Scenarios and design: Scoping the dialogue space

This paper examines the intersections between two futures-oriented domains of practice and research: scenario planning and design. Both are practice-led, with uneasy but productive relationships with theorizing. Exploring their relations offers ways to address challenges faced by interdisciplinary management research, which struggles to connect research and practice. The authors describe how they brought the two fields together. We outline how we convened, designed and facilitated the fourth Oxford Futures Forum held in May 2014. This event brought together leading practitioners and researchers in a collective inquiry based on self-organizing, generative and reflexive making and dialogue. How participants engaged, from responding to the invitation to take part, as well as their practical and discursive encounters with one another during the event, threw up similarities and differences between the two fields. We present nine themes that capture the links and spaces between design and scenarios, yet suggest that they are not a straightforward overlap or a simple relationship, but rather a range of interactions between the fields, including feeding in, bridging, tension and repulsion. The paper's contribution is to suggest how scenario planning can engage with design, resulting in new opportunities for research and projects. These modes of engagement provide a framing to explore dialogues between other management disciplines.     

基于主成分分析法的城市物流战略定位研究

为使城市物流的发展在区域物流规划定位中更加科学与客观,在分析区域物流定位影响因素的基础上,提出主成分分析方法的区域物流定位数学模型,并对模型进行了实证分析。在进行城市物流战略定位时,根据主成分分析的降维思想可以把较多的评价指标转化为几个综合指标,从而确定出最有利于物流发展的城市,为科学决策提供参考。     

Building up a B2B e-commerce strategic alliance model under an uncertain environment for Taiwan's travel agencies

E-travel agencies adopt B2B strategic alliances in order to strengthen their competitive advantages in the e-commerce travel market and because they are an effective tool to gain wider sustainable gains. External environmental and internal organizational factors impacting the success of strategic alliances model are themselves a crucial issue. This study uses multiple methods to collect data from multiple sources and uses qualitative and quantitative surveys. A two-stage research design is adopted to explore the present strategic alliances between Taiwan's wholesaler e-travel agencies and retailer sub-agencies. The results provide an in-depth understanding into the B2B e-commerce strategic alliance model. According to this research, Taiwanese e-travel agencies consider three external environment uncertainties, five internal organization motivations, five partner selection criteria, and two performance measurements of alliance strategies. Finally, the paper proposes an optimal B2B e-commerce strategic alliance model that matches the essential development needs of B2B e-commerce and overcomes the environmental uncertainties.     

Antecedents of entry mode choice when diversifying

Corporate diversification is one of the broadest investigation topics in strategic management, but there are important gaps in the literature regarding entry mode choice. Few studies have examined the extent to which pre-entry conditions influence the choice of entry mode into new businesses. Past research has focused exclusively on internal development and acquisition as ways of entering new businesses, without considering the existence of hybrid forms, such as strategic alliances, that have experienced extensive growth during the last decade. Here we present an in-depth analysis of entry mode choice that uses an integrative perspective of corporate diversification and considers strategic alliances as an alternative to traditional approaches. A survey of 272 domestic diversifying entries by 155 Spanish firms allows us to characterize the use of cooperative agreements in diversification and to stress the role of inter-firm cooperation in acquiring the knowledge and capability required to grow into new businesses.     

Comparative Studies in Public Administration and Public Policy

This article offers a conceptual framework and examines a range of cases around the theme of comparative studies in public policy and public administration. It sets the scene for a discussion about issues of comparative analysis in public policy and is aimed at generating debate regarding what comparative analysis can achieve. Finally, it turns our attention to what should be the underlying principles in comparative research and in comparative discourse.     

Changes in risk and strategic interaction

In this paper we study the comparative statics of Nth degree stochastic dominance shifts in a large class of non-cooperative games. We consider symmetric equilibria as well as asymmetric equilibria in which the risk changes are idiosyncratic and not necessarily of the same stochastic order. Furthermore, we establish conditions for risk changes to produce multiplier effects on equilibrium strategies. Finally, we evaluate the comparative statics of stochastic dominance shifts in supermodular games, which may feature multiple equilibria and non-convex strategy sets.     

Effectiveness of a corporate HR department in an Australian public-sector entity during commercialization and corporatization

This study examines the effectiveness of the strategic human resource management (HRM) function performed by the corporate human resource department of an Australian public-sector entity, before and after its corporatization. Multiple methods (including a survey of senior managers and semi-structured interviews) were used to collect the data. Despite an improvement in the overall level of strategic integration between HRM and strategic management, the rating of strategic HRM role effectiveness remained low. The results indicate that the strategic HRM function, as a corporate headquarters function, was more effective in its administrative role than in a value-adding function. The difficulty in balancing the dual roles of a corporate headquarter unit, together with the challenges of becoming a strategic business partner to line managers, provided the major impediments to effective strategic HRM.     

内地制药行业企业进入西藏市场的战略模式选择

内地制药行业企业进入西藏市场对其自身发展壮大和西藏居民健康状况的改善具有双重的意义，因此对进入的战略模式选择的研究是至关重要的。本文分析了内地制药行业企业进入西藏市场的必要性、可行性，在此基础上研究了进入市场的四种主要战略模式选择，阐述了不同战略模式的特征。希望本文的研究能够给我国制药企业的发展和西藏的医疗卫生进步作出贡献。     

Infrastructure provision and international market share rivalry

The paper examines a model of strategic infrastructure investment. Two oligopolistic firms compete on home and foreign product markets for market shares. The national governments support the firms in the market rivalry by providing cost reducing public infrastructure services that are financed out of taxing an input used in the production process. It is shown, that infrastructure policy can be used as an instrument for strategic trade policy. However, governments are facing the problem of balancing the burden of taxation and the benefits of infrastructures. The theoretical model also raises some critical issues with respect to the policy relevance of recent empirical infrastructure research.     

产业异质性、税收激励与自主创新

以2007-2016年中国战略性新兴产业A股上市公司数据为研究样本,从企业研发投入和专利产出两个维度,考察税收优惠政策与企业技术创新之间的关系。结果发现：①税收优惠政策对于企业自主创新具有激励作用,有效促进了企业研发投入和专利产出;②基于企业所属产业异质性视角发现,税收优惠政策对于八大战略性新兴产业企业的创新作用存在显著差异：对于新一代信息技术、高端装备制造业、节能环保等产业研发投入和专利产出具有激励作用,但对新能源产业的创新投入、生物产业和新能源汽车产业的专利产出具有抑制作用。研究结论在一定程度上解释了现有研究关于税收优惠政策“激励效应”和“抑制效应”的争议,也对完善中国创新税收激励制度具有借鉴意义。