Sustained strategic renewal – how do companies survive time?


Zenlin Kwee has defended her PhD thesis entitled “<link erim events _blank>Investigating Three Key Principles of Sustained Strategic Renewal: A Longitudinal Study of Long-Lived Firms” on June 25. How do large incumbent firms like Royal Dutch Shell change over time and adjust to the changes in their external environment? In her thesis Zenlin Kwee deals with this question. Using an analysis timeframe from 1907-2008, she studies Shell and uses British Petroleum (1970-2008) as a comparative study.

According to Kwee, firms need to be able to sense the changing conditions of their operating environments over time, and accordingly adjust their internal strategies, structures, technologies and cultures. Such strategic adjustments over a long period of time are referred to as "sustained strategic renewal". Her studies suggest that to be able to sustain strategic renewal, over time managers have to align their firm’s internal pace of change with the external pace of change; manage self-organisation; and balance concurrent exploratory and exploitative strategic renewal actions. These three interrelated elements are what Kwee refers to as three key principles that help firms to sustain their strategic renewal over time.

About Zenlin Kwee:
Zenlin Kwee was born in Tanjung Balai, Indonesia on May 27th, 1975. In 1998, she received her BSc degree (cum laude) from Pelita Harapan University (UPH), Indonesia majoring in Industrial Engineering. After working as a lecturer at UPH, as a consultant and later as a business development manager in Jakarta for four years, she was awarded a StuNed (Studeren in Nederland) scholarship that facilitated her to come to the Netherlands in August 2002. With the scholarship she did her two-year Master study at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

For her Master thesis project, Zenlin conducted a joint research project between TU Delft and Accenture on corporate longevity. Since then, she started her research journey on long-lived firms. In August 2004, she graduated cum laude from TU Delft for her MSc degree in Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management. To further pursue her research interest in corporate longevity, Zenlin joined the Department of Strategy and Business Environment at RSM Erasmus University in November 2004 as a PhD candidate, working together with Prof.Dr. Frans van den Bosch and Prof.Dr. Henk Volberda.

During her PhD research trajectory, Zenlin conducted an extensive research project at Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Her research has been published at Research in Competence-Based Management and ERIM working paper series. She has presented her research at prominent international conferences such as the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society Annual International Conference, Journal of Management Studies Conference, European Academy of Management Annual Conference, European Group for Organizational Studies Colloquium, and Competence-Based of Management Conference. At present, Zenlin works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Innovation at Delft University of Technology. She is in preparation to submit her works to international journals. Her research interests include corporate longevity, strategic renewal, strategic adaptation, innovation, organizational learning, and longitudinal study.

Abstract:
How do long-lived firms strategically renew themselves over time? Viewing organisational longevity as sustained strategic renewal, this PhD research investigates three key principles of self-renewing organisations. Building on the co-evolutionary perspective that incorporates both selection and adaptation perspectives, Kwee developed a comprehensive framework to investigate these three key principles in the oil industry as her case industry, in Shell (1907-2008) as her focal case company and BP (1970-2008) as her comparative case company. Besides the multilevel and comparative case study methods, Kwee employed the method of longitudinal content analysis to incorporate the temporal analysis of sustained strategic renewal over an extended period of time. First, she investigated the principle of matching the internal rate of change with the external rate of change. Results suggest that aligning the internal rate of change of a firm with the external rate of change of the firm’s environment positively influences the firms’ sustained strategic renewal. Second, environmental turbulence requires firms to renew their organisational structure and develop self-organisation. Her findings propound that self-organisation positively influences sustained strategic renewal. Third, she investigated exploratory and exploitative strategic renewal trajectories as well as the role of top management team (TMT) in influencing these trajectories. Kwee found that balancing exploration and exploitation positively influences sustained strategic renewal and that the TMT’s corporate governance perspective (shareholders/stakeholders) does influence strategic renewal trajectories. Finally, she substantiated managerial implications based on the enabling antecedents of the three key principles.

More Information
Pictures of the Event
Full Text of the Dissertation