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Contingency models have enabled researchers to develop system‐based decision‐making approaches to organizational studies. Two contingency decision‐making models ‐ rational and political choice ‐ have been applied to identify those organizational characteristics and strategic leadership qualities associated with acquisitive growth through “absorption” and “diversification”. A study of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) organizational growth strategies from 1920 to 1997 reveals that senior managers adopt the rational decision‐making model when organizational growth through acquisition involves absorption, and the political model when organizational growth calls for diversification. A contingency historical study of ITT demonstrates two important periods in ITT’s organizational life cycles ‐ one of growth (1920‐early 1970s) and one of consolidation/stability (from mid‐1970 to the present time). Contingency models indicate that differences in organizational growth strategies arise due to differences in environmental factors characterizing each period as organizations pass through several stages of growth in their life cycles.

An organization’s entrepreneurial orientation will relate directly to its efficiency strategies, market development strategies (growth), and its product development strategies (innovation). A firm will develop appropriate strategic control systems according to these chosen strategies. In order to be competitive and balance efficiency, growth and innovation strategies, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the most appropriate strategic controls to implement these strategies.

The eight variables under study were measured using 22 psychometric survey items obtained from responses of 101 FDIC-registered banks.

The results show a more entrepreneurial orientation is associated with an efficiency strategy, a market development strategy, and a product development strategy. The efficiency strategy was not associated with formal controls, contrary to expectations. A market development strategy was associated with formal rules, but was not found to be associated with formal targets. Finally, product development strategies was associated with all four strategic control archetypes.

The limitation of this study is that, it only examined banking institutions, and did not consider long-term financial performance implications. This paper supports and extends current research pertaining to company key success factors. Success requires effectively balancing cost reduction objectives, growth objectives, and innovation objectives, in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. A more entrepreneurial orientation necessitates a focus on innovation, traditional growth patterns, as well as cost cutting.

This paper demonstrates that an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation will relate directly to its efficiency, growth, and innovation strategies. Also, it finds the most effective strategic controls to implement these strategies.

The Leading Sector interpretation of development originates from the observation that all multisectoral economies exhibit a certain degree of intersectoral interdependence, through either the incomes generated in each sector and the corresponding final demand for other products, or through interindustry relations. The sectors in such an economy grow at different rates, as determined by the product of the appropriate income elasticities of demand and the overall growth rate, the latter factor being the weighted sum of the sectoral rates. However in a stagnant economy, as opposed to a dynamic one, even the fastest growing sectors are undynamic. To increase the overall growth rate, the foremost proponents of the leading strategy— Hirschman and Currie—recommend an increase in the growth rate of a few, key, potentially dynamic sectors; then the rest of the economy will be pulled along through the intersectoral relations.

In the past decade, research on rapidly internationalizing firms, commonly referred to as “international new ventures” (INVs), has mainly focused on their inception phase and relatively little is known of what becomes of these firms after this period in respect of their international marketing strategies. The purpose of this paper is therefore to gain insights into how management teams within small INVs assess international opportunities and develop appropriate international marketing strategies.

The approach employed involves interviews with key respondents in five small, independently owned firms that have a significant percentage of turnover overseas.

The paper identifies that specific types of knowledge are related to growth strategies as are perceptions of market potential and the management team's vision.

The results of this study provide further understanding of patterns of internationalization and more specifically that foreign market knowledge can be acquired in various ways and allows firms to become more highly committed to some remote markets much earlier than previously anticipated. This understanding could help policy‐makers to provide more targeted and relevant support to INVs.

Both planned and unplanned activities are evident in the research suggesting international marketing growth is not as strategically planned as a good deal of earlier research suggests.

Global competition has forced downsizing and restructuring, producing a shortage in many organizations′ managerial talent base. This deficit has highlighted an important need to integrate management development into the competitive strategy formulation process. However, many organizations lack the commitment to adopt the concepts of strategic management development (SMD), fail to understand fully its long‐term value, and/or lack the knowledge to take the steps necessary to develop it as a component of their competitive strategy. Presents a conceptual framework for adopting and integrating SMD into the competitive strategy formulation process as a means for ensuring the continued availability of trained and experienced managers. Stressing the need for the realignment of resources, a rethinking of organizational culture, and the need to shift focus from individual to organizational growth, it emphasizes that SMD will provide the catalyst for the organization to anticipate change, expand channels of communication, provide for a more effective allocation of human resources, and promote “people‐involvement”.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic development strategies of Nepal and Bhutan to understand the economic factors that have contributed to economic growth.

After a brief discussion of each country's modern history, their economies are examined together with their development strategies during the past half century. Standard economic growth models for Nepal and Bhutan are developed and estimated. To ensure the stationarity of the data series, tests of unit root are conducted. Further, a cointegration test is conducted and an appropriate error‐correction model is developed.

The results of the estimations reveal that domestic capital has been a significant source of economic growth in Nepal whereas foreign aid has not had any appreciable effect on growth. In the case of Bhutan, foreign assistance has been a significant source of growth while domestic capital has not.

Bhutan and Nepal also differ in terms of non‐economic factors such as culture, language, politics, and religion. These factors may also help to explain the difference in economic performance of these countries. While important, these issues are beyond the scope this paper and indicate directions for further research.

It is one of the first attempts to compare the economic growth strategies of Nepal and Bhutan. It may provide useful insight to policymakers and others interested in economic growth in Nepal, Bhutan and other developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the major long‐term role that hands‐on entrepreneurship training could play in poverty alleviation and job creation in one of the poorest regions of South Africa – the Eastern Free State (EFS). This is done against a background of frequently occurring violent protests against the inadequacy of the government's hand‐out poverty alleviation strategy of social grants, free houses and free social services.

The paper uses desk research and quantitative analysis of survey data collected from the Phuthaditjhaba area of Qwaqwa in the EFS.

The poverty indicators confirm the accepted view of the Free State as one of the poorest provinces in South Africa, which makes Qwaqwa, the poorest part of the Free State, a real human plight. While government hand‐out poverty alleviation measures, with their unintended consequences of violent protests and demonstrations, may only help some of the poor in the short term, training in entrepreneurship and provision of other facilities could give poor owners of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) opportunities to grow their businesses and get themselves and other out of poverty. Furthermore, as a result of a huge communication gap, MSE operators in Phuthaditjhaba, the commercial hub of Qwaqwa, do not even know of government agencies charged with the responsible of assisting small business operators in the area. Though they lack the finance and other endowments required to grow their businesses, the experience has given MSE operators some ideas about the kind of assistance that may help in this regard and even make it possible for them to provide employment for others – finance, government support, infrastructure and premises, training, etc.

As shown by the findings of a study sponsored by the Maluti‐A‐Phofung local municipality, there is potential for growth of small businesses in many areas of the EFS economy. Training of survivalist entrepreneurs and other poor persons with potential could open their eyes to opportunities around them which they could take advantage of to improve their economic situation and that of other poor persons in the area through job creation.

In addition to highlighting the shortcomings of the current poverty alleviation strategy of the South African Government, this is the first study that brings entrepreneurship training to the fore in the fight against poverty in the EFS.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

China's economy has transformed from a high-speed growth phase to a high-quality development phase. The agriculture sector has grown substantially since the economic reform in 1978. Considering the five-year plan (FYP) as a collection of policies, this study explores the relationship between the FYP and agricultural total factor productivity (TFP).

This study uses 31 provincial-level panel data of the five FYPs from 1996 to 2020. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute Malmquist productivity indexes. The authors analyze the temporal and spatial changes and convergences of China's agricultural TFP, and investigate the impact of economic planning on China's agricultural TFP and its regional difference.

There is a slow but upward growth trend in China's agricultural TFP. The technical change has played a leading role in the growth of China's agricultural TFP. The agricultural TFP of all provinces has shown a “catch-up” effect and is developing toward their respective steady-state levels. The regional difference in productivity growth among the eastern, central and western regions exists. Test results show that the FYP has a positive effect on the agricultural TFP, and the effect has obvious regional heterogeneity. The FYP also plays a positive role in the gross value of agricultural output, and the impact effect is greater than that on the improvement of agricultural productivity.

There are many forms of industrial policy in China, among which the FYP is the guiding document of industrial policy, which makes a systematic plan for industrial development in the subsequent five years. The development objectives, guidelines and overall deployment for agriculture in the FYP not only describe the general context of China's agricultural development but also show the key ideas of agricultural development. Therefore, this study explores its impact on agricultural quality development from the perspective of FYP. The results provide evidence for examining the governance performance of the government and the objective evaluation and restraint of the FYP. As agriculture moves toward the stage of high-quality development, the Chinese government should strengthen the critical guiding role of the FYP and pay attention to quality indicators such as technical progress, efficiency improvement and regional coordination in the formulation of the FYP.

The financial resources limitation, the difficult conditions for entry into the market and the lack of sufficient funds are the most important problems facing Iranian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For these reasons, this paper aims to propose an appropriate methodology for formulating the most influential Iranian SMEs development strategies to make it possible to grow and make more income. Then, a framework is developed to precisely determine the target market for Iranian SMEs.

The paper uses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis; Pareto principle and analysis of the market conditions to propose the development strategies and uses a methodology based on multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) method to determine the target market.

According to the research results, it is necessary for the Iranian SMEs to follow the brand strengthening, product and market development, enhancing product quality and creating research and development units strategies focusing on the domestic market. The results obtained from the empirical study also indicated that the customer acquisition rate improved from 0.06 to 0.13 per month, and the company's income has a 64% growth in 2016 than the year 2015 through the selection of some public customers as the target market.

Very few studies have been done so far on the formulation methodology of a market entry strategy for SMEs. Studies by researchers imply that no studies have been conducted in Iran in this regard. International studies also mainly focus on the impact of some marketing activities.