Fractals of strategic coherence in a successful nonprofit organization

We theorize that organizations that are able to use stories and examples to explain their strategy and offer a flexible guide to discretionary employee behaviors use them in what can be termed a fractal fashion. The thesis is based on the idea of how strategic logic can be communicated and how it ca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNonprofit management & leadership Vol. 17; no. 4; pp. 421 - 441
Main Authors Black, Janice A., Hinrichs, Kim T., Fabian, Frances H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published San Francisco Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.07.2007
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects
Business organization
Business studies
Complexity theory
Employee attitude
Fractals
Non-profit organizations
Nonprofit organizations
Organization theory
Organizational structure
Studies
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Summary:We theorize that organizations that are able to use stories and examples to explain their strategy and offer a flexible guide to discretionary employee behaviors use them in what can be termed a fractal fashion. The thesis is based on the idea of how strategic logic can be communicated and how it can be reiterated to lead to strategic coherence across different levels of analysis in organizations. The parallels of a nonlinear, reinforcing process that is based on iteration inspired us to draw on complexity theory and fractal processes to understand the generation of strategic coherence. We present the case of a successful nonprofit organization where it appears that such a fractal use of stories occurred.
Bibliography:istex:6E0CFCD1E1360F3A1E5A1B4BF0CA9FF4A566DB77
ark:/67375/WNG-40Q64S0S-X
ArticleID:NML161
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:1048-6682
1542-7854
DOI:10.1002/nml.161