Door: Roel Wagter
In mijn rol als copromotor en gastdocent aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen begeleid ik via de Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica jaarlijks een aantal studenten. Na mijn college over ‘sturen op samenhang’ ontvangen de betreffende studenten de opdracht om naar keuze een jaarverslag van een onderneming te downloaden en de samenhang op zingevingsniveau van deze onderneming te onderzoeken en te waarderen. Voor alle duidelijkheid, het betreft hier tussentijdse studieresultaten in de vorm van een op te leveren paper. De komende tijd zal ik, overigens met toestemming van de betreffende studenten en de universiteit, een aantal van deze papers publiceren. Dit doe ik in de hoop opdat velen deze exercitie zullen navolgen. Immers een goed niveau van samenhang is randvoorwaardelijk voor een hoog reactievermogen, hoge aanpasbaarheid en het bereiken van de beoogde performance. En het sturen op samenhang begint met het sturen op samenhang op zingevingsniveau. Te weten de samenhang tussen de missie, visie, kernwaarden, doelen en strategie. Voor een ieder die meer wil weten over ‘sturen op samenhang’ zie ons laatstelijk gepubliceerde boek.
De onderzoeksopdracht
De onderzoeksopdracht zoals omschreven in de inleiding heeft bij student Jeroen van Dijk er toe geleid de samenhang op zingevingsniveau van Philips te onderzoeken. In deze blog geef ik onderstaand alleen het abstract en de intro van zijn paper weer en verwijs graag naar de versie van het volledige paper.
Intro van:
Using the enterprise coherence framework (ECF) to make Philips’ coherence explicit at the level of purpose, Jeroen van Dijk (2020)
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to make Philips’ coherence explicit at the level of purpose and when possible quantified, by using the enterprise coherence framework (ECF). When the coherence among key aspects inside an enterprise is explicit this will lead to a positive effect on the enterprise’s performance (Wagter, 2013). To make this coherence explicit the enterprise coherence framework (ECF) was proposed by Wagter in 2013. This paper as stated above will focus on Philips and it’s level of purpose which consists out of the following five cohesive elements: mission, vision, core values, goals and strategy (Wagter, 2013). To make Philips’ coherence explicit at the level of purpose, Philips annual report of 2019 will be used and analyzed. Philips is an enterprise which operates in different industries, a so called conglomerate, therefore it will be interesting to analyze Philips using the enterprise coherence framework (ECF).
At first a brief introduction will be given of both Philips and the enterprise coherence framework (ECF). After that the annual report of Philips (2019) and the enterprise coherence framework will be used to make the coherence level of Philips explicit at the level of purpose. When this has become clear, the paper will further give its interpretation and discussion of the findings, relations with and implications for the field of information sciences. At last the overall conclusion of the paper will be given, in which also implications and future directions will be proposed.
Introduction
Since its founding in 1892 Philips has a long-standing history of innovation and change, starting with the production of lamps and other electrotechnical products in Eindhoven. In the following next decades Philips expanded their manufacturing to other products such as razors, radio’s and vacuum tubes (Springveld, 2018). In the previous decades Philips is mostly known for its joint venture with ASM international leading to ASML, and its cooperation with Sony leading to the CD-R, DVD and Blu-ray. Currently Philips focuses its activities on multiple sectors such as healthcare (Brown, 2020, van Meurs, 2020).
From above it becomes clear that Philips is a dynamic organization where a lot of change and innovation takes place. The fact that so much innovation takes place and Philips has its focus on different sectors means that this enterprise operates in a dynamic environment. Operating in a dynamic environment leads to different challenges but also to opportunities for enterprises (Wagter, 2013; Philips, 2019). Managing a large dynamic enterprise such as Philips ask for a high level of governance done by skilled and adequate management.
Different ways, tactics and elements to govern an enterprise in dynamic environments are already proposed in literature. An important way to govern an enterprise is by staying coherent in dynamic environments. If the level of enterprise coherence is high this will enable the senior management of an enterprise to govern their enterprise (Bekel & Wagter, 2020). Wagter (2013) proposed the enterprise coherence framework (ECF) to define the enterprise’s coherence of an enterprise. This framework of Wagter (2013) will be used to make Philips’ coherence explicit at the level of purpose. To guide this paper the following research question was developed: To what extent is Philips’ coherence explicit at the level of purpose? Using the enterprise coherence framework (ECF).
In order to asses Philips’ coherence at the level of purpose it’s important to first define the enterprise coherence framework (ECF), this will be done in the chapter literature study. After defining the ECF, the annual report of Philips (2019) and the enterprise coherence framework will be used to make the coherence level of Philips explicit at the level of purpose. When this has become clear, the paper will give its overall conclusion to the research question. In the end implications for the field of information sciences and future directions for research will be proposed.