bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Organizational Culture
Authors: Carnall Colin
Published: January 2015

The interest in organizational culture arose from the observation of dramatic differences in performance between nations over time and between organizations and sectors. Factors such as technology, strategy, structures, and management systems were unable to account for these differences. Differences both in national and organizational culture were seen as important sources of explanatory power.

Various models of organizational culture have been brought forward. Some were obviously based on sound evidence. Others appear to have been derived from practical or consulting experience. Many have been very influential in management conferences, in business schools, deployed as consulting models and so on. In particular, the work of Trompenars is a good example of a model clearly routed in national and organizational level data that has been influential.

Some authors distinguish adaptive and non‐adaptive cultures implying a “beyond‐culture” approach and this is both appealing and also problematic and it may will be that what we really need is a fuller treatment of the particular contextual factors that give rise to particular cultures at particular junctures of time and circumstance. In this article we consider culture through three lens – culture, rationality, and politics. Differences exist but it is to how these differences are perceived and how they are exploited (or not) that we must turn if we are to understand their impact and consequences longer term.
Balanced Scorecard
Authors: Russell Randall H.
Published: January 2015

The balanced scorecard, originally designed as a measurement system, has evolved into a comprehensive process to manage the execution of an organization's strategy. The framework uses measures to translate the strategic objectives into targets and initiatives while the management system creates focus, alignment, and leadership. It is estimated that 70% of organizations use the balanced scorecard approach to management.
Joint Ventures
Authors: Channon Derek F. , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Joint ventures are a way to enter new markets through the partnering of commercial resources. In markets that restrict inward investment, joint ventures may be the only way to achieve market access. Within joint ventures, equity positions are usually taken by the participants. Such holdings can vary substantially in size, although it is usually important to establish clear lines of management decision‐making control in order to achieve success. A lesser form of participation, which may or may not involve equity participation, involves strategic alliances. Joint ventures tend to have a relatively high failure rate. Nevertheless, they also enjoy a number of specific advantages. Joint venture agreements cover operational aspects such as legality, board and management structures, capital and equity management, financial rights, market rights of partners in different regions, and dispute resolution.
Turnaround Strategy
Authors: Angwin Duncan , McGee John , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Turnaround strategy is about doing different things and attempting to change companies' fortunes by fundamental adjustments in strategy, such as acquisition and divestment. Operating turnarounds are about doing things differently in terms of processes such as manufacturing, so that the firm's efficiency can be improved.

Three categories of turnarounds are proposed: traditional asset cost surgery, product‐market pruning, and piecemeal strategies. The characteristics identified in successful turnaround strategies involve good management, which is seen to be critical to a sustained recovery. An appropriate organizational structure often means a much leaner one, with fewer layers in the hierarchy. Tightly controlled costs mean better controls, rather than cutting costs.

Turnaround strategies typically go through three stages. In the first stage leadership and organizational culture face a restructuring. In the second stage costs are reduced, assets redeployed, and product and market strategies become more selective. As a result, the company moves to a third stage where it repositions itself in the market and industry.
Barriers to Entry and Exit
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Barriers to entry should technically be regarded as entry deterrent conditions. There are three broad categories of activities that deter entry; namely, structural obstacles to entry, risks of entry, and reduction of the incentive for entry. Barriers to exit are the activities and circumstances that commit a firm to its industry and its position within it. Discussion includes types of entry conditions and risks of entry.
Systems Model of Strategy
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

The systems model (or map) of strategy is a system, that portrays how the individual elements of the larger system are interconnected by causality and through time. A systems model requires feedback between elements so that system behavior changes dynamically either through self‐adaptation or intentional adaptation (by managers). This model consists of the strategy map (the basic activity set), management systems, and management thought processes. The role of management, especially the top management team, is to manage the whole system so as to achieve desired objectives without undue perturbations or risks. Effective management of each element is not by itself sufficient to change the behavior of the whole system toward desirable objectives – it is the whole system that has to be the target for attention. From this systems perspective, top management is attempting to manage the intersections and interconnections between multiple external systems (the strategy
context
) and the organization itself.
Substitute Products
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Substitutes are goods or services which are consumed instead of one another. They can be identified by their positive cross‐price elasticity of demand. Two products can be strong or weak substitutes, according to how easy it is to switch between the two. However, substitutability is actually a continuous measure and the distinction between strong and weak substitution is quite arbitrary. Substitution is one of Porter's original five forces and has strategic implications for pricing and marketing policies and for long term defense of or attack on the positions of industry incumbents.
Transaction Costs
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos
Published: January 2015

Transaction costs are costs involved in any transaction for the exchange of goods, services, or assets. They have two main components, transaction uncertainty and performance ambiguity. Transaction costs begin to be incurred during the preparation of a transaction and continue after it has been completed. Very high transaction costs may mean that an otherwise desirable transaction will be avoided. The desire to minimize transaction costs may lead to a reshaping of the transaction, internally or in ways that may include market internalization and mergers and acquisitions, thereby altering the organization, size and/or scope of a firm. As a result, transaction costs are also considered in the exercise of competition and regulatory policy
Advantage Matrix
Authors: Whitehead Jo
Published: January 2015

The Advantage or Environments Matrix, developed by the Boston Consulting Group, describes the impact of differences in the nature of the competitive advantage available to the leading players. Environments (i.e., industries or industry segments) can vary on the basis of the size of competitive advantage available (small or large) and the number of ways in which advantage can be achieved (few or many). Four combinations are possible, giving rise to four different strategic environments: Volume (large advantage possible and only few ways o achieve it), Stalemate (only a small advantage possible and one or few ways to achieve that advantage), Niche (large advantage possible and many ways to achieve it) and Fragmented (small advantage possible but many ways to achieve it). There are significant implications for industry profitability and strategy, however the matrix did not gain significant traction and frameworks such as Porter's five forces are generally regarded as offering a more sophisticated tool for analysing industry characteristics.
Cash Cow
Authors: Whitehead Jo
Published: January 2015

A cash cow business is usually defined as the business that enjoys a high relative Market Share in an industry in which the growth rate has slowed.
Segmentation
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

The basis for market segmentation lies in the existence of different responses to price (and other marketing variables) by individuals or groups of individuals. Differentiation activities are intimately related to the existence of market segments. One of the most creative endeavors in strategy making has been the seeking out of new markets or market niches to which customized products can be directed. These segments are strategic in the sense that they are not imitable by simple adjustments of the marketing mix, and that advantage rests on the distinctive skills and capabilities required to customize the product offerings. They are strategic also in that they provide the basis for product range strategies in which price and quality are the principal variables.
Break‐Even Analysis
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Break‐even analysis is a simple attempt to estimate the volume point at which a firm can break‐even (earn no profits but make no losses) on a product, a product line, on a factory, or even across a whole business. It is based simplifying assumptions that some costs are fixed with respect to volume and others are variable and that prices are constant.
Synergy
Authors: Channon Derek F. , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Synergy is the extra value addition achieved when two businesses are integrated together such that the sum of the whole is greater than that of the constituent parts. It is popularly described as “2 + 2 = 5.” It applies more generally to any benefits released by the combination of two separate elements. It is driven by the existence of potential economies of scale and scope but in practice has proved difficult to capture.
Sustainable Growth Rate
Authors: Channon Derek F. , McGee John
Published: January 2015

The sustainable growth rate is the rate of increase in thereturn on equityconsistent with a definedfinancial strategy, namely targets for debt to equity ratio, dividend payout ratio, profit margins, and total assets to sales ratios. Alternative formulations express growth in terms of return on total assets. The most important determinant of the growth of return on equity and return on assets is to leverage the debt equity ratio.
Strategic Intent
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Strategic intent is the provision of a powerful long‐term direction with particular emphasis on moving beyond the constraints imposed by current resources and capabilities. There is therefore a requirement to develop new resources, capabilities, and core competences and this gap between ambition and resources is called strategic stretch.
Demand Analysis in Theory
Authors: Knight Ben , McGee John
Published: January 2015

The theory of markets and the nature of demand underpin any firm's understanding of its customers. The key concepts shown here are the market‐level and firm‐level demand curves, and price and income elasticities and their determinants.
Competitive Market Theory
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

This is an explanation of how industrial organization, which deals with the behavior of markets, is turned toward the profit‐seeking activity of firms. This provides the backdrop of the various types of competitive market within which firms exist and lead to an identification of key economic concepts for them.
Generic Strategies
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Generic strategies are an attempt to categorize the various strategic options for competing in a market into a simple set of strategy types, a typology. Porter offered the first and most celebrated attempt at this following his seminal 1980 book on competitive strategy. He offered three main types: cost, differentiation, and focus. This was a simple but powerful approach that fostered better general comprehension of strategy forces. However, it suffers from conceptual difficulties primarily the assertion that cost and differentiation are mutually exclusive leading to the famous “stuck in the middle debate.” It also suffers from being too simplistic to capture the realities and complexities of differentiation strategies. It also largely ignores resource side considerations. The Mintzberg typology is noted as an alternative.
Technology and Standards in Network Industries
Authors: McGee John , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

The rapid growth of products from the information, computing, and telecommunications (ICT) economy depends on operating technology standards as well as on production costs. A technology standard is the important enabler to create wide reach and to capture a wide network of subscribers. With the globalization of commerce, national and regional boundaries blur and the need for international standards is more urgent and critical. Market‐based selection is reflected in standards wars such as that between Google led Android and Apple led
iOS
operating systems, where consumers decided on the extent of market diffusion of the standards. Negotiated standardization is becoming more widespread. Organizations that determine prevailing standards are emerging to reduce the cost and the uncertainty associated with adopting new standards.
Business Model
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

This is a widely used term intended to provide the link between an intended strategy, its functional and operation requirements, and the performance (typically cash flows and profits) that is expected. It usually applies to single businesses where a specific competitive strategy can be identified, but it can also apply to those multi‐business portfolios that are linked by strong synergies and, therefore, have common or similar strategies. However, it is not a concept that has been clearly defined in the academic literature and finds much more expression among practitioners than academics.
Uncertainty
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Frank Knight made the famous seminal argument that uncertainty was the principal of profit in the sense that uncertainty was essentially the unpredictability of change. Textbooks commonly identify four main sources of uncertainty, namely technological uncertainty, market uncertainty, organizational uncertainty, and strategic uncertainty. McKinsey have more recently developed its own four categories – a clear enough future, alternate futures, a range of futures, and true ambiguity. This is in accord with the idea of strategy as shaping the future where the different classes of uncertainty call forth radically different strategies.
Value Creation and Value Analysis
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Value is the amount that buyers are willing to pay for the product or service that a firm provides. Profits alter when the value created by the firm exceeds the cost of providing it. This is the goal of strategy, and therefore, value creation becomes a critical ingredient in competitive analysis. Consumer surplus is a way of assessing customer value and value creation analysis shows the implications for consumer surplus of different pricing strategies. The contrast is drawn between share strategies and margin strategies that are the outcome of the interplay between price elasticities and nature of advantage.
Differentiation Strategies
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Differentiation advantage is one particular route to competitive advantage. The starting point is an understanding of product differentiation and its potential for profits. Also discussed are the different dimensions and sources of advantage.
Focus Strategies
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Focus strategies are about serving a particular customer group better than anyone else. They are based on practical variants of cost and differentiation allied to the idea of narrow scope. Focus strategies have distinct attributes and particular characteristics. They require specific skills and face an array of risks and threats. Focus strategies are, however, durable and this evidenced by the proliferation of successful, albeit risky, small businesses. Focus is related closely to ideas of market segmentation and the served market and is much discussed in the marketing strategy literature.
Strategizing Routines
Authors: McGee John , Menuhin Jonathan
Published: January 2015

Strategizing routinesare the natural ways by which an organization carries out its strategic thinking, strategic planning, and the execution of strategic actions. The idea stems from Nelson and Winter's seminal paper on the evolutionary theory of the firm in which they identify two different kinds of routines, organizational and strategizing, and routine‐changing processes which they call governance. Research has emphasized the role of experiential learning and best practices.
Elasticity
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos
Published: January 2015

Elasticities are numerical measures of the change in one quantity as a result of a small given change in another,
ceteris paribus
.
Experience and Learning Effects
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos
Published: January 2015

Costs per unit of output may be reduced as a result of producing a large output rather than a small one.
Switching Costs
Authors: Avgeropoulos Stephanos , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Switching costs are defined as the costs that consumers face in order to change between substitute products. Switching costs arise from all impacts that a substitute can have on the buyer's value chain, including any linkages with the supplier's value chain. They can be the result of investment by the buyer in high‐cost specialized equipment, investment in learning how to operate such equipment, or even the result of product specifications, which tie the buyer to particular inputs.

Typical switching costs include the costs of identifying, evaluating, and testing the substitute, the costs of product or process redesign, the costs of purchasing additional equipment, employee retraining costs, and the costs of the technical help needed to affect the changeover.

Switching costs typically change and fall over time. Early adopters of a new substitute have to develop their own technologies, procedures, and standards, and so in effect they subsidize subsequent adopters, who may find it easy to copy the early work.

As switching costs can lock‐in buyers, they constitute effective barriers to entry. Incumbent firms pursue switching costs and new entrants try to challenge them. Establishing high‐switching costs, however, may foster inflexibility.
First Mover Advantage
Authors: Channon Derek F. , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

First mover advantage can be defined as the competitive edge gained by firms entering the market earlier than competitors. The timing of strategic moves may be critical for success as a result of the positive advantages accruing to first movers. Being first has a significant payoff when: It enhances the firm's image and reputation with buyers; early entry can tie up key raw material sources, new technologies, distribution channels, and the like, so as to shift the cost boundaries of a business or industry; first time operators build customer loyalty which is hard to dislodge; it constitutes a preemptive strike which is difficult to copy.
Strategic Business Unit
Authors: Tanya Sammut‐Bonnici , John McGee
Published: January 2015

A strategic business unit (SBU) is an organizational subunit that acts like an independent business in many major respects, including the formulation of its own strategic plans and its own marketing strategy. An SBU may share its parent organization's corporate identity or develop its own brand identity, depending on the degrees of freedom allowed to the management of the division. A one‐fits‐all strategic approach would be inadequate in large, diversified organizations and multinational companies. Dividing the corporation's operations into SBUs increases efficiency and market focus. SBUs are found to be a viable form of organizational sectioning because they ensure that products and product lines are given specialized focus, as if they were developed and marketed by an independent company. The SBU is driven by its own mission, which would be independent of that of the parent firm and the other SBUs in the organization. It would operate in a competitive market space that is separate from other divisions in the corporation. The advantage of operating through an SBU is that it would create a strategically focused management structure that is not distracted by the wider product portfolio of the corporation. Corporations may experience some disadvantages when organizing their divisions through an SBU structure.
PEST
analysis
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya , Galea David
Published: January 2015

PEST is an acronym for four sources of change: political, economic, social, and technological. PEST analysis is a powerful and widely used tool for understanding strategic risk. It identifies the changes and the effects of the external macro environment on a firm's competitive position. Strategists seek to understand external factors and evaluate how business models will have to evolve to adapt to their environment. The impacts of external factors are mitigated through preemptive strategy and new opportunities are exploited in the wake of new competitive positions that may be created in the process. PEST analysis is used in conjunction with SWOT (internal strengths and weaknesses, external opportunities and threats) and Porter's five forces model (encompassing the external effect of suppliers, consumer demand, new entrants, substitute product, and competitive rivalry). PEST analysis works best when the environmental factors are analyzed from the perspective of the firm's resources, capabilities, and core competences. The process involved in exploring a firm's external macro environment involves five main stages: identifying PEST factors, analyzing possible effects on the firm, categorizing into opportunities and threats, prioritizing factors, and developing corrective or preemptive strategic action.
Strategy Tools
Authors: Barnett Paul , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Research on the use and the implementation of strategic management tools shows that top management's view of them is mildly positive with varying opinions on their effectiveness. Over the years, 25 main management tools have been identified by ongoing research conducted by Bain & Company. The popularity of tools shifts over the years. Strategic Planning, Customer Relationship Management, and Employee Engagement Surveys feature first together in the latest survey. Mission and Vision Statements and Benchmarking are a diminishing trend. Critics of strategic tools see them as no more than thinking aids, and hope they also provide solutions. Strategic tools remain a valuable source to ignite discussion in management teams and to open up strategic thinking on competitive challenges. They contribute to the cognitive side of management in raising awareness of current commercial scenarios. It seems, however, that the tools that prescribe which decisions to take remain few and far between, and that decision‐making remains a mental process that is difficult to reduce to a set of tools and frameworks.
Volume Businesses
Authors: Whitehead Jo
Published: January 2015

Identified as one of the environments in the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) advantage matrix, volume businesses are those which have few sources of competitive advantage (normally scale or experience), but the size of the advantage is significant. Typical examples are businesses where the cost structure is driven by strong scale, experience or network effects.
Cognitive Map
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Cognitive maps can be defined as mental images and concepts that are built to visualize and assimilate information. Visualization, the act of organizing information in visual spaces, is applied to both spatial tasks (such as design) and nonspatial tasks (such as strategic planning). Memorizing speeches often requires cognitive mapping of the subject. Cognitive maps are also referred to as mental maps, mind maps, schemata, and frames of reference. Strategists may review their business environment by creating cognitive maps, which act as tools to process knowledge. The maps provide a coping mechanism under conditions of complexity and uncertainty. Two types of mental processes are employed to build cognitive maps. System 1 thinking is a rapid, intuitive, instinctive, and automatic and System 2 thinking is slow, conscious, analytical, and deliberate. In cognitive communities, the decision makers' cognitive maps and strategic outlook provide the foundations for a common frame of mind that would influence how an industry evolves and develops. Cognitive maps do not always reflect reality and they are influenced by bias or misinformation. Cognitive inertia, unless reexamined by regular reviews of incoming information that refresh the strategists' understanding of the business environment, can lead to the decline of the business.
Innovation Strategy
Authors: Curmi Franco , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Innovation strategy is the design and implementation of measures by which the organization improves or creates new products, services, and processes. Innovation ranges from the incremental improvement of existing products to a more radical approach of disrupting and reinventing industries. Radical innovation involves a much higher risk than incremental innovation. A Darwinian shake out of radical innovation is likely to occur. Incremental innovation is concerned with the gradual improvement of existing products, services, processes, competitive positions, and organizational paradigms. Open innovation gathers knowledge from sources external to the organization. Closed innovation models maintain a high degree of central control over the innovation process. The task of implementing strategic innovation requires a systematic approach to taking the organization through a stage of development and evaluation, from idea generation to testing and launch. Through the increase of global connectivity and ubiquitous information systems, analytical tools are providing marketers with real‐time feedback from global sources.
Resource‐Based View
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

The resource‐based view is the perspective that emphasizes the key role played by resources in capabilities in the creation of competitive advantage. The general terminology or resources, skills, competences, and capabilities have been developed into a conceptually powerful language of core competences, strategic assets, and distinctive capabilities. There is a profusion of language to describe the central concept, which essentially is the underlying capability that is the distinguishing characteristic of the organization, and there is also a need to develop the concepts further to make them more operational and more measurable.
Regulation
Authors: Cave Martin
Published: January 2015

Regulation has a pervasive and growing effect on the economy and society. According to public interest theories, it improves welfare by enhancing economic efficiency and achieving equity goals. According to the “economic” theory of regulation, interventions are bought and sold to the highest bidder. Regulation, thus, becomes another dimension of commercial rivalry. In recent years, there has been a strong and welcome trend to subject regulation to cost–benefit tests or regulatory impact assessments.
Performance Measurement
Authors: Kenny Graham , Bourne Michael
Published: January 2015

This article addresses three main questions: What is performance? How should performance be measured? How can a set of organization‐level measures be translated into performance metrics for people within an organization? The article links performance to outcomes and defines performance in terms of outcomes achieved by an entity for example, an organization, a business unit, a team, or an individual. It also notes that outcome assessment is based on the perspectives of groups of stakeholders – stakeholders are central to performance assessment. Levels of analysis, organization level versus business‐unit level, also affect the relevance of particular performance measures. A brief history of individual appraisals in performance measurement is also provided as for example, an assessment of other performance evaluation methods, such as the balanced scorecard.
Venture Capital
Authors: Wright Mike
Published: January 2015

This article outlines a definition of venture capital as risk capital and providers of monitoring and added value. The article discusses the stages in the venture capital life‐cycle process from identifying and screening deals, through valuation, structuring, monitoring, and exit. Different types of venture capital firm are identified. A brief review of the evidence on the impact of private equity on portfolio companies is provided. Finally, evidence on the performance of venture capital funds is considered.
Product Market Diversification
Authors: Simmonds Paul
Published: January 2015

The matrix was developed by Ansoff and identifies a company's strategic options according to its market and product decisions. These decisions – new or existing products and new or existing markets – will lead to strategies for product development, market development, or the protection/maintenance/growth of its market shares or diversification. By adding a third dimension, decisions regarding geographic markets may also be taken into account in the identification of strategic options.
Value‐Based Strategy
Authors: Johnson Peter
Published: January 2015

Value‐based strategy focuses on the generation of consumer and producer surpluses that allow a business to outcompete its rivals, and to control the growth and return on the resources it deploys. This is frequently achieved by the establishment of either a relative product, price, or cost advantage. Longer term strategic thinking will anticipate the erosion of competitive advantages and the challenge of competitors. To pre‐empt these threats, it is important to identify the key future strategy enablers and blockers that will impact competitive success.
Profit Impact of Market Strategy (
PIMS
)
Authors: McKiernan Peter
Published: January 2015

The profit impact of market strategy program began in 1970 as a formal attempt to discover what return on investment might follow from given market structures if certain strategies were followed. Thus began an unprecedented and unrivaled series of studies (over 108 by 2004). It fed academic research for over two decades and established some fundamental generalizations about the main influences on profitability such as market share and product quality. However, there have been varied and substantial criticisms over time. These have focused primarily on the market share–profitability link where the contemporaneous publication of the Boston Consulting Group BCG growth–share matrix advocated aggressive building of market share.
BCG
(Growth Share) Matrix
Authors: Whitehead Jo
Published: January 2015

The BCG, or growth share matrix is one of the most iconic strategy frameworks of all time, and is still widely used today, despite concerns about its applicability to the current business environment.
Life Cycle Strategy
Authors: Channon Derek F. , McGee John , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Life cycle strategy is developed by a firm to ensure that the demand for its discrete businesses is extended as long as feasibly possible. Life cycle strategy is based on product life cycle thinking from the field of marketing. It goes further than the scope of the product and is applied to lines of business or strategic business units that have common rivals, customer base, substitutes, capital investment, and pricing levels. The process to develop a life cycle strategy first identifies the life‐cycle position of a business as a descriptor of industry characteristics. Second, the competitive position of a business is represented across a matrix of life cycle stages and business strengths. The position of a business within its industry life cycle is determined by eight factors. They are market growth rate, market growth potential, breadth of product lines, number of competitors, distribution of market share among competitors, customer loyalty, barriers to entry, and technology.
Pricing Strategy
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya , Channon Derek F.
Published: January 2015

Pricing strategy is the policy a firm adopts to determine what it will charge for its products and services. Strategic approaches fall broadly into the three categories of cost‐based pricing, competition‐based pricing, and value‐based pricing. Pricing strategy is a key variable in financial modeling, which determines the revenues achieved, the profits earned, and the amounts reinvested in the firm's growth for its long‐term survival. A number of pricing strategy options are available, including markup pricing, target return on investment pricing, perceived value pricing, competition‐based pricing, penetration pricing, and skimming pricing. The choice of pricing strategies adopted by the firm will depend on the overall corporate strategy, buyer expectations and behavior, competitor strategy, industry changes, and regulatory boundaries. Other factors affecting the nature of pricing strategies are corporate image, geography, price discrimination, and price sensitivity. Future trends in pricing policies are likely to focus on information‐based optimization through cost reduction of inefficiencies in the supply chain, the reduction of trade allowances, an increase in responsiveness to changes in market conditions, greater pricing flexibility, and a reduction of pricing disparity across different channels.
Hypercompetition
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Hypercompetition is created by the acceleration of competitive moves in an industry where firms must react quickly to develop their competitive advantage and to erode the advantages of competitors. The objective of hypercompetitive firms is to thrive in dynamic markets by unsettling existing standards and norms of operation, and by generating a constant flow of short‐term advantages. In hypercompetitive environments, profits and competitive advantages are temporary and will soon be challenged by the next wave of disruptors. The strategic framework for hypercompetition adopts a dynamic approach that is in tune with the intensity of change in turbulent industries. Three sets of strategy‐building tools are proposed for the analysis of competitive markets by D'Aveni. The “four arenas” explores how competition builds up in the areas of cost and quality (C–Q), timing and know‐how (T–K), strongholds (S), and deep pockets (D) referring to financial resources. The “four lenses” analysis looks at how a single competitive action affects the four arenas of an industry. The “new 7‐Ss” framework proposes a set of hypercompetitive approaches to realign strategy. The objective is to develop strategies in three categories: vision for disruption, capabilities for disruption, and tactics for disruption.
Strategic Thinking
Authors: Campbell Andrew
Published: January 2015

There are six aspects of strategic thinking: balancing objectives with action plans, a stakeholder perspective, a business model perspective, a future orientation, attention to issues and creative problem solving.
Strategizing
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Strategizing means simply the devising of a strategy or course of action. Strategizing has been confused with strategic planning, has been influenced by chaos theory, and has been contrasted to economizing. Strategizing taking place around markets and activities is the way firms strive to configure and reconfigure their value chains so as to capture increasing returns. Strategizing is a managerial activity and concerns the management of the firm as a whole where a balance is struck between the market‐focused activity set, the resources required, and the routines required to hold the firm together and to position it for future development.
Knowledge‐Based View
Authors: Grant Robert M.
Published: January 2015

The knowledge‐based view (KBV) represents a confluence of research streams concerning the role of knowledge within the firm. TheKBVoffers a rationale for the existence of the firm that is distinct from the conventional transactions cost approach. The KBV has been applied to several areas of strategic and organizational decision making including the design of organizational structures, the analysis of coordination within and among firms, and the management of strategic alliances.
History of Strategic Thought
Authors: Grant Robert M.
Published: January 2015

This entry tracks the development of strategy thought from its origins in military strategy through the era or corporate planning to its twenty‐first century flourishing in terms of both the range of phenomena it explores and the variety of concepts and theoretical disciplines it deploys.
Structuring Organizations
Authors: Paroutis Sotirios
Published: January 2015

Organizational structure is the formal decision‐making framework by which job tasks are divided, grouped, and coordinated. Traditionally, an organization's structure can take the functional, divisional, and/or matrix forms. The process of choosing and implementing a particular organizational structure is captured in the term “structuring organizations.”
Strategy in Service Industries
Authors: Segal‐Horn Susan
Published: January 2015

Most of the frameworks that dominate strategic management research and teaching have been derived from research into manufacturing industries. However, services differ from products. Therefore, the concepts and frameworks with which strategists' analyze industries, firms, and competition need to be changed when applied to services. The most important differences between products and services are intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneous production and consumption, and perishability. These distinctive service characteristics mean that classic strategic frameworks, such as the value chain, have to be redesigned for service industries and firms.
Globalization of Service Industries
Authors: Segal‐Horn Susan
Published: January 2015

Service firms seek to benefit from the same sources of potential advantage as manufacturing firms in their international expansion. The issue is whether such benefits from international expansion are as attainable for service firms as for manufacturing firms. The historic pattern of competition in services occurred within domestic market boundaries as a result of the small‐scale, fragmented structure of service industries, and their culture‐specific patterns of demand and consumption. Scale and volume effects were limited. However, restructuring has now led to concentration replacing fragmentation in service industry structures. Homogenization of demand in services is also observable across countries. Service industries have recently been transformed: concentrated rather than fragmented; international rather than local; and capital‐intensive rather than labor‐intensive. Global strategies have become more feasible as global service firms can standardize and replicate facilities, methodologies, and procedures across locations. The larger the proportion of “back‐office” value chain activities in the service that can be separated from the location of the customer, the greater the potential benefits of globalization for service multinational companies (MNCs). It becomes possible to redesign the organization's value chain to secure scale and scope advantages in the same way as manufacturing MNCs.
Design School Versus Process School
Authors: Powell Taman
Published: January 2015

The design and process schools are two contrasting schools of through in strategic management. The design school adopts a prescriptive top‐down approach with a focus on rational analysis and planning. In contrast, the process school adopts a more organic bottom‐up emergent perspective.
Complexity Theory
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Complexity theory provides an understanding of how systems, such as the economy and global corporations, grow, adapt, and evolve. It explains how the relationships between members of these systems give rise to the collective behavior and sheds light on how a system interacts with its environment. It does not need to have a complex explanation. The principle of Occam's razor encourages us to simplify complexity, where possible, for the study of organizational change. The discussion can be simplified by delineating the difference between complicated and complex systems. Complicated requires attention to detail whereas complexity calls for attention to the behavior of the whole system. Organization move from a complicated mode of handling day‐to‐day matters to a more complex mode of operation that evolves and adapts with its internal divisions and its environment. Complexity theory recognizes that economic and organizational phenomena are similar to those observed in science and in nature. The best way to understand the similarity is to look at the key components of complex systems: increasing returns, self‐organizing systems, continuous adaptation, sensitivity to initial conditions, and nonlinearity.
Strategic Renewal
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Strategic renewal is the process of change and the outcome of adjustment in strategic direction that have the potential to determine the long‐term competitivity of a firm. The objective of strategic renewal is to provide a strategic fit between a firm's internal capabilities and shift in the external environment involving technology, markets, industries, and the economy that require a change in the status quo of conducting business. There are two types of strategic renewal. Incremental renewal occurs through a series of regular adaptations to changes in the commercial environment. Transformational renewal is brought about through radical shifts in strategic management and the removal or replacement of key functions and units in the firm. There is a need for continuous strategic ambidexterity and agility for firms to survive changes by recognizing the changing reality of their external environments. Some external shifts are cataclysmic, competence destroying changes that extinguish the inner core of the firm and do not allow it to renew its business operations.
Evolutionary Theory
Authors: Aldrich Howard E. , Martinez Martha
Published: January 2015

This article explores how biological theories of evolution have been applied to the area of organizations. We review the processes of selection, adaptation, learning, retention, co‐evolution, and strategic intent and how they fit together to determine both organizational success and change at the level of populations and communities.
Foreign Direct Investment
Authors: Vella Mario , Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Foreign direct investment (FDI) implies a lasting interest by an enterprise resident in one country in another enterprise in another country. The estimated global flow of
FDI
for 2012 is 1.4
US
$ trillion. In the first two quarters of 2012, transition in developing countries attracted over 50% of global
FDI
for the first time. China was the largest recipient country in the same period, followed by the United States. Direct investment is viewed as a method of securing determining influence on the overseas operation. Investors tend to provide other resources such as knowledge, management techniques, technology, and marketing strategy. FDI is a strategic option for firms that undertake it and for the states that seek to attract and regulate it. Managerial players are free to make and implement strategic choices, albeit within the limits of the structural circumstances they find themselves in. The practice of
FDI
in the last quarter of the twentieth century has been growing rapidly. Three groundbreaking intellectual perspectives spurred by Coase, Hymer, and Penrose provided the initial tremors causing the paradigm to begin to shift. Until a theory of the transnational enterprise and
FDI
emerges that is capable of bridging the epistemological gap that separates its territory from that of international strategic management (ISM), Dunning's
OLI
framework will be taken to be the extant theory of transnational enterprise.
Coopetition
Authors: Sammut‐Bonnici Tanya
Published: January 2015

Coopetition is the occurrence of both competition and cooperation between a firm and its competitors, suppliers, distributors, partners, and regulators. The most common motives for firms to engage in coopetition are to develop larger markets, to improve industry standards, to share the costs of research and development, and to increase consumer awareness for the benefit of all the industry players. Coopetition emerges from the increasing interdependence of firms in complex markets. Coopetition between industry players may take various configurations. Cooperation may occur between partners in research and development, whilst the same partners are competing aggressively for new customers. Firms may cooperate to challenge competitors that are not part of the alliance network. Cooperation in a competitive industry occurs in complex arrangements where the boundaries between cooperation and competition overlap. The main principles of coopetition have been described in game theory, which is useful in generating strategies that are otherwise not visible or may be counterintuitive (such as building an alliance with competing firms). The insights from complexity theory that are crucial to coopetition is the high level of adaptive capacity in organizations that exhibit the characteristics of complex adaptive systems such as adaptation, self‐organization, and cooperation.
Divestiture Strategy
Authors: Bergh Donald D.
Published: January 2015

Divestitures occur when an organization disposes of some or all of its assets. This article provides a general overview of divestiture strategy. It begins by defining divestitures and then identifies several of their more popular motives. The mechanisms for implementing divestiture are reviewed. Finally, the implications of divestiture are considered. Overall, the article provides insight into the divestiture process, including why they occur, how they are executed and what they mean for organizational stakeholders.
Strategy Implementation
Authors: Boyd Brian K.
Published: January 2015

Strategy implementation, also called strategy execution, is the process of shaping the myriad components of the organization such that they optimally support the firm's strategy and associated goals. Implementation emphasizes the “people” aspect of strategy, such as the design of organizational structures and the management of human capital. Contingency thinking, particularly the concept of “fit” plays a prominent role in the implementation process. One common criticism of both managers and researchers is that strategy implementation receives less emphasis and attention than strategy formulation.
Economies of Scale
Authors: McGee John
Published: January 2015

Economies of scale are introduced in Cost Analysis.
Demand Analysis in Practice
Authors: Knight Ben , McGee John
Published: January 2015

Demand analysis is important in two ways: (i) it provides a framework for analyzing price and other influences on the sales of the firm's products and (ii) it provides a baseline for pricing products, and marketing generally, and for forecasting and manipulating demand. It is built around the price–quantity relationship and the many ways in which this relationship is manifested. The different types of demand are shown and the linkage to return on capital.