Grey Advantage: New strategies for the old

With nearly one fifth of the population of the industrialized world soon to be beyond a traditional retirement age, businesses need to re-appraise their attitudes towards both older workers and older customers. Whilst some public and private sector organizations may have signalled such intentions, the gap between the rhetoric and reality of ‘third age’ employment and grey market development is still substantial. Analysing the ‘Age-Quake’, this article reviews current ageing population trends and associated business agendas. Using case study analysis, it then challenges three perceived ‘grey discontinuities’, as well as the traditional perception of simplistic step-change declines in physical and mental abilities and economic activity at the traditional retirement age. Deriving from this, the article challenges the older received wisdom by offering the individual assessment of ‘third-agers’ in terms of abilities as employees and tastes as customers as two generic strategies to assist managers in the strategic alignment of their organizations in pursuit of “grey advantage”.     

Strategizing in an Unpredictable Climate: Exploring Corporate Strategies to Cope with Regulatory Uncertainty

Government regulation of business activities is increasing rapidly, exposing firms to considerable uncertainty and requiring managers to decide on appropriate strategic postures. To help managers make informed decisions, this study compiles a comprehensive overview of strategies to cope with regulatory uncertainty and illustrates their interdependencies and how they can be combined into overall coping postures, as well as offering management guidelines on deciding which to adopt. A literature review identifies a considerable variety of coping strategies, and we apply unique data from a worldwide cross-industry survey to categorize each into one of three types - offensive, defensive or passive. We find that firms aiming to cope with the uncertainty associated with post-Kyoto regulation typically adopt one of four strategic postures, each characterized by a specific combination of these types: ‘daredevils’ rely solely on offensive strategies; ‘coordinators’ combine them with defensive ones, ‘hedgers’ pursue strategies from all three categories while ‘gamblers’ choose not to specifically cope with uncertainty at all. We exemplify the strategies characteristic of each posture, and illustrate their interdependencies by means of case studies in the European airline industry. We identify two main factors managers should consider particularly when deciding on their firm’s strategic posture: the level of regulatory uncertainty they perceive and the firm’s exposure to future regulations, and find that the higher the level of uncertainty, the broader the range of strategies applied, and the more future regulation seems likely to affect a firm, the more actively it seeks to cope with the associated uncertainty.     

Establishing best practice university research funding strategies using mixed-mode modelling

This paper develops a model representing the university research funding problem under a performance based research funding (PBRF) scheme during the ‘lead-up period’ using a mixed-mode modelling approach (involving soft and hard models) and suggests a solution heuristic. The resultant model facilitates the development of ‘best practice’ strategies to assist in raising the level of research quality and participation, thus placing the university (or academic unit) in the best possible position for facing the final hurdle, the formal research assessment process. This assessment process constitutes the ‘positioning problem’, for which models already exist to assist individual universities to adopt the most favourable strategy. However, the ultimate position of the university depends on the results from the lead-up period. The suggested model facilitates ‘research enhancement’ strategy formulation, evaluation and revision and actively involves the researchers themselves. Benchmarking, an Expert Panel (operating on panel consensus) and subjective strategy impact evaluation are the key tools used. The suggested methodology relies on the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the researchers themselves and will hopefully facilitate the achievement of an academic unit's research goals over the lead-up period preparing them for the ‘positioning problem’. The paper also offers some suggestions as to how to establish and obtain maximum usefulness from the expert panel. Lastly, the suggested solution to the suggested model is user friendly, requiring no more than the use of a spreadsheet.     

The impact of human resource management on organisational performance: Theory and research

This article by Jean-Marie Hiltrop, considers some of the models which have studied the link between HRM and organisational performance. As yet, there is little real evidence, but it is growing and indicates that corporate HRM policies and practices - including ‘best’ practices - are associated with high (financial) performance, and can encourage employee behaviour and attitudes towards strengthening the competitive strategy of an organisation. But such ‘best’ practices can vary widely and even contradict each other. Questions are raised in the article about these ‘best’ practices.The first part of the article looks at the relevant theoretical models, and the second part reviews the findings of recent empirical studies which have evaluated the effects of distinctive HR practices on organisational outcomes.     

The development of global IT infrastructure

A research model of the impact of a multinational corporations’ (MNC) global strategic orientation on global IT infrastructure was developed using global integration, or the degree to which a global strategy is actually implemented, as a mediator. A “matched pair” survey of 94 MNCs was conducted (two respondents per firm) in order to guard against common source bias. The results showed that the firms that pursue a globally oriented strategy actually enacted these strategies as indicated by a wide-variety of resource flows across national units. The role of the level of global integration as a mediator between global strategic orientation and global IT capabilities was empirically demonstrated. This confirms that a global strategy is not sufficient to ensure that an enabling IT infrastructure will be developed; rather it is the actual level of integration and interdependence that is achieved as a result of the strategy that drives IT infrastructure. The primary areas in which global integration was found to be closely linked to the global IT infrastructure were human resources, which significantly influenced the reach, range, support services and planning of the global IT infrastructure, and information resources which significantly influenced the planning dimension of the infrastructure. These results strongly suggest that the transfer of people among national units creates an information needs “pull” which leads to the development of better IT infrastructure and that the “push” of standardized information also contributes positively.     

Private and Public Sector Models for Strategies in Universities*

Increasing formalization of disciplined management of UK universities over the last 30 years has been accompanied by moves to articulate universities' strategies, by attempts to connect organizations' plans and management of activity to those strategies and by a desire to measure how well outcomes are fitted to universities' goals. In this complex change in the orientation of universities' management, lessons have been drawn from the contemporary development of the analysis of strategy and strategic process in commercial and, latterly, in public sector settings. It is argued that there have been very significant errors and weaknesses in the importation of such models of strategy, especially in the stress on strategic planning rather than strategic process and in the insensitivity of universities' planning to the underlying strategy process of the typical university. Most universities, it is argued, mistake planning – and even budgeting – for strategy itself, having failed to make proper sense of their own organizations' processes of generating strategies and putting them into practice. They have typically missed the crucial context of strategy and change. It is argued that there are crucial lessons to be learned from recent advances in theorizing about strategy in the private or commercial sector, particularly in relation to the development of modelling complex and path‐dependent systems; and it is argued strongly that universities' strategic process can fruitfully be analysed through the perspectives of real options analysis. This can also accommodate the richness of universities' traditions of strategy formation and implementation within ‘loose‐coupled’ organizations.     

Japanese Retailing Through the 1990s: Retailer Performance in a Decade of Slow Growth

The development of Japanese retailing through the 1990s is used to illustrate the applicability of a Europe-based growth model in a recessionary market. Through the 1990s the Japanese economy suffered low growth and periods of recession, after strong growth through the 1980s. Retail sales in the 1990s increased only slightly whilst floor-space developments begun in the 1980s and the result of retailer expansion strategies generated increased retail capacity. Large retailers pursued strategies of opening more stores in order to generate sales, but this proved disastrous and resulted in lower productivity, high levels of debt, low levels of innovation and consequential need to restructure. General merchandise and department-store retailers were slow to see the need to restructure and innovate. In contrast, three groups of retailers obtained competitive advantages from the recession, namely retailers who responded quickly to emergent market segments, foreign retailers and e-retailers. The strategic responses to recession and the reasons behind these responses are illustrated and suggestions made on how the experiences of the 1990s will affect development in the early 2000s. Implications of the retailers' behaviour are indicated for retailer strategies, the restructuring of the sector and for research on strategy and structural change.     

How Co-operative is Co-operative Purchasing in Smaller Firms?: Evidence from UK Engineering SMEs

Most SMEs do not try to engage in co-operative purchasing arrangements, and even those that do don’t handle them very well. Examining a sample of SME engineering firms from the UK Midlands for signs of more advanced practice, the authors identify three types of behaviour: firms with deliberate strategies (where co-operative purchasing is a consciously-designed and long-term part of management policy); firms with close ties with their suppliers but which still operate fundamentally adversarial policies (where, despite some development of practice, defensive, short-term and ‘low-trust’ attitudes still predominate) and those whose strategies, maybe of long standing, ‘just happened’ and are described as still emergent. The article analyses these positions to yield lessons for managers, recognising that, as firms grow, emergent strategies will need replacing with something more codified.     

Strategy and Opportunism in European Retail Internationalization

Europe in recent years has witnessed an increase in the amount of cross‐border operations by retailers. The retail sector has undergone substantial structural change characterized by the emergence of a group of rapidly‐growing large retailers, a redefinition of the balance of internalized and externalized functions and a need to respond to the cultural variety present in Europe that becomes evident as retailers move out of their domestic markets. The over‐arching requirement for these large retailers is to grow and gain scale economies. Internationalization of operations has become a requirement for these large firms. It is argued that the established academic conceptualizations of internationalization are unsatisfactory in not addressing this overriding requirement for growth. There is great variety in the international activity in retailing, with the absence of pattern being one of the few generalities. It is proposed that consideration of opportunism may be a better way to gain understanding of retailer activity than trying to fit activity into deterministic strategic models. The experiences of five West European retailers entering and building retail networks in Poland is provided as evidence for this view. Suggestions are made for future work exploring this issue of opportunism as a process in international retailing.     

信息禀赋差异下制造商信息获取策略：“躺平”或“进取”

在市场需求信息不对称下，没有需求预测能力的制造商总是需要权衡实施“躺平”策略还是“进取”策略来获取下游零售商拥有的需求信息。本文考虑一个制造商和一个零售商组成的供应链，通过构建信息对称、信息推测和信息甄别三种情形下的博弈模型，分析了制造商的最优信息获取策略、不同策略和信息禀赋优势对制造商、零售商决策的影响。研究发现，无论零售商信息禀赋优势高或低，对于制造商来说，“躺平”策略为其最优信息获取策略，且在该策略下制造商更倾向于根据零售商的零售价对需求信息进行推测。而对于零售商来说，制造商选择“进取”策略时对其最有利。若制造商选择“躺平”策略，零售商则更倾向于主动披露信息，在该情形下零售商的信息禀赋优势越低对零售商越有利，越高则对制造商越有利。     

Two-period pricing and ordering policy for the dominant retailer in a two-echelon supply chain with demand uncertainty

Retailing channels are increasingly being dominated by ‘power’ retailers who are in a position to dictate prices and ordering schedules to manufacturers and suppliers. A dominant retailer, such as Wal-Mart, has the ‘power’ to decide retail prices of products because there are so many manufacturers who are keen to sell their products through or to such a large and powerful retailer. Several products, such as electronic products, can be sold in the market for some periods during their lifecycles before they retreat, except when they are not popular with consumers after been introduced. Therefore, in case of such products, the retailer should not just consider a single-period pricing and ordering policy. It should make dynamic pricing and ordering decisions based on market demand forecast, in order to obtain maximum cumulative profit from the product during its lifecycle. In this study, we consider this scenario and construct a two-period model to discuss pricing and ordering problems for a dominant retailer with demand uncertainty in a declining price environment. We show that the maximum expected profit function is continuous concave, so the optimal solution to pricing and ordering policy exists and it is the one and only. We also analyze sensitivity of retailer's expected profit to the effects of parameters of price-discount sharing scheme and market demand.     

The role of strategic planning in small business

One of the important reasons for the tremendous interest in corporate strategy and strategic planning is that managers realize that a good strategy greatly increases the likelihood of a firm's success. Strategic planning is not the only reason for success, but there have been several studies which show that firms that plan their strategies are more effective. Taking the relationship of strategy and success as given, this paper considers the need to develop strategic planning for small businesses, and summarizes the findings of a recent survey on strategy of small businesses.Sixty-two minority and 58 non-minority small businesses were studied in this survey. A Likert-type questionnaire was used for the study. The survey indicates that the small businessmen fail, cope, and learn in the struggle for survival. Judgment, experience and intuition seem to play a more important role than any well structured technique of strategic planning. The businessmen were found to be ‘growth maniacs’, since growth may be the most tangible manifestation of achievement. The study leads to the conclusion that efforts should be made to improve the planning knowledge of this vital sector of economy.     

Inter-Organizational Learning and Strategic Renewal in SMEs: Extending the 4I Framework

This article explores how mature SMEs which lack internal resources access external knowledge to facilitate strategic renewal. Organizational learning, in contrast to entrepreneurial learning, recognizes that owner-managers must distribute knowledge throughout the firm to achieve competitive benefits. Three case studies demonstrate how external ‘knowledge providers’ (customers, suppliers and educational institutions) help institutionalize ‘new’ knowledge. Initially, learning from inter-organizational relationships requires owner-managers to be proactive in accessing and extending appropriate inter-organizational relationships. Second, external organizations can play an active role by ‘intertwining’ knowledge to support the development of processes, systems and routines that distribute and institutionalize learning throughout the organization. The three cases have practical implications for owner-managers and add to academic knowledge via the extension of Crossan et al's 4I model of organizational learning.     

Tactical coordination in a multi-location and multi-stage operations structure: A model and a pharmaceutical company case

In this paper, we look at the internal supply chain of an internationally operating firm characterized by a multi-location and multi-stage operations structure. We address problems at three levels, namely the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Our approach goes beyond the operational literature, and focuses primarily on the tactical level. We specify a model and a case that capture strategic and tactical issues and relate the tactical issues to organizational issues. We simulate coordination in different organizational forms pertaining to the ‘tactical control’ of the firm. Our analysis suggests that a functionally organized multi-location and multi-stage operations structure using traditional planning will not work. The choice is between a strongly IT-based, centralized organization or a more decentralized organization using transfer prices as the coordination device.     

考虑产品体验性和营销努力的分销渠道合作策略研究

有关产品分销渠道合作的研究主要集中在渠道成本、风险规避、消费者公平偏好等方面,较少关注产品本身属性。对于体验性低的产品,消费者在网络渠道就能较为准确判断产品价值。而对于体验性高的产品,网络渠道由于其虚拟性导致消费者不能准确判断产品价值,实体渠道则可以凭借现实产品的体验吸引更多的消费者。但由于线下零售商营销努力的溢出效应,部分消费者在线下体验产品后转移到线上消费,因此有必要从产品体验性和营销努力角度研究多渠道的合作策略。本文从消费者效用角度分析了产品体验性和营销努力对不同渠道需求的影响,基于此研究了制造商和线下零售商的三种分销渠道合作策略,探讨产品体验性和营销努力对不同分销渠道选择的影响：第一种为制造商支持线下零售商实施营销努力的单一合作策略;第二种是在单一合作策略下,制造商与零售商采取价格协调契约的双重合作策略;第三种是制造商与零售商之间进一步引入收益共享契约的多重合作策略。通过对三种合作策略的数值仿真,结果表明：三种合作策略均能有效提高制造商与线下零售商的收益水平,并且产品体验性越低,合作策略作用越显著。制造商在进入市场初期,往往需要快速增加企业价值,此时双重合作策略是最优选择。当市场发展成熟,双重合作策略虽然能够有效提高线下零售商收益,但却减少制造商收益,为了激励制造商支持线下零售商实施营销努力,需要将合作收益再分配,此时多重合作策略是最优选择。     

零售商嵌入专业技术的营销策略研究

考虑零售商和技术提供商的二元结构,本文构建理论模型分析零售商嵌入专业技术的营销策略选择问题,并探讨技术嵌入以及技术营销策略对决策结果的影响。研究发现,技术提供商作为博弈的领导者在获取边际利润方面具有优势且相对稳定;并且对技术提供商而言,让零售商进行技术营销的策略是最优的。然而,对于零售商而言,不同技术营销渠道下的利润大小会受到技术产出、技术营销、以及营销努力博弈的影响,因此零售商的策略选择较为复杂。在一定的条件下,零售商可以嵌入产出贡献度较大的专业技术,并优先选择自己进行技术营销以增加技术营销贡献度。这一策略有利于零售商快速实现利润最大化,并与技术提供商实现双赢。     

考虑消费者渠道间需求异质性的BOPS服务模式下生鲜品零售定价策略

针对同时拥有线上和线下销售渠道的生鲜零售商,考虑消费者在渠道间的需求异质性,研究其采用BOPS服务模式后的定价策略。在建立线上线下同价策略模型的基础上,提出线上、线下单一渠道折扣策略以及面向BOPS顾客的折扣策略,进一步设计了联合定价策略,并利用数值实验加以验证和扩展。研究表明:线上渠道折扣与线下渠道折扣策略在有效性上互斥;配送成本适中且配送比例较高时,面向BOPS顾客的折扣策略优于其他两种折扣策略;消费者对折扣的敏感度越高,BOPS折扣策略的适用范围越广,优越性越明显;联合折扣策略可以在更大范围内提升零售商利润。     

International Strategy and Knowledge Creation: The Advantage of Foreignness and Liability of Concentration

International business scholars increasingly emphasize regional strategies based on an optimal location of downstream sales. There has been less scholarly attention, however, to the relationship between international strategy and upstream knowledge creation including R&D. Building on contemporary strategic management theory and the knowledge‐based view we remedy this. The viability of home‐regional or bi‐regional strategies is based on common assumptions that imply negative consequences of distance and foreignness for downstream sales and marketing and benefits from agglomeration for upstream knowledge creation activities including R&D. In contrast, we propose that upstream knowledge creation, radical innovation in particular, rather gains from distance and foreignness and from being dispersed, suggesting the effectiveness of a global strategy. Based on the resource‐based view and recent research on the economics of strategic opportunities and competitive advantage, we provide theoretical explanations for this. We demonstrate how a global multinational corporation is uniquely equipped with knowledge extensity including heterogeneous social‐identity frames in multiple sub‐units. Thanks to arbitrage advantages between the sub‐units’ separate and often locally embedded knowledge, a global multinational corporation can address complex interdependences and interactions between knowledge sets required for knowledge creation. This suggests that maximum exploration capabilities are made possible by a global rather than a home‐regional or bi‐regional strategy.     

考虑网络退货和渠道成本时全渠道BOPS定价与服务决策

随着线上线下融合的全渠道零售的兴起，越来越多的品牌商开始为顾客提供线上购买线下取货BOPS （Buy Online and Pickup in Store）的购物选择。本文考虑网络退货和渠道成本，基于网络渠道、实体渠道和BOPS渠道下的消费者效用函数构建品牌商开设BOPS渠道前后的利润模型，分析BOPS模式对品牌商需求分布和盈利能力的影响，研究定价和服务的最优决策。结果表明：（1）当网络退货率和BOPS渠道不便利程度之间满足特定关系时，开设BOPS渠道可使品牌商总需求增加、网络渠道和实体渠道的需求减少；（2）当网络退货率达到一定阈值或BOPS渠道很便利时，开设BOPS渠道可使品牌商总利润增加；（3）当网络退货率很低而网络渠道购物成本较高时，开设BOPS渠道可使品牌商获利更大；（4）在交通便利之处增设具有体验服务的顾客自提门店，不论网络渠道购物成本和网络退货率高低，甚至适当提升商品定价也可使品牌商有利可图。本研究可为品牌商实施BOPS全渠道战略提供一定的管理见解。     

企业战略、人力资源管理系统与企业绩效的关系研究

有关战略人力资源管理的研究认为,企业通过人力资源实践活动之间的契合,及它们与企业目标之间的契合,可以获得高附加值、稀缺性、难以模仿和不可替代的竞争优势。本研究采用形态理论的方法探讨人力资源管理实践组合与企业战略之间的最佳契合模式.研究发现,不仅企业战略对人力资源实践组合有显著影响,而且人力资源管理系统与企业战略的交互作用对企业利润和销售额增长率也有显著影响。本研究的结论在一定程度上支持了人力资源管理系统与企业战略的交互作用有助于提升企业绩效的观点。