Steven.Floyd@business.uconn.edu
Steven W. Floyd is the Robert A. Cizik Chair of Strategic Management, Technology and Manufacturing at the University of Connecticut (USA). He is an International Fellow of the U.K. Advanced Institute of Management Research and Co-Editor of the Journal of Management Studies. In 2004, he was the Program Co-Chair for the 24th Annual International Conference of the Strategic Management Society, and he continues to serve the Society as Program Chair of the Strategy Process Interest Group. He has been a visiting professor at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), Strathclyde University (Scotland), EM Lyon (France) and Cranfield University (UK) and an invited speaker at business schools in the U.S. and Europe. As a consultant, he has worked to improve the strategy process of leading companies, including Arco International, Barnes Group Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston, Pfizer, TetraPak, The Hartford, The Institute of Management Studies, among others.
Dr. Floyd's research and consulting focuses on the strategy development process. The work explores the behaviors and processes associated with shared understanding and commitment toward strategy. Papers on this and other topics have been published in such journals as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Long Range Planning and the Academy of Management Executive. Much of his research centers on the strategic contributions of middle managers. Findings on this topic have been published in academic journals and featured in the business press, including The Economist, The Times of London, The Financial Times, BBC-TV and radio. His books, The Strategic Middle Manager (Jossey-Bass, 1996) and Strategy from the Middle (Sage Publications, 2000) , co-authored with Bill Wooldridge, articulate the strategic roles of middle managers and examine the implications of a middle-level perspective for creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Floyd is also co-editor of Innovating Strategy Process (Blackwell, 2005), which examines the latest theory and practice in strategy-making.
Professor Floyd's recent research focuses on the activities and practices associated with the management of strategic initiatives. With Christoph Lechner (U. St. Gallen) and others, he has studied initiatives in a diverse group of companies, including Allianz, Infenion, Lufthansa, and UBS among others. The purpose of this research is to determine how organizations can improve their approach to launching, guiding and managing strategic initiatives. Another recent interest is the relevance of social anthropological and micro-sociological perspectives on rituals and rites of passage in the study of strategy workshops. A theory-building paper co-authored with Gerry Johnson and Shameen Prashantham (both of University of Strathclyde) is under-development on this topic.