Diamond Thunderbolt Management
| DOI | 10.1177/014473949601600106 |
| Date | 01 March 1996 |
| Published date | 01 March 1996 |
| Author | John Darwin |
Teaching Public Administration, Spring 1996,
Vol.
XV/, No.1,
pp
76-88
DIAMOND THUNDERBOLT MANAGEMENT
JOHN
DARWIN
Sheffield Hallam University
This article is written in the spirit
of
the "reflective practitioner"
identified by
SchOn
(1983). It is written after four years
of
teaching
strategic management in a university, preceded by twelve years as a
senior manager in local government. A continued involvement in local
government -though now on the political side -has also helped to shape
views about the interrelationship between theory and practice.
As
SchOn
has argued:
'Practice is a kind
of
research. In problem setting, means and ends are
framed interdependently. And inquiry is a transaction with the situation
in which knowing and doing are inseparable. Inquirers encounter a
problematic situation whose reality they must construct.
As
they frame
the problem
of
the situation, they determine the features to which they
will attend. the order they will attempt to impose on the situation, the
directions
in
which they will try to change it. In this process, they
identify both the ends to be sought and the means to be employed. In the
ensuing inquiry, action on the situation is integral with deciding, and
problem solving is a part
of
the larger experiment in problem setting'
(Schon, 1983, pI65).
This interweaving
of
thinking and doing is not, however, an approach
which necessarily comes through in strategic management. Indeed
my
first encounter with the latter came as a local government officer,
working alongside a number
of
consultants employed to help develop an
economic strategy. They came with impressive diagrams and flow charts
(subsequently spotted in many a strategy textbook) but most crucially
with a view that the work should begin with a tabula rasa -an
assumption that nothing had previously been done, so that the strategy
could be built from scratch. Those
of
us who had grafted for several
years, and had achieved at least some limited successes
in
job
preservation and job creation, were less than thrilled by this assumption.
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