SWOT ROADMAPPING

Why using SWOT roadmapping

Two different tools in strategic planning: SWOT and roadmapping, have evolved quite independently so far, are taking into considerations in this research. The rationales for binding the two tools together are that not only can possibly solve the current business problems discussed earlier in this paper, but can also help to overcome current limitations in each of the tools. However, integrating these tools is not an easy task. Not only are they distinct from each other in scope, content and focus but also within the organizational level at which they are developed and implemented. Thus, blending them requires resolving a number of problems from architecture, to level and implementation. The discussion that follows will highlight their differences and justify the development of a newly developed technique: SWOT-roadmapping technique. The results of this discussion will lead to the development of a new prototype technique: SWOT-Roadmapping technique.

SWOT is widely recognized as a strategic planning tool at corporate and business level of businesses, while roadmapping rather falls in the level of operational and functional units. As a result, SWOT is usually used by managers from top management while roadmapping used by managers from functional and operational levels of an organization.

Because these two tools were previously used by managers from two different levels in an organization, their combination will link these two levels of managers together. The link would benefit organizations by improving their vertical coordination and communication systems. When top management imposes a new plan using a top-down approach, the lower first-level management might not follow exactly because they prefer a bottom-up approach. This problem could be overcome by applying SWOT in the roadmapping process to increase interaction between top-level and first-level managers.

SWOT is taking a macro perspective of businesses while roadmapping is taking a micro perspective of businesses. As a result, SWOT focuses on visionary matters, new investment issues, and future development and directions of business while roadmapping focuses on current resource limitation, effective implementation and action plan selection. Because SWOT is always regarded as visionary emphasis, and considering strategies from high level management position, thus, it has created many business plans that may not readily to be applied. Thus, it has always been perceived negatively from operational level managers who view it as too abstract and soft, touching only the surface, and lacking in terms of real practical substance. Meanwhile, roadmapping is rather paying more attention to operational detail and focusing on clarity in content. In addition, roadmapping helps in developing implementable strategies and action plans that could make the strategic plans to be realized. By combining the two tools, firms’ visionary objectives from SWOT will be linked to current resource constraints from roadmapping and grand strategies from SWOT will be supported by more practical and workable plans from roadmapping. Implementation of the combined tool could complement the weaknesses of each other.

SWOT considers a bigger environmental scope beyond the internal and operational functions of an organization. It helps managers to identify opportunities and threats from the business and economic environment that may be overlooked in roadmapping. SWOT enables companies’ managers to respond to changes in environment before too late. In this sense, SWOT enlarges the scope of roadmapping by providing a structure to capture and monitor broader context of strategy and enabling anticipation of wider range of possible environmental changes.

As compare to SWOT, roadmapping is not yet a popular tool and thus many users may not know how to apply it, where to start, and how to link the information. As a result, managers need assistant from experienced facilitators to use the tool and to avoid wrong interpretation. Unlike roadmapping, SWOT is taught in many business schools and appeared in many well-established strategic management text books for undergraduate and MBA students. Thus, by using a more well-known and established SWOT, managers could easily learn and use the tool for the development of a roadmap. Therefore, it would be easier to conduct roadmapping with the help of using SWOT analysis.

Roadmapping came in many formats. The selection process on which formats to use is not well understood. This has caused a problem in generating even the first roadmap. SWOT has only one format that cover four areas of strategic planning: strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. Thus, the SWOT four-quadrant framework is rather more easily understandable by managers and can complement the limitation in roadmapping.

One of the most serious weaknesses of roadmapping is that it is not become an on-going management tool in companies. This weakness can be improved by making the tool more usable by managers. Roadmapping tool pays too much attention on the hard aspect of tangible resources coordination and information link. It ignored the soft aspect of management such as human capital management, organizational behaviour, and culture. Thus, incorporating these features by applying SWOT that capture a wider scope of an organization (i.e. from environment to culture) could improve the application of the tool and subsequent usage by managers. In addition, the higher top management involvement will also improve the usage of roadmapping on an on-going basis. Traditionally, roadmapping exercise is usually participated by managers from functional department such as marketing, manufacturing and R&D, but not the top-level managers. As a result, top management may not clearly understand the benefits of roadmapping and have lack of interest and commitment. Consequently, this has created a barrier for the roadmapping process to be built-in into the existing company system and to be used in the company on an ongoing basis. Involvement of top management with applying SWOT could help to improve the usage of roadmapping.

In order to capture the information on strength, weakness, opportunity and threat across different time frame, managers would have to create a few matrixes to indicate information in the past, present and future. This work is time consuming and in addition, managers must produce a number of SWOT matrices in several separate sheets of papers. Roadmapping that emphasize a one-page solution of strategy, can help to overcome this problem. Thus, the drawbacks of SWOT matrix framework could be overcome by applying the roadmapping one-page framework.

The graphical representation of roadmapping on a wall chart is flexible and interesting as compare to SWOT’s bullet points. A roadmap enables managers to see the overall situation in just one-page diagram, and allows them to synthesize the overall strategies and crystallize their thoughts more easily.

The research aims to integrate the two tools by developing a SWOT-Roadmapping technique for managers and test how such combined concepts can be applied through real industrial application. The new technique could complement the weaknesses inherited in both roadmapping and SWOT and is believed to be more robust. A successful implementation of the new technique will benefit the industry and it is worth the effort.

New Science

Theory development from a new science perspective

Yee Choy Leong

Graduate School of Management

Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Tel: 03-89467731, Fax: 03-89486188, e-mail: yee@econ.upm.edu.my

Abstract

The positivism paradigm currently dominates scientific research in management. A positivism paradigm is a system of philosophy based on things that can be seen or proved and assumes that the social world can be measured objectively. However, there is another philosophical position in management research, interpretivism, proposes that reality is actually socially constructed and must therefore be inferred from the meanings of the social actors. The debate between these two paradigms systems is always framed in terms of a choice between the generations of knowledge is either more towards science (Positivism) or social science (interpretivism). Nevertheless, there are other important kinds of knowledge beyond these two apparent dichotomies. It is known as Mode 2 (knowledge produced in the context of application). This form of knowledge is usually associated with real industry application. Managers today are more concerning about solution of problems rather than research philosophy. Solution to problems is considered as practical knowledge. A great amount of research currently underway is of this kind. The paper aims to review and discuss the two earlier paradigm systems as well as a new system. The generation of practical knowledge from a new system may view from a different scientific perspective and thus it has a different epistemological position. This paper focuses on the philosophical position of a new system thus the arguments in this paper are mainly at the level of assumption, rather than at the level of operationalisation.

Keywords: positivism; interpretivism; paradigm; philosophy; epistemology

THE MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The philosophy of one’s research is about the way in which the researcher views the world. Today, there is an ongoing debate in the field of management about choice of research philosophy between two competing paradigms: positivism and interpretivism. A positivist assumes that the social world can be measured objectively. A positivist is a system of philosophy based on things that can be seen or proved such as cars, machines, or furniture (Bryman & Bell, 2007). The second philosophical position, interpretivism, proposes that reality is actually socially constructed and must therefore be inferred from the meanings of the social actors (Bryman & Bell, 2007). The first philosophy gives rise to scientific knowledge, and the second contributes to philosophical understanding. The debate is always framed in terms of a choice between the generation of knowledge is either more towards science (Positivism) or social science (interpretivism). However, there are other important kinds of knowledge beyond these two apparent dichotomies. It is known as Mode 2 (knowledge produced in the context of application). A great amount of research currently underway is of this kind of knowledge generation (Tranfield, 2002). According to Gibbon et al. (1994), Mode 1 refers to traditional modes of knowledge production according to accepted disciplinary criteria and influenced by the norms of scientific enquiry such as from the paradigms of positivism and interpretivism. Mode 2 builds on scientific and philosophical knowledge. This new accumulation of knowledge is outside the boundaries of established science, but always drawing on science and social science to solve problems in the world of practice (Tranfield, 2002). The generation of Mode 2 knowledge can be done with a combined methodology, toolism (Yee, 2009a). This combined methodology form a new way of knowledge generation and it is usually associated with real industry application. In a real practical situation, management researchers are adopting a more pragmatic view by solving real life practical problems in a real world. Managers are concerning about solution of problems rather than research philosophy and theory development.

In practical research, we start from a particular problem ‘in the real world’, and bring together all the intellectual resources that can be brought to bear on its solution. The problem has to be defined and the method of solution has to be discovered. The person working in this way may have to create and identify original problem solutions every step of the way. This will usually involve a variety of theories and methods, often ranging across more than one discipline since real-world problems are likely to be 'messy' and not soluble within the narrow confines of an academic discipline.

Generation of emerging knowledge in management

The issue of theory development and knowledge generation in management research has been debated in many ways. One of the most important questions about these arguments is that whether the knowledge generated is scientific or not. Traditionally, theories developed in management are in the forms of constructs, frameworks, models, matrices, typologies, etc. However, there are other forms that knowledge can be represented, such as tools, processes, roadmaps, or charts. Are these forms of knowledge representation acceptable as useful contribution in research?

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the followings are the definitions of these terms:

Traditional knowledge:

• Framework – a set of beliefs, ideas or rules that is used as the basis for making judgments, decisions, etc.

• Construct – an idea or a belief that is based on various pieces of evidence which are not always true

• Category – a group of people or things with particular features in common.

• Model – a simple description of a system, used for explaining how something works or calculating what might happen, etc.

• Matrix – an arrangement of numbers, symbols, etc. in rows and columns, treated as a single quantity or a system of lines, roads, etc. that cross each other, forming a series of squares or shapes in between

• Typology – a system of dividing things into different types

Emerging Knowledge:

• System – an organized set of ideas or theories or a particular way of doing something. A group of things, pieces of equipment etc. that are connected or work together.

• Tool – a thing that helps you to do your job or to achieve something

• Process – a series of things that are done in order to achieve a particular result or a series of things that happen, especially ones that result in natural changes

• Roadmap – a set of instructions or suggestions about how to do something or find out about something or a map that shows the roads of an area, especially one that is designed for a person who is driving a car

• Charts – a page or sheet of information in the form of diagrams, lists of figures, etc.

• Procedure – a way of doing something especially the usual or correct way.

Based on the understanding of the definitions above, both traditional and emerging knowledge have their specific characteristics. Table 1 below differentiates the characteristics of traditional and emerging knowledge.

Table 1 Characteristics of traditional and emerging knowledge

Traditional knowledge Emerging knowledge Descriptive Understanding Abstraction Representation Improve prediction

Prescriptive

Implementing

Approach

Application

Improve performance

Build upon the recent argument that much management research was not reliable for use by practicing community in providing a basis for justifying their decision-making and actions, a new science perspective would provide a radical solution for further in-depth debate among the academic community. In applying toolism methodology, researchers are someone who is “concerned with the design, installation, and improvement of integrated systems of man, machine, money, information and workplace by drawing upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences, together with the principles and methods of management to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems”. Applying the solution must be done in a very systematic and logical way. Not only that it must be validated by managers, but it also has to be logic and trustworthy.

The traditional method of enquiry with the theories being generated (i.e. traditional knowledge) are useful from a curricular perspective, it is much less useful from an application perspective. Traditional knowledge is very much descriptive in nature while emerging knowledge is prescriptive in nature. In toolism, we begin the reduction of theory to practice, and building theory from practice. We focus on a real world actual implementation rather than on an academic understanding. In this sense, the academic boundary distinctions among multiple disciplines will gradually disappear and migrate to a setting that is defined by business processes rather than academic discipline. What is important to us is our impact on business performance rather than on particular tools, techniques, or disciplinary focus. The disciplinary tool, knowledge, or technique becomes valuable when it is applied and we see its instrumentality for achieving positive business performances.

Solution to problems is considered as practical knowledge. Practical knowledge is also accepted as one type of knowledge (Gibbon et al., 1994), but may be difficult to generate. The generation of practical knowledge may view this research from a different scientific perspective and thus it has a different epistemological position. Research aims to generate practical knowledge may be treated as an ‘applied science’, such as engineering in physical sciences or medicine in biological sciences. The question now is whether we treat the field of management as science, social science, or applied science.

DISCUSSION

From this paper, the main benefit of the new perspective is that it results in Mode 2 knowledge that is directly applicable to industry. Practising managers can use this knowledge without having to modify or adapt it to their situations. Furthermore, toolism is not only relevant to practitioners but follows the systematic enquiry of scientific research method. The combine methodology generates relevant data from practical experiences meeting both the practical and academic requirement.

Perhaps, the most important question to raise here is whether the new science perspective follows a proper, systematic scientific enquiry? Theory generated in Mode 2 according to Tranfield (2002) has the following characteristics: “problems are set and solved in the context of application, using a trans-disciplinary approach, with a socially distributed research team, working in a heterarchical structure, resulting in theory development and dissemination/application of findings accurring at the point of production rather than the latter being temporally dislocated from the former.” Clearly, Transfield supported the notion that mode 2 production process makes knowledge contributions. Although these knowledge contributions are rarely in the traditionally acceptable science, because replication studies are unlikely to be used based on the normal science approach. However, the form of knowledge that mode 2 could generate based on this paper is in terms of tools, processes, roadmaps, charts, pictures, template/forms, flowcharts, or managerial guidelines. This is different from the traditional knowledge that are in the forms of constructs, frameworks, models, matrices, and typologies.

Transfield argued that, “Undertaking strategic research to produce exemplars of archetypal forms of organisation design, might provide a worthy goal for mode 2 management research. Not only would this contribute to management knowledge by providing a thesaurus of what works in which circumstances, in much the same way as engineers create design templates for physical artefacts, but it would also facilitate managers in their roles as organisational architects and engineers.”

The acceptance argument was further strengthened by van Aken (2001). In his tripartite typology of scientific fields, he differentiates science into formal science, explanatory science, and design science. His thesis about formal science is that this science is based on logic and maths, but is empirically void. The objective of science is to build systems of propositions whose main test is their internal logical consistency. Explanatory science such as normal science, describes, explain and predict observable phenomena. Design science, according to him, “…include fields which sit between practice on the one hand and more fundamental disciplines on the other. They include engineering, medicine, and management. They are preoccupied with the question ‘how should things be?’ and aim to …develop knowledge for the design and realisation of artefacts, i.e. to solve construction problems, or to be used in the improvement of the performance of existing entities, i.e. to solve improvement problems… Research aims at developing knowledge and its application should lead to intended results.”(p. 5)

van Aken (2001) explained, “Design science are postulated to develop valid and reliable knowledge in the form of ‘field tested and grounded technological rules’. These rules facilitate both academic advancement and also can be used by practitioners in designing, configuring and implementing solutions to specific problems.” He further illustrated, “…management research might be argued to be best positioned within the social sciences as engineering in the physical and medicine in the biological sciences. Whereas engineering and medicine are concerned with the proper arrangement of physical and human biological artefacts respectively…”

By and large, the theory generated with toolism methodology is quite consistent with the design science perspective. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

The process of theory development or knowledge generation concerns about the validity and reliability of the theory produced. The data collection in the new science perspective based on toolism uses a collection of managers’ viewpoints. Differences in viewpoints will have to be clarified first before it is used. This validation is done through the minds of the managers rather than based on a large amount of written documents or reports from the firm, analysed and judged by researchers without participation of managers. The way of data collection may look simplicity to some researchers, however, through face-to-face discussion and challenge of opinions/viewpoints among managers, information is re-evaluated and re-confirmed by the users of information. Anyhow, written reports or survey questionnaire are also based on these managers’ opinions. Are these kinds of data collection methods not subject to any possible bias?

“Researchers improve the internal validity of a theory when they examine the phenomena from as many perspectives as possible” (Christensen and Carlile, 2009).

“Scholars who examine the phenomena and outcomes of interest from …the viewpoints of different functional groups in a company, can either incorporate what they learn into their explanations of causality, or rule out other explanations so that theirs is the only plausible one left standing” (Christensen and Carlile, 2009).

The problems with respondents give biased or inaccurate data can be solved in the new science perspective. Ability of managers to recall memories in answering a survey questionnaire would be reminded in the discussion. However, factual descriptions such as quantitative data were likely to be more accurate than managers’ opinions. To some researchers, especially the quantitative researcher would have a very negative perception of the field research because it is not based on large amount of quantitative data and thus for them it is less reliable.

The question of reliability has long been the criticism among the quantitative researchers towards field research. Field research is high in validity but low in reliability. Many researchers believed that the measure of statistical significance and goodness of fit test are relevant measures of reliability. This is because they perceived numerical data as more trustworthy than qualitative data. But, is this data really ‘objective’? Christensen and Carlile (2009) defended that “numbers [used in many research projects are] representing revenues, costs, and profits in financial statements are the result of processes of estimation, negotiation, debate, and politics that can produce grossly inaccurate reflections of true cost and profit.” They further argued that “Even the ‘hardest’ of numbers, such as those measuring prices and product performance, really are manifestations of the prioritizations, fudging measurements, exaggerations, and negotiations that occurred prior to a number appearing as a proxy for all of those things.”

They suggested, “The healthiest mind-set for researcher is that nearly all data – whether presented in the form of a large quantitative data set on one extreme, or an ethnographic description of behaviour on the other – are subjective. Numerical and verbal data alike are abstractions from a much more complex reality, out of which the researcher attempts to pull the most salient variables or patterns for examination.” They continued “There should be no smugness among quantitative researchers about the alleged objectivity of their data, and no defensiveness amongst field researcher about the subjectivity of theirs. We are all in the same subjective boat, and are obligated to do our best to be humble and honest with ourselves and our colleagues about where our data comes from as we participate individually within and collectively across the theory-building cycle.”

I have no intention and interest to get involved in the paradigm war between the quantitative and qualitative perspective. Every method has its strengths and weaknesses. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques are taught in research methodology classes. The techniques included their strengths and weaknesses are already clearly stated in most established textbooks use in business school. The lecturers just have to strike a balance between quantitative and qualitative in their teaching and point out the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques under different circumstances. Experienced researchers who involved in reviewing articles or examining theses just have to be fair and transparent. Using quantitative criteria to evaluate a qualitative thesis is something unprofessional and it should be avoided. For example, almost every examiner will directly or indirectly ask these questions. (1) Is your research follow proper scientific method? (2) What is the theoretical contribution of your research? (3) Can your findings be generalised? From the first sight, they are nothing wrong with these questions. However, when we think deeper and ask ourselves whether the candidate has the same definition of science, theory and generalisation with the examiner? Did the examiner realise that what the candidate has in mind? For example, did the candidate follow the positivists’ science or interpretivists’ science? Did the candidate contribute to mode 1 or mode 2 theory? Did the candidate use a statistical generalisation or analytical generalisation? Although examiner and candidate may have different perspective, most very senior professors are experienced enough to understand this when they are evaluating theses. Their judgements about the thesis they evaluate when compare with other senior professors are quite consistent. Only the lack of experiences and competent one will not be able to understand the kinds that we are discussing here. Knowledge generation and theory development is a very professional job. Thus, we are all obligated to conduct it professionally. The acceptance of one new perspective needs many theoretical and empirical work in future.