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The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

An extensive search has shown that no business process reengineering (BPR) method specifically addresses the issue of selecting business processes for reengineering based on the processes’ impact on the firm’s strategic objectives. Focusing on strategic business units (SBUs) within the electronics and electrical components industry, the research reported in this paper develops a generic set of SBU business processes which is used, in conjunction with an existing set of generic strategic objectives, to create a decision model that assesses the performance and improvement potential of each business process with respect to the SBU’s collective strategic objectives. The decision model, which contains both deterministic and stochastic elements, is based upon the concepts of decision tree analysis and influence diagramming. Validation of both the set of business processes and the decision support system has been conducted through field studies at electronics and electrical components companies. The results from these studies have been very promising.

An overview of all the elements that go into formulating a business strategy – including received wisdom from the gurus, vision and values, ideas on growth, forecasting, information, objectives, audits, customers, markets, competition, finances, structure, training – with the focus on how to make it happen. Directed at practising managers whose task this is. Making strategic plans is the easy bit; enacting them requires changing things, getting things done through people. Discusses learning, training and development, culture, quality, with the emphasis on real people in real businesses. Underpinned by the philosophy of “action learning”.

The paper aims to analyse research conducted for assessing the current state of supply chain management practices followed by Indian organisations and identifying important areas that need to be addressed in order to increase their competitiveness.

The paper begins by proposing a framework for evaluating the supply chain strategy of an organisation along the three key dimensions – supply chain objectives, supply chain processes, and management focus on supply chain activities. Data collected through survey questionnaire for the three dimensions have been used to assess the alignment of supply chain strategy with the overall business strategy through statistical analysis.

The research findings reveal that most of the Indian organisations have aligned their supply chain objectives with their business objectives. They are now on course of aligning their processes and management focus. Enhanced level of competitiveness would require Indian organisations to manage the three‐dimensional alignment of achieving the agenda set by the business strategy.

Further research work should focus on: assessing the current level of supply chain processes; identifying critical supply chain focus areas for the business; and establishing specific performance measures for continuous measurement of supply chain efficiency improvement.

This paper provides a detailed study to help supply chain managers improve supply chain efficiency through alignment of supply chain objectives with business objectives, supply chain processes with management tools and supply chain focus areas with management focus. Improved supply chain efficiency will help Indian organisations maintain competitiveness in a rapidly globalising economy.

The supply chain alignment model suggested in this paper provides a framework for realising true supply chain efficiency and competitiveness. Different organisations will align their objectives, processes and management focus as per the focal areas of their organisation depending on their capabilities and market situation. However, in every case Indian organisations need to act fast to capitalise on these opportunities to be competitive with the world market.

This is a working document produced for the “BP in Education” European Conference in November 1989. The main benefits or objectives of business involvement with education are examined in depth and the main types of activity which can help to achieve them are described. There are four key objectives: thriving economy and society, licence to operate, human resourcing and business development. There is a wide variety of activities through which businesses can pursue these objectives. They can be divided into five main types: student work experience and vocational training; enriching teaching and learning; reciprocal attachments in business and education; donations; and services from education. Each objective is related to the main activities which serve them.

Many research studies in operations management (OM) and strategic management (SM) investigate how different kinds of firm decisions regarding business relationships can positively affect a firm's operations performance, resource endowment, and competitive position. Very few studies exist, however, that have attempted to illuminate the actual behaviors of managers when making strategic decisions about their intercompany relationships; rather, most existing studies focus on normative theory. The purpose of this paper is to explore linkages between the “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue, the “set” of networking decisions they make, and the “set” of business agreements they sign.

In order to investigate and explore actual managerial behaviors with respect to networking strategy, the study adopts a field research approach based on multiple case studies. Data were collected on 13 business agreements from three manufacturing firms in the mechatronics industry in Italy. Within‐case and cross‐case analyses are used for theory‐building purposes.

The empirical data allow identification four different archetypes of networking strategy. The archetypes capture different connections between the “set” of strategic objectives that managers are willing to pursue, the “set” of networking decisions that they consider, and the “set” of strategic agreements that they actually adopt. Specifically, the identified archetypes are named multi‐alignment, multi‐agreement (diversification), multi‐objective, and mono‐alignment (focus), and these are related to different association multiplicities among objectives, decisions, and agreements. The implications related to these archetypes are three‐fold. First, the multi‐alignment archetype suggests a focus not just on one kind of agreement, but also on the firm's overall portfolio of agreements, in order to facilitate understanding of how different kinds of agreements and networking decisions can play a complementary role in achieving a firm's predetermined business objective/s. Second, the multi‐agreement (diversification) archetype suggests that managers can minimize the risk of losing the potentiality of network collaboration by undertaking different kinds of agreements for the same strategic objective. Third, the mono‐alignment (focus) and multi‐objective archetypes suggest that just one agreement can potentially pursue one or multiple strategic objectives, and thus can allow managers to minimize the cost of managing several networking relationships.

The originality of this study lies in its exploration of linkages between objectives, decisions and networking agreements. Unlike most of the existing papers in OM and SM, however, it does not specifically focus on: vertical or horizontal relationships; operations performance (positioning school) or resource endowment (resource‐based view) strategic objectives; or any specific kind of agreement contract (outsourcing, alliance, joint venture, etc.). This paper presents four different networking strategy archetypes that represent different ways of matching a “set” of networking decisions, strategic objectives and business agreements. These are not related to either vertical or horizontal relationships, operations performance or resource endowment objectives, or any specific contract agreement form.

Contends that micro‐business owner‐managers invariably have objectives, although they do not always make them explicit. These objectives tend to relate to personal rather than business criteria. In addition, the vast majority of micro‐business owner‐managers indicate little inclination to maximise profit or pursue growth. The supposed non‐existence and ambiguity of objectives amongst owner‐managers probably arise because they often subconsciously set objectives, rather than make them explicit as part of a written business plan. In practice, micro‐businesses generally pursue a number of economic and non‐economic objectives relating to factors such as income levels, job satisfaction, working hours, control and flexibility. These objectives were derived from the influence of the micro‐business owner‐manager’s individual, social and economic contexts. Moreover, the behaviour of owner‐managers is most appropriately characterised in terms of satisficing behaviour. The impact of this is very important, because it means that there is often no drive to improve the business in terms of growth, sales and profitability. Furthermore, the willingness of owner‐managers to alter their aspiration levels, if objectives were not being easily achieved, often means that they do not initiate changes in the way they run their business when perhaps they should.

The study of franchising as a small business growth strategy is only weakly researched and understood. This preliminary, qualitative investigation examines the experiences of 17 operational and five “failed” franchises in the UK, in translating their business concepts into a franchise format. It reveals that small firms select franchising as a growth strategy for both economic and idiosyncratic reasons, but that economic reasons tend to prevail. The findings suggest that franchising is a viable growth strategy for small firms and that per se it creates few major problems for growth‐oriented small businesses. It is argued that further research is needed, particularly into the experiences of “failed” franchises and into the problems encountered by growing small firms who do not adopt franchising as a growth strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences and similarities that arise between manufacturing and service firms with regard to the impact of business model objectives on marketing innovation activities.

This study focuses on business model objectives and marketing innovations activities. As described by Oslo Manual, marketing innovations involve changes in product design, promotion, placement and pricing. Relationships between business model objectives and marketing innovations are based on the analysis of 9,525 firms, 5,488 of which are manufacturing companies and 4,037 of which are service companies.

Findings reveal distinctive results in the adoption of marketing innovation, depending on the business model objectives being pursued and the type of companies (manufacture or service) considered.

This research goes further than prior studies by identifying more precisely the particularities that differentiate the manufacturing and service sectors.

Firm’s age and size are not significant restrictions to introduce new marketing innovations in manufacturing or service sectors. In contrast, the business model objective to enter a new market is a significant driver of marketing innovations in most cases.

The focus on business model objectives and their impact on marketing innovations is novel. In addition, this study focuses on a large-scale sample that allows us to compare differences between manufacturing and service companies.

The adverse interactions between disruptions can increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Accordingly, establishing supply chain resilience to deal with disruptions and employing business continuity planning to preserve risk management achievements is of considerable importance. The aforementioned idea is discussed in this study.

This study proposes a multi-objective optimization model for employing business continuity management and organizational resilience in a supply chain for responding to multiple interrelated disruptions. The improved augmented e-constraint and the scenario-based robust optimization methods are adopted for multi-objective programming and dealing with uncertainty, respectively. A case study of the automotive battery manufacturing industry is also considered to ensure real-world conformity of the model.

The results indicate that interactions between disruptions remarkably increase the supply chain's vulnerability. Choosing a higher fortification level for the supply chain and foreign suppliers reduces disruption impacts on resources and improves the supply chain's resilience and business continuity. Facilities dispersion, fortification of facilities, lateral transshipment, order deferral policy, dynamic capacity planning and direct transportation of products to markets are the most efficient resilience strategies in the under-study industry.

Applying resource allocation planning and portfolio selection to adopt preventive and reactive resilience strategies simultaneously to manage multiple interrelated disruptions in a real-world automotive battery manufacturing industry, maintaining the long-term achievements of supply chain resilience using business continuity management and dynamic capacity planning are the main contributions of the presented paper.