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Staff Profiles

Home > Staff Profiles > Professor Julia Balogun

Professor Julia Balogun

Chair

Department

Centre for Strategic Management

Research Overview

My research interests centre on strategy development and strategic change, renewal and transformation, predominantly within large, mature corporations. I adopt a sociological perspective, focussing on how strategists accomplish their work through political, cultural and cognitive processes.

Professional Role

The Professor Sir Roland Smith Chair in Strategic Management. Associate Dean for Postgraduate Study. Director of the Lancaster Centre for Strategic Management and Director of the Graduate Management School

Current Teaching

Strategic Management on the Full-time MBA.

Research Interests

My early work explored how strategic activity is initiated and championed at multiple levels within organizations through a focus on middle managers and strategic change. This work adopts a sensemaking perspective and has won international recognition through acceptance in top ranked international journals.

In 2000 I helped to establish the Change Management Consortium, a collaborative research partnership between academics and practitioners, originally based at Cranfield School of Management with founder members including GSK, GKN, Ernst & Young, Cable & Wireless and HP labs. This consortium has undertaken a range of research, exploring issues, such as, managing change across boundaries and individuals and continuous change, and has more recently undertaken research into merger processes, such as at HMRC.

My current research is more concerned with investigating strategizing as a distributed organisational activity, through a focus on activities such as strategic planning, strategic change and radical organisational restructuring. I have acquired a particular interest in how large corporations transform themselves to both retain and regain competitive advantage in the face of declining performance.  

My research in this area is connected to a field of research which has become known as "Strategy as Practice". (See www.strategy-as-practice.org.)  Research in strategy is largely dominated by a view of strategy as something organisations have, neglecting strategy as something organisations do. The strategy as practice field attempts to redress this balance. I am working collaboratively with other academics internationally to promote this perspective. One project has been a Special Issue of Human Relations on Strategy as Practice with Professors Paula Jarzabkowski and David Seidl. Another has been an exploration of the role of strategic planning mechanisms in building strategic consensus and integration.

In January 2006 I became a Ghoshal Fellow of the Advanced Institute for Management. As part of the fellowship I have undertaken a major empirical investigation of how multinational enterprises are developing integrated European operations from previously multi-domestic modes of operation in response to performance challenges, and how they deliver the associated local transformation this requires. Consistent with the strategy as practice perspective this research follows what executives at the European and National levels are doing to deliver this shift.  This work is currently being developed into two different projects: "Breaking out of Strategy Vectors" and a "Narrative approach to Strategic Renewal". 

Additional projects underway include collaborative work exploring strategising from a discourse perspective, middle manager strategic sensemaking, the impact of strategists' identity on their strategic activity and strategy workshops.

I typically utilise my previous consultancy experience to work collaboratively with organisations and managers in a way that enables the co-production and advancement of practitioner and theoretical knowledge about strategy and strategic change. My work is, therefore, also used to inform practice through practitioner books and journals. I remain committed to research that is both rigorous and practically relevant.

In addition to publishing widely in the area of strategy and strategic change, I sit on the editorial boards of leading international journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Organization Studies and Long Range Planning.

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