Robustness to strategic uncertainty

We introduce a criterion for robustness to strategic uncertainty in games with continuum strategy sets. We model a player's uncertainty about another player's strategy as an atomless probability distribution over that player's strategy set. We call a strategy profile robust to strategic uncertainty if it is the limit, as uncertainty vanishes, of some sequence of strategy profiles in which every player's strategy is optimal under his or her uncertainty about the others. When payoff functions are continuous we show that our criterion is a refinement of Nash equilibrium and we also give sufficient conditions for existence of a robust strategy profile. In addition, we apply the criterion to Bertrand games with convex costs, a class of games with discontinuous payoff functions and a continuum of Nash equilibria. We show that it then selects a unique Nash equilibrium, in agreement with some recent experimental findings.     

战略价值的四维透视

战略价值是指战略理论、战略知识、战略思维的存在、属性对于战略学习者和实践者的意义。正确把握世界和中国的发展趋势、增强分析复杂形势的战略思维能力,是领导者与管理者的必修课。登高则可望远,望远而致思深。优秀的战略家不一定是卓越的领导者,但卓越的领导者必须是优秀的战略家。而对于战略价值何在、为何研究战略、为何学习战略知识等问题,却大都莫衷一是。要知道,明确学习意义与目的是学习任何知识的前提,明确战略价值是领导者与管理者学习战略、运用战略的基石。沿用"价值是指客体的存在、属性对于主体的意义"的分析理路,以个体、政党、国家、人类为主体,战略的价值可以概述为:求知明智、获取权力、完善政策、引导历史。     

The exploratory analysis of trade-offs in strategic planning: Lessons from Regional Infrastructure Foresight

The sustainable transformation of infrastructure sectors represents a challenge of prime importance worldwide. Due to long life times of infrastructures, strategic decision making has to explicitly consider uncertainties in context conditions, value considerations and available technological alternatives. However currently, strategic infrastructure planning is often carried out in a very narrow perspective. The present paper argues that foresight informed strategic planning, allows addressing trade-offs related to context uncertainties, value conflicts and sustainability deficits in a structured way. The paper introduces a specific procedural proposal, the Regional Infrastructure Foresight method (RIF) and illustrates its potential virtues through an application to urban water management planning in a Swiss region (Kiesental).     

The strategic Marshallian cross

We prove existence and uniqueness of non-autarkic equilibria in bilateral oligopoly assuming only that preferences are binormal and satisfy a weakened version of gross substitutes. We permit complete heterogeneity of preferences and our analysis exploits the fact that payoffs depend only on own strategy and two universal aggregates. This allows us to define strategic versions of supply and demand curves such that non-autarkic Nash equilibria are in 1–1 correspondence with intersections of these curves. The same approach can be used to establish comparative statics under the assumptions above. As examples, we focus on adding players and changing endowments. This competitive approach also allows us to conclude that much of conventional Marshallian analysis is robust to strategic manipulation.     

Exploring the relationship between scenario planning and perceptions of strategic conversation quality

This study examines the construct of strategic conversation in a scenario planning context. After defining key terms and a conceptual framework for the strategic conversation, this study presents data gathered from individual participants in a scenario planning project. Data concerning perceptions of strategic conversation skills were collected pre-and post-scenario planning project, and then compared with a standard t-test. Conclusions are drawn and limitations are presented and discussed in depth. Recommendations for improving this research in future studies are also identified.     

Coordination and learning in games with strategic substitutes and complements

This paper experimentally compares the impact of the presence of strategic substitutes (GSS) and complements (GSC) on players’ ability to successfully play equilibrium strategies. By exploiting a simple property of the ordering on strategy spaces, our design allows us to isolate these effects by avoiding other confounding factors that are present in more complex settings, such as market games. We find that the presence of strategic complementarities significantly improves the rate of Nash play, but that this effect is driven mainly by early rounds of play. This suggests that GSS may be more difficult to learn initially, but that given sufficient time, the theoretically supported globally stable equilibrium offers a good prediction in both settings. We also show that increasing the degree of substitutability or complementarity does not significantly improve the rate of Nash play in either setting, which builds on the findings of previous studies.     

企业战略管理理论演变与战略风险思想探析

经营环境的复杂、多变和不确定,战略风险成为企业面临的最大风险,战略风险被称为战略的副产品,为从根源上把握战略风险的本质,本文系统回顾了企业战略管理理论的产生、发展和演变,并对主要战略管理学派一战略规划学派、环境适应学派、战略定位学派、资源基础论和核心能力学派以及动态能力学派的内在演变逻辑、主要观点和蕴含的战略风险思想进行研究。研究表明战略本身作为一种风险规避的手段,随着环境的变化战略管理的内容也在不断演变,同时战略本身的风险也因环境的变化在不断增加;战略风险产生的根源是战略、企业资源和能力与环境动态匹配失衡的结果,战略风险来源于战略、资源能力及环境各要素之间的不匹配以及战略管理过程的不确定。战略风险与战略相伴而生,随着战略风险重要性的提高,战略风险将不断融入战略管理过程,成为战略管理的有机组成部分。     

Sampling equilibrium, with an application to strategic voting

We suggest an equilibrium concept for a strategic model with a large number of players in which each player observes the actions of only a small number of the other players. The concept fits well situations in which each player treats his sample as a prediction of the distribution of actions in the entire population, and responds optimally to this prediction. We apply the concept to a strategic voting model and investigate the conditions under which a centrist candidate can win the popular vote although his strength in the population is smaller than the strengths of the right and left candidates.     

战略计划与战略思维简析

战略计划在战略管理中占有重要地位,但这一思想后来受到了许多管理学家的批评,有关战略计划与战略思维的关系,是理论界长期争辩的一个问题。本文对战略计划的批判性观点,以及战略计划与战略思维的关系的主要观点进行了梳理。在此基础上,从理论上分析了战略管理者应具有辩证思维,战略计划与战略思维是辩证统一的关系,并提出了在实践中保持二者辩证统一的机制。     

Sources of strategic fit in high-tech firms

This study analyses the concept of strategic fit as a factor explaining organisational performance. We propose that strategic fit should include aspects of environment perception as well as the gap between planning processes and strategic implementation. Studying the firm's capacity to reduce this gap, we identify various organisational capabilities and analyse their relationships. Through managers’ responses from a sample of firms in European high-technology sectors, we find sufficient empirical evidence to affirm that strategic fit facilitates improvement in organisational performance. We also observe that strategic flexibility, real options and organisational learning are sources of strategic fit. So-called learning organisations facilitate generation of options that give the organisation the strategic flexibility needed to achieve fit with the environment. Strategic flexibility is defined in both the adaptive and anticipative sense. Our article thus offers a new perspective to contribute to better understanding of strategic fit and its antecedents.     

自恋型管理者特质对企业战略和绩效的影响浅探

本文探讨了企业战略领导者的自恋特质,从概念的起源及演进开始,通过与相关概念的对比理清这一早期心理学和临床研究中独特的性格特征,并探讨其在组织领域研究的新拓展,考察战略领导者自恋特质对企业战略选择和绩效的影响,从三个层面系统加以阐释,即自恋特质影响领导者战略选择的内在机理、具体选择行为的剖析及战略选择的绩效表现。在此基础上进一步提炼该领域内可能的研究框架,并规划未来研究的方向,以期对相关研究予以启示。     

GOS tree (Goal-Objective-Strategy tree) approach to strategic planning using a fuzzy-Delphi process: An application to the Indian Shrimp Industry

Setting long-term goals, specifying short-term objectives, and formulating strategies to achieve the objectives are the key elements in a strategic planning process. In this paper, we have used hierarchical relationships among these key elements to propose a Goal-Objective-Strategy (GOS) tree. We have proposed an algorithm to validate the structural relationship between two hierarchically adjacent elements of the GOS tree by getting their feasibility score rated in a five-point linguistic scale with the help of a Delphi questionnaire survey. The linguistic scores were then converted into fuzzy scores and consensus of Delphi experts' opinions on feasibility of various statements were derived mathematically using fuzzy aggregation algorithm. We have applied the GOS-tree-based approach as a tool for strategic planning for the Indian Shrimp Industry that has displayed a cyclic performance in the past and has shown signs of rejuvenation in recent times.     

Extensive-form games and strategic complementarities

I prove the subgame-perfect equivalent of the basic result for Nash equilibria in normal-form games of strategic complements: the set of subgame-perfect equilibria is a nonempty, complete lattice—in particular, subgame-perfect Nash equilibria exist. For this purpose I introduce a device that allows the study of the set of subgame-perfect equilibria as the set of fixed points of a correspondence. My results are limited because extensive-form games of strategic complementarities turn out—surprisingly—to be a very restrictive class of games.     

Different approaches of pattern management and strategic intelligence

The world around us contains endless amounts of information. That information is mostly loose in our minds. Very often, it does not at first contact fit in with our conventional understanding, experience or any context we are used to. Hence, we may say that we are overwhelmed with constantly changing raw data, and strategic actors especially tend to be short of more rapid, up-to-date, valid and in-depth understanding of the transforming business landscape and social environment. Strategic intelligence is an emerging field of business consulting, which aims to undertake the task of revealing large, complex or complicated issues of transformation in a more understandable form. Pattern management, however, can be seen as one field or one approach of strategic intelligence. It is an approach that may, on one hand, be based more on empiric data and formal structures than other forms of strategic intelligence, but, on the other hand, it is a very heuristic approach to integrate quantitative data, reasoning and narratives. The main attempts of this article are, first, to show, what are in general the most commonly used ways of managing, finding, drawing, reasoning or anticipating patterns from our environment, and second, to locate how the concept of pattern can be understood in different ways. From the gathered knowledge, this article presents three main categories of reasoning patterns: empirical calculation (EC) is common especially in enterprise consulting. Theory proving with observations (TPO) is common especially in natural sciences, and real combining (RC) is common especially in qualitative research and in narrative.     

Corporate social responsibility and strategic relationships

We analyze a delegation game relevant to the conduct of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in which the firm’s owner offers the manager a contract consisting of firm profit and social welfare. We derive three results that distinctly differ from existing findings. First, CSR decisions are strategic complements for firms. Second, with simultaneous CSR decisions, the equilibrium price is equal to marginal cost, despite the fact that firms compete in a Cournot duopoly. Finally, with sequential CSR decisions, unlike the follower firm, the leader firm never exhibits CSR. However, the follower firm can enjoy a profit equal to that derived by the leader in a Cournot–Stackelberg game.     

Sunspot-like equilibria in an overlapping generations economy with strategic interactions

In this paper I analyze the effect of market uncertainty in an overlapping generations economy with strategic interactions among agents. I demonstrate the existence of sunspot-like equilibria, in which arbitrarily small amounts of intrinsic uncertainty in agents’ offers generate large fluctuations in equilibrium bids and prices. I would like to express my gratitude to Stephen Spear for his guidance during the realization of this project. I thank an anonymous referee for providing insightful comments and suggestions. I have benefited from comments by Alexander Elbittar, Cesar Guerrero, and Vivek Ramachandran.     

Information and strategic voting

We theoretically and experimentally study voter behavior in a setting characterized by plurality rule and mandatory voting. Voters choose from three options. We are interested in the occurrence of strategic voting in an environment where Condorcet cycles may occur and focus on how information about the preference distribution affects strategic behavior. We also vary the relative importance of the second preferred option. Quantal response equilibrium analysis is used to analyze the game and derive predictions. Our results indeed show that strategic voting arises. Its extent depends on (i) information availability; (ii) the relative importance of the intermediate candidate; (iii) the electorate’s relative support for one’s preferred candidate; (iv) the relative position of the plurality-supported candidate in one’s preference ordering. Our results show that information serves as a coordination device where strategic voting does not harm the plurality-preferred candidate’s chances of winning.     

Arbitrage and equilibrium in strategic security markets

Summary. In view of the fundamental price taking hypothesis, arbitrage is never compatible with equilibrium in Walrasian markets because the existence of an arbitrage opportunity in a competitive situation always leads to unbounded arbitrage activity. In strategic markets however, the mere effort of individuals to profit alters market clearing prices and thus distorts arbitrage opportunities as well. This observation suggests a different relationship between arbitrage and equilibrium, than in the competitive model. Indeed, we show that in such markets a spread between the cost of a portfolio and its returns is compatible with equilibrium. We provide an example of an equilibrium where a resourceless individual holds a portfolio with zero cost and positive return in every state. We further demonstrate via an asymptotic result, that no arbitrage is intimately related to price taking behaviour.Received: 8 September 2001, Revised: 6 March 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: G12, D4, D5, D52. Correspondence to: Leonidas C. Koutsougeras     

Corporate culture, strategic orientation, and business performance: New approaches to modeling complex relationships

This paper introduces the idea of using a complex biochemical model as an alternative method for modeling managerial constructs in order to incorporate change within organizations. To illustrate the potential of using this type of modelling, two well established managerial concepts (strategic orientation and corporate culture) are reviewed and the differences and similarities between the constructs discussed. Traditional simplistic models are presented and the limitations of these for dealing with change within and between organizations are discussed. A more complex model based on enzyme action is presented, and integrated with case study material which allows rich, complex and dynamic modeling including the incorporation of evolutionary and co-evolutionary change within organizations.