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"McKeown, Max"
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The constitution of strategic change by insider and outsider ceos: language games and discursive bets
This thesis is about how insider and outsider CEOs use language to accomplish strategic change. It argues that language matters to strategy. It also argues that research and theory have neglected language. It finds support from the literature and empirical evidence. Data came from CEO communication in two large US corporations over twenty-five years. The study explores CEO use of language, including the textual production, dissemination, and consumption of discourse, to investigate mechanisms for legitimating authority discourse, transforming organizational and individual identities and renegotiating the prevailing strategic narratives. It makes several original contributions to the field of strategic management research, particularly in the areas of change and leadership. It contributes to the emerging micro focus on strategy as actions and as process – the study of 'strategy as practice'. First, it reveals strategy narratives, how they change over time and in different contexts. It shows discourse is effective at tracking patterns and mechanisms of strategic change. It throws detailed empirical light on discourse as a vehicle for change. It does this in a novel way contributing new inductively derived categories and concepts. Second, it offers a new way of conceptualizing the role of CEO in the constitution of strategy as maker of discursive bets in the form of various language games. These games play out internally and externally. They shape organizational outcomes – creating, sustaining or slowing change. Third, it sets out a discursive-recursive model to explain how CEO discourse leads to strategic action or inaction. It describes different characteristics of this model with empirical examples. Fourth, most importantly it examined the role of insider and outsider CEOs in strategic change. It contributed specific new understanding of how success is accomplished. It shows how and why certain language games work. It contributes new concepts, relationships, and theory.
Dissertation
Give me some slack
There I was, waiting for the police to arrive. It was the second time I'd crashed a new company car. This time it had hit the central barrier, flipped over, skidded back across three lanes and finally came...
Newspaper Article
HR Focus: Give me some slack: Many employers would frown on a 'slacker' - but not management guru Max McKeown, right, who says that less busy workers often turn out to be more productive
My boss wasn't pleased. He said: \"Max, I pay you for your ideas, not your time. You're no good to me dead or so knackered you can't think straight. Get out of the office. Take a walk in the park. Buy a painting.\" You need slack. You may think that you are more creative under pressure but research shows that the opposite is true. Your boss thinks the best way to get results is to keep you as busy as hell, but he's wrong. Unfortunately, as the slack disappears so does the possibility of finding new ways of cutting costs and generating new growth. It's like they really believe that solving problems doesn't take time. The truth is probably that we all know creativity needs space but we're too busy to do the right thing; too busy to do less and achieve more. [Slack] is not just a gnarly, beach-blond, surf-and-sand thing. Emerging markets are using it to revolutionise the way suppliers and manufacturers work together. In the Chinese city of Chongqing, suppliers are not constrained by detailed specifications and blueprints from fussy, controlling, slow-moving clients. Within rough plans and broad parameters, suppliers are free to be as creative as they wish to be. This speeds up development time, reduces costs, increases the amount of innovation in each new module, and enables assemblers to deliver complete products faster than their more traditional rivals. They now produce more than half of the world's motorcycles and out-innovate their Japanese rivals using slack, not project management, as their secret weapon.
Newspaper Article
DNA extraction from spider webs
Many spider species produce webs that represent a potential non-invasive source of DNA for conservation genetic analysis. Reported here is the successful isolation of target DNA from members of two families (Theraphosidae and Pholcidae) using a standard CTAB phenol–chloroform–isoamyl protocol. The isolated DNA was of sufficient quality to permit routine PCR amplification and sequencing of mtDNA COI fragments of various sizes (maximum 710 bp attempted). This adds to other studies in demonstrating that webbing offers an excellent resource for genetic studies of spiders across families. Applications of the technique include species identification and monitoring, faunistic surveys, population connectivity, subpopulation structuring, and ex situ breeding programs.
Journal Article
Windspeed Analyses of Tornadoes Based on Structural Damage
Documentation is presented for the tornadoes of 28 June 1979 in the Iowa towns of Manson and Algona. Analyses of failed engineered and nonengineered structures are presented with an emphasis on those studies of observed damage that can form the basis of potential design recommendations intended to mitigate the destructive effects of relatively weak tornadic winds. Structural analyses leading to windspeed estimates (in the F2–3 range) at the ground level are presented, based on observation of damaged and failed structures.
Journal Article