Week 5 -Application Assignment- Academic Article

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The article by Leitch and Davenport (2002) focuses on New Zealand’s Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST).  According to the article, in 1999 FRST became the primary investor and facilitator for science and innovation system research.  A new board for the agency was put in place by the government and the company was forced to go through major structural changes.  The changes also involved new ways to communicate with internal and external stakeholders.  Leitch and Davenport used FRST to show how aspects of Eisenberg’s strategic ambiguity theory can affect an organization as it undergoes change.

As we read in this week’s article by Eisenberg, one of the three essential concepts about strategic ambiguity is that it facilitates organizational change through shifting interpretations or organizational goals and central metaphors (Eisenberg, 1984).  This was the case for FRST as their new board and staff tried to identify what their new mission would be and the overall strategy for the organization.  As a result of the change in structure FRST was in charge of not only investing in new science initiatives, but also guiding providers in which areas of research would take priority over others.  The data collected by Leitch and Davenport for this case, mostly through interviews with FRST employees, shows that the organization had been used to following a top-down management and communication strategy.  So when new initiatives were introduced there was not an existing model to follow that would appropriately deal with communication issues.  In the article Leitch and Davenport quote one of FRST’s senior managers as saying:

“Internal communication, in my view, has never been a strong point within the Foundation.  The groups on different floors are isolated from one another and some floors communicate better internally than do others” (Leitch & Davenport, 2002).

Therefore when senior managers were asked to take on new roles within the company, there were unprepared on how to communicate the information.  The article indicates that FRST’s new Chairman and board essentially came up with a new mission statement during the course of one meeting.  They worked to maintain this information vague because they knew changes were going to happen, but were not clear on a process of implementation.  “Vagueness in communication can cause problems, to be sure, but it can also serve to hold strained relations together and reduce unnecessary conflict” (Eisenberg, 1984).  FRST approach on the mission statement allowed some room for stakeholders to interpret the information in a number of different ways.

The article by Leitch and Davenport also shows how strategic ambiguity backfired with some of FRST’s stakeholders.  Several universities in New Zealand, who partnered with FRST in science research, were not receptive to FRST’s ambiguous messages.  The article states that universities receive little funding from FRST, so university staff were not inclined to work on projects that only met FRST’s objectives.  FRST’s new Statement of Intent was named ‘Investing in Innovation’ (Leitch & Davenport, 2002).  University researchers were not comfortable with the term ‘investing’ knowing that the funding was lacking and little to no direction was provided for the new projects. 

Near the end of the article, the authors mention that in order to have room for interpretation in strategic ambiguity, each stakeholder needs to have goodwill and trust toward the organization (Leitch & Davenport, 2002).  I thought this was an interesting concept because this is not the first throughout the semester where we have seen that trust is needed between partners to have effective communication.  Therefore organizations, such as FRST, need to beware that some of their messages may be interpreted negatively by some stakeholders.  This would be an incredible risk to take and could hinder partnerships.  If I were a consultant for FRST, I would advise them to continue following the strategic ambiguity model until they have developed a more specific system of communication for internal and external stakeholders.  However, I would also suggest that they identify their most valuable stakeholders and address some of their communication concerns as soon as possible.  

Leitch, S., & Davenport, S. (2002). Strategic ambiguity in communicating public sector change.

               Journal of Communication Management. 7, 2, 129-139.

Eisenberg, E. (1984). Ambiguity As Strategy in Organizational Communication. Communication

Monographs, 51, 227 -242.