Page 353 - Operations Strategy

328 CHAPTER 9 • THE PRoCEss of oPERATions sTRATEgy – foRmulATion And imPlEmEnTATion
sustainable alignment between operations resource capabilities and market require-
ments. We also stressed the difficulty of achieving alignment because of uncertain
markets and operations resource capabilities. In Figure 9.6, moving along the market
requirements dimension indicates a change in intended market performance. Moving
along the operations resource capabilities dimension indicates changes in operations
capabilities.
Using this model gives us a starting point for understanding the purpose of the opera-
tion’s degree of change involved in the strategy implementation. It is important to
be clear regarding how much change is intended. So, if, on Figure 9.6, point A is the
current operations strategy and point B is the intended operations strategy, it is neces-
sary to develop an understanding of current and intended market requirements and
operations resource capabilities. Certainly, without such an understanding, it is exceed-
ingly difficult to expect the whole organisation to comprehend why, how and how
much things are going to change when the new strategy is implemented. Yet, providing
guidance to those who will be carrying out the implementation is not a straightfor-
ward task. We are again confronted with the tensions between seeing strategy as a plan
that provides a ‘grand design’ for the operation on one hand, and seeing strategy as an
emergent process that takes full account of the experiences that are derived from the

Figure 9.6 implementing an operations strategy that involves moving from A to B
means understanding current and intended market requirements and operations
resource capabilities so that the extent and nature of the change can be assessed

Intended market requirements Line of fit B

Level/nature of market requirements Extent and nature of market requirements change

Current market requirements A Extent and nature of operations

resource capability change

Current resource Intended resource
capability capability
Level/nature of operations resource capability

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