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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.

To empirically test for an impact on profit performance when activity-based costing (ABC) is used in companies with customer service and low-price strategies. We also investigate whether the profit impact of ABC usage is affected by higher-quality information systems.

Survey.

We find a positive impact on profit performance when ABC is used by companies with customer service as a strategic priority but not when ABC is used by companies with lower emphasis on customer service. For companies emphasizing low-price strategies, we find a positive impact on profit performance, especially when ABC is used together with high-quality information systems.

This study develops a method of measuring strategic priorities of a firm. It divides firms into strategy groups based on their degree of emphasis on three strategic priorities: low price, flexibility, and customer service.

Identifies certain contexts when ABC is especially beneficial.

If the use of ABC information leads to better strategic and operational decisions, firm performance should improve. However, prior research on the impact of ABC on firm performance has found little to no connection and usually only when it is used with other practices. This is the first study to find an impact on profit performance for firms with customer service and low-price strategies and high-quality information systems.

Behavioral aspects and positive attitudes toward the balanced scorecard (BSC) could be a determinant factor in the success of BSC implementation. In the study we use the contingency theory framework to examine whether adopting a planned strategy improves employees’ buying into the BSC and helps to maximize the benefits of BSC implementation by enhancing corporate performance. We hypothesize that employees’ attitudes and perceptions toward the implementation of the BSC are contingent upon the type of strategy the firm is employing and the suitability of deploying the BSC with this strategy in place. We use a path model that draws an association between the firm's strategy and employee attitudes toward BSC implementation and employs OLS regression to test the association between the variables. We also examine whether employees’ positive attitudes help to improve a firm's performance as proxied by the customer, internal processes, learning and innovation, and financial perspectives of the BSC. We sent a mail survey to Canadian and US firms to collect the necessary data in order to conduct this study.

Conforming to our expectations, we find that firms that carefully plan their strategic objectives are more likely to have a positive impact on their employees’ perception of the BSC. A deliberate strategy – or planned strategy – as defined by Mintzberg (1978) is associated with higher levels of BSC awareness, perceptions of BSC ease of use, perceptions of BSC usefulness, and intentions to use the BSC. We also find that higher perceptions of BSC ease of use are positively associated with aspects of a firm's performance, such as from the customer, internal processes, and learning and innovation perspectives. Hence, we conclude that firms implementing the BSC need to take into consideration that the successful implementation of the BSC requires careful planning to ensure that the firm's strategic objectives are well formulated, in agreement with BSC measures, and effectively communicated to BSC users.

Prior research on political strategies has predominantly analyzed singular political activities or drivers for firms to become politically active and, overall, only scarcely obtained insights on performance consequences of political strategizing. To further develop the realm of political strategy, this study analyzes the effects of two “generic” political strategies on firms’ (1) stakeholder network development and (2) performance. Specifically, we provide theoretical and empirical evidence whether the two political strategies add to or substitute each other in their effect on the corresponding outcome variable. We find that an information strategy significantly affects the stakeholder network development, whereas no influence of a financial incentive strategy could be detected. Moreover, we find that the stakeholder network drives firm performance and, more importantly, that the two political strategies substitute each other in their effect on firm performance. Thus, we provide initial insights on the efficiency of political strategies when firms opt to execute an information strategy and financial incentive strategy simultaneously. The results of our study have important implications for research as they put a new light on the efficiency of political strategies.

This study suggests two new diversification strategies, i.e., tourism-related and tourism-unrelated diversifications which are specifically applicable to the hotel firms. This study aims to investigate which diversification strategy has better benefits toward firm performance. This study includes a complete set of public listed firms of the hotel industry from four Asian countries, namely, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, and Malaysia, covering from years 2001 to 2012. Revealing the advantage and disadvantage of both diversification strategies, the empirical evidence regarding its influences on hotel firm performance are investigated in this study. This study finds a nonlinear relationship between degree of diversification and firm performance. Confronting with the volatile earnings when crises strike tourism sector, this study further shows how the crises affect the relationship between tourism-related/unrelated diversification strategy and hotel firm performance.

This study explores whether the implementation of Management Control Systems (MCS) by the Greek shipping companies influences the adoption of their performance measurement systems and the implication of this choice on organizational performance. The study uses data collected from semi-structured interviews and a survey instrument addressed to shipping companies located in Greece. The paper finds evidence that MCS are defined in terms of the informational purposes these MCS fulfill. Analysis of responses to the questionnaire results that the choice of MCS is contingent upon the strategy pursued by the shipping companies. In addition, evidence suggests that shipping companies with an optimal fit between their strategy and their MCS experience superior performance and higher perceived usefulness of MCS. Moreover, it is concluded that Greek shipping companies adopt subjective performance measures irrespective of the MCS they implement and that this choice leads to enhanced perceived performance.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face challenges in internationalisation due to their limited resources. Research on service firm internationalisation as well as the antecedents and consequences is scarce. Literature suggests that internationalisation for service firms is even more demanding than for manufacturing firms due to the characteristics of services such as intangibility. Extant literature states that firms introducing innovations are more likely to export. However, research on learning by exporting and thus investigating the effect of a firm’s export status on innovation is comparatively scarce. Therefore, the authors investigate the influence of different market entry strategies on innovation and firm performance. The authors employ a quantitative, survey-based approach to test our hypotheses based on a sample of internationally active firms headquartered in Austria. Regarding firm financial performance, the analysis of the data shows that the entry strategy of direct entry excels the direct export strategy. In terms of non-financial performance, the strategies of direct entry and direct export seem to be equally feasible.

The resource-based view of the firm and strategic groups research are two of the most investigated frameworks in strategic management. Historically, assumptions behind these two views have seemingly put them at odds. The resource-based view of the firm argues that sustained competitive advantage is best attained when firms have unique resources, while strategic groups research argues that a number of firms within the same industry can achieve sustained profitability with strategies that are similar to one another, but distinct from other industry members. The two views focus on different levels of analysis and each largely ignores the other’s focal level. Yet neither offers any propositions that are incompatible with the tenets of the other. Thus, conceptual integration that crosses levels of analysis is possible and potentially fruitful. Indeed, some strategic groups research has begun to bridge the gap between these two theories by suggesting that firm differences exist both within and between strategic groups. This article adopts a multi-level view by developing propositions concerning contingencies when firm differences, group processes, or both may lead to sustained competitive advantage. Implications for practitioners as well as suggestions for future theory building and empirical tests are also discussed.