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The purpose of this paper is to close the gap between theoretical approaches to strategic operations auditing and empirical analysis of practice in service organisations. Through analysis of the two different views of strategy formulation – environment‐market and resource‐based – the paper aims to provide insights on how strategic operations audit methods are being used and under what circumstances.

The case study methodology was employed which involved a three‐stage data collection and analytical process. Its purpose was to identify how strategic operations audit methods were being used, why they were used and the particular circumstances of their use. Trails of operational improvement within each of six case studies show links between service operational activities, the benefits achieved by the improvements and the formulation and/or execution of each service company's business strategy. These trails of improvement provided a means by which to reveal some of the strategic operations audit methods being used. In addition, interviews and analysis of supporting documentation ensured the complete set of methods being utilised was identified.

The results indicate three main findings. First it is recognised that the service companies all look to adopt a top down approach to strategic operations auditing and seek to maintain, and where possible, gain greater strategic impact from their service operations. Second, the competitive state of the business impacts the choice of strategic operations audit method used. All companies studied employed an environment‐market method to assess operations – market fit. Only when a company is confident of its competitive position will managers then look to also devise a resource‐based method in order to assess its current ability to nurture new capabilities to exploit. Third, companies use a variety of integration techniques to verify on‐going cohesion across infrastructural decision‐making categories of the content of service operations strategy. The assessment of cohesion within service operations strategy takes place within subsets of the content of the strategy. The authors did not find integration techniques that hone structural decision categories or service operations strategy as a whole. The results also show that methods used by managers are pale imitations of the rigorous procedures originally devised by researchers.

Service operations managers possess inadequate understanding of how the application of a strategic operations audit method should be made and limited ability to undertake the audit in a structured and meaningful way. A strategic operations audit methods selection process is put forward to remedy this. The process acknowledges that the choice of a particular method is contingent on the stage of development of the company's service operations strategy. It guides managers through the decision‐making process of what strategic operations audit method to use and when managers should be using it. The message for academics is that new resource‐based methods need to be created that are accessible to managers and relevant when service operations strategy has successfully evolved to the point where greater influence is being sought from it in the formulation of business strategy.

An empirical study within service operations management of the practice of strategic operations auditing is rare. The paper's findings begin to address the gap between theory and practice. The paper presents revisions and additions to the operations manager's tool kit of strategic operations audit methods and culminates in a selection process to guide managers on which tool to use and when.

The study aims to contribute to the debate on how to identify and manage an organization’s sustainability-related resources and processes by understanding the impact of business activities on the environment and evaluating actions to ameliorate their impacts. Within this debate, and specifically taking into consideration the opportunity to support circular economy actions and initiatives, the study focuses on integrated reporting (IR) practices. In detail, this study advocates the joint use of IR principles with the dynamic resource-based view (DRBV) of the firm, adopting their representation of resources and impact of the business activities to identify environmental friendly “hot spots” in organizations. The framework is illustrated through two exploratory case studies.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate information and communications technology (ICT) adoption and its impact on business changes and performance.

This paper provides a model interconnecting ICT adoption, ICT‐enabled business process re‐engineering (BPR), and performance in terms of external and internal organizational motivations with a balanced scorecard approach. The framework is tested using survey data from a sample of 377 chief information officers and senior information system managers.

The results indicate that environment capacity fit and a dynamic environment positively affect technology adoption, which in turn directly triggers business processes changes, organizational learning and growth, while indirectly affecting improvement of customer satisfaction and financial performance.

This study is limited by its sample size due to the complexity of the questionnaire.

This paper provides empirical evidence to examine how intra‐ and extra‐organizational factors influence ICP adoption, how ICT shapes BPR, and business performance from a dynamic resources‐based view. These findings will be valuable in understanding various motivations of ICT adoption, and predicting outcome of business performance stemming from ICT‐enabled BPR.

Advanced Electronic Medical Records (EMR) provide many potential benefits to hospitals. However, because of their broad scope, many stakeholders deal with the EMR and a continuous effort has to be made to keep up with internal and external change. Therefore, hospitals need to deliberately shape their organizational competencies considering the pursuit of alignment, i.e. making sure that the EMR remains optimally aligned with strategies, goals and needs of the hospital and its stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate the evolutionary paths of these alignment competencies and their drivers, from a theoretical perspective of co-evolutionary information systems alignment (COISA).

This paper reports on a longitudinal multiple case study of three Dutch hospitals which each recently implemented an advanced EMR system. The authors conducted 35 in-depth interviews in 2 phases (before and after go-live of the EMR), and studied documentation related to the EMR implementations.

The findings show that each hospital's COISA capability shows a different evolutionary path. However, two of the three case hospitals ended up coordinating part of their COISA capability to an ecosystem level, i.e. they incorporated other hospitals using the same EMR system to coordinate their alignment efforts, either from an operational perspective, or in terms of orchestration and strategy. The found evolutionary paths' key drivers include “stakeholder initiative”, “accumulating experience”, “driving events” and “emerging issues”.

The findings help healthcare practitioners to deliberately shape their organization's COISA capability in pursuit of EMR alignment. Furthermore, the authors add to the knowledge base on co-evolutionary approaches to alignment through the longitudinal approach.

Adopting aspects of the resource-based perspective and interorganizational relational dynamics, this paper examines the notion of resource transformation in the reconstitution of broken interorganizational relationships.

Following a qualitative approach, the research involved four in-depth case studies of buyer–supplier relationships among 12 Scandinavian manufacturing firms.

The results suggest that reconstituting broken interorganizational relationships, whether overlooked or underutilized, can pose important consequences for resource transformations. To adapt in dynamic environments, firms use resources in new combinations, and various relationship-specific resources may be difficult, if not impossible, to transform independent of the reconstitution process. Such resource transformations can occur when competencies in reconstituting interorganizational relationships are combined to synthesize novel resources or recombined with other resources. Four identified types of resource transformations in reconstitution processes – in production facilities, products, human know-how and coordination of interorganizational collaboration – can occur in each firm and/or in the interorganizational relationship.

Although the explorative multiple-case study approach afforded novel insights, the findings have no representative or generalizable implications in any positivist sense and thus warrant careful interpretation. Nevertheless, they make important contributions to the literature and illuminate promising avenues for future research, which should involve additional data collection and quantitative studies.

As firms reconstitute broken interorganizational relationships, the transformation of their resources can provide new, expected resources capable of generating substantial benefits.

This paper fills an identified gap in research regarding how reconstituting broken interorganizational relationships influence the transformation of resources. The paper provides new conceptual and empirical insights as well as makes several contributions to the literature on the topic.

Driven by the dual-carbon target and the widespread digital transformation, leveraging digital technology (DT) to facilitate sustainable, green and high-quality development in heavy-polluting industries has emerged as a pivotal and timely research focus. However, existing studies diverge in their perspectives on whether DT’s impact on green innovation is synergistic or leads to a crowding-out effect. In pursuit of optimizing the synergy between DT and green innovation, this paper aims to investigate the mechanisms that can be harnessed to render DT a more constructive force in advancing green innovation.

Drawing from the theoretical framework of resource orchestration, the authors offer a comprehensive elucidation of how DT intricately influences the green innovation efficiency of enterprises. Given the intricate interplay within the synergistic relationship between DT and green innovation, the authors use the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method to explore diverse configurations of antecedent conditions leading to optimal solutions. This approach transcends conventional linear thinking to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics involved.

The findings reveal that antecedent configurations fostering high green innovation efficiency actually differ across various stages. First, there are three distinct configuration patterns that can enhance the green technology research and development (R&D) efficiency of enterprises, namely, digitally driven resource integration (RI), digitally driven resource synergy (RSy) and high resource orchestration capability. Then, the authors also identify three configuration patterns that can bolster the high green achievement transfer efficiency of enterprises, including a digitally optimized resource portfolio, digitally driven RSy and efficient RI. The findings not only contribute to advancing the resource orchestration theory in the digital ecosystem but also provide empirical evidence and practical insights to support the sustainable development of green innovation.

The findings can offer valuable insights for enterprise managers, providing decision-making guidance on effectively harnessing the innovation-driven value of internal and external resources through resource restructuring, bundling and leveraging, whether with or without the support of DT.

The research findings contribute to heavy-polluting enterprises addressing the paradoxical tensions between digital transformation and resource constraints under environmental regulatory pressures. It aims to facilitate the simultaneous achievement of environmental and commercial success by enhancing their green innovation capabilities, ultimately leading to sustainability across profit and the environment.

Compared with previous literature, this research introduces a distinctive theoretical perspective, the resource orchestration view, to shed light on the paradoxical relationship on resource-occupancy between DT application and green innovation. It unveils the “black box” of how digitalization impacts green innovation efficiency from a more dynamic resource-based perspective. While most studies regard green innovation activities as a whole, this study delves into the impact of digitalization on green innovation within the distinct realms of green technology R&D and green achievement transfer, taking into account a two-stage value chain perspective. Finally, in contrast to previous literature that predominantly analyzes influence mechanisms through linear impact, the authors use configuration analysis to intricately unravel the complex influences arising from various combinatorial relationships of digitalization and resource orchestration behaviors on green innovation efficiency.

According to the “strategic focus and future orientation” principle of the integrated reporting (<IR>) framework, <IR> should provide information useful to support investors in assessing the future financial performance of organizations. This study aims to support the operationalization of this function by improving the forward-looking orientation of the integrated report.

Basing on the backward- and forward-looking disclosure in <IR> and the dynamic resource-based view (DRBV), this study develops an explorative case study building a quantitative simulation model based on an integrated report.

This study provides useful insights into how operationalizing the <IR> “future orientation” and obtaining more quantitative information on the organization’s capacity to create value in the future by applying DRBV and quantitative simulation modeling.

The article presents one case study to explore the method suggested to improve the <IR> forward-looking orientation. Additional case studies applying the same research design should be certainly useful to refine the method.

Supporting the <IR> forward-looking orientation, this study provides additional information for the decision-making process of investors, thus contributing to the efficient and productive allocation of capital.

Few studies have investigated forward-looking information in integrated reports, highlighting the existence of an “information gap” referred to such disclosure. Overcoming these previous results, the study provides useful insights on how to improve the <IR> forward-looking orientation.

This paper aims to examine the influence of the dynamic capabilities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on organizational performance, and the interaction between dynamic capabilities and organizational inertia in a volatile environment.

A quantitative survey was carried out in Lithuania's SME sector. In order to achieve the aim of this empirical research, a sample of 360 SMEs was analyzed.

This exploratory study offers a conceptual model for dynamic capabilities and organizational inertia in a volatile environment. The findings suggest that dynamic capabilities have positive effects on non-financial relative organizational performance, though no impact on financial relative organizational performance has been revealed. The authors argue that organizational inertia moderates dynamic capabilities and relative organizational performance.

One suggestion for further research is to investigate the interaction between dynamic capabilities and organizational inertia in a stable environment and to perform longitudinal research embracing a broader sample of organizations.

The study addresses a gap in strategic management literature and practice, examining the interaction between SME dynamic capabilities and organizational inertia in a volatile environment during an economic crisis.

This study adopts the perspective of dynamic capabilities to investigate influencing factors and proposes improvement strategies of supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction.

The structural equation model (SEM) is used to identify and verify the relationship between factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. The system dynamics (SD) model is constructed to dynamically simulate the specific effects of different influencing factors.

Results indicate that: (1) An evaluation index system for supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction containing five first-level indicators and 36 second-level indicators is constructed; (2) Ability to anticipate, ability to respond, ability to adapt, ability to recover and ability to learn are positively correlated with the supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction and (3) ANT3 (information system), RES1 (quick response), ADA3 (buffer stock) and LEA4 (trust) are the most leading factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction over time.

This study fulfills the need for an in-depth exploration of the various influencing factors on supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. Furthermore, this study provides improvement strategies to enhance supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction in China.