ibbott and Robert OKeefe

219

The business world is a global one, we are often told, and the Internet will enable information exchange across national boundaries, globalise supply chain management and facilitate access to international markets. But how are such transformations handled in actuality? This article tells how two major players in the mobile phone business successfully established a joint structure to govern their global relationship on a virtual basis. Based on the detailed understanding of one of the authorsthe senior Vodafone manager involved in the transformationthe article details how this transformation proceeded via an improvised journey approach with no fixed destination or project plan, only a shared acceptance of asymmetric benefits. Showing how information sharing, communication, virtual teams, competence development, horizontal organisational relationships and control of product elements are managed via an inter-organisational information system now called the eRelationship, the authors conclude that, while evaluation remains unresolved to an extent, strong leadership on the improvisational journey, high levels of trust between partners, a