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An overview of English aims, theoretical scope and methods is badly needed. Ministries throughout the English-speaking world have become dominated by a demand for testing – stimulated no doubt by regular Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveys – and lost sight of first principles. The purpose of this article is therefore to set out a model of English drawn from the best international experience since the 1960s, collected during seminars and practical workshops on four continents.

This paper uses a collection of experiences drawn from seminars and practical workshops over the past 50 years. It incorporates researches and reflections generated with the author’s former colleagues.

The paper gives an insider’s account of the carefully designed movement for English development and teacher participation that started during that decade in England, ramifying and attracting new energies in Canadian provinces, the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Founded in new theories of classroom communication and interaction, the emerging models also demonstrated the urgent need for new approaches to assessment, sampling students’ optimal achievements. The regime that is universally replacing this major work depends, it can be shown, on a model designed by ministers (disregarding professional advice) and avowedly intended to promote competition among pupils, teachers and schools – thus stifling the kinds of cooperation essential to any classroom, especially in the arts, and indeed to Education in general. But the historical foundations remain, from that creative period, and can be reclaimed.

This is an original view from an author who is one of the handful of survivors and who has been active in each stage since 1960, and has been privileged to be invited to four continents to convene seminars and practical workshops over many years.

Although competitive advantage is the cornerstone concept in strategic management it still remains a poorly defined and operationalized construct. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the concept of competitive advantage, to identify the problems that stem from its current conceptualization from the majority of the literature.

The paper undertakes an extensive literature review, audit of logical inference, syllogistic reasoning and Bayesian expressions in order to examine the problems associated with the current conceptualizations of competitive advantage.

Several drawbacks and fallacies relating to current conceptualizations of competitive advantage were identified that create an urgent need for a more robust definition which could better serve the needs of both empirical research and management practice.

The authors by no means claim that the literature review undertaken in this paper on the concept of competitive advantage and on the problems derived from its conceptualization was exhaustive or absolute. Rather, this paper constitutes an attempt to stimulate efforts and provide directions on the further conceptual development of competitive advantage.

The findings allow practising managers to not necessarily associate competitive advantage with its sources and with the determinants of superior performance.

The findings contribute to the evolution of the strategic management field by identifying, categorizing and mapping potential problems, drawbacks and fallacies, associated with the conceptualization of competitive advantage as currently delineated in the literature, and by suggesting some criteria for the development of a conceptually more robust definition.

Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.

The authors of “The Digital Fallacy” are interviewed by veteran strategist David Rader. They envision digital implementation as a learning journey rather than a time-boxed program. They name the journey “Digital Maturity.”

Explains how Digital Maturity is a way of applying digital technology – at first to promote efficiency and ultimately in creative ways to innovate new business models – an operation that continues to grow and evolve.

Digitally mature companies are more likely to be agile, experimental, risk tolerant, collaborative and learning organizations.

Getting started can begin with identifying leaders within the organization with characteristics exhibited by digitally mature organizations and tasking them and a team with an effort that allows them to test fast, learn fast and scale fast.

Companies often start by focusing on efficiency gains, then move to better use of data for decision making and then lastly to employ technology to transform their offerings and business models. The final stage is where the greatest value from digital maturity is achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of competitiveness. The authors introduce the concept of Competitive Productivity (CP), supplementing shortcomings of traditional understandings of national, organisational and individual productivity which overlook the nature of competitiveness, i.e. outperforming the competition, or at least bettering one’s own performance. The authors offer definitions, components and construct measurements of CP at three levels: macro, meso and micro.

A review of the literature was conducted to evaluate the need for combining productivity and competitiveness into one new construct. There are theories that combine these ideas – e.g., the resource-based theory of the firm – but the authors are presenting these concepts differently, or in a novel way. The authors’ focus on CP makes necessary a new group of construct measures which are different from that of the strategy literature: the authors measure an agent’s tendency “to be better than the competition” along multiple dimensions. Based on the CP construct, the authors present three testable models to uncover determinants of CP at three levels (macro, meso and micro). Finally, the work around “emergent property” can be applied to examine CP itself as being a determinant for other higher-order outcomes such as welfare, profits and life satisfaction. CP forms a platform to explore likely interplay (bottom-up and/or top-down mechanisms) within the micro–meso–macro architecture.

Three CP models were developed and are briefly discussed in this paper: first, a National Competitive Productivity (NCP) model to capture the components/drivers of national CP (macro level). Second, a Firm Competitive Productivity (FCP) model to capture the components/drivers of firm CP within an industry context (meso). And finally, an Individual Competitive Productivity (ICP) model capturing the components/drivers of CP at the individual (micro) level.

The study provides a combined approach to capture productivity and competitiveness within one innovative concept: CP. It can be used by government and policy makers (NCP model), managers and organisations (FCP model), and individuals such as workers and students (ICP model) to evaluate and enhance their performance. A better understanding of the components/drivers of CP at the three levels and the suggested measurement of CP should provide a stronger theory of competitiveness of nations, firms and individuals. Not least should a focus on the three levels (macro, meso and micro) better prepare citizens, firms, workers and students to effectively function and work in the marketplace and in society. The authors’ work should eventually contribute to more effective benchmarking and continuous improvement in the competitiveness domain. Crucially, this conceptual paper forms the foundation for future empirical testing of CP components in the context of the relative values and moderated behaviour as captured by the ReVaMB model.

This study aims to acknowledge that most Indonesian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience slow growth. It highlighted that this sluggishness is because of some falsification of Indonesia’s ecological psychology. It focuses on investigating the situated cognition that probably supports this falsification, such as affordance, a community of practice, embodiment and the legitimacy of peripheral participation situated cognition and social intelligence theories.

This study obtained data from published newspapers between October 2016 and February 2019. The authors used the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis and the J48 C.45 algorithm. The authors analyzed the data using the emergence of news probability for both the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Indonesian society and the situated cognition concerning the improvement of the SMEs. The authors inferred ecological psychology from these published newspapers in Indonesia that the engaged actions were still suppressed, in comparison with being and doing.

This study contributes to the innovation and leadership policies of the SMEs’ managerial systems and the GoI. After this study identified the backward-looking practices, which the GoI and the people of Indonesia held, this study recommended some policies to help create a forward-looking orientation. The second one is also a policy for the GoI, which needs to reduce the discrepancy between the signified and the signifier, as recommended by the structuralist theory. The last one is suggested by the social learning theory; policies are needed that relate to developing the SMEs’ beliefs, attitudes and behavior. It means that the GoI should prepare the required social contexts, which are in motoric production and reinforcement. Explicitly, the authors argue that the GoI facilitates SMEs by emphasizing the internal learning process.

The authors present some possibilities for the limitations of this research. The authors took into account that this study assumes the SMEs are all the same, without industrial clustering. It considers that the need for social learning and social cognition by the unclustered industries is equal. Second, the authors acknowledge that Indonesia is an emerging country, and its economic structure has three levels of contributors; the companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, then the SMEs and the lowest level is the underground economy. Third, the authors did not distinguish the levels of success for the empowerment programs that are conducted by either the GoI or the local governments. This study recognizes that the authors did not measure success levels. It means that the authors only focused on the knowledge content.

From these pieces of evidence, this study constructed its strategies. The authors offer three kinds of policies. The first is the submission of special allocation funds from which the GoI and local governments develop their budgets for the SMEs’ social learning and social cognition. The second is the development of social learning and social cognition’s curricula for both the SMEs’ owners and executive officers. The third is the need for a national knowledge repository for all the Indonesian SMEs. This repository is used for the dissemination of knowledge.

This study raises argumental novelties with some of the critical reasoning. First, the authors argue that the sluggishness of the Indonesian SMEs is because of some fallacies in their social cognition. This social cognition is derived from the cultural knowledge that the GoI and people of Indonesia disclosed in the newspapers. This study shows the falsifications from the three main perspectives of the structuration, structuralist and social learning theories. Second, this study can elaborate on the causal factor for the sluggishness of Indonesia’s SMEs, which can be explained by philosophical science, especially its fallacies (Hundleby, 2010; Magnus and Callender, 2004). The authors expand the causal factors for each gap in every theory, which determined the SMEs’ sluggishness through the identification of inconsistencies in each dimension of their structuration, structuralism and social learning. This study focused on the fallacy of philosophical science that explains the misconceptions about the SMEs’ improvement because of faulty reasoning, which causes the wrong moves to be made in the future (Dorr, 2017; Pielke, 1999).

Are divestitures really just the “flip side” of acquisitions? Both divestiture and acquisition are important processes for firm scope change. Frequently, these processes are considered to be “two sides of the same coin” wherein a divestiture is simply an acquisition performed “in reverse.” In contrast to this perspective, the authors submit that these two corporate strategic processes have fundamental differences in their motivations, implementation, and ramifications. Failure to recognize and address these differences could have serious consequences for firms, especially in the domains of capability development and deployment. In this chapter, the authors begin by recognizing the similarities between divestitures and acquisitions that have contributed to their “mirror image” reputations. The authors then identify and categorize the major differences between divestitures and acquisitions and explain how these distinctions can present significant challenges to firms when building and utilizing their corresponding divestiture and acquisition capabilities. Finally, the authors leverage these insights to develop not only suggestions for future research but also recommendations for firms to avoid succumbing to the fallacy of sameness between divestitures and acquisitions – and perhaps even successfully exploit it – when building, wielding, and honing the tools in their capability portfolios.

The purpose of this article, which is based in the tradition of critical theory, is to present a number of reasons for preserving a strong production economy given that the aim of the nation state is to work for improved competitive advantage.

The critical theory approach is used in this paper.

The paper is also an attempt to show why a majority of Western countries have defended the transformation from a predominant production economy to a service economy by explaining the shift as a result of class interests, using new class theory. It argues for why a materialist perspective in economic theory is relevant today.

The Western world should focus more on the production economy and less on the service economy.

To the author's knowledge, no other paper has gathered as many arguments on the issue before.

Why do respected planners so often fail to predict seismic events? Here are some reasons, and a better way to plan: scenario planning.