The Process of Self-Renewal by Management Teams

Abstract

Self-renewal, self-organization, autopoiesis and related concepts have become quite popular in strategic change research. These concepts point at the importance of deeper structures of rules governing human behavior in organizations. This article describes the results of a study dealing with the role of management teams in strategic change processes, using the perspective of self-renewal. The results are summarized in a conceptual model of managerial behavior in the context of strategic change. The key concept is the repertoire of top management, which involves a set of recursively applied rules that govern managerial behavior. Management repertoires become institutionalized and relatively successful in particular contexts. The model describes forces contributing to the inertia, breakdown and formation of repertoires of management teams. The most important implication is that management teams could profit from trying to recognize the deeper rules governing their behavior. Managers should also try to prevent their own management team from becoming either extremely homogeneous or heterogeneous. In addition, they should use informal networks as much as the formal hierarchy.