Evolution of strategic management: The need for new dominant designs

The development of strategic management is explained from an evolutionary perspective on the basis of cycles of variation, selection and retention. In industry, breakthrough innovations, or technological discontinuities, initiate eras of ferment that end when a generally accepted standard, or dominant design, starts an era of incremental change. In strategic management, the original definition of strategy initiated an era of ferment characterized by a focus on the environment. The attention to the environment of firms and the integration with other areas of inquiry reached a point of maturity with development of a widely accepted model for analyzing industry and with the definition of generic strategies. The resource-based view of the firm created a new era of ferment by affirming that the main sources of sustainable competitive advantages reside in the development and use of valuable resources. A new period, marked by swift advances in technology and increasingly blurred boundaries among industries, markets and competitors as well as diverse and more complex sources of competitive advantages, imposes on scholars and practitioners an imperative need to conceive new dominant designs. This paper illustrates the evolution toward new directions and challenges of creating new dominant paradigms in strategic management that revolve around the concepts of knowledge, learning, and innovation.     

Digital orientation: Conceptualization and operationalization of a new strategic orientation

Although there is ample evidence that digital technologies are strategically important for value creation, extant literature lacks holistic concepts that capture an organization’s strategic orientation concerning digital innovation and transformation initiatives. This study integrates recent digitalization themes with IT business alignment research to conceptualize a new strategic orientation construct: digital orientation. The construct is manifested in four dimensions which we operationalize for computer-aided text analysis. We validate the construct based on 6498 shareholder letters from large US firms over 16 years. Building upon the resource-based view, we validate the digital orientation construct by linking it to firm performance. Our findings advance the literature on strategic orientations and bring the domains of strategy and information systems closer together. The novel digital orientation construct and the validated measurement instrument lead to many new research opportunities.     

Maintaining strategic momentum: The CEO''s agenda

How does the chief executive of a large complex organization maintain strategic momentum? This represents a great challenge when there are no obvious external threats, and no obvious reasons for having a concerted action. Floris Maljers, Charles Baden-Fuller and Frans van den Bosch explore the inherent tensions which exist between stability and change. Change is necessary to maintain success, but too much change is disastrous. The authors argue that there are several possible solutions to this paradox, including that of generating periods of intense activity followed by periods of comparative stability and incremental improvement. Using the introspection of one of the CEOs of Unilever, who held office from 1984 to 1994, the authors examine how these tensions were played out and resolved.     

The Impact of Alliance Management Capabilities on Alliance Attributes and Performance: A Literature Review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter‐firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) – firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge – as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner‐specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge‐sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.     

The Alliance formation process

While interest in developing strategic alliances within the food system continues to increase, there remains considerable risk when firms adopt such a cooperative strategy. The risk is due in part to the lack of concrete guidelines that illustrate the steps or stages of alliance development and the important strategic and operational decisions required at each stage. The existence of such guidelines would facilitate alliance formation and enable managers and researchers to better understand alliance practice. This paper provides an alliance formation model that incorporates the process of alliance formation with the strategic and operational considerations required for long term success. The model can be used by managers and academicians to develop and understand alliances.     

Quality improvement's new focus yields quantitative results

Health care quality improvement methods are now undergoing fundamental change. The emphasis is shifting from inspection of physician practices to continuous improvement of clinical processes validated by quantitative results. This change is long overdue. Traditional quality assurance methods that operate retrospectively and alienate physicians are not useful in a marketplace where quality and cost control are a matter of survival. Physician practices are only as good as the institutional processes they rely upon, and any quality improvement method that alienates physicians is doomed. Quality improvement is impossible without the support of physicians, because true improvement is driven and quantified by clinical data. Physicians are needed to interpret that data.     

Beyond products: new strategic imperatives for developing competencies in dynamic environments

Strategy research has often taken a product-centered perspective. When firms compete in environments characterized by accelerating product life cycles, mass customization, and technological discontinuities, a product-centered perspective on strategy may help explain a firm’s current competitive advantage. However, this perspective adds little guidance in making strategies that create competitive advantage in the future. In this paper, we present a perspective in which dynamic environments require firms to focus on (1) building market-driven, technological, and integration competencies, not a stream of product improvements, and (2) decoupling these competencies from current products in order to create and exploit new opportunities. We discuss the perspective of products as a temporary integration of market and technology trajectories. Research propositions are presented and future implications are discussed.     

The Impacts of Alliance Purpose and Partner Similarity on Alliance Governance

It is generally recognized that the governance structure of an alliance has an impact on its probability of success. In this study, we examine the choice between two alternative alliance governance structures: equity and non-equity. Drawing from transaction cost economics, two sets of factors, namely alliance purpose (R&D or marketing) and cultural distance between partners, are hypothesized to influence the above choice. We further hypothesize that collaborative R&D alliances, where both parties contribute technical knowledge, are more likely to lead to the formation of equity alliances than non-collaborative research agreements, where only one partner may be doing the research work. Based on a sample of 2407 alliances formed in the global biotechnology industry, we find partial support for the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, we find that collaborative R&D alliances are more likely to be equity alliances, whereas non-collaborative R&D alliances do not have any impact on the choice of the governance form. We also find that alliances formed with a marketing purpose are less likely to be equity alliances. We did not find any relationship between cultural distance and the choice of equity alliances.     

The strategic divestment decision

Management, periodicals have of late been reflecting the increasing attention corporate managers are paying to the difficult problem of divestment. The purpose of this paper is to outline conceptually a planning and analytical framework for dealing with divestments.Corporate Planners in manufacturing organizations will find particular relevance in the author's comments.     

The competitive advantage: strategic thinking for physician leaders

Physician executives should manage their career strategies like a well-run company. Learn how to start thinking aout your career strategy.     

基于信息联盟的中小企业战略联盟

本文以提高中小企业竞争力为出发点,从观察客观存在的中小企业群入手,看到了中小企业在竞争方面面临的问题与机会,指出以信息为纽带进行联合是解决问题的出路,进而研究中小企业以信息化为平台的合作方式,归纳总结了4种方式,提出了"信息联盟"方式的设想,并进行了实证研究.     

A new tool for hospital/ physician strategic alignment: the subsidiary physician corporation

Physicians' and hospitals' strategies often diverge--with poor results for both. The causes of this divergence are many. They include different methods of payment, divisive governmental regulations (like Stark) and cultural differences.     

The components of strategic planning

What is the current level of strategic planning in the United States? What objectives are quantified in the strategic plans? What kinds of environmental factors are identified in the planning process? What areas are planned for? How often are the strategic plans reviewed? These are among the questions which were raised in a recent survey of 323 companies whose results are summarized in this paper. It is hoped that this study will permit practitioners to compare their planning with planning being performed in their industry.Suggested improvements in the stategic planning process include more frequent monitoring of performance against the plans, more comprehensive environmental surveillance, and greater emphasis on organizational structure plans. The strategic planning process was found to be constantly evolving and cyclical. The strategic planning activity expanded during adversity and contracted when business prospects were good.     

企业动态联盟的协调机制

企业动态联盟是近年来出现的由多利益主体联盟结成的一种新型的网络组织形态,这种网络组织的运作效率和联盟目标的实现,不仅取决于联盟成员企业的独立运作能力,而且更需要联盟体内成员企业间的精诚合作与相互协调。针对企业动态联盟实践中遇到的协调困难及由此而导致的诸多风险问题,本文在阐明企业动态联盟协调的价值基础、关键要素和基于信息平台的协调管理构架的基础上,提出了三种形态的企业动态联盟的协调机制,并给出了一些具体的协调方法,以期为企业动态联盟管理实践提供参考。