Quantitative analysis of the relationship between organizational construct and opportunities to improve strategy execution

Strategy execution is emerging as one of the most significant performance measures in organizations today. Research has offered opportunities to identify obstacles and improve performance, but there is contradiction among the recommendations. To date, there has been little attention given to how organizational size relates to strategy execution opportunities and risk identifiers. This quantitative study correlated opportunities to improve strategy execution and related factors with organizational size. The results revealed differences between organizational constructs in regards to ownership of execution success by key employees, strategy communication and guidelines, financial stressors and impacts associated with grid or matrix structures. Finally, and perhaps most operationally significant, both large and small organizations perceive consistent yet substantively different obstacles to strategy execution. To state this another way, the most influential opportunities to improve strategy execution differ between large and small organizations. These results remove the contradiction in previous research and create a clearer context for decision making at all levels of the management and leadership hierarchy. Knowing how organizational size contributes to determining the obstacles of greatest import provides a roadmap for improved execution efforts in organizations of all sizes.