Competing Motivations: Towards an Understanding of Strategy Formation Processes

Abstract

This working paper sets out to examine the strategic formation process in a non-profit organisation and how this process is influenced and determined by competing motivations held by key personnel and stakeholders using a case study approach. Strategic formation is the critical component of the strategic management process and therefore is vital to the future development of an organization. In the private sector, organizations mostly exist for, and are driven by the profit motive. Any other activity is incidental to the primary driving force. For non-profit organizations, there are different motivations. Breaking even (the closest to a profit motive) is only one of the drivers. This study is an opportunity to examine the strategy formation process of how different (and sometimes competing) organizational motivations are or are not satisfied and how this significant task is accomplished in a not-for-profit environment.

As the process of strategy formation is a social process, an interpretivist perspective was utilised, with its relativist ontology and subjectivist epistemology. Subsequently, a qualitative method of research is chosen, in this instance, grounded theory, as it was exploratory in approach. By generating coding and theoretical saturation of interview data, it was found that rationality was a core process. However rationality was seen as a characteristic of the narrator and irrationality was applied to others. This process seemed to be how the strategy formation process would emerge. This case study is a small contribution to an area short on empirical research and attention in the literature, and offers some insights to the complex task of satisfying the demand of competing motivations in organizations.

Keywords: strategy formation, strategic management, non-profit, not for profit, organization