Strategic change and organisational restructuring: How managers negotiate change initiatives

This study examines the organizational changes and varied response amongst managers to those changes in seven subsidiaries of multinational apparel firms. Because of intensified competition from low wage economies, such firms have been forced to restructure production processes to heighten both their productive efficiency and attain greater flexibility at the plant level. Much of this change has involved the introduction of high performance work practices (HPWP), a central focus of much recent scholarship on post-Fordism. Drawing from several qualitative strategies, this paper focuses on the role of managers as agents of strategy implementation and discusses how they negotiate, accept or resist such changes. We describe the failure to implement HPWP as some firms seek efficiency gains from work restructuring rather than broader effectiveness goals that would have deepened employee participation. In doing so we theorise about structural impediments to organisational innovation, the operational constraints that render some managers change recipients rather than change agents, and what this might tell us about micro-political strategies within large organisations as key actors negotiate a new organisational reality.