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This article addresses the widespread failure of organizations to turn strategy talk into action. It suggests that underlying this failure is the creation of strategy “ducks” – a term borrowed from the world of architecture for buildings intentionally built as symbols. The author here argues that many corporations, in an effort to appear “strategic,” have inadvertently created strategy ducks – strategies that function as symbols, not roadmaps that remain an abstraction and a mystery to the people in the organization who must make them work. As with architecture's ducks, the connection between symbol and day‐to‐day practice is missing. In creating the appearance of a strategy where none exists, these ducks risk leaving the majority of the organization with little recourse other than to “fake it” – to act as though a meaningful strategy exists, when in fact it doesn't. What organizations need instead are strategies that feel real. The article suggests that, in order to close this gap between rhetoric and action, we need to construct strategy “sheds” instead.

This paper reviews the literature to examine what makes something feel “real.” Feeling real is a subjective perception, a personal judgment that each individual makes. The article explores the concept of real – drawing on work in psychology and, again, in architecture to answer the question: what makes anything feel real?

Four components are identified: firstly, presence – attracting attention, secondly, significance – making it matter, thirdly, materiality – offering substance, and finally, emptiness – inviting us in. Each component offers managers a useful lens into strategy making that enhances understanding of organizations' knowing‐doing gaps in a powerful way, and helps address the question “Is your strategy a duck?”

This paper is oriented towards executives and aimed at helping them to understand what it takes to make strategies convincingly real to other members of the organizations, and more likely to be successfully implemented.

Purpose – The primary purpose of this chapter is to offer classroom teachers, administrators, and program specialists specific “big picture” strategies to support upper grade English learners in comprehending expository content-area texts that offer challenges not present in narrative or story-like texts.Design/methodology/approach – Two separate approaches for helping English learners to identify content topics, text structures, and key ideas that control text selections are described and modeled: the Advance Organizer and PLAN (Predict, Locate, Add, and Note).Findings – When learners engage in specific, step-by-step “big picture” processes to understand text structure, organization, and concepts/vocabulary (not relying simply on decoding, or sounding out words), they attain higher levels of comprehension and retention.Research limitations/implications – “Big picture” strategies are well-documented in research as having advantages for all learners who interact with expository text structures – but are especially effective for English learners who may struggle with unfamiliar text structures and higher levels of academic and technical content-area vocabulary.Practical implications – Specific directions for (and advantages of) implementing two big picture strategies that are adaptable to a wide range of grade levels and content-area topics are presented. Teachers can easily modify the strategies in flexible ways to personalize the use of these strategies for English learners in any content-area context.Originality/value of chapter – With step-by-step directions, templates, and examples of content-area texts to guide them, teachers can easily utilize these strategies with English learners using a whole class, small-group, or one-to-one intervention approach.

There’s clear evidence that helping employees become more business literate makes a difference financially. But turning complex business plans into motivating ideas that connect with a cross‐section of employees is a challenge many organizations struggle with. This extract looks at the common principles that will help to engage your employees.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the current manufacturing strategies and practices of bus manufacturers in China, and to propose a framework of manufacturing strategies for time‐based competitive advantages.

The conceptual research framework is devised from a review of the literature, and case studies are used to investigate the manufacturing strategies and practices in place in the case companies. Data are collected through semi‐structured interviews and secondary documentation.

The results show that, with over‐capacity in the Chinese bus manufacturing industry, success is no longer determined by high productivity or low price; a quick response to the customers' tailored demands is essential in a climate of fierce competition. The suggested best practices for time‐based competitive advantages comprise building technical centers and post‐doctoral research stations, applying modularity logic, adopting radio frequency identification (RFID), and optimizing processes by, for example, involving customers and integrating inbound and outbound logistics.

The research results are limited within the context of the bus manufacturing industry in China.

The research results help both the practitioners and the researchers gain a better understanding of the practices of Chinese bus manufacturers from the perspective of time‐based competitive advantage. The proposed strategies and best practices have the potential to improve the manufacturing performance of this type of manufacturer.

This paper shows the big picture of manufacturing strategy and practice of bus manufacturers in the Chinese automobile industry. Furthermore, it presents a manufacturing strategy framework with best practice guidance to gain a time‐based competitive advantage.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This research paper concentrates on the link between dynamic capability development, strategic management, and environmental performance in third party logistics (3PL) companies. The results revealed that dynamic capabilities – namely, in order of descending importance, the sub-dimensions of sensing, coordinating, learning, and integrating – do drive company performance. In turn, where more environmental munificence is present, dynamic capabilities and strategic management are elevated in their quality and business value delivery. A balance of accessing their market's big picture, tailoring strategy to operational targets, and elevating dynamic capabilities cross-functionally within the company forms a triad for performance-enhancing success among the 3PL manager population.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Training can be personalized using online resources to determine an individual’s learning preferences and personality characteristics. This study provides an overview of learning style, personality types, and multiple intelligences theories; lists and describes selected testing instruments available on the Internet; and provides strategies for teaching and learning, considering different learning styles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how big-picture sustainability strategies are translated into tangible product development efforts. The authors assert that most sustainable products currently remain confined to niche markets and do not permeate the mainstream. The authors propose that there is a missing link between strategic sustainability goals and operational product development initiatives. The authors establish a path to bridging this gap.

The manuscript is based on a qualitative research design with a sample of 32 companies. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with product developers as well as secondary data analysis.

The authors delineate three empirically derived approaches firms from the sample pursue to develop sustainable products. The authors identify a phenomenon that the authors’ call the fallacy of trickle-down product sustainability. The authors find that only one of the three approaches – codification – is equipped to successfully turn strategic sustainability targets into authentic sustainable products.

This study provides an actionable guide to executives and product developers with respect to bridging the gap between often elusive sustainability aspirations and tangible product improvements via the process of rigorous codification.

This study provides a novel and unique perspective into strategy, sustainability and product development. The authors synthesize the extant literature on sustainable product development, juxtapose the emergent structure with primary interview data, and elaborate the resource-based view (RBV) to provide theoretical and practical implications. The authors establish scalability as the missing RBV capability of many attempts toward mass–market compatibility of more sustainable products.