Abstract:
Since the early work of Skinner, much has been written on operations strategy; but managers
still do not appear to carry out the actions in the practice of operations management. This
paper is motivated by this issue, and in order to respond to this issue we will first decide how
we will conceptualise the organization in which operations function performs. It is possible
to think of the organization as a productive function, and this may ground one approach to
strategizing within the operations function. An alternative perspective conceptualises the firm
as a governance structure, and in this form, the process of strategizing within the operations
function is problematic.
This paper reviews the alternative perspective, based heavily on the resource based view of
the firm, and uses material based on the experiences of an Australian company to illustrate
aspects of strategizing within the operations function.
