Implementing a Grand Strategy system—by what method: a case/field study of National Grocers' Peterborough distribution warehouse's Grand Strategy System effort

In the last decade, companies have been faced with a turbulent business environment. There have been dramatic technological shifts, deregulations, economic uncertainty, rapid growth, increased global competition, and major shifts in demography and values. Managing organizational performance and success is becoming increasingly challenging and difficult. Organizations are realizing that in order to succeed, or even to merely exist, they must change the way they do business on a grand scale. Large scale organizational change is risky, hard, complex, unpredictable, and emotionally intense. On the other side of the coin, not changing in this turbulent day and age can even be riskier.

National Grocers Company Limited is currently going through a large scale organizational change effort. Their effort started with a pilot test in their Peterborough, Canada food distribution warehouse. This thesis is a summative evaluation of the change effort within the Peterborough warehouse. This research:

Documents the Peterborough GSS implementation Documents warehouse performance results Evaluates the effectiveness of the PDSOF project Evaluates the effectiveness of the GSS framework in the PDSOF project Documents expert advice on GSS implementation

By organizing and presenting a variety of data in a format that is easy to understand and learn from, I have created a reference document that organizations can use in their large scale organizational change efforts to take theory to practice. More specifically, I provided National Grocers with a document of the change effort at the Peterborough warehouse so that other National Grocers’ warehouses can benefit from the wisdom gained and lessons learned at Peterborough. Therefore, my results and conclusions have “meaning” for real world managers.