Need a research question on strategic management for MBA dissertation?

Question

Any ideas for a research topic in strategic management to examine for an MBA dissertation? I would prefer to do one related to the resource-based theory but open to other ideas. Would be useful if you can also suggest why undertaking this topic would be useful (in adding to the current knowlege of strategic management). Also, preferably one (if possible) that can utilise available information (e.g. companies' published accounts) instead of seeking primary data from surveys, etc.

Answer 1

I worked as a systems analyst (business analyst) for state gov for 31 years. They sent me as a consultant into agenies having problems and I was to fix them.

Biggest issue I ran into - over and over and over - was people's resistance to change. Many Managers, and Senior Executives felt their jobs were safer if they did not "rock the boat" by changing things.

Also, Managers run with a "herd mentality". Stepping forward to change things, was seen as leaving the herd. This is dangerous because the herd will turn against you.

Fred Akers, the former CEO of IBM, says in his book - The IBM Way - that it was most difficult to put up with "royal dissenters (RD)". RDs's don't kiss the boss's butt - they are the people who tell him "the emperor has no clothes on". Akers said - most of his Managers would totally agree with him even when they knew something he was proposing was wrong - or had a flaw. They wanted to be seen as supporting the boss. He said it was hard to accept that RD were essential and good - and not react to their valid points in a negative way.

Either issue - would be a good question. How to develop a business culture that is supportive of these.

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Let me give you a real life example. I worked for a state agency. Had 13,000 employees and 7,000 computer users. Over 140 locations over a 500 mile radius. As a systems analyst they put me in charge of a computer system that should have been buried 10 years ago - said it could not be changed. But no one had tried to change it.

I talked with a Records Officer at one of our locations and learned each month they spent days pulling file folders on our "customers" to prepare a summary report to send to the "home office" This info was in the comuter system - but no one - had asked for a report of the info.

Took me and a programmer less than 1 hour to design, write and test a report program to provide the info. Then provided a DRAFT COPY to the Records Officer. She said that would save 3 days of work each month. That she could use it to do her "talley sheet" - where she counted the info on each cutomer. Some fields of info had up to 500 possible "business codes" . I asked why didn't she tell me to put that on to begin with - She said she had been ordered not to ask the Info Tech staff for anything - that we would not do it. And that doing the totals would be a lot of work - she had no experience doing programming. (It would take an Info Tech programmer less than 15 mnutes to add it).

I had Info tech staff threatening to resigned because our CIO would not allow us to do any - work.

In a staff meeting with our CIO, I said my staff would add counters to provide the totals on that report - thus saving each location about 2 days of manual labor per month.

Our CIO stood up, rolled the status reports into a roll, and walked over and hit me in the head. Asked what would it take to get thru to me - that the Info Tech staff were suppose to let these people do things manually? We were only suppose to fix things not working. Not add new features.

I went back to my desk, and sent my programmer a email stating that the report program was not working correctly, to "fix" it so it would print the summary page showing counts for the 5 categories.

Programmer came to me and said "There is no code. You are saying to add something."

I said "Listen carefully to me. I do not micro-manage people. I do not care what you have to do. Just get the totals to print. And keep the email from me in case anyone asks you about the assignment.

I then went in and submitted my resignation.

The Records Officers got the report - saving over $500,000 worth of labor each year. Counting errors were reduced to 0%.

I left - and the CIO got a promotion and raise for good job performance.

Answer 2

Strategic Management Dissertation

Answer 3

Yes try application of lean production techniques to office administration.