PLANNERS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS[1]

This paper discusses the foundations of the normative model of strategic management and reports the results of empirical research that examined the validity of the model from the perspective of practising planners. It was concluded, on the basis of the responses, that the normative model of strategic management is an accurate representation of what planners believe to be the steps in the process at both the corporate and business-levels. While the steps were all included, there was significant variation among the relative importance of the various steps.     

Understanding attributes affecting meal choice decisions in a bundling context

This study examined attributes that contribute to consumer meal choice decisions within a prix fixe menu. Drawing on typologies of consumer purchase behavior, factors potentially influencing consumers’ meal choice are identified and empirically tested. The results showed that consumers consider value for price as the most important consideration for their meal bundle choices. The results also indicated that familiar and healthy foods also contribute to the selection process. However, consumers tend to avoid the risk of choosing new menu items.     

Managing knowledge transfer in international alliances

Although managing knowledge assets is critical for firm success, organizational knowledge is hard to capture, transfer, and make useable. Because knowledge is embedded in organizational structures, processes, procedures, and routines, it is not easy to separate knowledge from the context in which it has been created. In addition, when knowledge is highly tacit, it is difficult to transfer without moving the people who have the knowledge. Thus, even though many studies have argued that the ability to transfer knowledge is a primary source for a firm's competitive advantage, relatively little is known about how to transfer knowledge within and across organizational boundaries. This article explores organizational knowledge transfer and illustrates the discussion with two cases of successful knowledge transfer. Two related and fundamental premises anchor the article: (1) knowledge‐transfer effectiveness can be actively managed and improved upon and (2) it is possible to design organizational strategies and structures to support and enhance knowledge sharing. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

BUYING LOCAL IS NOT NECESSARILY GREEN

Environmentalists are urging consumers to stop buying imports that needed to be transported long distances. However, the domestic production of the same goods would typically involve a much greater use of resources and therefore be counter-productive.     

Testing the Association Between Production and Financial Performance: Evidence from a Not-for-Profit, Cooperative Setting

A sample of sixty-three Australian credit unions is used to compare the financial performance measures provided by accounting-based financial ratios, and production performance as measured by efficiency indices. Whilst the evidence found supports the posited association between financial ratios and efficiency indices, the usefulness of such information is contingent upon which set of a priori behavioural assumptions have been used. More particularly, the results question the applicability of a traditional profit-based, physical production approach to a not-for-profit, cooperative setting.     

Quantiles, expectiles and splines

A time-varying quantile can be fitted by formulating a time series model for the corresponding population quantile and iteratively applying a suitably modified state space signal extraction algorithm. It is shown that such quantiles satisfy the defining property of fixed quantiles in having the appropriate number of observations above and below. Like quantiles, time-varying expectiles can be estimated by a state space signal extraction algorithm and they satisfy properties that generalize the moment conditions associated with fixed expectiles. Because the state space form can handle irregularly spaced observations, the proposed algorithms can be adapted to provide a viable means of computing spline-based non-parametric quantile and expectile regressions.