The inconspicuous zone 2 items in the management-concerns diagram construction (of the ALRA)

The inconspicuous zone 2 items in the management-concerns diagram construction (of the ALRA):

From the experience of exploring with my MBA students to construct management-concerns diagrams, it dawns on me that management-concerns items related to Zone 2 (organizational capabilities) of the Agile Literature Review Approach (ALRA) are often inconspicuous to many students. What often happens is as follows;

Researcher A: tell me one key management-concern that you could think of for your project case study of your Department of ABC Ltd?

Student-as-participant B: Consumers of XXX products are getting more price-conscious?

Researcher A: In this case, what are the impacts to your organization? [the so-what questioning tactic]

Student-as-participant B: I could see that it affects (i) the profitability and sales performance of our business and (ii) the morale of our salespeople who earn less sales commission.

Researcher A: Could you tell me what are the factors that lead to your consumers being more price-conscious?

Student-as-participant B: This is due to the poor economy that we now have, .... etc..

Researcher A: Next, could you tell me what your company, notably your Dept., has been thinking and working on to address this management concern of consumers getting more price-conscious?

Student-as-participant B: Our company has been thinking of how to attract new market segments with customers who are willing to buy our premium products (with higher profit margin)..... etc..

When these management-concerns items are reviewed, I could remind the students that there are items related to zone 1 (environmental drivers) (e.g. about the poor economy), items related to zone 3a (outcomes-related) (e.g. on sales performance) and items related to zone 3b (solutions-related). What is missing are zone 2 items (organization capabilities). [One of the possible reasons: certain participants could find it somewhat jittery to include research efforts related to evaluating an organizational capability topic, which is a kind of self-reflective evaluation exercise at the individual, departmental and organizational levels.] Thus, there is a need to come up with a few zone 2 items for the construction of a useful management-concerns diagram for dissertation project study purpose. This is not difficult to do so. The following are some hints:

1. The zone 2 items are most likely related to the Department the student focuses on in his/her research project investigation (e.g. due to the fact that the student is the department head of ABC Ltd.

2. Zones 3a and zone 3b items also hint at what zone 2 items are relevant in the construction of the management-concerns diagram, e.g. low staff morale of the sales team suggests that a useful zone 2 item to evaluate is the salesforce management competence of ABC Ltd.

3. When prompted by the researcher about what organizational capabilities items could be considered in the research investigation, given the management-concerns items identified so far, the participant will usually be able to come up with 1 to 2 zone items to include in the management-concerns diagram.

4. The researcher, based on his/her intellectual knowledge as related to the interview discussion, could also suggest a few zone 2 items for the participants to consider to include in the management-concerns diagram.

From the classroom practice on the construction of management-concerns diagrams with my students, I find that a useful management-concerns diagram draft could be produced in about 1 hour. It is useful in the sense that the diagram will have 2-3 zone 1 items, 1-2 zone 2 items, 2-3 zone 3a items and, finally, 1-2 zone 3b items.

I must also admit that my handwriting is quite lousy but the the ideas underlying the management-concerns diagram are clear. The wordings of the diagram items can be refined subsequently.