Roadmapping: (Missed) opportunities to overcome strategic challenges

Firms face various critical challenges when pursuing a coherent course of action that seeks to create value for the long term. They are required to balance myopic and hyperopic behavior. They must ensure coordination, adopt a holistic view of various functional perspectives, and foster commitment among key decision makers. They need to develop a credible and compelling line of reasoning that employees understand and can act on. Adopting the perspective of roadmapping as a strategy tool, this article advances the argument that roadmapping is especially suitable in helping firms to surmount these three critical strategic challenges. This article distills three core features of the roadmap: graphical representation, multi-disciplinary integration, and scaling. It then reviews the three critical strategic challenges and shows how roadmapping can help to overcome each of these. Following this explanation, the article describes ten key principles for effective strategic roadmapping that support firms in obtaining the strategic benefits promised. The article concludes with additional insights for practice with the intent of encouraging further exploitation of roadmapping’s potential.     

Human resource management: Challenges for graduate education

Despite a recent paradigm shift in many firms from an employee advocate model to a strategic business partner model, human resource (HR) management is still seen by some as not adding value to organizations. This article briefly summarizes a few of the challenges for HR graduate education at both the master's and doctoral degree levels. Emphasis is placed on the ever-increasing need to produce human resource professionals and managers, in general, who recognize and appreciate the value and relevance of HR's contributions to the attainment of strategic organizational outcomes as a strategic business contributor.     

The Prospect of Infrastructure Public‐Private Partnerships in Kuwait,Saudi Arabia,and Qatar: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities

This article examines the prospect of using infrastructure public‐private partnerships (PPPs) within Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in light of the drastic drop in oil prices since mid‐2014. It argues that, while PPPs appear to be a strategic policy option for the three Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to tackle growing fiscal deficits, these states are constrained by numerous governance‐related, administrative, and regulatory challenges that make PPPs problematic. Effective implementation of the inherently complex and contractual PPP policy requires addressing the existing institutional, economic, bureaucratic, and cultural constraints within these three states. This article concludes with recommendations to mitigate these challenges, that require serious political will and sufficient time to yield positive results, and to attract international investors and contractors to the Gulf region. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The logic of being illogical in strategic marketing planning

This article challenges the validity and usefulness of a conventional model of the sequence of stages in strategic marketing planning. Quite simply the conventional model ignores the organisational and human realities facing the planner. This paper proposes an “illogical” but iterative model of strategic marketing planning which is driven by the managerial understanding of the environment and knowledge of what tactical imperatives exist and constrain implementation. The advantages of explicitly recognising this “illogical” aspect of the planning process lie in: coping better with information demands made by executives in planning; allowing for psychological planning constraints and the obstacles created by the real nature of the manager's job; and in gaining the implementation of strategic marketing plans, with all that this implies for organisational and cultural change. The argument leads to an agenda of issues to be considered by the executive responsible for managing the strategic marketing planning process.     

The virtual reality value chain

Virtual reality (VR) technology is predicted to become indispensable in the business world, as it fundamentally reimagines the ways in which firms interact with customers. This technology has sparked a VR ecosystem, with multiple types of firms and other stakeholders interacting to create value. Firms need to define their roles in this ecosystem in order to capitalize on the opportunities and address the challenges they face when navigating its complexities. This article develops a VR value chain that illustrates how the use of VR technologies adds value to key stakeholders. It also provides an understanding of the current state of the VR ecosystem and serves as a source for strategic managerial decision making and future VR research.     

Emerging female entrepreneurship in Japan: A case study of Digimom workers

An economic solution for reversing Japan's financial challenges is entrepreneurship. New ventures are emerging outside the traditional Japanese management systems of lifetime employment, seniority systems, enterprise unions, and the Japanese business culture, which stresses a group‐oriented, riskaverse orientation. Governmental changes are slowly improving the climate for entrepreneurship. Using a case‐study approach, this article follows the development and strategic challenges facing the company Digimom (or “Digital Mom”) Workers, and profiles the historic and cultural challenges facing a female entrepreneur in Japan. Financial reports as well as a profile of the competitive environment are included. Implications and lessons learned follow the case analysis. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

跨国公司R&D的全球化动力机制和中国的战略对策

跨国公司在实现了销售与生产的国际化之后,为了实现其全球战略意图,增强企业和国家的竞争力,又开始将研究开发活动国际化、全球化。跨国公司的终极目标是将生产制造、研发和运营销售与其全球网络接轨,实现一体化运营。跨国公司研发全球化的动力机制主要有内因和外因两方面;中国在快速发展经济的同时,正面临R&D全球化的挑战;积极融入和参与R&D全球化的竞争,优化R&D政策体制环境,打造品牌优势是中国迎接跨国公司R&D全球化的战略决策。     

The questions we ask: Opportunities and challenges for using big data analytics to strategically manage human capital resources

Big data analytics have transformed research in many fields, including the business areas of marketing, accounting and finance, and supply chain management. Yet, the discussion surrounding big data analytics in human resource management has primarily focused on job candidate screenings. In this article, we consider how significant strategic human capital questions can be addressed with big data analytics, enabling HR to enhance overall firm performance. We also examine how new data sources that help assess workforce performance in real time can assist in the identification and development of the knowledge stars that contribute to firm performance disproportionately as well as help reinforce firm capabilities. But in order for big data analytics to be successful in the HR field, regulatory and ethical challenges must also be addressed; these include privacy concerns and, in Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We conclude by discussing how big data analytics can facilitate strategic change within HR and the organization as a whole.     

Achieving and Managing Global Brand Equity: A Critical Analysis

ABSTRACT

According to some experts, brand equity is a company's most important asset. In this article, the authors first study the durability of brand equity in the long run. Then they examine the maintenance of that brand equity. The study analyzes the relative position of the top 50 most important global brands. Rank correlations indicate that, in the short run, the top 50 brands maintain strong equity levels, but in the longer run, this equity dissipates. In order to empower global brands in the long run, the authors put together a general global brand strategy model that would achieve and maintain brand equity. The model has three important components: strategic action, generating brand power, and achieving sustained brand equity. Such a model could balance the success in achieving brand equity globally both in the short and long run.     

Mitigate,tolerate or relocate? Offshoring challenges,strategic imperatives and resource constraints

This paper examines key firm-level factors influencing initial strategic responses to offshoring implementation challenges. Comparative case findings indicate that firms are likely to try to mitigate challenges if they perceive to have control over their cause; if strategic objectives are diverse; and if firms have abundant resources available. By comparison, firms tolerate challenges if cost is a strategic imperative, or if resource endowments are limited. Firms relocate operations temporarily or permanently in particular if challenges are externally caused, whereby temporary relocation requires investments into flexible global infrastructures. Findings reveal critical contingencies of capability development and learning in offshoring and beyond.     

Crossing the great divide of strategic entrepreneurship: Transitioning between exploration and exploitation

Managing uncertainty effectively is perhaps one of the most significant challenges a firm's decision makers face today. Strategic entrepreneurship—defined as exploration for future sources of competitive advantage, combined with exploitation of current sources of competitive advantage—has been proposed as a means via which decision makers can manage uncertainty. In this article, we discuss the transition between exploration and exploitation activities within organizations as a vital part of strategic entrepreneurship; this transition process can involve various types of internal firm challenges. Additionally, we highlight various sources for these internal challenges and mechanisms through which firms can overcome them.     

Interfield Dynamics: Law and the creation of new organisational fields in the nineteenth-century United States

Abstract

This article draws on the concept of ‘strategic action fields’ to examine the interaction of law and organisations in the nineteenth-century United States. Focusing on the emergence of savings banking, it analyses how new legal rules were created to define the actors, actions and relationships that constituted the organisational field. The article develops three conceptual claims about the dynamics of institutional contexts: (a) the configuration of state fields shaped the nature and timing of legal rule making vis-à-vis organisational fields; (b) state actors engaged in ‘inter-field framing’ by applying analogies from the legal field to define social order in the organisational one; and (c) the legal and organisational fields were mutually constituted through these interactions. The article concludes by elaborating on the broader value of the theory of fields in business history.     

Integrating Decision-Making Support in Geocollaboration Tools

Collaborative spatial decision making (CSDM) involves multiple stakeholders making strategic decisions based on spatial data. Current CSDM tools have been exploring different ways to integrate spatial data with collaboration, distribution and mobility. Notably, decision-making support has not seen the same level of attention. This paper discusses the challenges raised by the integration of decision-making models in CSDM tools. We review a large collection of decision-making models using three different views: sequential, dynamic and continuous. From this review we derive a conceptual model and a set of functional requirements necessary to integrate decision-making support in CSDM tools. The conceptual model highlights the importance of several functions in decision-making processes: representing problems, finding alternatives and making choices (sequential view); classification and communication (dynamic view); and perception, comprehension and projection (continuous view). The paper also describes a prototype developed to validate the model. The paper provides two main research contributions: a unified view of decision-making support and an innovative CSDM tool blending spatial data with decision-making support.     

Building and transforming an emerging market global enterprise: Lessons from the Infosys journey

The story of Infosys’ growth and transformation from a $250 start-up to its current market valuation of approximately $26 billion provides one of the most pertinent lessons in leveraging India's strengths and managing the challenges faced by an emerging market global enterprise based in India. In this article, we present a wide-ranging interview with Infosys’ current CEO, Mr. S.D. Shibulal, as he explains what he considers to be the core strengths of the company that made it successful in the past, lays out his vision for the company's future, and discusses in detail how he sees the company's transformation taking place over the coming years. The conversation uncovers several interesting themes and lessons for multinational enterprises in emerging as well as developed economies, including the relevance of being born global, values-based governance, the necessity of creating hybrid business models that infuse the ‘India way’ with local cultures and practices in global markets, leveraging strategic partnerships via co-creation and co-evolution, and the delicate balance between ‘preservation-creation-destruction.’     

Global talent management and global talent challenges: Strategic opportunities for IHRM

The need for multinational firms to be as competitive in the global marketplace as possible has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. For international human resource management this has meant many strategic opportunities to international human resource management. An excellent example of such an opportunity is that which exists regarding the management of talent. This opportunity began to develop in the late 1990s with the advent of the challenge of “global talent management.” During the past few years this opportunity has expanded to include challenges dealing with talent shortages, talent surpluses, locating and relocating talent, and compensation levels of talent. Together, these conditions are all “global talent challenges”. In this article we describe these several global talent challenges and the strategic opportunities they present to firms and propose the implications of these for firms and for the field of international human resource management.     

The effectiveness of strategic planning: competitiveness in the Brazilian supermarket sector

This paper considers the relative impact of management strategic planning practices and economic changes on company performance. The paper focuses on the Brazilian supermarket sector during the period 1988–1999. This was a period marked by significant changes in economic and competitive conditions. Using sales figures as indicators of company performance, ANOVA tests were applied. The results derived suggest that variables representing changes in economic conditions and strategic planning were both statistically significant when they were used to explain performance differences among Brazilian supermarket operations. Differences in company management practices were found to play a more important role than changes in the environment. However, the results clearly suggest that management by itself was unable to take advantage of the upward and downward movements in the economy to modify the relative competitive positions of companies operating within the market. This finding challenges the existing literature on strategic planning.     

Banking on global success: Internationalization strategy and its limitations (the case of Allied Irish Banks)

This article explores the choices and challenges facing Ireland's leading financial services corporation, Allied Irish Banks (AIB), in its strategy for international market growth. It begins with an examination of the company's internationalization strategies within the global banking context. It then considers the limitations of international market expansion and transnational management control for a company with low brand recognition outside of its home market and limited experience of international operations. Finally, it elaborates on the strategic challenges that face the organization and reflects on the lessons for other midsized international companies competing in consolidating, globalized industries.© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

From Supply Chains to Supply Ecosystems: Implications for Strategic Sourcing Research and Practice

Traditionally, sourcing decisions such as what to buy and from whom to buy it were viewed as clerical in nature. Today, however, many executives view sourcing decisions as strategic and these decisions are being made from more prominent positions within firms. Indeed, over time more companies are embracing the concept of strategic sourcing—making acquisition decisions with the intent of creating value and achieving a competitive advantage. In this article, we introduce the Special Topic Forum articles on strategic sourcing and performance. Each offers important implications for strategic sourcing research and practice. An overall implication is that some traditional supply chains appear to be giving way to supply ecosystems, which represent a set of interdependent and coordinated organizations that share common adaptive challenges and that collectively shape the creation and nurturing of a sourcing base that contributes to competitive advantage and superior performance. We offer several theoretical perspectives that hold promise for explaining supply ecosystem functioning and outcomes. In terms of practice, firms need to adapt their strategic sourcing to this evolution or run the risk of being weakened.     

再造我国家电企业的战略管理

家电业要走出“价格战”的怪圈,必须解决好“战略管理缺失”的问题。在此基础上再造我国家电企业的战略管理,需要认识战略决策的层次性,形成全方位的有效衔接;认识战略决策的适应性,善于应对变革和协调、平衡;依据战略要求及时调整组织结构,以战略和竞争优势为导向营造、调适企业文化。     

The entrepreneur's character,life issues,and strategy making: A field study

Although entrepreneurs seem to engage little in formal planning, strategy in entrepreneurial firms can exhibit identifiable patterns over time. The strategic orientations of such firms are particularly likely to reflect the priorities of their entrepreneurial CEOs. While researchers have looked at entrepreneurial traits in order to explain business start-ups and generic strategies, little attention has been paid to possible interactions between entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and the strategic options they choose to pursue. This study links entrepreneurs' strategy-making processes to their life issues, legacies of their past histories. Its finding suggests that an entrepreneurial firm will consistently pursue the strategic directions that most reflect the entrepreneur's set of life issues.