Contextual understanding

Interestingly, the common theme with the shortcomings of education seemed to be that education lacked in generating the skills and understand- ing that are usable in a real work-life context. Many leaders explicitly stated that education is narrow and contextless to work-life. However, the leaders also mentioned that developing the pre-work-life education to a more context-including direction would not probably be that beneficial. Instead, many of them proposed that some topics should be revisited within the work-life context after some experience from the actual work chal- lenges would have been acquired. Reflecting theory with the relevant context would bring novel understanding that simply would not be achievable prior to gaining actual work-life experience.

What would really benefit you, I think that it’s almost like that you have been working for five years, and then you would go

back to organisational theory and the courses in the depart- ment of work psychology, you would only do them then. Be- cause putting it in context during studies, you study for an exam, but it is extremely hard to understand what it then

means in reality.

-Leader 8

Finally, connecting with the lack of contextual understanding, the leaders said that the education did not prepare them well with the practical skills required in the work-life. Leaders stated that business skills, readiness in the international environment, and overall skills needed in renewal would have helped a lot in their previous responsibilities and strategic renewal processes.

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5 Discussion

This thesis’ findings on successful strategic renewals mostly correlate with the concept of incremental strategic renewal (Agarwal & Helfat, 2009). Ma- jority of the successful renewal journeys were continuous in their nature.

Continuity was present regardless of the velocity of changes in the environ- ment or whether the impulses of renewal were internal or external. Favour- ing incremental renewal over transformational one might be linked to the current turbulent environment, where changes are constantly occurring.

Thus, organisations must be constantly ready to alter their direction to sus- tain themselves in this highly dynamic environment. This constant develop- ment also relates to the renewal journeys not having specific end points where the renewal plainly stops. As previous turbulences have been cleared, new ones already emerge, requiring the modern competitive organisation to be in a constant state of renewal.

Importantly, this thesis creates a grounded theory on the enablers of success- ful strategic renewal (see Figure 6: Strategic renewal process model). With the process model, this thesis answers the shortcomings of previous work on the enabling factors of strategic renewal (Hopkins et al., 2013). Providing a comprehensive picture of the entire successful strategic renewal process helps future practitioners and scholars understand the interconnected and multifaceted nature of renewal enablers. Successful strategic renewal re- quires the capability to sense and seize renewal triggers, as well as strategic agility, change agency, and a culture of trust and acceptance. Additionally, there needs to be a clear direction, aligned competences, and focused re- sources. Finally, to ensure a successful execution of the strategic renewal, the process must be continuously engaging to ensure that the critical mass of people is committed to the goals of the renewal. In addition to accomplishing the renewal targets, success in the renewal creates good feeling and renews the organisational leadership. The effects of successful renewal consequently increase the organisation’s capabilities to attempt and succeed in future stra- tegic renewals.

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Interestingly the methodological choice of choosing an equal representation of women and men, instead of conforming to the technology industry’s gen- der ratio, provided novel findings regarding cognitive diversity and trust.

This study provided evidence of the importance of cognitive diversity, or di- versity of thinking, as an enabler to strategic renewal. Cognitive diversity has not been majorly linked to strategic renewal or strategic change before. Es- pecially interesting was that this finding was only explicitly stated by women in the interviews. Importance of diversity of thinking can be a result of the extremely men-dominated Finnish technology industry, where only 2o % of the people working are women (Teknologiateollisuus, 2018). Women, who are underrepresented in the industry might be more capable in sensing and valuing others not fitting the industry’s existing status quo. Regardless, di- versity of thinking is an important enabler of successful strategic renewal, as it provides an antidote against groupthink and risk blindness (Bruce, 2014).

Diversity of thinking was also seen dominantly present in the women’s lead- ership philosophies. This presence might provide and interesting link to un- derstanding the importance of servant leadership to successful strategic re- newal. Traditional leadership based on the unquestioned authority might fortify groupthink as the leader is the one who usually is responsible for the expertise of the organisation (Manz & Sims, 1991). The capability to innovate might not be at its peak in a culture built on authority, as the subordinates might be less willing to present differing views. Thus, servant leadership has the potential of supporting a more multifaceted decision making by encour- aging diversity of thinking. The humility and empowering nature of a servant leader can encourage others to bring out their thoughts. This is especially im- portant in an organisation where the substance experts might be more capa- ble than the leader in specific fields of knowledge, which was found to be typ- ical in the case companies of this thesis.

Other important enabler of strategic renewal not majorly discussed in prior literature was trust. Although trust was found to be important factor of lead- ership philosophy for both women and men, only women explicitly empha- sised its importance for strategic renewal. Trust was understood as mutual

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trust between the subordinates and the leaders. Subordinates trust the lead- ers to have the subordinates’ interests in mind, and the leaders trust that their subordinates have the capabilities to accomplish the tasks needed to succeed in the renewal. Trust allows leaders to focus on the broader-scale strategic decision making, as they believe that people in the organisation are capable to autonomously create solutions for other emerging problems. In this sense, trust creates more time for the organisation to focus on the exter- nal and internal changes, thus making the organisation more capable at re- newal. Additionally, trust fits the Finnish, and Nordic, mindscape of equality and non-hierarchical organisations (TEM, 2018), and might be one the com- petitive advantages these Northern countries can lean on regarding strategic renewal.

Additionally, leadership philosophies of leaders behind successful renewal have not been majorly documented in prior literature. This thesis provides new avenues to understanding the linkage between leadership philosophy and success in strategic renewal. Interestingly, the leaders’ experienced in successful renewal emphasised the values of empowerment, stewardship, in- terpersonal acceptance, direction provision, authenticity, and humility – ten- ets that are commonly associated with servant leadership and exemplary en- gineering leaders (Li et al., 2022; van Dierendonck, 2011). In successful stra- tegic renewal leadership that values and respects the human element tri- umphs over leadership that primarily focuses on the monetary aspects of business. Getting people to join was found to be the single most important enabling factor of strategic renewal, in that it either makes or breaks the re- newal’s success.

Interestingly, the leader’s impacts to the larger society, present in the theory on exemplary engineer leaders (Li et al., 2022), were not explicitly observed in the findings of this thesis. This difference in findings could be due to dif- ferent research samples. The basis for exemplary engineering leadership was on engineers’ evaluating their leaders, while this study focused on the lead- ers’ evaluating themselves. Evaluating own current and future impacts might be more difficult than to observe the impacts of somebody else. However, the

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willingness to participate in this thesis, that focuses on understanding and developing knowledge for future leaders, implicitly shows these leaders’ will- ingness to impact the larger society and develop their profession. All these leaders were willing to spend time pro bono to help create an understanding of strategic renewal and the factors influencing it. Thus, these leaders pre- sented great efforts to impact their society, even if they did not explicitly state it.

This thesis also provides new avenues to understanding successful Finnish leadership. Prior studies had found Finnish leadership to be engineering minded but one that is characterised by not focusing on the future and avoid- ing people empowerment and development activities (TEM, 2018). This the- sis found that not every Finnish leader shares these negative qualities. More importantly, the leaders that did focus on the future, on developing and em- powering their subordinates, and on providing direction, in addition to hav- ing the typical Finnish leadership qualities, fared immensely well in leading their organisations through successful strategic renewal. Finnish leadership can be empowering and future-oriented, and this type of leadership is espe- cially capable at constantly renewing the Finnish technology industry to keep and lead the changes in the turbulent global environment.

This thesis also provides interesting findings to the debate whether education background influences the actions and philosophies of leaders. Interestingly, this thesis did not find any major differences between the leaders based on their education background. Rather, all the leaders were quite similar in what they valued in leadership and what they perceived to be important for strate- gic renewal. Thus, success in renewal might require a certain type of leader- ship that is not currently influenced or developed by any educational back- ground. However, a focus on failed renewal attempts might provide more di- versity between the influences of different educational backgrounds. A sec- ond reasoning for the similarities between leaders could be that the Finnish culture, or a long tenure in the technology industry, influences the leaders’

philosophies more than a specific education background. An engineering minded servant leadership might just simply work better in this culture and

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industry than other leadership philosophies. Finally, a third reason could be that strategic renewal topics are not currently taught in detail in higher de- gree education. In this scenario, the skills for renewal are not learnt from a distinct education, but rather from work-life experiences in the Finnish tech- nology industry.