Colin Campbell-Hunt - World Famous in New Zealand: How New Zealands Leading Firms Became World Class Competitors

World Famous in New Zealand

How New Zealands Leading Firms Became World-Class Competitors

COLIN CAMPBELL-HUNT

John Brocklesby

Sylvie Chetty

Lawrence Corbett

Sally Davenport

Deborah Jones

Pat Walsh

This project was funded by the Public Good Science Fund under contract VIC806, and by grants from the New Zealand Trade Development Board and Victoria University of Wellington.

First published 2001
This ebook edition 2013

Auckland University Press

University of Auckland

Private Bag 92019

Auckland 1142

New Zealand

www.press.auckland.ac.nz

CANZ, 2001

eISBN 978 1 86940 646 2

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Sarah Maxey

This study relied wholly on the goodwill of the very busy people who devoted many hours of their time to share with the research team their recollected wisdom on what it takes to grow world-class businesses from New Zealands economic soil. We are grateful to them for allowing us to share this project with them, and for everything we learnt from them. It was a great two years. Thank you.

The Criterion Group: Wally Smaill and Brian Smaill, Executive Directors

Formway Furniture: Rick Wells, Managing Director and Colin Campbell, General Manager New Zealand

Gallagher Group: Bill Gallagher, Managing Director and Margaret Comer, Corporate Services Manager

Kiwi Dairies: Shona Glentworth, Strategic Development Manager and Roy Baker, Chief Executive Officer Fencepost

Montana Wines: Peter Hubscher, Managing Director and Peter Anderson, Management Services Manager

Nuplex Industries: Fred Holland, Chairman and Geoff Swailes, Commercial Manager Resins

PEC New Zealand: John Williams, Chief Executive Officer (retired)

Scott Technology: Graham Batts, Director

Svedala Barmac: Andi Lusty, Managing Director and the entire company

Tait Electronics: Sir Angus Tait, Chairman and Warren Rickard, Chief Executive Officer

We are grateful, too, for the guidance we received from the projects advisory panel. They directed us towards the exemplar organisations for our study, commented on our ideas and organised forums in which we could test our ideas with management practitioners.

Ministry of Commerce (Ministry of Economic Development): Graeme Davis, Yvonne Lucas and Stephen Knuckey

New Zealand Institute of Management: David Chapman

New Zealand Manufacturers and Employers Federation: David Moloney

New Zealand Trade Development Board: Michael Hannah

This book is the joint product of a large research team. We worked together for two years and during that time shared impressions of the companies we studied, and borrowed and built on each others ideas. Within that collective enterprise, each of us took responsibility for particular aspects of the enquiry, and for drafting particular chapters as shown below.

The book is also based on histories of the participating companies written by the following people.

Amy Harrison and Clinton Haswell summarised these histories for the appendix. Diane Campbell-Hunt edited the entire manuscript and drafted the final chapter.

Colin Campbell-Hunt read English Language and Literature at Oxford. He also holds an MBA from York University, Canada, and a PhD in economics from Victoria University of Wellington. He is currently Reader in Strategic Management at Victoria University of Wellington and has also been a Visiting Professor of Management at St Andrews in Scotland. He will shortly take up an appointment as a Professor of Management at the University of Otago.

John Brocklesby is Professor of Management at Victoria University of Wellington. Previously he was employed in the steel industry in Britain. He has an undergraduate degree from Coventry University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Warwick Business School. Recent publications have appeared in the International Journal of Strategic Management, the Australian Journal of Management, the Journal of Organisational Change Management, the Journal of the Organisational Research Society, Systems Practice, and Systems Research. A rather sad aspect of his life is that he has supported Scunthorpe United Football Club since 1962, and Coventry City Football Club since 1973.

Sylvie Chetty is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the College of Business, Massey University, Albany. She is one of New Zealands leading researchers in international business and has published widely on the export success of New Zealand firms, and the use of business networks in internationalisation.

Lawrence Corbett is Associate Professor of Operations Management at Victoria University of Wellington. In a long research career, Professor Corbett is perhaps best known for his regular series of studies of the manufacturing sector in New Zealand, as part of the global research network, the Manufacturing Futures Project.

Sally Davenport is a senior lecturer and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Business and Public Management at Victoria University of Wellington. She has previously worked for a consulting firm in London and as a research chemist at Oxford University. Her teaching is mainly in the areas of technology strategy and policy on the Master of Management Studies (in Technology) course. Her research interests focus on research alliances and joint ventures and the commercialisation of technological research, while her consulting work has mainly been in developing research strategies for industries and evaluation of research for policy agencies.

Deborah Jones is Senior Lecturer in Organisation Behaviour at Victoria University of Wellington. She has published research on communication, culture, gender and ethnicity in New Zealand organisations. She has a special interest in qualitative approaches to organisational research.

Pat Walsh is Professor of Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at Victoria University of Wellington, where he is also Head of the School of Business and Government Management. He is one of New Zealands most prolific researchers of labour market flexibility and human resource management.