Strategy Implementation in a Small Island Community Defended on Friday, 9 May 2008

Strategy implementation is of high importance to organization science and practice, due to its direct relation to organizational performance, its high complexity, and high failure rate. This PhD thesis is about strategy implementation and the reasons for success or failure. Despite its apparent importance for organizational performance, research on the subject remains rather limited. Relevant literature exists but is fragmented among other fields of management research. Especially research in non-North American and non-Western European contexts remains scarce. In addition, little attention has been paid to strategy implementation within developing economies and small island communities. This PhD thesis investigates strategy implementation and its reasons for success or failure. It reports on a qualitative survey of 55 executives with strategy implementation responsibilities within 44 public and private organizations in the small Caribbean island community of Curaçao. The study demonstrates that strategy implementation is a highly complex organizational phenomenon which is influenced by a large number of factors related to the process, content and context of an implementation effort. The present study integrates a number of independent streams of research to develop a comprehensive and integrative framework for strategy implementation, which is grounded in implementation practice. This thesis further discusses the implications of these factors on strategy implementation performance and makes recommendations for implementation practice. The study provides important insights that are highly relevant for managers to successfully implement strategies.

Keywords

strategy implementation, policy implementation, organizational change, success factors, an integrative framework, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, small island economy, small island developing state, non-western context, strategy implementation process, content and context, implementation performance