Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explain how ecosystems and platforms have evolved to manage customer information and to identify the management, research and teaching implications of this evolution.

This paper is based on research and industrial experience of two of the co-authors in customer relationship management, further developed with other co-authors in the field of business models, the research and teaching experience of the university authors and cross-functional literature reviews in the areas of strategy, marketing, economics, organizational behaviour and information management.

This paper shows that digitalization, cloud computing and new information-based platforms are beginning to change how customer information is being managed, creating new opportunities for improving marketing, customer relationship management and business strategy.

The impact of platforms on the management of customer information needs to be confirmed by primary empirical research.

This paper identifies the need for senior marketing management to examine closely how internal and external/public customer information platforms may enhance their capability for managing customers and setting new strategic directions.

The emergence of giant multi-sided platforms has clear implications for data protection and privacy, which need to be explored more in research.

This paper highlights the move to customer information platforms and identifies how senior managers should consider them as an option for better customer information management and as a basis for new business strategies.

The paper seeks to explore Kant's formulations on universal good will, perfect moral order, and universal peace, and the notion that the world's citizenship should be organised in a federated system of states, free to choose their own universal laws.

This theoretical discussion is pursued in two separate sections. The first section reviews leading regulation theories that explain how governments in their decision‐making capacity engage in regulation at macro‐level of the entire socio‐economic system. The second section follows from this argument and discusses the governance theory and alternative governance mechanisms designed and employed by governments to manage the strategic behaviour of the individual economic actors at mezzo‐ and micro‐level of contract relationships.

The paper discusses some of the current theories that underpin the analysis and interpretation of public administration practice, or public governance in different socio‐economic systems. The paper looks at some of the dominant postulates of regulation and governance, and question to what extent they can be accepted as universal principles in line with Kant's argumentation. Different types of governance mechanisms are compared and contrasted in the context of strategic actors such as: the public government as a regulating authority and the firms as regulated economic actors.

The argument in this paper is that governments as regulators of national socio‐economic systems are strategic actors in their capacity to actively shape the regulatory environment, implementing various coordination mechanisms that facilitate the functioning of the economy and the society. The paper attempts to make some ethical judgements on market imperfections and government imperfections in line with Kant's concept of universal moral order.

The paper discusses the new concept of “Multinational Investment Projects” (MIPs) and its application in the context of international business operations in China. The petrochemical industry in China is used as the industrial context in which we investigate the interplay between the Chinese government, which encourages growth and investment activities in the sector, and the multinational petrochemical firms competing for global market share in this sector.

The paper investigates the nature of the petrochemical value chain and the investment activities in all of its segments. Using an originally created database of the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China and additional context information the business environment in China, the paper reviews the investment strategies of multinational petrochemical corporations, and discusses their strategic choices for mode of entry in China, geographic location and location within the value chain.

The overview of MIPs in the Chinese petrochemical industry confirms the theoretical expectations of the critical impact of Chinese Government policies. The paper explains the emerging shape of international competition in this sector of the Chinese economy.

The main contributions of this paper are the new conceptual framework for analysis of the drivers for strategic investment choices, the assembly of a database with the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China, and the analysis of the relationships between the regional endowments, concentration of value‐chain activities and location choices by multinational firms from different countries of origin. The results demonstrate the factors that drive growth in a knowledge‐, technology‐ and capital‐intensive sector.

Complexity of the organizations has created an immense diversity of approaches for research and consultancy. Based on a review of previous work, proposes a new theoretical model for organizational analysis which examines three levels of organizational consultancy. The first level is the level of business organization. The second level focuses on the internal management and organization of resources. The third level examines the individuals and the human behaviour at work. Presents the situational analysis in organization as an evaluation procedure allowing in‐depth analysis of problems in work situations. The ultimate goal of this procedure is to enable consultants to map out the key elements for evaluation in work situations and to test existing relationships between different factors considered in organizational re‐design. The proposed methodology has been developed as part of a consultancy project based on participant observation and conducted by the author in Bulgaria in 1988.

The purpose of this paper is to engage in a comprehensive review of the research on strategic alliances in the last decade.

After presenting a typology of diverse alliance governance forms, reviews recent analyses of alliance formation, implementation management, and performance outcomes of collaborative activities.

Strategic alliances developed and propagated as formalized interorganizational relationships. These cooperative arrangements represent new organizational formation that seeks to achieve organizational objectives better through collaboration than through competition.

The paper provides future research directions on partner selection, networks patterns and processes, understanding the integration in alliances through fusion, fission, and how to manage developmental dynamics.

Concludes with some future directions for theory construction and empirical research.

This introduction aims to set the scene for this special issue on innovation in Chinese firms.

There is no research design and methodology for data collection and analysis as such.

This introduction sets the special issue in the context of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) track with the same theme. It also provides an outline for the special issue highlighting the main topics in terms of technology and innovation management in large and small firms in China; as well as lessons drawn from academic institutions involved in provision of management education both at research and taught – MBA‐level degree programs.

This special issue is limited in the number of contributions that they are submitted to the EURAM Conference and track on “innovation in Chinese firms” in 2008 and 2009. The research implications for firm strategy and government policy draw on limited empirical evidence mainly from case studies and interviews with selected experts.

The originality of this special issue is that it brings together empirical findings from a broad range of large state owned companies, small and medium enterprises, and Chinese and foreign universities and business schools interested in management education in China.