Motivation in a conceptual model of cooperative theories

Master thesis

Motivation in a

conceptual model of cooperative theories

for strategic management.

Written by student: Bart C. Vergeer (10476040)

Final version, February 4, 2016

Executive Program in Management Studies – Strategy track

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: Frank Jan de Graaf, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam

Motivation in a conceptual model of cooperative theories for strategic management.

1

Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Bart C. Vergeer who declares to take full responsibility for the contents

of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than

those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work,

not for the contents.

Signature:


2

Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4

2. Literature review .................................................................................................................................... 6

2.1 Resource based view .................................................................................................................... 6

2.2 Role of motivation ....................................................................................................................... 10

2.3 Management information ............................................................................................................ 13

2.4 Professional service firms ........................................................................................................... 15

3. Data and method ................................................................................................................................. 18

3.1 Case environment ....................................................................................................................... 25

4. Case description .................................................................................................................................. 28

4.1 The case in practice .................................................................................................................... 29

4.2 The theoretical implications ......................................................................................................... 44

5. Model of cooperative theories for strategic management.................................................................... 49

6. Discussion ............................................................................................................................................ 52

7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 54

8. Sources ................................................................................................................................................ 56

9. Appendix .............................................................................................................................................. 64

9.1 Appendix 1: Interview protocol .................................................................................................... 64

9.2 Appendix 2 Conceptual model of cooperative theories for strategic management .................... 65


3 0 Abstract

Abstract

The Resource Based View (RBV) has always been an important theory in regards to strategy and

determining how organizations were able to be more competitive than others. However with the passage

of time and the development of global markets, technologies and complex services, the complexity of

resources, capabilities and dynamic capabilities increased as well. One of those complex organizational

forms which in the last twenty years seem to have become more and more important is that of the

(professional) service firms (PSF), whose operation are mostly based upon capabilities of the human

resource. From an RBV point of view a lot of the strategic decisions of PSFs can be explained and yet there

are despite all its resources and capabilities outcomes of processes, competition or development which are

inefficient or ineffective. Considering motivation as a potential key driver and cause for the both failure and

success for the PSF, this thesis set out to understand what role the dynamic resource of motivation plays

in the PSF.

The finding of the thesis before you argue that the RBV should take the dynamic resource of employee

motivation more in consideration, especially in the modern services focused economy in which more and

more core activities of firms rely purely on the capabilities and willingness of human resources. Although

this thesis in its case study did show the need for motivation, it also showed that motivation was not

necessarily not present, but rather missed alignment. These findings were not made based upon the RBV

alone but also based upon insights coming from human resource management and motivational theories.

The conceptual model which was created in order to pinpoint the dynamic resource of motivation amidst

other resources and capabilities provided useful insights and unconsciously grew to a model which may be

more valuable for theorists and practitioners for future dialogue or research. The model’s development was

done in order to allow resources, capabilities, dynamic resources, supporting fields of science, and the

outcome of all these influences on the organization work together in a logical way. The model could in

potential provide practitioners with a prescriptive platform of choices and theories, researchers of the RBV

with an overview of potential resource influence and theorist from resources specific fields of science with

an idea of the influence on the firm of their focus area. The potential to bridge gaps between different

theorists and practitioners is still dependent on further development, but as we lack such a model, it could

be an important first step


4 1 Introduction

1. Introduction

During the last four years I have been working in and with professional service firms. Professional service

firms (PSF) in my eyes are, when it comes to the creation and acquisition of capabilities and expertise, one

of the most knowledge intense commercial firms currently in existence. An example of the intensity with

which these firms pursuit expertise and skills which could grant them strategic resources in a specific market

is the large amounts of corporate acquisitions and the constant willingness to invest in employees.

On the other hand the PSFs I have experienced also always seem to maintain a paradox, their employee

lifecycle is relatively short, even though they invest huge amount resources in their employees (supported

by Campion & Malos, 2000 and Malhotra, Morris & Smets, 2010). Another paradox is that the amount of

corporate acquisitions that are done is tremendous compared to other business areas, sometimes as much

as two a year, but acquisitions do not always lead to a situation in which the new strategic resources work

in synergy with the already existing capabilities (which is also shown in research by Greenwood, Hinings

and Brown (1994)). This difficulty to work within the firm is not only at times apparent within business

departments trying to outcompete each other, but also in the cooperation between support and business

departments. And although this behavior is by no means the constant standard, it did interest me, surely

all these highly educated people could and perhaps should know better?

Most of the strategic behavior I see within professional service firms can be explained by the Resource

Based View, but the paradoxes which can be observed in the PSFs cannot. By doing a case study within

the firm on the development of the strategic resource of management information I hope to increase the

understanding on the influence of motivation as the dynamic capability of development of management

information. With this research I hope to add a new perspective to the constant development of the RBV,

showing there is a need for a more in depth understanding on how motivation influences the performance

of the organization.


5 1 Introduction

Because this thesis focuses on the dynamic capability of motivation by studying the development of another

dynamic capability (management information), the thesis also answers the question on how dynamic

capabilities help firms to gain a competitive advantage through innovation / development. A question which

according to amongst others Nooteboom (2005) has not been addressed sufficiently.


6 2 Literature review

2. Literature review

Before researching the case, there is a need to create an understanding of the available knowledge on both

the subject of the case and the theories which may be applicable. Researching the available knowledge on

the subject does not only allow for potential insight which might create useful perspectives which in turn

can support the findings, but it also provides means to categorize findings. Although this research does aim

to add to the scientific knowledge, it is more prudent and viable in a thesis research to extent existing

perspectives than to create an entire new perspective.

The following chapters provide a theoretical understanding into theories which most likely can be applied

to the case, also these chapter provide an understanding of the theories which are commonly used in

business strategy and which might be extended to answer the research question and be extended to create

a new perspective to the RBV.

2.1 Resource based view

The resource based view will be the core of this research because it allows categorization of skills and

competences and view them as a potential source for strategic benefit. Using the Resource Based View

(RBV) in this research thus allows for finding differences in stakeholders abilities, available (software

resources) and educational backgrounds, but also differences in the case phases. Another reason why the

RBV is used in this research is that for practitioners in the PSF the RBV is very accessible and applicable

to running a company, especially from a strategic point of view. Although as a theoretic approach it can be

very useful, the RBV is not often applied to cases. One of the reasons for this particular research has been

to do just that, apply the RBV to a case to understand why and how the case developed as it did.

Resource Based View basics

When looking at resources capabilities and tooling, the theory of the Resource Based View (RBV) (Barney,

1991 and Peteraf, 1993) is an important source. Although RBV has been developed extensively throughout

the last twenty years, it remains on the whole very abstract, preferring to focus on capabilities and resources

in general instead of applying these to cases to provide a clear solution. (Kraaijenbrink, Spender and Groen,

2010)



One of the reasons that RBV is considered to be difficult to apply to cases or practice is that the theory in

itself was created to be used on organizations as a whole in an attempt to explain why organizations which

seem identical and operate in the same market do not necessarily have the same performance. RBV

believes that resources play a very dominant role in the ability of firms to compete, Peteraf and Barney

believed that certain resources will allow companies to outperform their rivals. They found that these key

resource can be identified as being Valuable, Rare, In-imitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN-resources).

These characteristics together would create a resource which could provide an organization with the

competitive advantage it seeks.

Although management information systems are a resource for the RBV, it is rarely mentioned as being a

key resource to the business as it is not a resource which directly creates a competitive advantage. What

is mentioned by, for example Kearns and Lederer (2003), is the key role IT departments play in dynamic

capabilities like knowledge sharing within the organization.

Current researchers with - Barney and Peteraf as primary sources - mostly use the RBV to explain why

companies are successful and how their factor markets allow them to gain a competitive advantage. RBV

in its current state rarely closely looks at the ability of resources – especially dependent resources – as

constraining for the (dynamic) capabilities of the firm. An instance in which RBV does look at the processes

of support department is when the process itself has a direct influence on the ability to compete with other

firms.

Although it may seem as if the Resource Based View provides a very limited view, this is not the case! The

Resource Based View has been developed in many different areas. This has for example lead to Prahalad’s

and Hamel’s (1990) arguments that resources themselves are an important part of the strategy; for the

efficient and effective use of resources is key to creating and developing unique resources. Looking closer

within organization or as within Resource Based View theories would say looking in the “low church” of

RBV. RBV seeks to understand the resources within the organization, resources which can be developed,

like capabilities (Dierickx & Cool, 1989), knowledge both explicit and tacit (Grant, 1996) and Dynamic

capabilities in order to allow the organization to adjust more effectively to the context in which the

organization operates (Teece, 1997). Teece in 2000 also wrote “Dynamic capabilities .. reflect an



organization’s ability to achieve new and innovative forms of competitive advantage despite path

dependencies and core rigidities in the firm’s organizational and technical processes”. (Nooteboom, 2006).

Weakness

The resource based view like any theory or perspective has its flaws and critics. Although critics and what

they perceive as the RBV’s flaws have been used to improve the RBV, it is important to take the weakness

of the current knowledge in regards to RBV into consideration for this research.

One of the most important critiques to the RBV is that because the RBV is so easily applied to the

managerial tasks and decisions it is often done so without a clear Strategic Competitive Advantage as a

result. Barney in 2001, as one of the RBV’s original creators even clearly stated that the RBV was never

intended as a managerial prescription like Nelson (1991) and Rumelt (1984) tried, but rather to provide

means to create a theoretical understanding of potential influences of resources on a firms Strategic

Competitive Advantage. Although it can be argued that creating an theoretical understanding of how a firm

can gain a strategic competitive advantage can also be re-engineered into applying that understanding to

create a strategic competitive advantage in a real firm, there are plenty of potential issues and influences

in regards to its sustainable competitive advantage. For example are the resources we consider to be VRIN

in this industry correct, are there influences which can mitigate the importance of the VRIN, why do different

companies operating in the same market make similar decision even though their access to resources is

different, how would different strategies and thus VRINs react to each other? As a result RBV Barney (2001)

argues that RBV – and indeed all strategy theories - should never lead to managerial prescriptions on how

to gain a strategic competitive advantage, it can only aim to understand how organizations have achieved

an competitive advantage.

Another important critique is that of the resource layers within a firm, meaning that having a resource which

in itself creates the strategic competitive advantage is often created by some sort of capability which

creates, sustains and updates that resource. Applying the layered resource concept which the RBV often

does then requires any theorist to make a large amount of different choices in regards to which resource

actually is the VRIN-resource. Even worse, the preference of the researcher is likely to dictate what

resource is the VRIN, for some it will the legal aspect, like patents or ownership, for others it will be the



method to create the VRIN, for others it will be the people working (with) the VRIN, for marketers it is likely

the way the VRIN and its results is placed in the market etc.. Kraaijenbrink (2010)

Management information as a resource

Management information as a resource can be very important, but it is not something that directly creates

a competitive advantage rather it enables the creation and sustainability of VRIN resources which then

enable the organization to gain or keep a competitive advantage. Especially the work of Olszak on the

interaction of business intelligence & analytics and RBV has been helpful in this chapter to provide a clear

theoretical understanding of the influence of management information on the strategic competitive

advantage of firms.

Management information as a resource allows key decisions makers to organize the company in the best

possible way. It by its nature provides data / information for managers on both the internal and external

environment allowing rapid analyzes and insights which allow them to organize the company to what in

their eyes is the best possible fit to the environment. Teece in 1997 defined dynamic capabilities as “the

key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting, integrating, and reconfiguring internal and

external organizational skills, resources, and functional competences to match the requirements of a

changing environment” (Olszak, 2014). Management information does fit in the dynamic capabilities as

described by Teece in 1997, as management information is playing the key role in empowering

management with insights in how to meet and handle the organization’s challenges in gaining a competitive

advantage. Perhaps to emphasize, in a dynamic environment a VRIN resource cannot likely provide a

sustainable competitive advantage, dynamic capabilities act as a buffer or influencers to deal with these

dynamic threats. (Cosik, Shankes, & Maynard, 2012; Eisenhard & Martin, 2000).



2.2 Role of motivation

Motivation plays a very important role in professional service firms, one of the most important reasons for

this is the high level of employee involvement in the core business. In fact very few if any at all services

would be provided if employees would decide to lay down their work. Also professional service firms -

especially those who demand higher rates - also tend to have extraordinary long working hours and skill

demands, requiring employees to be motivated or they would simply not be able to stay long within the

company. The influence of human capital on the professional firms has already been described by Hitt,

Birman and Shimizu in 2000, for this thesis however we wish to focus on the dynamic resource properties

of motivation.

Motivation within science has been approached from different perspectives. In terms of goals and

relationship management by for example the agency theory. Another perspective is that of the kinds of

motivation, for example extrinsic or intrinsic, which focuses more on where motivation originates from.

Although motivation from a Human capital perspective can be considered an entire field of science, this

research will see motivation by itself as a resource and potential source of difference between report

developers.

The agency theory in essence tries to comprehend and explain how a contract or agreement between a

principal and an agent is created. The agency theory assumes bounded rationality, meaning that the

principal is never fully capable of understanding, comprehending, and programming a contract for every

possible situation which may arise as the principal employs the agent. The agency theory explains why

hierarchy works or does not work, it does this by explaining what incentives or punishments motivates

employees (agents) to do what managers (principals) ask them to do. In the core of the agency theory there

is the assumption that agents preferably are not intrinsically motivated to work and are extrinsically

motivated. (Eisenhardt 1989)

The Agency theory has often been used in order to explain the issues surrounding contracts and incentives,

or why any kind of agent would do something for the principal. Agency theory has been criticized, as being

dehumanizing at times, seeing both principals and agents and calculative entities who are only moved by

extrinsic motivation (Perrow 1986). This places the principal (leaders, shareholders or even the firm as



entity) and the agent in opposing corner, each attempting to represent their personal interests. However as

long as there seems to be a deviation from the best route for the firm in development or processes because

of reasons that cannot be explained by the transaction cost theory or the RBV; the Agency theory may be

a good indication of what is going on. As such, theoretical approaches like that of Eisenhardt in 1989 and

later Wiseman (2012), indicate that the Agency theory can be applicable at more levels in the organizational

hierarchy. Making the agency theory a theory, which much like the RBV, can explain the choices and

directions on multiple levels in the organization, but unlike the RBV explains how personnel goals, rather

than environmental influences, affect the effectiveness of processes and potentially the ability to create a

competitive advantage.

Motivation is created within individuals, in which often the environment or the gains of the working

environment are aligned with the individual’s needs or sense of accomplishments. What these needs are

and how they can best be described is done by many perspective, however because of the wealth of

knowledge available in this research we will focus on two generalized terms for identifying motivation drivers

namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation finds its origins in the personnel drive of individuals to overcome challenges, become

better or be competitive. The enjoyment of the action and tackling a challenge itself is the key driver rather

than the reward which may be achieved by finalizing the assignment. Extrinsic motivation is the complete

opposite, individuals are motivated by the potential reward gained by finalizing the assignment or achieving

something. Extrinsic motivation can be seen as the motivation which comes from outside of the individual,

if the individual is acting conform externally decided upon goals he or she may receive rewards. Where

things get tricky is when the environment starts creating culture which influences the motivation of

individuals, in the end the key in these kinds of situations is figuring out what the key motivator is, which is

a lot more difficult than it seems as the motivation may come from a sub consciousness level.

When the resource based view was first introduced by Barney Peteraf and others, a different field was also

in full development, the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM). SHRM is older than RBV but

has definitely benefitted from its development, because RBV moved away from focusing strategy based

upon external factors and more to the internal resources to create a competitive advantage (Hoskisson,



Hitt, Wan & Yiu, 1999), which obviously was to a benefit of both the development and interest in SHRM

(Snell, Shadur & Wright, 2001). One of the trends that can be seen by the conversion of these two fields of

science is that Human Resources has been propelled into the interest of both academics and the

businesses as a resource which can create competitive advantage (Barney and Wright, 1998). Examples

of how SHRM and the RBV have converged can be seen in theories of leadership (Finkelstein & Hambrick,

1996), dynamic capabilities (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Teece, Pisano & Schuen, 1997) and knowledge

(Grant, 1996, Leibeskind, 1996).

What is interesting is that soon after the two fields started interacting one of the conclusions which was

found was that HR practices could never be a source of sustainable competitive advantage because they

are relatively easy to copy (Wright et al., 1994). Rather in order to create a competitive advantage the

human capital pool of the organization needs to have both a high level of skill and willingness to exhibit

productive behavior (Wright, Dunford, Snell, 2001).



2.3 Management information

Management information plays a vital role in the research case, as the lack of management information

creates the need and urgency for development of this strategic resource. Management information is very

important to high level management to make (strategic) decisions, therefore when management information

is absent like in the case, high level management tends to be willing to empower rapid change and

development with less regards for the costs, which is exactly what happened and provided this research

with a case. This chapter will focus on the role of management information within a Professional Service

firm and within the case, although it is often viewed from a theoretical perspective, management information

theories in this thesis are considered to be a means to understand the case and not a theory which can be

extended to answer the research question or create the structure or new perspective for the RBV.

Management information like the term suggests, focuses on providing management with information. Often

management information is provided by so called business intelligence tools (also known as BI tools). The

key to reporting is considered to be turning data into information / business intelligence, which is then used

by decision makers to make strategic decisions. In the end the creation of information can be done either

by changing data or adding knowledge to it or by providing representations of data which through their

representation or combination allow its viewers to rapidly see patterns and thus immediately create

conclusions on what actions to (not) take.

The data which feeds the creation of management information comes – especially in the larger firms – from

ERP- systems (Enterprise Resource Planning). ERP-systems are software packages which specialize in

handling and storing data which represents transactions, both within and with other firms / entities (Klaus,

Rosemann and Gable, 2000). Implementations or changes to the ERP system directly influence the

available data and the information systems which are linked to that data. As a result major changes to ERP

systems can completely change the available data and management information and spark major

discussions in regards to reporting, management information and all strategic issues that is followed by

them. (Boonstra, 2006)

Business intelligence - a term which replaced decision support executive information systems and

management information systems (Thomsen, 2003) - has always been about creating a better



understanding of the environment regardless of whether or not this is the internal or external environment.

This better understanding is created by organizing the chaos of data which is provided by the organization

and its external environment. As a result Business intelligence is often considered to be about getting data

in and getting data out in the form of clear overviews. (Watson and Wixom 2007)

Business intelligence as a field of science has already started the creation of process steps and

requirements in order to allow implementation of business intelligence systems (BI). Olszak and Ziemba

(2007) have for example provided a list of requirements for both the implementation and proper use of BI

systems. They recognize two stages namely the building of BI and the consumption of BI systems. In order

to build a BI system the organization requires to have a culture in the perspective of working with information

and information technologies, especially in relation to: information needs, cooperation between users and

IT support, the willingness to share information, ability to turn data into information.



2.4 Professional service firms

Professional Service firms are organizations which unlike classic organization gain their competitive

advantage purely through the quality of their intangible asset Human Capital. This is different from most

other organization kinds because most organizations are to one degree or another dependent on tangible

assets like the raw materials for their products for example (Hitt, Bierman, Shimizu and Kochhar, 2001).

Because the case takes place in a professional service firm (PSF) the following literature will provide insight

in how resources affect the PSF and how strategy is applied by most PSFs.

Professional Service Firms like audit and consultancy (like in the case) rely heavily on the resource human

capital, in fact it is their core business to provide professionals to other firms who then provide services.

Although human resources has long been argued as a critical resource to firms the necessity for

professional service firms to invest in their employees is far bigger than for any other kind of organization

(Pfeffer, 1994). The influence of human resources can be seen (much like the resource management

information) as a dynamic resource as it influences multiple essential parts of the company. The Human

resource is also a resource which can be seen in layers, on a deeper level with attributed like knowledge

management, education, experience, skillsets and of course motivation.

Professional Service firms rely heavily on Human capital in order to provide both the service but also in

order to allow the firm to have credentials and thus approach specific niches / areas of the market. As such

professional service firms have - when it comes to strategy and gaining competitive advantage - a very

distinct focus on Human capital and building skillsets and credentials.

In general there are two possible focus area for increasing market share or gaining a competitive advantage

for a PSF: increasing market exposure / penetration, or increasing skills and acquiring their credentials.

Keep in mind that professional service are either providing solutions or development for companies, this in

practice means that they rely heavily on strong customer relations and their skills to help those potential

customers. This in turn means that strategy for a PSF is often a matter of gaining access to new customers

or providing customers with new developments or solutions.



Increasing market share allows a professional service firm to increase its potential customers, and increase

exposure to potential opportunities. The increase of market exposure can be done in several ways,

increasing presence, share knowledge and creating a network with focus group (which is why PSFs often

organize conferences), invest in employees with market exposure, create alliances, and so on. In the end

the market exposure will only allow a PSF to gain customers and engagements if the reputation and

credentials are there. As a result, most Professional Service Firms, focus largely on the acquisition of skills

and credentials.

Increasing skills and acquiring credentials can be done in two ways either by actively investing in employees

already in the firm, or by buying both skills and credentials through acquisition of employees or groups /

firms.

Increasing skill with current employees is often only done when the allocation of those employees makes

sense, for example if employees already are active in a growth market and can be managed to high

productivity and margins they are not likely allocated. The investment in employees to acquire skills is often

done when the skills to be acquired are complementary to already existing skills, or when allocation is

considered to be to a far better alternative to a current unprofitable endeavor. Investment in skills are also

not taken lightly by most professional service firms, not only because skill training costs time and money

but also this time cannot be used for productive work. The cost of time is also the reason why investments

in skills is more often done on the junior members of the PSF than on senior member level who can be sold

for higher hourly rates.

Acquisition of skill and credentials is done on both the individual level and on group level. On an individual

level this is mostly done by recruiting an experienced manager who supplies the firm with the credential

and experience, but who can also lead newly recruited consultant in acquiring new skillsets. Sometimes

when recruiting is done with a strategic plan it is possible to not only recruit an experienced manager but

also have him or her recruit former colleagues who would like to continue working with / for the manager.

From a firm point of view acquiring skills and credentials can also be done by taking over small specialized

firms, or creating alliances, joint ventures or even combining skills by creating a network organization. This

is in any ways following the same trends we are seeing in other kinds of firms, where the risks and costs



are reduced by using a smaller organization and supplementing that organization via a trusted network, this

also reduces potential profit as this is now shared among the individual participants in the network.


18 3 Data and method

3. Data and method

The exploratory nature of this thesis makes it a qualitative research, because this research explores a

phenomenon experienced and seen by practitioners. The research of an experience or phenomenon also

makes it a case study. One of the characteristics of the case study is that it allows proper research into how

and why certain phenomenon happen, in effect the case study allows the researcher to answer both why

and how something has taken place (Yin, 2003). Case studies are the most appropriate research methods

when there is a need to cover or explain the contextual elements of the phenomenon under study, or when

the boundaries of phenomenon and the contexts is unclear. (Baxter and Jack, 2008)

Research question

This research hopes to understand the role played by motivation in professional service firms in regards to

(indirectly) increasing its competitive advantage. Competitive advantage will be looked at from a strategy

point of view using the Resource Based View, both because of its applicability to the strategic behavior of

Professional Service firms and because it allows categorizations of software and capabilities (including

motivation) in a layered fashion. To understand the role motivation could play within a professional service

firm in regards to its strategic development of dynamic or strategic resources, this research aims to answer

the following question.

What role does motivation play within the development of (dynamic) capabilities of a professional

service firm?

The answers that is to be expected is that the younger and yet to proof themselves group of developers in

the consultancy are likely more motivated in their effort to gain skills and make a difference. The reason for

this expectation has both to do with the need for young professionals to establish themselves and get

acknowledgement, another important influence is that the stability of the regular work activities of each of

the developers will be a major influence. Support departments for example are by nature less development

and change driven than for example the consultants whose core activities are to create change. It is

however likely that the truth behind both the lack of development of the Support developers and the



willingness of the consultants to develop their own organization maybe more complex then at this point can

be foreseen.

Another expectation is that to all developers the desires of the partners within the professional service firm

will be key in their motivation. Not only because the partners are the primary shareholders of the firm but

also because they are in effect both the top managers of the core processes and the shareholders, allowing

them to throw a lot of political influence around. This political influence influences the career path of

consultants, but it also determines the strategy of the PSF in regard to reorganizations of support indirectly.

Although the managerial / political power of the partner is likely going to be important, part of me hopes that

the influence of HR theories is larger than the managerial power of the partners. Meaning that the research

will be able to find clear evidence of the influence of the Agency theory, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

and perhaps other theoretical concepts which might come up along the way.

A potential risk for this thesis is that because the thesis is looking at motivation which is human resource

influence on the project, there will be other human resource influence which will affect the outcome of the

project more than in a group of professionals should be expected. Influences like political alliances,

friendships or annoyances among important stakeholders.

Hypothesis

The main research question is founded based upon a larger believe that in a more service driven economy,

which currently can only exist by knowledge and execution of services by human resources or their designs,

the ability of an organization to motivate its employees can be described as a VRIN resource. Even if

motivation is a VRIN resource, a firm would never have a sustainable competitive advantage by just keeping

employees motivated, it needs more capabilities, some dynamic, sometimes resources. Perhaps more

interesting is that these resources need to be different for different areas of the organization, innovation for

example is by no means for all organization or organization parts a capability which will lead to a sustainable

competitive advantage. This was also mentioned in the reaction of Barney in 2001 to critique of Priem and

Butler (2001), as Barney mentions that the RBV needs to be extended in order to truly create an

understanding of what creates a sustainable competitive advantage. However the RBV itself is a good

perspective to consider and organize processes but there is a need to involve other theories in order to



understand how specific resources need to be organized and handled. From that perspective each major

department and processes can be seen as having an optimal configuration of resources which are handled

in an optimal fashion.

One of the key modules for departments and major processes is the resource human capital and thus this

thesis set out in to see if it can show how the motivation of human resources can influence the organization

and its ability to sustainable competitive. Therefore the hypothesis which this thesis will attempt to prove or

disprove the following research question:

“Motivation as a dynamic capability has become key to sustainable competitive advantage for any

organization which relies on human resources in their core activities.”

In order to test this hypothesis this research will follow the conceptual model shown below (figure 3,1). The

goal of the research is to figure out how motivation influences the developers as they create management

information for the high level business manager of the professional service firm. In order to do so within the

framework of the Resource Based View it is necessary to home in on dynamic capability of motivation first

by understanding the other resources. This will be done by looking at the available resources and their

capabilities both in the beginning of the case and the progress of each developers group during the case.

Then the dynamic capability of motivation and its effect can be researched, by looking at the outcome of

development, cooperation in development and cooperation or willingness to cooperate between the

departments in terms of sharing resources and requesting help. Last but not least this thesis recognizes

that on a deeper level then the RBV is normally willing to go there are specialized fields of science which

fuel the motivation of individual employees and the policies that departments create.



Figure 3,1

Sub questions.

The sub questions are established to do two things, first of all they will organize the case descriptions in

such a way that it becomes clear how the resources and capabilities of each group of developers changed

during the case. Secondly the case will be examined by looking at the underlying motivational drivers which

will fuel both motivation and behaviors, this will be done by looking at the behaviors but also by taking a

closer look at the motivational drivers the developers perceive. The resulting creation of management

information - which is the subject of the case - is part of the dynamic capabilities which allow the PSF to be

competitive over time, is the final goal of strategy. However this is a result of motivation in collaboration

with other resources and capabilities, the goal of this thesis is to understand motivation and its role as a

dynamic capability in regards to the strategic proficiency of the firm.

The conceptual model and its cooperation between theories and the RBV will act as a guide for this thesis.

This means that within the case of development of management reporting the first goal is to determine what

skills and resources are available to the different stakeholders and how the skills and resources available

to the developers will develop, this will follow the perspective of the RBV. Once that has been determined

the motivation and cooperation can be looked at more closely looking at more specific field of science.



The first step is to organize the findings of the research in a practical representation events which allow the

reader to not only understand the case, but to understand the case in a way that allows the reader to

understand why developers had different results. The second step is turn the case describing parts of the

case into theoretical explanations and implications for the RBV in regards to motivation.

The case describing sub questions are:

What resources and capabilities had each of the developers to create the management information?

To what extent did each group of developers commit to the creation of the strategic resource?

What was the result of each group of the developers?

How did the different stakeholders work together?

How is motivation different for each stakeholder group?

The sub questions in regards to the theoretical explanation and implication are:

What role does motivation play in strategy of professional firms?

How could this knowledge be relevant for the Resource Based View?

How could this knowledge be applied to other cases and by practitioners?

Because this thesis focuses on the dynamic capability of motivation by studying the development of another

dynamic capability (management information), the thesis also answers the question on how dynamic

capabilities help firms to gain a competitive advantage through innovation / development. A question which

according to amongst others Nooteboom (2005) has not been addressed sufficiently, this thesis will at least

show how the lack of dynamic capabilities will reduce the competitive ability of a firm.

Although not the initial goal of this thesis it became clear that in order to perform a case study on a dynamic

capability which can be researched from a lot of other scientific perspectives required me to consider how

to use these other fields of science in cooperation with the RBV. Hopefully an interesting side effect could

be that the conceptual model created in the hypothesis can be developed into a strong cooperative structure

of theories, which at one point can allow theorists and practitioners to create a more specific and explicit

understanding of what it takes to be sustainable competitive.



Data acquisition

Data acquisition in the case research will be done by following different methods. First of all primary

stakeholders will be interviewed in order to understand their position and motivation in the development

process. Initially the primary stakeholders consisted out of the managers (6) and the developer so reporting

department (7), interviews with the business developers (7) were done later and because of progressive

insight were less formal. The initial interviews will be recorded and written. After that the case will be

monitored based upon progress found in both observations in meetings and short interview with developers

and business unit managers who would be using the reports. Figure 3,2 (page 24) shows both the interviews

and meetings taken into account

The process of developing management information within the professional service firm is a continuous

process. For this research this has meant that the case in terms of time had to be limited. Originally the

research was limited to a period 1,5 year, during which period the consultancy firm developed its initially

required management information. The timing of this case research is essential as at the time the PSF in

the case implemented a new ERP-system, which in terms of management information meant that

everything had to be redeveloped using a new data model and software with new possibilities and

limitations.

Interviews will be conducted in order to acquire information into why each stakeholder group has performed

differently and whether or not this difference in performance is caused by difference in resources and

capabilities or potentially could have different causes like motivation. Interviews will be conducted in

confidentiality, just like the professional service firm will not be mentioned. The interviews with employees

of each group will be confidential both to protect the employees and to allow the employees to be forthright

without hesitation in regards to the findings or reactions to their opinions.

The interviews will be semi structured, each interviewee will know the subject is in regards to management

information development, however the specific nature of motivation will not be named. Rather the interviews

will be held in order to find out how management information development efforts are structured in the

professional service firm, or at least that is the introduction. By doing this we can create both a clear



overview of the priorities of developers and create an overview of the available resources and capabilities

without raising presumptions.

The interview will be semi-structured which in practice meant that throughout the interviews a list of

numbered subjects was always present. Allowing to mark whether or not a subject has been mentioned but

also using the number in the notes and answers of the interviewee to mark subjects. The list of subject can

be found in the appendix. The subjects were grouped and numbered in a way which allowed for rather

simple numbering during the interview, and more detailed numbering afterwards, which considerably

speeded up the processing of the interviews. The interview protocol / subjects can be found in the appendix.

The interviews will follow the chronological line in which development by different stakeholder groups

incurred. By doing so it is most likely that the perspectives of each stakeholder group, its differences and

its influence on the case will be best understood. The interviews will focus on the different limitations and

output performance of development of management information in order to understand how and why

performance differences by each stakeholders group were created. Next to interviews the research uses

observations from within meetings and reviews the process continuously with its stakeholders to understand

their position and motivation within the process. In total the following amounts of interviews and meetings

were taken into account (figure 3,2).

Figure 3,2

In terms of style and reporting method this thesis will be modelled after the stakeholder analysis during an

ERP implementation written by Boonstra in 2006. Although Boonstra was researching the impact and

influence of stakeholders on a different subject, rather than a specific influence on each of the stakeholders

in a development process, the logical sequence and style of writing should provide the structure that allows

for a reader-friendly overview of what has happened.

Interviews Meetings

Support developers 6 4

Managers 7 1

Consultants 7 5

Support developers / Managers N/A 3

Managers / Consultants N/A 7

Support developers / IT / Managers / Consultants N/A 1



3.1 Case environment

The case this thesis will use to research, is the case of development of management information within a

professional service firm. This professional service firm is one of the larger firms within the Netherlands and

has a global presence, making it within the focus area of accounting one of the larger accounting firms in

the world. Next to accounting this professional service firm also provides management consultancy, risk

consultancy and fiscal advise. This professional service firms was chosen, because not only it had access

to different professionals capable of developing management information, the firm itself was fully

cooperative, which in case of these kind of strategic resources is not a given.

The research setup recognizes three different groups and performance periods, during each period a

different group was active as developer. These developers were part of departments or specific sub-

departments, in order to protect identities of individuals this thesis will refer to the developer by naming their

group / department or sub-department. Their relative position in the organization and in regards to each

other is shown in figure 3,3.

Figure 3,3

The first group attempting to create reporting development was the Finance support department. This group

initiated report development directly after the implementation of the ERP system and had full access to the

data and influence on the way the data was organized. The primary report developers within the finance

department were the professionals part of the Reporting sub-department. The time and resources of this



department are fully focused on maintaining data flows (including reports) and developing reports for the

board of directors of the PSFs and its major business units (Advisory and Audit). The individuals in this

supportive reporting department are highly trained in reporting (development) and data modelling, making

them the ideal candidate for development of the strategic resource of management reports.

The second group is formed by the high level managers and their technical support. Each of the Business

Units in the PSF have very capable high level managers in charge who are both experienced and

(financially) enabled experts and have support of experienced and capable technical experts. This group

started developing their own reports when the financial Reporting was unable to meet their criteria of what

reports should be.

The third and last group which was part of the development process of management information reports

were the consultants of IT management consulting, who were part of the Advisory Business units of the

PSF. Normally these consultants help clients with their IT challenges including reporting. Reporting itself is

not necessary for all the involved consultants their core activity, nor are they knowledgeable about the data

modelling of the PSF. The consultants are however experienced solution providers and creators in regards

to both IT and reporting.

Within the case there are multiple stakeholders, each with their own characteristics, responsibilities and

priorities. The most important stakeholder to the case are the high level managers of the PSF, they are

responsible for making strategic decisions in regards to strategy and support partners in their operational

decisions in regards to business. These managers as a result require information in the form of

management information and are thus the primary pushers for better reports. These managers set the

criteria for the reports but also are able to provide facilitating political power and budget for their

development.

A second major stakeholder in the case are the members of support developers department. This

department has the responsibility to create and guard all the data access authorization and to a very large

degree is the only stakeholder group who is responsible for reporting. Although this group in terms of

authorizations and interaction with the system developers and the data modelers has the most power over

data and reporting they are in terms of hierarchy below the high level managers. This group of support



professionals have the most experience in regards to reporting and the data model of the PSF. Their focus

on reporting and thus management information also makes them the most likely candidate to keep the

reports that are to be developed operational once they have become available.

Other relative minor stakeholders are the IT department, business consultants and their partners. The IT

departments role is one of facilitating the development by arranging access to resources and ensuring all

parties understand the capabilities of the involved resources. Business consultants and their partners play

a larger role in this case as the consultants actively participates at one point. Keep in mind that the biggest

priority for the business stakeholders in general is to create revenue for the PSF and not to solve internal

management issues. This in practice means that whenever consultants from the business are focusing on

internal projects their activities create double the costs, not only the costs of the consultant but also the lack

of revenue created because of the consultant’s allocation to internal projects. As a result the most junior

consultants are usually used on internal projects, not only because it is considered a save area to practice

and improve their skills, but primarily because of the costs involved. The consultants in the case, are also

juniors, or sometimes assistant managers.

What is important to note is that within the current system of the PSF there are two kinds of reporting, that

of the monthly financial data and that of current operations. The data for the monthly financial data is easily

accessible and is primarily used by the Board of the Directors, while the data used by operational high level

management is relatively difficult to acquire. One of the reasons this operational data is difficult to acquire

by for example the sheer amount and different layers of data, higher complexity, and time dependent

requirements. The Board of Directors is not mentioned as a stakeholders because their reports have been

developed and created little challenge.


28 4 Case description

4. Case description

In the case description the sub questions are used as a framework to describe the major aspects which are

likely to influence the case. The framework first focuses on the description and explanation of what happens

in the case and then continues to the theoretical perspective and scientific meaning of the case.

The sub questions allow to describe both the practical and theoretical matters surrounding the case. The

first part with its case observations and finding creates the understanding needed to explain why the case

developed the way it did, providing both an understanding of what activities took place and why. While the

second and theoretical perspective provides meaning and categorizes the development in the case in a

way that allows the reader to understand and place it within a theoretical framework. Together the case

description should not only allow, for understanding of the case in both perspectives, but it should also

allow the reader to bridge the gap between theory and practice in order to apply the understanding to their

own environment.

Each sub question with a practical perspective ends with an overview on how each group of developers

functioned in regards to the sub question, with “++” being the top score and “- - “ being the lowest possible

score. Throughout the case three developers are mentioned: the developers of support developers, the

managers of the board of directors together with their direct subordinates, and last the consultants.



4.1 The case in practice

Resources and capabilities of the developers

The resources and capabilities of the developers involved allow for an overview on how developers

themselves started out and progressed during the case from the perspective of the resource based view.

Although this chapter approaches the case from a practical side, the available and / or acquired resources

and capabilities should still give a pretty good idea on the extent to which the different developer groups

were suited to develop the management reporting of the PSF in the first place. While the development in

terms of skills and acquisition of resources for each developer group is an indication of their willingness to

learn and thus is also an indication of motivation. This chapter answers the following question:

What resources and capabilities had each of the developers to create the management information?

This question is important as available resources and capabilities in the end are hugely responsible for

development. The resources and capabilities can be described at different moments, by doing so the

development of capabilities and acquisitions of resources become visible. Capabilities will be described

along the following categories, education level, experience, focus areas in regular work, and capabilities

acquired during the case.

The support developers are at the start of the case by far the most experienced and specialized group of

developers in terms of management information within the PSF. From an educational point of view most of

these developers started out at the level of university of applied sciences, but have trained and sometimes

finished academic education during their professional lives. The capabilities of these developers have not

changed significantly throughout the case, although like all the other developers there was a change in

regard to with which software they would have to work with, this was a change that all developers had to

go through.

In terms of resources the developers of Support developers hold all the strings, all the reporting facilities

are arranged through support developers, this means software, authorizations and access to data goes

through this department. They are also closely connected to the data model and all software in regard to



data extractions, they represent the knowledgebase in this regards and are in close cooperation with the

global IT management.

The second group of developers are the managers of the boards of directors from the business units. These

managers are experienced consultants and have moved away from working in the core operations to

guiding and supporting the core operations in terms of management. Among their tasks are the creation of

budget and control of budgets for the departments, deciding on investments and supporting the

departments in their management, ensuring that partner in the core business can focus on sales and

operations. Their skillsets are often very different and depending on the background in which they were

working in the operations. However the manager involved in this case had a background in performance

improvement, human resource management, Finance and major reorganization projects. In terms of

education the managers had a slightly more educated starting point in the sense that each of them studied

at the university rather than universities of applied sciences. However none of them studied specifically in

Information Technologies or management reporting, their skills in this area were acquired purely through

experience. This group of developers did not became reporting developers by choice but rather because

of a need for information they started making excel sheets which turned data into information. In this process

they became both used to working with Excel and created a basic understanding of the data model they

required to fill their basic information needs. During their professional lives management have trained

mostly in regards to leadership financial management and change projects.

The last group of developers are the business consultants, this group is in terms of capabilities perhaps the

least experienced. The business consultants especially, in this case, are young professional and mostly

consist of junior consultants. The consultants in general are academics and usually have finished a Master

of Science as well, although not necessary with a focus point on management information. The consultants

in their everyday work are IT consultants with a focus on major ERP systems or in some case Business

Information and Analytics tools. Being young professionals they are not as experienced as the other groups

of developers and have on average only 1 to 2 years of working experience. They are not familiar with the

data model of the PSF, but in some case are familiar with the ERP tool used by the PSF. The primary

capability they have is they are used to relative short projects in which they need to acquire information on



a company and work with the tools they have available. They are in other words used to adjusting to a new

situations and solving issues in IT systems or issues related to IT like management information

For the professional service firm the Support developers consultants are the cheapest to use in internal

improvement projects, followed by the business consultants and last the managers. The business

consultants may be cheaper in terms of costs than Support developers, but any time invested in internal

projects by them also reduces revenue, creating a large cost for the PSF.

The table 4,1,1 shows how each developers group was suited for development of management information

based upon their starting characteristics. It is important to note that all the columns are in focusing on the

expertise in regards to the specific PSF, so for example although the consultants may have some

experience with management information, they have so far not had anything to do with the management

information of the PSF. Also “Used to development” column is an indication of the extent to which the

developers are used to developing management information, managers of the business units for example

have large amounts of experience in change management, but are inexperienced in the creation of

managed information, using for example BI tools or templates.

Table 4,1,1

During the case the capabilities and resources available to each of the developers changed, not only

because some of the developers became involved at a later stage, but also because there was a need to

adjust their skillset to the available resources. (table 4,1,2 shows the capabilities at the end of the case and

support the texts below)

Support developers became less and less involved during the case, they to a certain degree felt that they

weren’t trusted, and to a certain degree felt that all considering that if the business wants to invest in their

own reports that is fine. The support developer did maintain control on all resources, but in terms of

development were focusing on maintaining the current data flows and stabilize the existing available

Suited for

development Resources Capabilities

Management

reporting expertise

Used to

development Average

Support developers ++ ++ ++ + ++

Managers = - + = =

Consultants - + = ++ =



information systems. This meant that in terms of capabilities they were falling behind on the consultants

and they also lost connection to the managers in the business which lead to a lesser understanding of

business requirements of management information for the business units.

The managers of the business units became slightly more experienced in the development of management

information as they learned the limits of the PSF data models and reporting abilities.

The consultants adjusted to the PSF resources and capabilities the most, not only did this adjustment lead

to a higher score, but their experience from the consultancy activities allowed them to add additional

capabilities to the applicable skillset. In terms of resources the consultants were allowed access to nearly

all resource which delivered data and BI tools available to the PSF. The reason they do not have the “++”

sign is that at the end of the case it turned out that the support developers and IT-department had kept one

essential resource away from the business developers.

Table 4,1,2

Suited for

development at the

end of case. Resources Capabilities

Management

reporting expertise

Used to

development Average

Support developers ++ + - - =

Managers = = + + +

Consultants + ++ ++ ++ ++



Commitment to the project

The reason commitment is important is that it explains why effort was (not) put in the project of developing

the management information. In order to explain commitment this thesis will describe the influences on the

time invested in the project, purely by capabilities of the influence and the formal set priorities. A good

indication of these priorities and influences are agreements made in meetings and KPI’s. this chapter

answers the following sub-question:

To what extent did each group of developers commit to the creation of the strategic resource?

Support developers’ primary goal is to keep the general reporting (pull reporting) from the ERP-system up

and running and maintain its authorization scheme, their second priority is to supply the board of directors

with management reports and last but not least they need to support the business both in specific inquiries

on data but also in reporting. These priorities are set by the overall board of directors, however the

department itself together with an attached supervising business controller advice on the reporting

strategies of support, in other words support developers specialists advice the board of directors what the

support developers specialists should be doing. Although this may sound as something bound to go wrong

it is very important for two reasons, first of all in a partner organization or PSF there is a risk that each

partner (often financial or strategic experts themselves) have their own specific information demands,

secondly the amount of political and social pressure created by the business partners can be overwhelming

and thus the board of directors act as a (political) buffer. An important political issue that influence support

developers is that within the PSF there is always tension between the different major business units, this

tension is most felt on the highest level namely accounting and advisory. The controller which supervises

the support developers specialist is the controller for accountancy.

The managers of the board of directors of the business units are in terms of priorities quite clear, the

management information is their highest priority as it is part of their support to the partners. That being said

the resources they are most willing to use to acquire their management information is time and political

influence. Time in regards to their own time or time of those who have been appointed as supporting for

their efforts. Political influence is for example used in regard to temporary acquiring business consultants

from the business, this is done by acquiring goodwill of the partners involved but also because it helps



junior consultants to know influential people in the board of directors of their business units. When using

different resources like for example budget it reduces the profit, which in the PSF is directly linked to the

income of the business partners, which obviously does not create a large amount of goodwill.

The business consultants primary priority is to be productive and in time as they reach higher ranks to sell

projects, in other words to create revenue for the PSF. Their second priority is to learn and improve their

skills in order to become more valuable for the PSF and thus become essential for parts of the revenue.

Their third priority is to raise their profile and create awareness of their skills, this is done not only to progress

in the organization but also because (especially) as a junior consultants you need to have supporting

managers who want to work with you on their projects in order to gain productivity and gain approval to

gain rank. It is important to understand that there are a lot of influences on the career of juniors, because

of this they are also vulnerable for social and political pressure especially in the beginning of their careers.

During the project the influence and time invested of the different developers changed. Support developers

became less and less involved and went from developing and testing all reporting facilities during the

implementation to the absolute minimum which is maintaining data flows for existing report and changing

authorizations of the developers. Support developers were also responsible for answering or making sure

questions of the business were answered in regards to the system or its data.

Managers of the board of directors in the beginning of the project were trying to figure out what kind of

support they were going to receive in order to create their specific reports. When after four months after the

ERP implementation it became apparent that there were no results or reports that filled their specific

operational management information needs, the manager of board of directors of business units started

developing their own reports. This was done for two reasons, first of all to fulfil their own information need,

but second also to supply business operational leaders with operational management information which

they would otherwise acquire by allocating resources away from the core business. In practice the

motivation of the managers of the board of directors decided that if support was not supporting the

information need for the core process of the PSF they would have to take responsibility for the development.

As a result after the initial four months after ERP implementation the managers of the board of directors



became the leading developers and they remained on the long run the most involved in the creation and

maintaining of management information by setting the requirements and challenging the consultants.

The consultants of the business were involved in the implementation of the ERP system but had absolutely

no involvement in the initial four months of reporting development. Support developers and support were

unable to call upon their expertise in the field of management reporting as this would take the consultants

away from their core activities and cost the PSF a lot of money. Also support developers were hesitant to

ask assistance of the business both for political reasons and because their involvement often meant that

support developers had to change the way they worked by acquiring new knowledge or changing their

activities. The consultants in the business on the other hand were not involved initially for other reasons as

well. Each consultant belongs to a department who are judged by their productive hours and income they

generate, these KPI’s are very important to them and performing these internal development projects are

not supported by these KPI’s. As a result the consultants are often involved in a sort of hit and run fashion,

when an issue or the need for a new report was raised the consultants put in a lot of effort in a short time

to get the job done and then focused on their core activities again.

The IT-department is also mentioned in the table as the IT-department is supporting the support developers

in the maintenance of authorizations, data flows and resource managements. The IT-department was often

called upon to provide indications of technical possibilities of resources. Also IT much like the support

developers were often involved or asked their opinions or technical solutions but then came back with efforts

or answers which the business considered unacceptable. One of the things that in practice often happened

was that while the business was looking for the optimal solution of management information and then

afterwards improved efficiency of its operation, the support departments worked the other way around first

looking at capabilities and capacity of current operations and the possibilities within those limits to develop

additional management information.

The following two tables (table 4,1,3 and table 4,1,4) indicate the commitment of the developers group

based upon their policies and regular activities and then based upon what happened in practice. The

column on personal benefits was created because the performance of individuals in regards to projects is

very important as well, but is also something which is under high influence of political powers.



table 4,1,3

During the project the influence on the consultants was the most interesting. Consultants often considered

the project to be annoying, not because of the project itself, but because of the issues it caused for their

time management. What happened was that the managers of the business units started treating them as

champions on the topic, which was interesting for them personally in the long run, but at the same time the

political pressure of partners to remain productive became larger and larger. Causing the consultants to

feel as if they were caught between a rock and a hard place, this was also a primary reason for the

annoyance of the consultants with the support developers as the consultants felt they were receiving no

support and were doing the work of the support developers.

The support departments however found their situation changing completely during the case, not only did

it became apparent that the business was unhappy with their commitment, a reorganization of the support

departments was announced. This was to be the third reorganization in the course of 4 years, leaving most

of the departments with halve of their original staff and entire groups or staff levels being removed. The

paradox of the situation is that if the business (partners of the business are the driving force behind the

reorganizations) was happy with their commitment there would likely not be a reorganization. What is

interesting as well is that the support departments in unison did less rather than more to ensure they were

required to stay, which resulted in even more support from the business to reorganize the support

departments.

table 4,1,4

Commitment based

upon policies. KPI's Politics Personal Benefit Average

Support developers ++ + + +

Managers + ++ ++ ++

Consultants + + + +

IT-Department - = = =

Commitment during

the project KPI's Politics Personal Benefit

Time spend on

development Average

Support developers = = ++ = =

Managers ++ ++ ++ + ++

Consultants = - ++ ++ +

IT-Department - = - -- =



Results of development

The result of the development of each group is important to create an understanding of the outcome of the

efforts of each group in order to understand their impact on the organization. Regardless of the source of

the outcome, without results which benefit the organization there is no reason to invest in any resource or

aspect of the organization from a business point of view. The outcome of development efforts is also

important in regards to future development projects, because the organization and its managers are unlikely

to invest in a group of developers which have yet to prove themselves. This chapter answers the following

sub-question:

What was the result of each group of the developers?

The support developers did not support any of the management information reporting of the Advisory

business units, some but only little of the information needs of Audit and most of the information requests

of the general board of directors. Because the support developers department is not just responsible for

the management information but also for (among other activities) the running of reports they soon felt that

the creation of more periodic management reports would cause too much work pressure on them during

period closings. In practice this lead to a reduction of any developing efforts from their side after the first

four months. This opinion was not shared by the other developer groups, particularly because both period

closing processes were not made more efficient either and management information in the business was

simply not available causing the core operations management to fly blind.

Management of the board of directors of the business units did develop reports and their efforts lead to the

development of the final management information reports, although mostly through acquisition of business

consultants. The managers arranged for resources to develop and run the reports and applied political

pressure to prevent partners and individual departments from running reports, which for the PSF is a poitive

result as this allowed for focus on the core processes and a reduction of hidden costs in the business.

During development the managers made sure that the information needs of all departments were

consolidated to a single report requirement which the consultants then developed



The consultants created most of the reporting developments. Although in essence they created the

technical solutions for the requests of the managers of the business units, they were essential in the creation

of the reports. It is also important to note, that although the consultants realized the management reports,

they were from a resource perspective not good enough to create the reports at the beginning of the project.

However by acquiring new skills and applying data modeling and programming skills from their own different

fields to a relative low-tech solution in terms of resources, they managed to provide the reports which were

needed as shown in table 4,1,5.

table 4,1,5

Results of

development Reports developed Technical strength

Technical

management Average

Support developers - - - -

Managers = + + +

Consultants ++ + ++ ++

IT-Department - - - -



Cooperation between the different stakeholders

Cooperation across departments can be tricky, especially when departments have different priorities and

KPI’s. Although cooperation is often something that is created between individuals, organizations have a

profound impact on the motivation to cooperate, through KPI’s, work pressure, reward systems and culture

development. The amount of cooperation and whether or not this cooperation leads to results and mutual

appreciation can thus be a very good indication of motivation with employees.

How did the different stakeholders work together?

Support developers started as the primary project owner / developer but throughout the project were less

and less involved. Support developers felt that throughout the case the appreciation for what they were

doing became less and less and it was unfair in their eyes as they acted as a buffer between the business

processes and the changes which were created, and sometimes went wrong, by the global IT organization.

Although the issues caused in the system were indeed caused by external parties, the business did rely on

support developers to communicate any issues which were created by updates or changes in the system

in which they did not always succeed. Developers of support also felt that the way the business operated

was unfair, not only did business put what they perceived as pressure on them to do things which they had

no responsibility for, like the management reports the business created. But also they felt as if they were

caught between a rock and a hard place, as the demands for information remained high while at the same

time their department were going to be reduced in terms of man power. Last but not least support

developers were led by the controller of accountancy and formally he had to agree on all the development

efforts, which created political tension between the support developers and business.

The Manager of the Advisory business units remained on good terms with all parties throughout the case,

although this has likely something to do with the future needs of all parties, these managers are experts in

applying political pressure. For example although the manager of the business units never opposed the

support developers, neither did they opposed the reduction of employees in that particular department or

supported them by stating there was a need for more capacity as the business units were now running their

own reports. The way the managers work is they provide fact based results on what is going on in regards

to consultants which do not directly belong to their influence or departments, because of the role these



managers have in the organization in regards to budgeting these facts are important for future decisions

for the business and support leaders which do have direct influence. Although respected and liked for what

they do, there is always a certain influence which works both ways and both consultants (especially juniors)

and support developers are aware of this. Although the managers remained on good terms with all

developers during the case, they were annoyed when support developers in direct communication initially

gave commitment and possibilities but always came back on initial promises because they could not get an

approval from support leaders for the development activities.

The consultants started on good terms with both other developer groups but throughout the project their

relationship with the support developers deteriorated as they found out that resources were held back.

Consultants went into a brief outrage as they found out that both the IT department and support developers

knew about software capabilities which could extract data efficiently, but both support groups choose to not

communicate anything about this, resulting in weeks of extra work for the consultants. The only reason the

consultants found out about this data mining possibility was because one of the global system architects

gave a presentation on the current and future of data exporting methods at which point both support

department had some explaining to do. Although communication after a brief period of quietness went back

to the normal respected formats, the consultants from this point on constantly double checked any

statement from support developers, which created tension as the consultants from a technical perspective

were more experienced than the support developers in the ERP data flows and had access to colleagues

with more experience in management information and BI tools.

Table 4,1,6 shows the cooperation between the different developers. The top left is the starting willingness

to cooperate between developers and their standings while the lower right shows the standings and

willingness to trust and cooperate between developers at the ends of the case. None of the stakeholders

believed that in the long run these standings would remain this bad, but rather that in regards to report

development in the short run the cooperation will be tricky and lack trust. However all the stakeholders also

agree on the firm’s need for each other and believe that in regards to report development in time and

through professional cooperation, trust will return to what is was and is in other areas of reporting.



table 4,1,6

Cooperation

between developers IT-Department Consultants Managers Support developers

Support developers ++ + +

Managers + ++ =

Consultants + ++ -

IT-Department - = +



Stakeholder’s perspective on motivation

Most organizations work with so called key performance indicators (KPIs) which aim to measure the

performance of the department or groups of employees. KPIs can be extremely important to departments

to employees as they are evaluated based upon them, these evaluations can in consequence be important

for increase of pay, promotions, dismissals and reorganizations. Because of the impact of KPIs and the

influence they have on the motivation of the department and individuals, many organizations including the

PSF in the case use them. This chapter focuses on how the developer groups are prioritizing their

stakeholders and their activities. This chapter differs from the earlier chapter in regards to commitment to

the project by different developer groups in the way that this chapter focuses on the perspective of the

developers themselves and does not take the outcome or result in account.

How is motivation different for each stakeholder group?

The developers of support are not part of the core business of the PSF, rather they are tasked with

maintaining the general information flows. From an hierarchical point of view this also means that the

support departments have a very priority to keep their supervisors happy, but this is also where things get

tricky. Although the support manager of PSF are important in the end the partners of an professional service

firm with partners are way more important, as these are both the high level managers who nearly

autonomously keep the PSF revenue up, but also because they are shareholders. This in practice creates

a very tricky balance, if support departments in general or something as representative as a reporting

department consistently fail in performance in the eyes of the business departments the risk of

reorganization in support becomes very real. This is for the simple reason that in the eyes of the business

they are paying for a service but the quality of the service is lacking. The result can be seen in the case,

the finance department have had cuts of manpower for the last four years and have a third reorganization

round ahead of them within 5 years, making it not only difficult to be motivated but also to handle large

innovation projects next to their regular activities as they simply lack the manpower and the employees that

are there don’t seen the point as they are running the risk of getting fired anyway.

High level manager of the business units are primarily concerned with supplying the partners of the

business with the necessary information and keeping them happy. In practice the managers of an business



unit are a mix of permanent managers, often directors, who occupy themselves with providing consistency

in the management and partners who are very experienced and involve themselves in the strategic support

of fellow partners and major opportunities. In general the power of these boards are determined by goodwill,

which is either created by personal relationships or by a sort of give and take attitude. In the end the

priorities of these group of managers are created by the market and partners, in times of hardship like for

example during the economic crisis all partners have expectations of this group. However the same partners

are also at all times watching the management of the business units in terms of investments as the

investments can mean a reduction of profit, which is (at a certain level) directly linked to the partner’s

personal income.

The developers of the consultants are measured in terms of sales, productive hours, development and

customer feedback. From that perspective it does not necessarily make sense to invest time and effort on

internal projects, however the most junior consultants are often trained on these internal projects, allowing

them to improve their skills before going to customers. That being said it does help junior consultants to

know and interact often with the managers of the business unit, as it matures them by understanding the

PSF and its ways better, providing them with more understanding of what it takes to make career in the

PSF. What is perhaps also important to note is that these young professionals want to learn and become,

although not openly competitive with each other, they have throughout their studies and careers shown a

high drive and ambition and skills. They put in more hours than any of the groups to build skills, gain

experience and exceed expectations. Although by many this is considered to be the old method of working

and making a career in a PSF it is typical behavior for high drive employees. This same motivation allows

them to work in an environment which has high demands on their time, but also to deal with the need to

acquire new skills while working full time. The high drive and high demand on time is something that

especially in the first few years is normal, after that period the consultants tend to balance work and private

life better and work smarter instead of harder, which they need to do otherwise they will simply not last.



4.2 The theoretical implications

Motivation in strategy of a professional service firm

This chapter aims to make the transition from case description to theoretical explanation. Although the

following chapters will also elaborate on the theoretical implication of the case, this chapter will explain why

motivation is important to the professional service firm. What is important to note is that the thesis will now

focus on motivation itself meaning that the focus shift away from the RBV and more towards the specific

fields of science which can explain the configuration on motivation and its consequences. This will be done

by using the case as an example and show how motivation has impacted the ability for the organization to

increase its sustainable competitive advantage, which strategy is according among other Porter (1996).

This chapter focuses on the following sub-question:

What role does motivation play in strategy of professional service firms?

Professionals Service Firms and motivational strategy can be splits in two groups, the support departments

and the business departments. This can be seen in the case by looking at for example the KPIs of the

different developer groups, in which the business employees aims is either directly or indirectly support the

acquisition of revenue and reduction of costs. For support departments these KPIs are more difficult to find,

looking at the reorganization and cost cuts in recent year, reduction of costs as KPI is very obvious, but in

terms of performance and positive reinforcement there are no direct linkages to the core processes of the

PSF. This difficulty is supported by for example studies on motivation and KPI’s like that of Lee, Chen and

Chang in 2008 on how KPI’s could be created for IT departments which indirectly support the core business.

The case study clearly shows that the support departments are constantly balancing between two

influences on them, influence from the business to create high quality services and influences from their

direct leaders which focus more on control. What this case shows is that by not having motivation aligned

with the core business processes of the organization and creating pressure on individuals to divert efforts,

the individuals in the organization will start making decisions which will help themselves in relation to their

direct supervisor. A lack of motivation or rather a lack of aligned motivation created in this situation in which

the support departments were unwilling to change priorities to the core business and rather preferred to



supply a general board of directors with reports rather than the managers and planners who actually created

revenue and guarded costs. This prioritizing can be explained by the stakeholder-agency theory, described

by Hill and Jones (1992) who explained that within a group of stakeholders agents will always prefer the

stakeholder of whom they are most dependent as a principal. From a strategic point of view however this

choice seems to be counterproductive for the firm as it means that these developers are prioritizing

reporting to top management on the performance of middle management without allowing middle

management to perform as they are flying blind without reporting. Support developers were evaluated,

rewarded and perhaps resigned in terms or contracts by the leaders of the support departments and there

were no KPIs or motivators in place which prioritized the core operations, which create revenues, at all (as

suggested by Hammer and Stanton 1999). From a theoretical perspective it seems as though the support

developers choose for the stakeholders which in the end would decide on their fate within the organization.

However there is more, when the support developers and IT departments kept resources from the business

even when the business requested to know all the available resources, by not giving the resources to the

business the workload of at least IT departments was kept lower than it would otherwise be. This from a

theoretical perspective is a very good example of a situation in which the agent (support developers) uses

the bounded rationality advantage over the principal (the management of the business units), this self-

interest and use of bounded rationality is one of the assumptions and keys to the agency theory

Although it seems as though the fault is entirely with the support developers, this seems to be easy of an

judgement. Although the business in the end solved the reporting demands for its managers of the business

units, the unwillingness to provide manpower and expertise unless there is money involved even in regards

to their own support departments is making it very difficult for support department to develop. It is a very

good example of how extrinsic motivation in the end can cripple a PSF which is one of the most intense

knowledge capable business forms in existence. Also, although it is difficult to calculate its financial impact,

one could argue that during the period in which there was a lack of information in the management of the

business units mistakes were made which created more difficulty to supply opportunities and thus revenues

were missed. Is it possible that flying blind on operational management level would have cost more money

in terms of missed revenue than it would have cost in terms of missed revenue by immediately supporting

the development of reports with consultants?



Motivation and the Resource Based View

This chapter explains why motivation should be in the Resource Based View and not discarded as a

completely different field of science that is out of scope. As it is right now human capital and dynamic

resources can be seen as one and the same and in an age where services are becoming more and more

important and industry less and less. Defining the capabilities and dynamic capabilities of human capital

will be the key to sustainable competitive advantage. Thus the sub-question that this chapter will answer in

regards to the findings on motivational alignment is:

How could this knowledge be relevant for the Resource Based View?

The motivation and drive of individual can be seen in how individuals try to improve themselves, their

surroundings and their willingness to invest in order to achieve goals. If and when motivation is aligned to

the company’s needs, it seems as though organizations are more capable of creating capabilities or

improving their abilities to meet their goals, and perhaps be more competitive. If all of this is true, then a

logical next step would be to consider motivation and the means to maintain motivation in employees as

something which could both ensure a competitive advantage but is also one of the prime dynamic

capabilities in an era in which knowledge human applied services are (becoming) bigger than manufacturing

or any other kind of industry, especially for the business to business markets.

The case shows how motivation factors are capable of acting as dynamic capabilities, even though all the

tangible resources, software, capabilities are in the organization, the PSF was unable to create operational

reporting until the moment that the motivated young consultants were added as developers. Although

formally seen the RBV is mostly seen as descriptive rather than a predictive (Lockett and Thompson, 2009)

theory for sustainable competitive advantage, many readers of the theory look around in their everyday

work and do consider the RBV to provide insights. Regardless of how to look at the RBV it seems to be

impossible to explain competitive advantage by not taking human resources (like this research shows) and

any influence, like dynamic resources, on it into account. Also competitive advantage purely through

resources, without having some sort of VRIN has never been sustainable and in an age when human



resources define the quality of services, creating the right mix of motivational drivers may just be the only

method for creating a sustainable competitive advantage in human resource based (service) firms.

Also this case shows something else, it shows that to certain extent it should be possible to predict the

outcome of processes in development and thus to a smaller extent competitive advantage by ensuring the

presence of certain key (dynamic) resources. With that in mind it could be argued that the VRIN resource

perspective of Peteraf (1993) and Barney (1991) has changed for most processes, and that for most

processes the key to a sustainable competitive advantage is slowly but certainly becoming a mix of

resources and capabilities which in their synergy and coordination provide a competitive advantage, while

managing them correctly creates a sustainable competitive advantage. The idea to look more in the

combinations of resources and capabilities was also expressed by Gallunic & Radon in 1997, although they

are more interested in the firm and its competitive advantage by creating new combinations of resources,

it is one of the view widely quoted papers which supports the concept of optimizing resource combinations.

To consider combination of resources as method to create a sustainable competitive advantage would also

mean that research can be done in different setups, creating optimal solutions which will likely be

continuously develop on a deeper level. This in turn means that research in the RBV could start focusing

on finding optimal resource sets and discarding the non-optimal sets, based upon markets, cultures and

industries. The idea of finding the optimal resources and discarding others is not unlike the evolutionary

theories in regards to the RBV which Barney mentions in his retrospective on the RBV in 2001. Also the

necessity of dynamic resources and mentioning of requirements of a business model in terms of capabilities

and (dynamic) resources by Teece in 2009, seems to indicate that it is possible to move to a prescriptive

model of optimal resource setup.

Usefulness for practitioners.

Part of the reason for this thesis was to bridge the gap between theories and practitioners and to allow

practitioners to start making sense and use of theories which could be useful in the development or

adjustment of management strategies. This chapter follows on the following sub-questions:

How could this knowledge be applied to other cases and by practitioners?



The thesis has shown that within organizations in which results for development is created by human

resources, motivation is one of the most important dynamic resources. With the right motivation it is possible

for individuals to acquire new capabilities and improve already available capabilities and resources as the

consultants demonstrated in the case. For practitioners this means that when involving human resources it

is important to align motivation with the goals of the organization and with the goals of the particular

department in mind. This may sound easy but it is more than just ensuring that employees are motivated

to work. For example when looking at the case, by no means it should be said that the developers of support

developers were unmotivated to work, however their motivation was directed in working and developing a

base set of reports and then focus completely on the needs of the general board of directors and maintaining

the existing reports. I hope that when looking at this example practitioners will understand that aligning the

specialists of report development to management information for top management while not having

management information for the management of the core business processes is not the best method of

using motivation.

But there is more, the resource based view may have been designed to be descriptive rather than predictive

according to Barney (2001) and Lockett and Thompson (2009), it seems to be possible for each department

or perhaps even major process to consider what set of resources should be available in what fashion. By

creating a management method which handles all the different resources and capabilities in the RBV and

uses more specific resources either from RBV or different fields of science to fill in the details, the chance

of being successful in the department or major process should increase. Although this obviously does not

guarantee the final result as the external environment of the organization obviously plays a major role in

creating competitive advantage, by using such a method we at least ensure that management is capable

of ensuring that everything that could have been done within their resources and available abilities in their

employees, has been done.


49 5 Model of cooperative theories for strategic management.

5. Model of cooperative theories for strategic management.

This thesis originally set out to argue that the role of dynamic resources like motivation, which heavily

influence the ability of employees to perform, should be taken more into account. The realization that in

order to explain what motivation was other theories outside the RBV had to be involved, lead to a stronger

conceptual model of strategic management than the one which can be seen in figure 3,1. The conceptual

model was created based upon the idea that it should be possible to create a setup of resources and

capabilities with specific theories as configurations of resources as a model. This thesis like every thesis is

limited in scope to only a specific part of the organization and thus a specific area of the model.

The thesis focuses the development of management information, within the model this is in the organization

part of the organizational change and considered a project, as it is a development effort in a limited amount

of time and with a specific goal. Within this project there is obviously a number of resources and dynamic

capabilities which need to be looked at in order to research the influence of motivation. Motivation is the

major dynamic capability this thesis researches, in the model this is named Key driver, in order to identify

how motivation is created the supporting specific resources are looked at. For this research the specific

theories that were chosen to explain how motivation was created were the agency theory, intrinsic

motivation and extrinsic motivation, the stakeholder agency theory and the concept of key performance

indicators (which I see as part of the Agency theory in the model). Because the complexity of understanding

the influence of motivation on the competitive ability of the PSF, this thesis looks at the influence of the key

drivers on the core abilities and use of technologies. In order to acquire these new abilities and acquiring

the skill to work with new technologies motivation is needed, although this is to a certain degree an

assumption, I do believe it is a very save assumption. Management is looked at because when looking at

the key drivers and the agency theory, the hierarchy and its management cannot be overlooked,

management itself however has no major role in this thesis as the configuration by specific theories will not

be looked at. Other resources were not in scope because their influence was relatively small. Both the

larger model of cooperative theories for strategic management and the focus of within the model for this

thesis can be found on the next page (figure 5,1).



Figure 5,1



But why does this model not yet exist? The truth is the model does exist, it exists in nearly every theory in

regards to the RBV case researches, just in very specific scope. The issue is that the models researchers

create or use are created from theoretical perspective, fitting specifically to a scientific focus area with a

very limited scope, limiting the influence of the resource or the change in configuration to a small area of

the organization. Examples of these kinds of research are Oliver C. (1997) which combines institutional

theories with the RBV, Hoopes, D. G., Madsen, T. L., & Walker, G. (2003) who argue the RBV should be

developed in to a wider perspective of competitive heterogeneity, Priem, R. L., & Butler, J. E. (2001) actually

concluded that the RBV lacked to meet the empirical content criterion required of theoretical systems

(Bacharach, 1989, Hunt, 1991 and McKelvey, 1997) but also make multiple suggestions on how to improve

the RBV. All these articles suggest and create models which much like the model in this thesis, attempt to

make the RBV less abstract and specify the RBV and the sustainable competitive outcome of the firm by

adding theoretical concepts which enable a more specific configuration of a resource. This effectively

answers from a practical perspective the strategic configuration of a specific part or layer of the organization

and leaves other parts or layers out of scope. In the end it is my believe that the suggested model in this

thesis incorporates most parts and layers of the organization through the eyes of a practitioner and thus

forces theorists to consider more side effects of changing resources. Eventually developing theory on a

more realistic platform which does not only exist in abstract theoretical concepts, but can be applied to

practice as well. And isn’t the only reason for science to improve our knowledge of reality?

However it is also very possible such a model will never find support of scientists both because of the

complexity of each scientific perspective which claims to provide a strategic benefit in its most relevant

importance. But also because of the complexity which each scientific perspective has developed by not

incorporating other perspectives in its search for theoretical explanations of cases. In short the model

suggested regardless of its strength in regards to overview, will be tremendously complex both because

cooperation of scientific perspectives is required which is unlikely to acquire appreciation of the

perspectives themselves (especially if they are not incorporated). But also most strategic or specific

scientific perspectives on strategy have become too complex to cooperate for the simple reason they were

made to provide the most important explanation of why organizations are competitive within their

perspective.


52 6 Discussion

Complexity and politics thus is the largest reason for a lack of such a model which in detail would explain

the competitive sustainable advantage of a firm. But other reasons are also time, by the time a model would

be adapted to a new reality it would need change again. And I guess last but not least politics and culture

within scientific communities would never agree on a model, but always find some fault in it or its details,

falsifying it however is because of its size too much work and thus nobody would dare to use it.

6. Discussion

In this chapter both the primary research of this thesis and the suggestion of a cooperative model between

fields of sciences are discussed, not from an supportive point of view but rather from critique point of view.

This chapter focuses on the weak points, the assumptions, the need for more confirmation, on the potential

issues that can be seen already in the long run and last but not least the constrictions of what is found in

this thesis. This chapter will start with the role of motivation in the professional service firm and discuss the

cooperative theory model after that.

One of the major issues for exploratory research is the ability to reproduce and thus in the long run confirm

the findings of the an exploratory research. The issue with this thesis is not that the findings are not

reproducible in new cases, although cases will at all times vary in some way, but it is difficult to quantify the

concept of motivation and what it entitles, thus making it difficult to research. For example motivation is not

just a matter of the strength of the motivation but also in regards to its alignment and the capabilities of the

individuals taking part in the research. In this thesis for example the support developers were definitely

highly motivated professionals, but felt they had to protect the firm from the risks of IT differentiation without

IT-support in reporting. Although for the case of creation of management reporting for the business there

was a technical issue which required IT differentiation, there is no certainty that the core reporting and data

model processes would have remained available if the support developers committed time and resource

heavily in the creation of management reporting for the business at the expense of time and effort put in

maintaining the already existing reporting and data flows. In short we lack a control group. Within this thesis

there was no involvement of specialist from the field of motivational theories which for further research


53 6 Discussion

should be done to accurately combine the theories and interpret the influence of a specific dynamic

capability like motivation. Much like the model of cooperative strategic theories suggests.

That being said I found that throughout my thesis I was confronted with knowledge and experience in certain

specific fields of science which were relatively unfamiliar to me. The specific field of science which the most

challenge was human resources, in terms of recruitment theories, motivation theories, forms of agency

theories and so on, all of which I had little to no experience in from a scientific perspective. The conceptual

model of cooperative theories for strategic management was based upon the same bounded rationality,

researchers in the RBV are incapable of knowing all the possibilities in which a resource or capability can

influence the outcome of the organization’s competitiveness. The model was created to counter some of

the issues which threatened the thesis, but the model as crude as it may be seems to have more potential.

In order to create a model which allows the RBV and specific fields of science to cooperate and make the

tacit understanding of how resources influence outcome more explicit the model needs a lot more

development. Although the development of each of the strategic theories will likely be very limited, but to

get used to working with configurations coming from different scientists in different fields which need to be

aligned to the configurations of other fields will be a challenge as discussed in chapter 5.


54 7 Conclusion

7. Conclusion

This thesis clearly demonstrates the significance of motivation to a professional service firm, both as a

dynamic capability and as a source for development of strategic resources and capabilities like

management information. The thesis however also shows that the perspective on motivation as source for

competitive advantage is not just a matter of it being there or it being not there. It shows that motivation is

something that should be aligned and by not aligning motivation to the proper processes or efforts the

company can be reduced in the effectiveness or efficiency.

On the influence of motivation, this thesis shows that motivation is focused in different areas, making its

management essential for effective and efficient (development) processes. What is interesting in this

regards is that motivation, its alignment, but also the kind of focus with which each stakeholders is

comfortable is very different in a group of professionals who all are in essence capable (in terms of

capabilities and resources) of developing management information. This means that the motivation of

individuals is not only a resource for the company but is also, in all its variety and personal preferences,

something which can be applied to individuals, making correct recruitment and its aligned to efforts /

processes essential for the firm.

The second major finding is that the RBV by itself is incapable of providing in debt knowledge on all of the

resources which individuals, processes or even firms should have. Although this thesis recognizes the

depth of the dynamic resource of motivation it also recognizes the limited capability of the Resource Based

View to handle the complexity and thus argues that there is necessity for the RBV to combine its strong

overview potential with insights acquired by different fields of science, like in this case that of human

resource management motivational theories.

This thesis thus argues not only that motivation has influence on the sustainable competitive advantage of

the professional service firm and thus should be the subject of more debate in the RBV in regards to

valuable resources in modern economies. It also argues that there is a model in which both RBV and other

specific fields of science should be combined in order to create a more specific / prescriptive scientific

perspective, making all theoretical approaches involved more valuable as the model would support both


55 7 Conclusion

management sciences and managers alike. In this thesis’s case description the influence of motivation was

shown with the RBV providing a resource overview and motivational theories of agency theory, share –

stakeholder view and intrinsic / extrinsic motivation providing insights in why and how motivation influences

the case, through the dynamic resource of motivation.

The largest contribution of this thesis is the creation of a conceptual model of cooperative theories for

strategic management, that if supported and developed could provide a platform which would allow

scientists and practitioners in strategic management to really bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Allowing theorists to make applicable contributions by adjusting optimal configurations or even setups and

practitioners to challenge theorists based upon their experience in practice and a model in which both

practitioners and theorists can approach each other on a mutual recognizable and useful platform. As this

largest contribution is a side-effect of this thesis it was moved to the appendix, but I urge anyone who is at

a loss in regards to how to combine theories in management studies either from a theoretical or

practitioner’s point of view to look at the model and benefit from it.


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64 9 Appendix

9. Appendix

9.1 Appendix 1: Interview protocol

1. Determination of developer:

1.1. Who are you?

1.2. Which department are you part of?

1.3. What role do you have within your department?

1.4. What is you educational background

1.5. What capabilities define your role and ability to operate in that role?

2. Hierarchy and principals

2.1. How does your department fit in the organization?

2.2. What are the most important stakeholders to your department?

2.3. Are there stakeholders who are important to you as an individual employee?

3. Resources

3.1. Current software for management information in use?

3.2. Is there software available which is currently not used?

3.3. New software for development?

4. Development experience

4.1. Experience in management information development

4.2. Experience with management information in this PSF

4.3. Experience with the development of internal projects

5. Current experience

5.1. Who determines what management information needs to be

5.2. Method of creating the development

5.3. Capacity available

5.4. Skills additionally acquired

6. Cooperation in project

6.1. History with other developers

6.2. Current communication

6.3. experience of cooperation

7. KPIs

7.1. Rewards for developing management information within the PSF

7.2. Rewards for other activities

7.3. What motivates you personally to develop management information

7.4. What would hold you back in the development of management information


65 9 Appendix

9.2 Appendix 2 Conceptual model of cooperative theories for strategic management

The model as can be seen in figure 9,1 is a combination of the RBV which provides the framework and

other theories with a more specific nature which can provide an in depth analysis on the resources in the

RBV framework. Model of cooperative theories would create the possibility to clearly create boundaries

within which the RBV could be used most effectively and allow other theories to specify and make explicit

the requirements of a specific resource. The goal of such a model would be to create optimal configurations

based upon markets, culture and industries. Although it is my firm believe that regardless how well a setup

is made it will never be completely able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage and will at some

point have to be adjusted, a solid platform of such a structure would improve discussions on subject

tremendously. Perhaps more importantly it would bridge the gap between practitioners and theorists, as

theories and ideas would be applicable within a setup and actually be applicable rather than hoping that all

other resources have had no influence on the outcome.

Although the initial setup of such a model may be complex in terms of cooperation and take a lot of time in

terms of research. Once the platform is created it would be possible for scientists to consider the model as

modular, meaning that changes to the configuration of resources can be made by specific fields of science

in specific setups or on specific resources. This in turn means that after the initial platform is created the

discussion on what is or would be optimal strategic management can become specific scientific applicable

to reality. The game becomes clear in its full extent, when that happens one can argue the rules of the

game of the influence of the players but the result or the influence on the game will be explicit and specific.

This would in my eyes move the social science of management sciences to a point comparable to nature

physics, with theorists stretching theories or arguing the rules of the game (physics) could be changed and

practitioners or case researchers applying the knowledge and showing outcomes.


66 9 Appendix

The model itself is based on a combination of the RBV and the Schumpeterian or evolutionary concept of

discarding old lesser setups and replace them by new setups. What the model in effect is suggesting that

within a firm there are a certain amount of processes, departments and aspects which can be defined as

being key to the organization. For these organizational key items it is possible to provide a set of resources

which for each different organizational item may vary slightly in order to create an optimal setup in which

the firm will be most competitive. The resources themselves are influenced by both dynamic resources and

specific theories in regards to the nature of the resource, examples of this are for the human resources the

recruitment policies, reward policies, but also the dynamic resource of motivation, which as a resource has

its own supporting specific theories.


67 9 Appendix

Figure 9,1


68 9 Appendix

The model consists out of the following elements:

Outcome in regards to sustainable competitive advantage, which can either be: more competitive, no

result or less.

Organizational items, which are arranged by major processes, departments or organizational changes

The setup of resources supports each organizational item, although each organizational item has its

own setup, the setup itself consists out of limited set of resources. The setup of resources is thus unique

in the way its resources are configured and work together and not in the resources that it has chosen

The dynamic resources support resources in terms of maintaining a sustainable competitive

advantage. They are part of the setup, but rather instead of clearly having a domain which they

cover they ensure that the resources can handle changes in the environment and maintain the

competitive advantage coming from the setup by adjusting the configuration of the resource in the

setup.

Specific fields of science are supporting both the resources and the dynamic resources. These fields of

science can be found in for example: financial management, risk management, human resource

management, IT management, work environment optimization, industry techniques, suppliers

relationship management, customer relationship management, logistics and others.

External environment, last but not least there is the influence from the external environment that will

potentially influence the sustainable competitive advantage.

On the one hand the amount of setups and configurations makes for a complex model as the model itself

would be huge, consider for example each organizational item having its own setup of resources. The

beauty of the model however is that the model is based upon the concept of a setup meaning that the setup

itself is nothing more than a selection and configuration of a given set of resources. In general each of the

fields of science provide to the resource a specific configuration in its characteristics. The configuration of

each specific resource can thus not change by itself, but it can be adjusted by dynamic resources, for

example capabilities of a setup can change because of recruitment or L&D investments. Dynamic

capabilities would do this either in an attempt to improve the sustainable competitive advantage or in

reaction to an external influence. The setup is the combination of resources and their configurations,


69 9 Appendix

changing a setup rather than a single configuration of a resource, is much more sever and indicates that

there is a shift in multiple configurations or even in which resources are used for an organizational item.

Although this may seem complex, this solves two issues in regards to the RBV, it solves the issues in

regards being unable to show the effect of changes in resources in terms of competitive advantage result,

but it also solves the issue in regards to the abstract nature of the RBV, bridging the gap between theorists

and practitioners.

The models complexity may seem huge but is in fact limited to the set of resources and fields of science

supporting those resources. This means that once a set of resources have been selected there will be little

to no change in this setup until innovation in market or theories creates a new resource type which is

capable of destroying the model. What is essential for the model is necessity to a standard model in terms

of a relative fixed framework in terms of: resources, organizational items, specialized specific fields of

science, and last but not least the external influences. The next step for such a model to exist and work is

that the boundaries of the model needs to be set, to which degree is the model capable of having any

predictive value. For some markets this may actually be pretty big allowing the researchers or practitioners

to generalize the global market, and example of the is the mobile phone market. For other markets it may

not be as easy to generalize the model because of cultural, industrial or political difference, which cannot

be overcome by dynamic resources and thus the model and its setups need to be adjusted in order to

improve the sustainable competitive abilities of the organization. From this perspective the dynamic

resources play an essential role in allowing the model to cover multiple markets.

In practice once the model has been created to the point that the configurations of resources and their

setup is clear the attention will shift to operational strategic management. Meaning that the external

environment and how it influences the ability to competitive, versus the dynamic resources and their ability

to handle those changes will become the core focus of the model. The moment it appears the dynamic

resources are unable to handles the influences from the external environment the buffer of the organization

is compromised and the organization faces an sustainable influence on its ability to be competitive. This in

turn means that either the organizational items and their setups and configuration of resources need to be


70 9 Appendix

changed and the model has to be adjusted, either by locally creating a different model or discarding the old

model for a new model still covering the same entire market.

In order to build such a model, the likely best approach which would lead to the least amount of cooperation

issues and potential conflict between fields of science would be to use a case study to create the initial

model. Obviously in order to do so the case study would have to be done after the selection of fields of

sciences which could configure resources and provided in depth analysis in each resource. First of all it is

necessary to identify a set of resources which in their combination can create sustainable competitive

advantage and even create synergy by choosing resources which are complementary and have little to no

overlap. Each of the resource and capabilities needs to be defined in a way that together they will cover the

bulk of known corporations but at the same time each resource needs to be able to exclusively cover part

of the organization and thus have no overlap. The dynamic resources through their interaction with the

resources and capabilities should not create overlap but rather influence other resources.

Secondly the cooperation between the RBV and the other fields of science can only be properly established

when it is clear where the structure of the RBV ends and the specific fields of science start. This in practice

likely going to mean two things, first of all the theories which are used to cooperate with need to be chosen,

because if a theory goes outside the structure provided by the RBV it is likely influencing other resources

or capabilities and potentially contradicting that specific field of science. It also means that in the research

of this structure and the cooperation of theories, cooperation of scientists with different focus areas is very

important. Although this provides both opportunities and challenges, it also means that the RBV itself will

never provide the sole determination of which resource / capability - or the configuration of such - will create

the sustainable competitive advantage. In essence this means we move the concept of a VRIN resource to

a VRIN setup of resources and capabilities. It also means that in the end this model may start providing

knowledge to the point that it can create descriptions of successful setups and configurations, allowing

industries of markets to very specifically manage their organizations and in response challenge the setup.

This process is extremely revolutionary as it means that setups will (especially in the beginning) be

constantly adjusted and old setups thus discarded. Personally I think that such a situation would lead to a

strategic management field within a market or industry which is comparable to the game of Stratego, with


71 9 Appendix

every setup having competition which is likely capable of outcompeting it in some area or part of the market

as it competes in a weak spot of the setup.

Documents

Motivation in a conceptual model of cooperative theories