A Review And Comparison of Strategy Diffusion (Top-Down) and Performance (Bottom-Up) in Project-Based Organisations

Abstract

Many studies have investigated topics related to strategy management, portfolio management, program management, and project management relationships. However, traditional one-way cascading of the strategy is still preferable by many organisations, with few studies investigating the use of top-down and bottom-up techniques to spread an organisation’s strategy and getting back the performance, or the possibility of employing one of diffusion theories (e.g., Rogers’ Theory of Innovation Diffusion) within strategy or project contexts in project-based organisations. Therefore, the need to understand and apply a strategy diffusion (top-down) and report its performance (bottom-up) was urgent and necessary within project-based organisations, to fulfil the complete drive of the strategy and raise the competitive advantage of businesses. Thus, this article displays the possibility of matching the Rogers’ innovation diffusion theory key terms, elements, characteristics, and decision process stages with the strategy management elements, characteristics, and process stages, which provides theoretical underpinning of the similarity of innovation diffusion and strategy diffusion concepts. Then, it will show the similarity of the meaning for the four innovation diffusion elements (innovation, communication channels, time and social system) in Rogers’ diffusion theory and in David’s strategy management model. After that, this study will provide the characteristics’ meanings of compatibility, relative advantage, complexity, observability and trialability in Rogers’ innovation diffusion theory and the parallel characteristics’ meanings (consistency, advantage, clarity, visibility consonance and feasibility) in David’s strategic management model. These have different terminologies but the same meanings. This is to support and confirm the possibility of the study proposed concept of utilising Rogers’ diffusion theory for strategy diffusion within project context as top-down method in a project-based organisation. Finally, the paper explains the detailed bottom-up arrangement from project to program to portfolio and up to the strategy level, which shows the possibility of the bottom-up approach in project-based organisations; this is done in order to fulfil the necessity of improving organisational performance.