Lecture # 23

PROSPECTORS – Prospector enacts an environment that is more dynamic than other types of organizations. Unlike the defender, whose success comes primarily from efficiently serving a stable market, the Prospector’s prime capability is that of finding and exploiting new product and market opportunities. For Prospector maintaining a reputation as an innovator in product and market development may be perhaps more important profitability. Entrepreneurial problem: How to locate and develop market opportunities? - The systemic addition of new products or markets,

Combined with retrenchment in other parts of domain –characterizes the Prospector. -Prospector must have the ability to scan, survey a wide range of environmental trends and events. -So the organization spends heavily on individual and groups who scan the environment. -Change (within industry and to different industry) is major tool of the Prospector manager to gain edge over competitors. -Product and market innovation protect the organization from a changing environment but the organizations risks the low level of profitability and stretch (over expansion ) of it resources. Engineering Problem -How to avoid long term commitments to a single technological process?

Solutions: to invest in flexible, proto-type technologies -to invest in multiple technologies. -Prospectors have low degree of routinization and mechanization. -Believes in organic organizations technology is embedded in people. Therefore technological flexibility permits a rapid response to changing domains but the organization cannot develop economies (or efficiency) in production and distribution system because of multiple technologies. -Decentralization increases cost while centralisation to economies. Administrative Problem: How to facilitate and coordinate (rather control) numerous and diverse operations?

Solution lies in having organic-structure-process mechanism -Therefore top management is dominated by R & D and Marketing experts, planning is broader rather than intensive, and oriented towards results not methods. -Project structure characterised by low degree of formalization, decentralized control, lateral and vertical communication,etc. -Therefore flexibility is the catchword for all three types of problems of entrepreneurial, engineering and administrative. -Administrative system is ideal to maintain flexibility and effectiveness but may underutilize or misutilize resources.

ANALYZER- The research shows that the defender and Prospector seem to reside at opposite ends of continuum of adjustment strategies. -Between these two extreme we have analyzer and It is a unique combination of the two types. -A true Analyzer is an organization that attempts to minimize risk while maximizing the opportunity for profit it combines the strengths of both the prospector and defender into a single system. -The best word to describe Analyzer’s adaptive approach is “balance”.