An emergent approach to organizational strategy making assumes that few organizations actually realize the goal of deliberative, top-down strategic planning, and that effective strategy making occurs on a continual basis and is a shared activity of the entire organization. This innovative book provides the first in-depth look at how real organizations are formulating and implementing strategic change under this new paradigm. The authors have dug deep into three large and varied organizations (Hewlett-Packard, the California State University system, and the County of Los Angeles) and...

How do corporations achieve change? In the first analytic book about Hewlett-Packard, Deone Zell also offers an ethnography of corporate redesign, documenting Hewlett-Packard's radical reorganization of both a manufacturing and a research division. Because she writes from within the process as it unfolds, Zell is able to demonstrate how the inclusion of employees in every step of redesign can inspire the knowledge and commitment to transform an organization.

Hewlett-Packard is among a growing number of companies in the United States exploring what is called sociotechnical systems (STS)...