Professor Harry Sminia
Management Science
Personal statement
Harry Sminia is professor of strategic management.
Before joining Strathclyde in 2013, Harry held positions at the University of Groningen, the Vrije Universteit, Amsterdam and the University of Sheffield.
His research interests are in the area of processes of strategy formation, strategic change, and competitive positioning. He is eclectic in his theoretical tastes, as long as it helps to elucidate ‘how’ questions. Management reality is processual. It is not about the state of things and providing explanations why these are correlated with each other. It is about how things come into being, change or continue to be, and sometimes disappear again. It is about understanding how things happen and can be made to happen.
Harry has done research on how a top management team activity actually affects the strategic direction of a firm, how organizations change, how environments develop, but also how crucial things remain unaltered over a period of time despite a strong impetus for change. He currently focuses on high value manufacturing. This is a particularly interesting problem area, not only because of its prominence in Scotland’s and the UK’s economic and innovation policy, but also because it is at the crossroads of strategy, innovation, and operations. He is also interested in process research methods and methodology.
To do and to teach strategy, Harry believes there is nothing so practical as a good theory (to paraphrase Kurt Lewin). Furthermore, he beliefs that learning is the most effective if you have to do what you are being taught. For those reasons he always tries to involve students in activities in which they have to use strategy theories to experience their practicality.
Harry is happy to supervise PhD students who – like him – are interested in finding out about 'how' questions in the broad area of strategic management. Yet he is particularly interested in projects that are at the crossroads of strategy, innovation, and manufacturing.
Area of Expertise
- Strategy process
- Realising strategy
- Strategic management capability
- High value manufacturing
- Process research
Publications
- How stories make strategy : top management and middle managers' storytelling performances
- Enang Etieno S, Zhang Ying, Sminia Harry
- Academy of Management Proceedings Vol 2024 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.5465/amproc.2024.12010abstract
- Exploring performativity in institutional work : towards a strong process framework
- Van Fenema Paul C, Sminia Harry
- Academy of Management Proceedings Vol 2024 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.5465/amproc.2024.13080abstract
- Path release among practices in the process of path constitution : how the MP3-path appeared in the field of recorded music
- Sminia Harry, Bohn Stephan, Sydow Jörg
- Research Policy Vol 53 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105073
- Failure as a process : shaping what is worth doing in creative projects
- Otto Birke, Schiemer Benjamin, Sminia Harry, Sydow Jörg
- Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2024) (2024)
- Strategic management as wayfinding : the doing of strategy work
- Sminia Harry, Corvalàn Julia
- The Palgrave Handbook of Strategy, Change and Transformational Project Leadership (2024) (2024)
- Unpacking researchers' embodied sensemaking : a diffractive reading-writing of Mann Gulch disaster
- Enang Etieno, Sminia Harry, Gherardi Silvia, Zhang Ying
- Scandinavian Journal of Management Vol 39 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2023.101299
Professional Activities
- Digital Strategy for Textiles
- Organiser
- 31/1/2018
- External Examiner Warwick Business School
- External Examiner
- 2016
- External Examiner Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow
- External Examiner
- 2016
- External Examiner Newcastle University Business School Joint Degrees with Rijksuniversteit Groningen in The Netherlands
- External Examiner
- 2014
Projects
- KTP - JWF Process Solutions Ltd. Business model transition from sensor supply, to provision of a software-based data and information service sales solution.
- Paton, Steve (Principal Investigator) Sminia, Harry (Co-investigator) Wallace, William (Co-investigator) Walls, Lesley (Co-investigator)
- 01-Mar-2021 - 28-Feb-2023
- KTP - Leonardo
- Paton, Steve (Principal Investigator) Ates, Aylin (Co-investigator) Sminia, Harry (Co-investigator)
- 04-Nov-2019 - 03-Nov-2021
- Strategy Capability Workshops for Turner & Co Ltd
- McIntyre, Alan (Principal Investigator) Sminia, Harry (Principal Investigator) Nair, Anup (Co-investigator)
- 25-Jan-2018 - 08-May-2018
- ERDF Atlantic Area Programme 2014-2020 IN. 4.0 Project
- Ates, Aylin (Co-investigator) Sminia, Harry (Co-investigator) Walls, Lesley (Co-investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator)
- 01-Sep-2017 - 31-Jan-2021
- Strategy Workshop for Turner & Co Ltd
- Sminia, Harry (Principal Investigator) Nair, Anup (Co-investigator)
- 06-Jan-2017 - 12-Feb-2017
- The interrelationship between strategic change and the emotional autonomy of employees: A Strategy-as-Practice view
- Mittra, Pallavi (Post Grad Student) McInnes, Peter (Principal Investigator) Sminia, Harry (Academic)
- We know little about how the unfolding process of strategic formulation and implementation impacts upon the individuals’ understanding of what they should, and can, do. Such questions are central to the internationally important field of strategy-as-practice. Here strategy is not seen as something organisations “have”, but as something people “do”. The focus is less, then, the techniques used to formulate business policy, and more the way individuals enact, and react to, the formulation, dissemination and implementation of strategy. While the literature suggests subjectivity is linked to the interpretation and enactment of strategy, the individual’s sense of place and value within the business has not been considered. Consequently, the recurring question in the literature concerns how ‘strategy’ reflects in the intangible embodied perceptions and practices that shape what gets done in organizations. Addressing this gap, this proposed research asks: What are the implications of strategic change on individual actors’ sense of ‘emotional autonomy’ as they formulate and respond to changes in strategy?
- 01-Oct-2013 - 30-Sep-2016