Recontextualising a strategic concept within a globalising company: a case study on Carlsberg's 'Winning Behaviours' strategy

A corporate strategy is often formulated on the executive floor at headquarters. However, in order to make it live in an organisation, middle management and employees must be involved and make sense of it. These actors thus contribute to, participate in and enact the strategy in processes where it m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of human resource management 2015-01, Vol.26 (2), p.231-257
Main Author: Søderberg, Anne-Marie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business strategies
China
corporate values
Denmark
Employees
Globalization
Leadership
Malaysia
Management theory
Managers
Organizational behavior
Participatory management
Personnel management
recontextualisation
Senior management
sensegiving
strategic change
Strategic management
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A corporate strategy is often formulated on the executive floor at headquarters. However, in order to make it live in an organisation, middle management and employees must be involved and make sense of it. These actors thus contribute to, participate in and enact the strategy in processes where it may take on new meanings and forms. This article investigates how 'Winning Behaviours', a strategic concept developed on the initiative of top management at the Carlsberg Group in order to improve global integration in the multinational organisation, was recontextualised. It draws upon interviews and observations as well as documents collected at the company headquarters in Denmark and in its subsidiaries in China and Malaysia. Here, expatriate and local managers tried to give sense to the Winning Behaviours in various ways, and employees brought their own local leadership ideals into play when they tried to make sense of the preferred behaviours and turn them into daily practices. The process of creating a new strategic concept and making it live in other sociocultural contexts was facilitated by headquarters staff in the Human Resources and Communications departments, who thus played an important role as change agents in the 'glocal' strategy process.
ISSN:0958-5192
1466-4399
DOI:10.1080/09585192.2014.922358