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The purpose of this paper is to develop and justify a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between manufacturing strategy, business strategy, time-based manufacturing competence, capability and competitiveness and their impact on firm performance for firms operating in the manufacturing sector. Many executives and scholars have argued that time is an important component for developing a brilliant strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm.

This paper provides a theoretical framework primarily concerned with the relationship between time-based manufacturing competence, competitive priorities and firm performance. The framework suggests that firms focusing on time as a strategic factor at both strategic levels – business strategy and manufacturing strategy – can achieve a multi-competitive advantage, and, in turn, high performance.

To realize the level of performance associated with time-based manufacturing competence, it is essential for firms to identify the areas in which time can be reduced. These include reduction in design lead time, product concept to production; time-based competition for product-to-market firms; time-based manufacturing competence; product development activities; fast-to-product; and customer service.

This article provides a theoretical framework for linking manufacturing strategy to business strategy and performance to help expand the body of knowledge for other researchers to follow.

Most research issues in strategic management are essentially problem focused. To one extent or another, these problems often span levels of analysis, may align with different performance metrics, and likely hold different implications from various theoretical perspectives. Despite these variations, research has generally approached questions by taking a single perspective or by contrasting one perspective with a single alternative rather than exploring integrative implications. As such, very few efforts have sought to consider the performance implications of using combined, integrated, or multi-level perspectives. Given this reality, what actually constitutes “good” performance, how performance is effectively measured, and how performance measures align with different perspectives remain thorny problems in strategic management research. This paper discusses potential extensions by which strategic management research and theory might begin to address these conflicts. We first consider the multi-level nature of strategic management phenomena, focusing in particular on competitive advantage and value creation as core concepts. We next present three approaches in which strategic management theories tend to link levels of analysis (transaction, management, and atmosphere). We then examine the implications arising from these multi-level approaches and conclude with suggestions for future research.

Scanning both the academic and popular business literature of the last 40 years puzzles the alert reader. The variety of prescriptions of how to be successful (effective, performing, etc.) 1 Organizational performance, organizational success and organizational effectiveness will be used interchangeably throughout this paper.1 in business is hardly comprehensible: “Being close to the customer,” Total Quality Management, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value maximization, efficient consumer response, management reward systems or employee involvement programs are but a few of the slogans introduced as means to increase organizational effectiveness. Management scholars have made little effort to integrate the various performance-enhancing strategies or to assess them in an orderly manner.

This study classifies organizational strategies by the importance each strategy attaches to different constituencies in the firm’s environment. A number of researchers divide an organization’s environment into various constituency groups and argue that these groups constitute – as providers and recipients of resources – the basis for organizational survival and well-being. Some theoretical schools argue for the foremost importance of responsiveness to certain constituencies while stakeholder theory calls for a – situation-contingent – balance in these responsiveness levels. Given that maximum responsiveness levels to different groups may be limited by an organization’s resource endowment or even counterbalanced, the need exists for a concurrent assessment of these competing claims by jointly evaluating the effect of the respective behaviors towards constituencies on performance. Thus, this study investigates the competing merits of implementing alternative business philosophies (e.g. balanced versus focused responsiveness to constituencies). Such a concurrent assessment provides a “critical test” of multiple, opposing theories rather than testing the merits of one theory (Carlsmith, Ellsworth & Aronson, 1976).

In the high tolerance level applied for this study (be among the top 80% of the industry) only a handful of organizations managed to sustain such a balanced strategy over the whole observation period. Continuously monitoring stakeholder demands and crafting suitable responsiveness strategies must therefore be a focus of successful business strategies. While such behavior may not be a sufficient explanation for organizational success, it certainly is a necessary one.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

The paper examines whether the hybrid strategy can generate high performance and what hybrid strategy configurations are more conducive to high performance.

This paper explores the complex causal relationships between six strategic elements (marketing, growth, R&D, capital, efficiency, stability) and firm performance. From a configurational approach, the authors utilize necessary condition analysis, time-series qualitative comparative analysis, and typical case extraction techniques to analyze 944 balanced panel data from 118 Chinese ICT firms during 2013–2020.

Chinese ICT sector firms do not rely on pure strategies (prospector or defender) to achieve high performance. The hybrid strategy is conducive to high performance. Only specific hybrid strategy configurations, including stable growth, innovative efficiency, and two-way player types, could enable firms to perform well. Six strategic elements do not constitute a necessary condition for high performance.

This paper proposed an integrated qualitative comparative analysis scheme, proved the effectiveness of the hybrid strategy on firm performance, and revealed how hybrid strategy configurations generate high performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the correlations among entrepreneurial environment, market-oriented strategies, and entrepreneurial performance.

Entrepreneurial environment is measured by institutional environment and industrial environment. A survey of 176 large Chinese automobile firms is conducted. The structural equation model is applied to perform analysis.

The uncertainty of the institutional environment is positively related with market-oriented strategies and market-oriented strategies are positively related with firms’ performance. The stronger the uncertainty of the industrial environment is, the larger impact that market-oriented strategies have on firms’ performance will be. There is no distinct positive relationship between the uncertainty of industrial environment and firms’ market-oriented strategies. The hypothesis, that the stronger the uncertainty of institutional environments is, the larger the impact that market-oriented strategies will be on firms’ performance, is not supported.

In terms of research design, this paper does not select survey samples randomly. This paper only takes institutional and industrial environments into consideration while the environmental characteristics are omitted.

This paper expands entrepreneurship research by integrating previous studies. Findings in this paper are helpful for firms in emerging countries to implement “going abroad strategies,” to start up new businesses in other countries, and to achieve the goals of improving competitiveness and integrating with international firms.

This research examines the influence of business strategy and intellectual capital on firm performance and bankruptcy risk of Oman's non-financial sector companies.

The data comprises 380 firm-year observations collected from 2015 to 2019 for the non-financial sector companies listed on the Muscat Securities Market. This study measures business strategy using the Miles and Snow typologies and Porter's strategies as alternative measures. The study uses the Granger-causality test to measure the bi-directional causality between independent and dependent variables. The authors use alternative measurements of business strategy and 2SLS/IV estimation to validate the OLS results.

According to the Miles and Snow typologies, most of Oman's non-financial firms were analyzers. The empirical results show a negative relationship between business strategy and return on equity (ROE), suggesting defender-type strategy leads to an increase in firm performance. The OLS results show no influence of A-VAIC on firm performance and Altman-Z score. The structural capital efficiency is positively associated with ROA, and Altman Z score consistent with the hypothesized relationship. The Granger causality test shows no inference of causality between any independent and dependent variables except for Z score and CEE.

The business strategy results from the firm performance and bankruptcy risk models are valuable to the researchers from an emerging market and non-financial companies' perspective. Oman's diversification strategy of its economic activities through non-financial sector companies receives an impetus through the findings of this study. As this study is limited to Oman's non-financial sector companies, future research on business strategy impact can be extended to the financial sector, other GCC, and emerging countries.

The findings of this study contribute to the sparse literature on business strategy in an emerging market like Oman. This study enriches the knowledge of business strategy typologies proposed by Miles and Snow, and Porter. It also contributes to the extant literature on firm performance and bankruptcy risk.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of market-based and nonmarket-based strategies on firm performance in African countries. This study also investigates host country institutions' effect on the relationship between firm strategies and performance in these countries.

Data of 1,276 firms in five African countries were obtained from two different sources: The World Bank Enterprise Database and The Global Competitiveness Report. Two-stage least squares regression was applied.

Both market-based strategies and corporate political activity (CPA)improve firm performance in the African countries included in the analysis. Institutional development also has a direct positive impact on firm performance. However, the effect of CPA weakens as the host country shifts towards more efficient, market-oriented institutions. Furthermore, the results show that local African firms benefit more from institutional development than foreign firms.

The paper confirms and extends our understanding of the dynamic fit between institutions and strategy by highlighting the moderating role of institutional development on CPA and market-based strategies in enhancing firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role performance measurement plays in the relationship between competitive strategies and firm performance.

This study conducted a mail‐survey of Thai listed companies in 2009. A total of 101 Thai listed companies’ executives, each representing their company, participated in this study. The SPSS version 11.5, path‐analytical model is adopted to analyze the survey data obtained.

This study finds that generally, all competitive strategies positively and significantly enhance firm performance through performance measurement. Specifically, firms’ differentiation strategy not only has a direct and significant impact on firm performance but also it has indirect and significant impact on firm performance through financial measures. Cost leadership strategy that firms pursue does not directly affect firm performance. However, it does so indirectly and significantly through financial performance measures.

Future research could consider the use of longitudinal data to ascertain more clearly these causal relationships.

The paper offers managerial implications that whether a firm chooses to pursue cost leadership or differentiation strategies, a strong emphasis on performance measurement will ensure the positive impact on firm performance in a fierce competitive environment.

This paper adds to the existing theoretical discussion and analyses the research and findings on the mediating role of performance measurement on the relationship between competitive strategy and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the type of theoretical lens and strategic purpose impacts the relationships among firm environmental strategy, financial performance, and environmental performance.

This is a theoretical paper which first investigates three constructs: firm environmental strategy, environmental performance, and economic performance. Scholars have argued for different relationships among the three constructs. The paper then discusses two theoretical lenses (strategic choice and the resource‐based view) and two strategic purposes (stakeholder and shareholder) used in the literature. The paper argues that the type of theoretical lens and strategic purpose will impact the way the three constructs (firm environmental strategy, financial performance, and environmental performance) are arranged.

The paper provides a two‐by‐two matrix distinguishing between theoretical lens and strategic purpose. The paper argues that the specific choice of theoretical lens and strategic purpose helps define the way firm environmental strategy, financial performance, and environmental performance are arranged.

As different scholars have argued for different relationships among the three constructs, this paper provides a framework that could help justify the seemingly paradoxical relationships. The paper concludes with ideas for future research on these issues.