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It has been suggested that to be successful in the current global economy with increased competition and ever changing markets, especially in the post-crisis context, firms need to focus more on innovation in exploring new ideas and designing new products to develop new markets than on cost-cutting strategies to maintain cost leadership in old markets. However, because of the lack of micro data, this conjecture has not been systematically evaluated. This paper aims to fill this important void by studying the economic performance associated with these two different business strategies using Canadian micro data.

The main data for our analysis are from the Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (2009 and 2012) which is a sample-based survey of Canadian government. The authors used in this research regression models for the econometric analysis of the underlying factors for undertaking certain business strategies and how business strategies link to economic performance. They also used propensity score matching to ensure the group of firms with innovation strategy being comparable to that with cost-cutting.

The research shows that firms focusing on product innovation are indeed more productive than firms focusing on cost-cutting, although there is no evidence that these two different strategies make a difference in profitability. The first indication from the research has been that certain characteristics of Canadian firms are very useful predictors for firms to undertake product innovation. They are, among other things, the age of the firms, the single-establishment structure of the business and being multinationals.

This empirical research opens up many interesting avenues for future research. Some other variables could be integrated into the models to increase the rate of explained variance. Moreover, because this research is based only on the case of Canadian firms and for a relatively short period of four years after the 2008 crisis, an extension to other context and to a longer period of time should be interesting.

The research has confirmed that Canadian firms adopting long-term business strategies based on product innovation are more productive.

The results truly concur with the vision of the Government of Canada, like some other developed countries, on the importance of innovation and its policies in encouraging business innovation in driving the growth of the Canadian economy and improving the standard of living of country.

Mainly because of the lack of micro data, the existing researches have not provided solid evidence on why firms are choosing different business strategies when they are operating in the same business conditions and how the financial crisis has affected the undertaking of business strategies. They have not established a clear linkage between economic performance and different business strategies, although there has been some anecdotal evidence about their association. This study aims to bridge the knowledge gaps with theoretical and practical contributions.

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.

Organizational areas which deal with innovation are often the first to see costs cut when an economic crisis emerges. Yet this can actually have a dramatic negative effect on recovery after a crisis, compared to cutting costs elsewhere.

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.

This study aims to compare alternative search behaviors managers enact with regard to firm aspirations.

The behavioral theory of the firm predicts that poor performance relative to aspiration levels leads to search for ways to raise performance over aspirations. Most researchers have assumed search leads to risk‐taking or innovation. However, firms might search for ways to raise performance without incurring additional risk, such as reducing expenses. This paper compares the two models of search using data on research and development (R&D) spending.

The results generally support the cost cutting argument; R&D spending increases monotonically with performance relative to social aspirations.

These results suggest researchers need to consider searches that emphasize cost reduction, as well as searches that emphasize innovation.

Overall, this paper extends behavioral work on risk‐taking and R&D to provide a more complex view of the interactions between kinds of aspiration levels and both innovation and search behavior.

This paper aims to explore how research and development (R&D) scientists and engineers can contribute to sustainability initiatives in their organisations.

This paper uses a critical case study methodology, focussed on a large Vietnamese company in which business leaders sought to engage R&D scientists and engineers in sustainability initiatives focussed on eco-innovation and eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s theoretical lens of habitus, capitals and field facilitates a relational analysis of the findings.

While R&D scientists and engineers adapted well to early changes aligned with eco-innovation, they struggled to engage with sustainability initiatives in the case firm. This study explains adaptions and constraints as scientists and engineers’ professional habitus and capitals, and their broader organisational field.

This paper provides insight into how organisations might integrate professional acculturation and appropriate facilitators to promote the additional contribution of scientists and engineers to sustainability initiatives in the context of an organisation.

Although eco-innovation and eco-efficiency are only potential dimensions of comprehensive organisational sustainability reform, this research provides insight into how engaging scientists and engineers with a broader social sustainability agenda might be advanced.

The study addresses calls for empirical insights into ways that scientists and engineers can commit to organisational sustainability practices based on the configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field.

In the past years, many contributions have been published addressing frugal innovation and other types of resource-constrained innovations in the management field. Throughout this paper frugal innovation is reported as a phenomenon, concept, research field and strategy, showing the different ways the literature refers to it and how scattered the concept is. However, based on the understanding, the authors decided to address frugal innovation as a kind of innovation strategy that helps companies to innovate in resource-constrained environments. Therefore, considering the increasing interest in the frugal innovation topic and adding the perspective of business strategy for resource-constrained conditions, the research question addressed in this paper is: what are the main features of the frugal innovation literature that unfold its current perspectives for business strategy? In this sense, the purpose of this study is to analyze the scientific production in frugal innovation through a literature mapping and review to better understand it, delimiting different perspectives and creating boundaries to other business strategies or approaches.

The authors performed a co-citation analysis using the Vosviewer software to notice how authors are arranged in clusters based on their understanding of the topic. Furthermore, the authors also performed a systematic literature review (SLR) analyzing the extant literature on frugal innovation based on the clusters found through the co-citation method. The final sample used in the study included 42 papers published between 2011 and 2019, using the Web of Science platform as a data source.

By means of SLR, the findings of this study provided a more organized view of frugal innovation through the co-citation analysis and the qualitative analysis of the clusters, which were the basis for the parameters established. After the conceptualization of frugal innovation strategy (FIS) and the delimitation of boundaries of FIS, the authors bring the reflections about the contribution to the literature and the practice (managers and society) by showing three assumptions to be tested and confirmed in future studies and a framework to guide companies in search of a FIS.

This study contributes to the discussion on frugal innovation moving a step forward to clarify the research field on this subject providing the main characteristics for researchers and practitioners. The paper has delimited the boundaries of FIS. The assumptions established in the discussion can become hypotheses for empirical studies. In addition, the authors explain why, what is, where and to whom the FIS can be developed and applied. Furthermore, the authors contribute by developing the FIS framework, with four strategic positions based on the boundaries of FIS organized by the complexity technological level. The strategic positions are frugal innovation orientation (FIO), FIO to value shared, FIO to market and FIS.

This masterclass examines how two important new books propose to achieve cost innovation, a value creation strategy that can transform an over-priced industry.

In their book, marketing gurus Stephen Wunker and Jennifer Luo Law highlight the potential of cost innovation in helping to create new market demand and transform the competitive dynamics in any industry sector, and they offer guidance on how to develop such a strategy. In their study of transformation by value creation, Professors Vijay Govindarajan and Ravi Ramamurti highlight the potential for cost innovations in emerging markets to help transform health care delivery in the West.

The authors showcased in this masterclass demonstrate how the value-based principles highlighted by Porter and Christensen and Kim and Mauborge are key to transforming any industry to make it more reliable, accessible and affordable.

Cost innovation involves taking a fresh approach to the conventional way of delivering value in any given industry and looking for ways to reimagine it.

The notion of cost as a potential target for breakthrough innovation in its own right is still not widely recognized. As marketing consultants Wunker and Luo Law point out in Costovation: innovation and cost are still most often seen as “magnetic opposites,” the one in natural tension with the other. They set out to challenge this assumption and show how “innovation and cost-cutting” can become “a powerful duo, capable of reshaping markets and creating long-term competitive advantages.”

The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing.

The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs.

The importance of the firms' market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations.

Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness.

The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.

Asks what happens to company headquarters when an organisation decides to downsize its operations. Examines new organisational imperatives and the reasons for restructuring and streamlining. Presents the ways that headquarters buildings have responded to the changing business environment. Offers some examples of shrinking headquarters in the United Kingdom. Suggests that it has been possible for some companies to develop, use and manage shrinking headquarters creatively.

This article looks at the alignment of performance management system with the strategy, structure, and organizational outcome in Canadian health care organizations. In this study, balanced scorecard is the framework adopted for assessing the health care organization's performance management system (PMS) and outcome. CEO and clinical unit managers were surveyed for their perceptions on their organization's strategy, autonomy structure, PMS, and organizational performance. Path analysis was the methodology used in examining the relationship about the above organizational variables. The results indicate that patient satisfaction is the primary and most significant perspective of the depicted balanced scorecard in organizational performance. Patient satisfaction and research criteria, on the other hand, are the significant perspectives of a balanced scorecard in an organization's PMS, which are linked to strategy, autonomy structure, and organizational performance. Moreover, the results show that the strategy/structure links operated as suggested. Surprisingly, strategy on service innovation has a negative impact on the organizational outcome of patient satisfaction. Uncertainty from continuous development and organizational change in pursuing service innovation and cost-cutting measures in response to fiscal constraints are plausible explanations of the adverse impact reported.

In this paper, the authors set out to explore how small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) in a developing country (Turkey) are coping with economic and financial consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It is also crucial to understand what kind of policymaking solutions will help them to successfully overcome it.

To gather data, the authors interviewed SMTEs in the Bodrum area – one of the most elite and exciting destinations for foreign travelers in Turkey. Semi-structured interview method was used, and questions for data collection focused on three key areas: (1) impact of COVID-19 on SMTEs, especially in terms of cash flow and other problems, (2) government incentives and (3) business strategies to cope with the crisis.

(1) Even a year and a half into the pandemic, despite government relief efforts, vaccination programs, the easing of lockdown and travel restrictions, survival is still the main concern for SMTEs. (2) Although they do not have enough resources, these entrepreneurs have energy and motivation, are optimistic about the future and are investigating new opportunities by capitalizing on their “strategic flexibility”, an intrinsic strength of SMEs. (3) Recovery is going to take a long time, and government support, however crucial in the interim, cannot replace the pre-crisis conditions that are anxiously awaited by these businesses.

One of the main limitations of this study is that the gathered research data are localized to one destination in Turkey, the Bodrum area. In that respect, it is difficult to hypothesize the degree to which the resulting data can be generalized to other areas of Turkey and the rest of the world. Future work is required to provide greater insight into how to be prepared effectively for this type of crisis. Therefore, further research should be undertaken to investigate tourism and hospitality industry in the whole country and to compare findings to those of other cities and regions. An especially important issue for future research that would yield insight and practical implications worldwide is comparison of findings across countries.

The impact of COVID-19 is challenging all SMTEs’ conventional business models. Each business needs to evaluate its own internal and external conditions, secure required financial resources necessary for survival and sustainable business strategies for post-COVID-19 era. Besides short-term survival thinking, they also look for long-term business strategies both saving, investing, innovation and diversification. They are also on the look-out to seize any new opportunities presenting themselves as well as for any additional governmental support.

This paper offers a systematic approach toward understanding the realities of SMTEs in the midst of crisis by focusing on their short-term survival and long-term sustainability responses against COVID-19. It also brings practical experiences of industry participants and opinions of industry experts to academicians, practitioners and policymakers, shedding light on challenges faced by SMTEs.