Effective strategic management the prospective approach

La prospective recognizes that the future is the raison d'être of the present, that it is multiple and uncertain, and that it is a way for everyone to take control of their own future. This article looks at the role of such qualitative prospective analysis in the business planning and forecasting context, and, from the experience of application of this analysis over a decade or more, draws ten golden rules for effective strategic management.     

The impact of development of customer online banking skills on customer adviser skills

The object of this article is the development of customer banking skills as a result of using online banking and its impact on the competence of customer advisers in face‐to‐face customer contacts. The main results show that online banking enables customers to develop a range of banking skills.     

DEBIASING STRATEGIES IN SUPPLY MANAGEMENT DECISION‐MAKING

Human judgment and decision making under uncertainty are vulnerable to decision biases leading to deviations from the standard assumptions of the rational paradigm in economics. This fact is currently not widely reflected by research on decision making in sourcing contexts. However, supply managers are aware of the judgment and decision challenges that result from existing and increasing levels of uncertainty in the external, upstream supply chain, and deploy decision supporting strategies for debiasing their judgments. The analysis of supply management decisions using 441 data units from 133 embedded cases from 15 buying organizations revealed high levels of such debiasing strategies. However, the seemingly most effective mitigation strategy recommended in the general debiasing literature ‐ creating awareness of the underlying mechanics causing decision biases ‐ was only employed by one buying organization, indicating a need to further investigate debiasing strategies specifically in supply management contexts.     

EXPLAINING RISING INEQUALITY: SKILL‐BIASED TECHNICAL CHANGE AND NORTH–SOUTH TRADE*

Abstract We review the ‘skill‐biased technological change (SBTC) versus North–South trade (NST)’ debate in order to explain widening wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. The traditional explanations based on exogenous SBTC and on the North–South Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson approach, as well as the early estimates that diagnosed a clear prevalence of the former, are firstly exposed and discussed. A presentation is then made of the recent theoretical literature that endogenizes SBTC, introduces new channels of impacts from NST, and combines both explanations. Finally, the current estimates show that (i) both explanations are relevant, (ii) their impacts differ according to industries and countries, (iii) outsourcing is the main vector of impact from NST and (iv) SBTC and NST interact.     

Does the Canadian economy suffer from Dutch disease?

We argue that the failure to disentangle the evolution of the Canadian currency from the U.S. currency leads to potentially incorrect conclusions regarding the case of Dutch disease in Canada. We propose a new approach that is aimed at extracting both currency components and energy- and commodity-price components from observed exchange rates and prices. We first analyze the separate influence of commodity prices on the Canadian and the U.S. currency components. We then estimate the separate impact of the two currency components on the shares of manufacturing employment in Canada. We show that between 33 and 39 per cent of the manufacturing employment loss that was due to exchange rate developments between 2002 and 2007 is related to the Dutch disease phenomenon. The remaining proportion of the employment loss can be ascribed to the weakness of the U.S.     

Putting sense of place at the centre of place brand development

Developing a place brand involves highlighting the distinctive attributes of a place that could be used to enhance its attractiveness. This study is in line with recent literature where the concept of place identity is being replaced by sense of place, which provides an holistic view of a place by integrating all users’ experiences and feelings. Through a qualitative study involving 31 individual interviews with users and meetings with managers of a French coastal area, this paper proposes a five-dimensional definition of sense of place and its use as a tool for developing a place brand in 3 ways: defining the place brand concept, bringing together the internal stakeholders and invoving users in brand building.     

Culture as determinant of the attractiveness of a tourism region

Ritchie, J.R. Brent and Michel Zins, “An Empirical Evaluation of the Role of Culture and its Components as Determinants of the Attractiveness of a Tourism Region,” Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. V, No. 2, April/June 1978, pp. 252–267. This study examines how explicit manifestations of culture are related to the attractiveness of a tourism region. A mail questionnaire was employed to obtain the opinions of managers and functionaries from various sectors of tourism and from different areas of cultural develppment. Survey results were subsequently reviewed by respondents within the framework of discussion workshops. These orkshops provided qualitative enrichment of the quantitative findings and formulated detailed recommendations for tourist development programs.