Getting heard? How employees learn to gain senior management attention in inclusive strategy processes

Abstract

Research SummaryRecent trends toward inclusive strategy processes raise the issue of how employees acquire the discursive competence necessary to gain senior management attention. Building on the emergent dynamic attention‐based view's (DABV) emphasis on communicative interaction, we ethnographically track an inclusive strategy process in a large insurance company. We find that employees typically failed to gain CEO attention because they lacked the discursive competence to integrate their operational knowledge with the CEO's corporate themes. Employees acquired this competence by both experiential and vicarious learning. The CEO promoted employee learning more effectively by specific coaching than by generic coaching. We contribute primarily to the DABV by showing how interactions are sites for learning as well as communications and that communication channels can be both expandable and transparent.Managerial SummaryThe benefits of increased employee inclusion in strategy processes depend upon participants being truly heard. This study of an inclusive strategy process in a large insurance company shows that top management attention to employee contributions cannot be assumed. Employees often fail to pitch ideas in a manner that top managers can work with. Employees learn to pitch ideas effectively both by receiving direct feedback from top management and by observing feedback on other employees' contributions. Top managers must also learn how to coach effectively, engaging with the specifics of employees' contributions rather than offering general advice. Designs for new inclusive strategy processes should include opportunities for top managers to improve their coaching and for employees to learn from both direct feedback and indirect observation.

Interdiscursive struggles: Managing the co‐existence of the conventional and open strategy discourse

“…In this way, he tried to ensure that the other employees' perspectives would be included, at least indirectly. Such a restriction on the number of participants who are expected to "represent" different parts of the workforce is not uncommon in open strategy and has also been observed in other studies on open strategy (e.g., Splitter et al, 2021;Splitter, et al, 2024).…”

“…How to cite this article: Langenmayr, T., Seidl, D., & Splitter, V. (2024). Interdiscursive struggles: Managing the co-existence of the conventional and open strategy discourse.…”

“…The open strategy discourse has been adopted by an increasing number of organizations (Splitter et al, 2024;Stadler et al, 2021;Whittington, 2019). But the introduction of this new discourse does not imply that organizations simply switch from one strategy discourse to another.…”