Strategic Alliance Research in the Era of Digital Transformation: Perspectives on Future Research

The emerging digital transformation in the twenty‐first century is rapidly and significantly changing the business landscape. The fast‐changing activities, expectations and new modes of collaboration suggest it is time to review the current theoretical insights from strategic alliance (SA) research, which are based on assumptions from a different era. We therefore aim to stimulate multidisciplinary debate and theoretical reflections to better understand emerging paradoxes and challenges that contemporary firms face in the formation, evolution and dissolution of strategic alliances. Specifically, we offer alternative visions of SA research and suggest fresh applications or supplements of existing theoretical perspectives and research methods that can better address the research questions emerging from an era of digital transformation.     

How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies

Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐related activities and those that encouraged mothers to work voluntarily. The most pronounced negative effects on school outcomes occurred for the group of adolescents who had a younger sibling, possibly because of the increased home and sibling care responsibilities they assumed as their mothers increased their employment.     

Awkward Customers? Parents and Provision for Special Educational Needs

This article selectively reports on a small-scale qualitative exploration of the experiences of families who had undergone recent conflict with special educational needs (SEN) professionals. The data were collected over the spring and summer terms of 2001 from 10 families in two local education authorities (LEAs) in the English midlands. The research aimed to examine the parents' perspectives on points of conflict or dissatisfaction between themselves and education professionals. It was concerned with the parents' points of view regarding their pursuit of desired outcomes for their children and the factors that helped or hindered their endeavours. The project found that the parents' negotiation of the SEN system was held by them to be exceptionally difficult and stressful compared to other troubling issues in their lives. The research suggests that dissatisfactions with SEN provision have important implications for the management of LEA Parent partnership Schemes (PPS) in ameliorating the differences between parental aspirations and governmental ambition.     

Asylum Seekers in Scotland: The Accommodation of Diversity

This article explores the experiences of asylum seekers who have been housed in Glasgow under the government's dispersal policy. It notes the work of the Audit Commission in identifying those factors which may be considered when assessing the suitability of areas for asylum-seeker settlement. These factors are then discussed in detail in relation to the Glasgow case study, using information derived from interviews with asylum seekers themselves, with service providers and various community and voluntary organizations. The article notes the impact of additional factors such as media coverage, which were not considered by the Audit Commission. The article discusses the appropriateness of cities such as Glasgow, with relatively small minority ethnic populations, as locations for asylum-seeker settlement, and explores the impact of devolution. It concludes by suggesting that areas such as Glasgow may, with the appropriate commitment, become places where asylum seekers may successfully settle, once they have received refugee status, with new multicultural communities being created.     

Dramatically reducing cycle times through flash development

The reduction of cycle time has emerged as a fundamental element of new product development strategy. Many companies look solely at speed enhancement and increase the human, capital and technical resources allocated to development projects. However, additional resources do not guarantee significant reductions in cycle time. As well as speed enhancement activities, there exist two other sets of activities that are key to shortening the development cycle: those that act to prevent delays (friction) in the development process and those that define the scope of the final outcome (direction). This paper describes flash development as an alternative approach to reducing product development cycle times. Flash development works by creating a process that focuses on speed, friction and direction. The process is illustrated through an analysis of the Galileo Project at Nortel Networks.     

Managerial Involvement and Perceptions of Strategy Process

Prior academic research attests to both positive and negative effects of involvement on the process of developing strategy. On the one hand, it has been argued that involvement strengthens shared vision, increases rationality and improves adaptiveness in strategy-making. On the other hand, involvement is said to lead to intense political behaviour, increased cultural inertia and more constraints in the strategy process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relative importance of these effects. In a survey of over 6,000 managers, we find that their reported levels of involvement are positively associated with perceptions of strategy development processes that are more rational, more focused by a shared vision, and more adaptive. In addition, involvement is negatively associated with statements describing the process as top-down, influenced by politics and slowed by internal culture. Moreover, those who are more involved tend to see business and non-business constraints as less important in determining strategy. We argue that these associations between involvement and desirable features of strategy process are important because perceptions are the basis of managerial behaviour. Thus, managers who are more involved in strategy not only see the process in a more favourable light but also act in ways that make the process more effective. The main implication of these findings is that for most organisations increasing involvement improves the strategy process.