Search results

It is commonly acknowledged that history matters in strategy. However, the strategy literature mainly discusses history in terms of path dependency, leaving little room for managerial agency, despite growing anecdotal evidence that managers can actively draw on corporate history to improve decision-making. An emerging literature on how managers use the past to give sense to internal and external stakeholders has given rise to a more agent-based approach to history, but while sense-giving is commonly connected to sense-making as a driver of strategic change, the role of history in sense-making remains unexplored. Drawing on the concept of analogical reasoning, this chapter theorizes the connection between corporate archives and managerial sense-making, arguing that analogies drawn from past experience can reduce uncertainty and foster learning. This theory leads to the suggestion that consulting the corporate archive can promote strategic renewal and thus boost performance.

Privatization is one of the ways governments consider to dispense with the consequences of governmental economy in the economic reforms. One of the complex matters that governments face is decision-making in privatization and choosing policies and methods that move the country’s economy toward more efficiency. Considering the importance and complexity of this issue, taking a comprehensive strategic perspective by the policy makers seems necessary for establishing successful privatization.

Article 44 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s constitution is the foundation of its privatization program and this study specifies the strategic requirements in implementation of privatization based on the mentioned article and other legal documents. Iran Privatization Organization (IPO) is the single executor of the program and we surveyed all members of the statistical population of this study, including all experts, supervisors, managers, deputies, and senior advisers of IPO to collect the required information by a questionnaire with some questions including strategic thinking, requirements, and results.

To analyze the data, at first, validity and reliability of the collected data, then the correlation between strategic thinking and requirements were tested and all strategic requirements of privatization were prioritized. We used tests such as Cronbach’s Alpha, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Linear Regression, and Friedman to perform the study.

This paper asks the reader to consider future information retrieval services that return multimedia documents containing any combination of text, graphics, still raster images, audio, and motion video in response to user queries. It then argues that the emergence of generally available multimedia information services depends on four things: (1) close to ubiquitous high‐bandwidth networks; (2) inexpensive user appliances capable of handling multimedia; (3) adoption of standards for representation, compression, packaging and transport of multimedia information; and (4) development of a corpus of multimedia information and associated infrastructure for organizing and searching it. After some explanation, it asserts that the first three are already happening and expresses reserved optimism about the fourth.

This first chapter argues that turbulent environments require adaptive strategy for survival and continued prosperity and thereby introduces the attempts to determine effective response capabilities in contemporary firms, which are presented in the ensuing chapters. The background in prior strategy research is outlined to position the various contributions within a proper backdrop as potential extensions to prior insights generated in the strategic management field. It suggests a need for multiple methodological approaches to gain new diverse and relevant knowledge from rich qualitative field studies as well as quantitative data probes and computational analyses. Finally, the ensuing chapters are briefly presented to provide a coherent view of the contributions made by this specific collection of chapters that the authors hope will inspire and fuel ongoing work in this important area.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Early paradox research in organization theory contained a remarkable breadth of inspirations from outside disciplines. We wanted to know more about where early scholarship found inspiration to create what has since become paradox theory. To shed light on this, we engaged seminal paradox scholars in conversations: asking about their past experiences drawing from outside disciplines and their views on the future of paradox theory. These conversations surfaced several themes of past and future inspirations: (1) understanding complex phenomena; (2) drawing from related disciplines; (3) combining interdisciplinary insights; and (4) bridging discourses in organization theory. We end the piece with suggestions for future paradox research inspired by these conversations.