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Cluster analysis is applied to the union and employer tactics used in a sample of Ontario organising campaigns to identify the combinations of tactics or strategies that are used most often. Seven union organising strategies and five employer resistance strategies are revealed. Contingency table analysis shows that the union and employer strategies are not independent of one another. More active campaigns by one side (in terms of more tactics used) are met by more active campaigns by the other side. Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of the strategies on the outcome of the organising campaign. The most active strategies, including intensive communication with workers and worker committees, work best for the employers. For unions, strategies emphasising personal communication through house calls are the most effective.

The purpose of this study is to better understand distinct solution strategy types for common commissioning and startup problems (Hot Spots) in the construction of industrial facilities. The authors also sought to better understand which solution strategy types offer the best value for the effort required.

The authors used a method of qualitative coding of text-based data to identify themes, patterns and trends from a collection of 178 commissioning and startup (CSU) solution strategies for the CSU Hot Spots. Coding categories emerged after multiple iterations. The authors also mapped high-value, low-effort solution strategies across the categories. Chi-squared testing and analysis of proportion statistics help quantitatively justify this qualitative research.

The authors identified 12 distinct coding categories and showed that they follow a non-uniform distribution via statistical testing. Those strategy types which provide particularly good value for the effort required are identified (such as quality assurance and control strategies), as well as those strategy types that do not.

Research is limited to CSU for the construction of industrial facilities. The findings are also limited to a subset of the most commonly problematic CSU activities. Many findings may be beneficial for heavy civil and commercial CSU as well.

Coding categories, definitions and descriptions provide a good overview of all 178 solution strategies for CSU project professionals. Implementing certain types of solutions or solution programs may allow CSU managers to prevent multiple Hot Spots from becoming problematic or to keep problems already occurring from becoming worse. Managers will also benefit from knowledge about which strategy types are more likely to give a higher value for lower effort.

Qualitative coding and analysis of solution strategies for common CSU problems have never been conducted so rigorously in any other CSU study. This method has yielded results distinct from other CSU studies which have used quantitative methods. Insights from findings have advanced the body of knowledge surrounding problem-solving in the commissioning and startup sub-discipline.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretically sound and empirically tested classification system composed of purchasing strategic categories as a basis for purchasing portfolio models.

An international, cross‐industry survey has been designed to assess the characteristics and corresponding strategies of the purchasing categories.

The paper operationalises the constructs derived from previous scientific contributions related to purchasing portfolio management and transaction cost economics (TCE) to empirically test the purchasing portfolio. In total, four different types of strategic categories have been identified, and distinctive competitive priorities have been found.

Managers might be able to identify different types of purchasing strategic categories, whose characteristics drive specific purchasing strategies. Longitudinal data and more extensive tests of the characteristics of each category might contribute to improving the proposed research framework.

The research overcomes some of the classical limits of purchasing portfolio models, including the absence of a theoretical and empirical basis. In particular, TCE is used to support and expand traditional purchasing portfolio approaches, and a broad empirical base is used to test such an approach.

This paper aims to clarify the fit of competitive strategies and firm-specific advantages (FSAs) with country-specific advantages (CSAs) in explaining manufacturing location choices at product category level in the European automotive industry.

Seven hypotheses are formulated and tested using binomial logistic regression with data from 148 passenger car models (i.e. product category level) that are sold in Europe and manufactured in countries that offer CSAs of either cost advantages or differentiation advantages. The first four hypotheses test manufacturing location choices of product categories pursuing cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, focus strategy and hybrid strategy. The other three hypotheses test whether FSAs of R&D capability, marketing capability and operations capability will impact on the manufacturing location choice. The tests control for the type of passenger cars as well as the manufacturer’s region of origin.

While pursuing cost leadership strategy leads to manufacturing in countries that offer cost advantages, pursuing differentiation strategy as well as strong R&D capability and marketing capability result in manufacturing in countries that offer differentiation advantages. Focus strategy, hybrid strategy and operations capability do not have an impact on the manufacturing location choice at product category level.

Conducting empirical research at product category level is subject to limitations in the choices of FSAs due to lack of availability of data.

Managers should assess the competitive strategies and FSAs of their product categories and then decide about manufacturing locations based on their fit with host country CSAs. Policymakers should understand the CSAs of their countries and target to attract manufacturing FDI from product categories with matching competitive strategies and FSAs.

The research contributes to discussions in explaining manufacturing location choices. Its originality lies in being the first study to test the fit of competitive strategies and FSAs of product categories with CSAs.

The dominant strategy discourse projects strategy as rational and calculable. However, leading academics conclude that strategy is “elusive” and “complex”. The purpose of this paper is to unravel strategy's elusiveness and unpack its complexity through empirical hermeneutic investigation.

Strauss' grounded theory is used to investigate leisure and cultural managers' understanding of strategy‐making. Data were collected through multiple interviews with senior managers of a local authority, and the organisation's strategy documents were examined. The grounded theory's transferability to organisations in, and outside, public leisure and culture was provisionally tested.

It was found that in making strategy, managers engage in purposeful, complex processes, here termed “navigational translation” which have mutually impacting relationships with organisational resources, the environment and managers' character, explaining its complexity and elusiveness. The provisional testing of navigational translation's transferability suggests that it has scope beyond public sector leisure and cultural strategy.

As this research focused on theory generation, a main limitation is its small‐scale testing of navigational translation's transferability. Future research could test transferability with more organisations in leisure, culture and other fields.

This explanation provides a robust understanding of strategy that could improve practice. It empowers managers so that they are no longer subjugated to unrealisable expectations that rationalistic strategy tools will work in a complex world.

Navigational translation offers a richer, practitioner‐oriented understanding of strategy, which utilises leading academic explanations from the various, competing and divergent strategy schools into a pragmatic, multiparadigmatic framework.

The predominant view of positioning in both the literature and practice – a remarkably uni- or two-dimensional view – asks these questions: (1) What dimension should the product or service be positioned on, for example, unique styling, design, performance, and quality? (2) What category does the product or service compete in or belong to? So marketers therefore ask: Should the computer brand be positioned as reliable (Dell), or faster (Toshiba)? Research on economic value is well established in the pricing literature, especially in business-to-business pricing. Most of this literature focuses on differentiation value, that is, how to calculate the worth of the differential benefits a customer receives from using the firm's product versus the competitive substitute. But a much less studied area of this research deals with the price of the competitive reference product, or competitive frame of reference. Rarely do marketers extend positioning strategy to the level of economic value, asking: How is the product framed, and how valuable is the frame? The purpose of this chapter is to explore competitive frames of reference in business-to-business positioning. Specifically, what are alternative types of frames of reference? What is the role of the reference price in frames of reference? What are the implications of choosing one type of frame of reference versus another?

The purpose of this study is to scrutinise individual learning strategies in their workplace when they were experiencing digital innovation. Moreover, the respective enablers and challenges of each category of strategies were explored to conceptualise supporting features needed in the digital learning environment.

This study adopts a qualitative inquiry to understand employees’ workplace learning strategies and the respective enablers, and challenges in each category of strategies. Twenty employees across different industries were interviewed, and a two-cycle inductive coding analysis was adopted to identify the categories of learning strategies.

Four categories of workplace learning strategies were identified: self-driven, social-leveraged, enterprise-oriented and information and technology-enhanced (IT-enhanced) strategies. Enablers and challenges of each category were also presented in this study.

The findings provide insights for individuals to establish a repertoire of learning strategies. The inadequate use of IT-enhanced strategies is additionally addressed.

This study examined workplace learning strategies in the context of digital innovation. Based on the empirical findings and existing literature, this study proposes a framework with the supporting features for a digital learning environment.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of strategies for information searching and seeking by reviewing the conceptualizations on this topic in the field of library and information science (LIS).

The study draws on Henry Mintzberg’s idea of strategy as plan and strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. Conceptual analysis of 57 LIS investigations was conducted to find out how researchers have approached the above aspects in the characterizations of information search and seeking strategies.

In the conceptualizations of information search and information seeking strategies, the aspect of strategy as plan is explicated most clearly in text-book approaches describing the steps of rational web searching. Most conceptualizations focus on the aspect of strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. This approach places the main emphasis on realized strategies, either deliberate or emergent. Deliberate strategies indicate how information search or information seeking processes were oriented by intentions that existed previously. Emergent strategies indicate how patterns in information seeking and seeking developed in the absence of intentions, or despite them.

The conceptualizations of the shifts in information seeking and searching strategies were excluded from the study. Similarly, conceptualizations of information search or information retrieval tactics were not examined.

The study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the key aspects of strategy are conceptualized in the classifications and typologies of information seeking and searching strategies. The findings contribute to the elaboration of the conceptual space of information behaviour research.

This study aims to compare the extent of voluntary strategy disclosure in the annual/integrated reports of listed companies in an emerging market with the extent of strategy disclosure in the annual/integrated reports of listed companies in a developed market.

A developed market sample that was made up of the top 50 companies on the New York Stock Exchange and the Australian Stock Exchange was compared to an emerging market sample that was made up of the top 50 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange. The comparison was conducted by scoring the amount of strategy disclosure reported in the annual/integrated reports of the companies for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The emerging market companies had average to good strategy disclosures in their annual reports, whereas the annual reports of companies in the developed market showed low strategy disclosure.

This study expanded upon the limited research available on strategy disclosure by comparing the extent of strategy disclosures in two developmental markets (the developed and emerging market).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the choices made in manufacturing decision categories by subcontractor small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and determines if subcontractor SMEs make homogenous manufacturing choices.

A literature review was used to develop theoretical propositions. A multiple case study with 19 subcontractor SMEs was conducted.

Factors that might lead to homogenous choices in the manufacturing strategy decision categories were formalised into four theoretical propositions. The propositions were based on new institutionalism factors as well as SME factors. The findings reveal that there is considerable heterogeneity across the subcontractor SMEs in the various manufacturing decision categories. However, there are similarities between some manufacturing choices. This can partly be explained by the proposed factors and partly by other factors, such as SME characteristics and process choices.

The study reinforces the need for more research that is focused on manufacturing decisions and choices in SMEs. All cases were of Swedish SMEs belonging to three different industries, potentially limiting the generalisability of findings to other industries or countries.

This study highlights the importance of the different choices made considering manufacturing and the factors influencing those choices. This provides guidance for managers when they make manufacturing choices in various decision categories.

By addressing new institutionalism, SME characteristics and decision categories in the same study, the author provides new insights into the categories of manufacturing decisions.