Embeddedness and the dynamics of strategy processes : the case of AMUL Cooperative, India
Date
2010
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McGill University, Montreal, QC, CA
Abstract
Strategy scholars point to the need for developing more dynamic views of strategy formation that can transcend the paradox between agency and change. This thesis sets out to understand the embeddedness of strategy making, which recognizes the agency of actors in interaction with intra- and extra-organizational contexts.
Social enterprises provide an ideal context for studying an embedded view of strategy, as they embrace both social and economic goals and adopt unconventional business models that allow for greater participation of constituents at multiple levels. Though they are ubiquitous, few strategy formation studies have been conducted in social enterprises. Given the scope for better understanding how organizational strategy is embedded in the larger context, this study focuses on an exemplary social enterprise, AMUL, India’s most successful cooperative, organizing millions of milk producers. Among the most trusted indigenous brands, it has competed successfully with bigger multinationals. This study provides a rich analysis of the strategy process in this organization and its evolution.
I make three contributions to the extant strategy process literature. First, using social movement theory, I show how organizational formation interacts with the political and social contexts. As strategies implicated in the organizational formation process are under-theorized, this study fills that gap. Second, I provide a contextual understanding of the processes by which social enterprises grow to achieve scale and scope economies. The study shows the interactive dynamics of AMUL’s strategic intent and the government, and the effects on AMUL’s growth through product diversification. Third, I depict the interaction of planning and emergent processes that set AMUL on an extraordinary growth path, through active social embedding of AMUL in relations with its members. The interactive intra-organizational dynamics between the middle management, boundary actors, and members is documented to enhance our understanding of processes that underlie the achievement of economies of scale and scope typically taken for granted as being achieved without explaining how.
Description
Thesis, McGill University, 2010
Includes abstract in French
Includes abstract in French
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Keywords
INDIA, INNOVATION, COOPERATIVE MOVEMENTS, DAIRY INDUSTRY, BUSINESS ORGANIZATION, ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES, AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES