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This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework to understand the role of leadership and organizational learning in intra-organizational digital business strategizing, to contribute to our understanding of how digital business strategies emerge.

Based on a theoretical analysis of relevant literature to connect leadership and organizational learning to intra-organizational digital business strategizing, a co-creation model was developed.

The model demonstrates that digital business strategy emerge through the mediating role of leadership and organizational learning processes, facilitated by the moderating effect of contextual factors, which includes; strategic alignment, information technology competence, institutional trust and organizational change readiness.

Two major limitations of this paper that warrant further research are as follows: the paper’s focus on intra-organizational digital business strategizing which excludes collaborative inter-organizational digital business strategizing among network organizations in Industry 4.0; and the need for empirical examination of the model to evaluate and validate it.

This paper offers a framework that will ensure that digital business strategizing maintains a fit between organizational strategy, structure, knowledge, culture, systems and processes that must align together to achieve the desired strategy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the extendibility of leadership and organizational learning to digital business strategizing and to propose how digital business strategies emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to explain the firm growth process based on an integration and extension, through empirical research, of Penrose’s theory of the growth of the firm and the resource-based view. Theoretical development within the firm growth literature has been noticeably limited. Firm growth studies use different theoretical bases and what is needed is integration of multiple theories and empirical testing of these to form a new conceptual framework capable of explaining the modern growth process fully.

The key perspectives are critically reviewed and integrated and empirical qualitative research is undertaken analysing the process of growth in two firms. Semi-structured interviews, participant observation and analysis of company documentation are utilised.

The key insight this research provides is detailed information with regard to which resources, mediators and outputs are vital to firm growth, how they need to be developed and why this is the case. The study shows that these act in a cyclical nature to enable firm growth and development.

These findings could be used by practitioners to determine which part of the conceptual framework requires the most amount of improvement and which are developed to an acceptable state, enabling them to make plans for the achievement of growth.

This research is able to reconceptualise two dominant theoretical perspectives resulting in the generation of a new firm growth framework, thereby addressing a distinct gap in the firm growth literature.

Design of experiments (DOE) is a scientific method for identifying the critical parameters associated with a process and thereby determining the optimal settings for these process parameters for enhanced performance and capability. It is a powerful technique employed in the improvement phase of the Six Sigma methodology as a means to improve process yield, stability, customer satisfaction and reduce process variability which results in high scrap, rework and warranty costs. This paper presents the application of DOE to a spot welding process in order to discover the key process parameters, which influence the tensile strength of welded joints. Statistical analysis was carried out to identify the process parameters, which affect the mean strength and variability in weld strength. The results of the study encouraged the engineering team within the company to extend the application of DOE to other core processes within the business as a process performance improvement technique.

Dr Taguchi is a Japanese engineer and an international quality consultant who has made breakthrough improvements in product and process quality through the use of statistical design of experiments (SDOE). The Taguchi method became popular in the West in the 1980s as a means to design robust products and processes. Although many companies and industries have used the method with success, the real benefits of the approach were not realised and fully understood in many cases. This lack of success could be attributed to a number of factors, but mainly because the experiments were treated in isolation and not integrated into a continuous improvement strategy. This paper briefly presents the results of the application of the Taguchi methodology in the UK industry. The paper also illustrates the application of the Taguchi method for optimising the production process of retaining a metal ring in a plastic body in a braking system.

Experimental design (ED) is a powerful technique which involves the process of planning and designing an experiment so that appropriate data can be collected and then analysed by statistical methods, resulting in objective and valid conclusions. It is an alternative to the traditional inefficient and unreliable one‐factor‐at‐a‐time approach to experimentation, where an experimenter generally varies one factor or process parameter at a time keeping all other factors at a constant level. This paper presents a step‐by‐step approach to the optimisation of a production process (of retaining a metal ring in a plastic body by a hot forming method) through the utilisation of Taguchi methods of experimental design. The experiment enabled the behaviour of the system to be understood by the engineering team in a short period of time and resulted in significantly improved performance (with the opportunity to design further experiments for possible greater improvements).

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a management tool that provides a visual connective process to help teams focus on the needs of the customers throughout the total development cycle of a product or process. It provides the means for translating customer needs into appropriate technical requirements for each stage of a product/process‐development life‐cycle. It helps to develop more customer‐oriented, higher‐quality products. While the structure provided by QFD can be significantly beneficial, it is not a simple tool to use. This article outlines how techniques such as fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, and the Taguchi method can be combined with QFD to resolve some of its drawbacks, and proposes a synergy between QFD and the three methods and techniques reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a means of measuring information technology (IT) strategy improvements in small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

A longitudinal study of eight SMEs was carried out over a two‐year period, applying an IT development scorecard which uses a Likert scale to measure changes during the study period.

The paper finds that seven of the eight companies assessed during the period of the study showed improvements in their IT development, with only one company showing negligible improvement. The company that made negligible improvement went into receivership 12 months after completion of the study.

The key limitations were that only eight companies were prepared to participate fully in the study, and the diversity of type of company was large. Future research should include a larger sample size and use of companies from within the same industry/sector.

The scorecard has practical implications in that instead of having to choose complicated IT planning systems or pay high consultancy charges, SME owner managers can use the scorecard themselves at no cost and make informed decisions on IT investments.

This particular design of scorecard has not been used before, it is original, and will be of use for SME owner managers and IT practitioners, as it provides an easy‐to‐use tool to help plan and measure IT development within SMEs.

There is currently a proliferation of digital analytics and machine/artificial intelligence productivity tools for creating and sustaining competitive advantage through strategic flexibility. Transformational e-HRM enables organizations to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through exploitation of these new productivity tools and approaches. However, it has been observed that many organizations have not been able to realize this. Using findings from an empirical exploration of e-HRM’s contribution to sustaining business performance, derived through an interpretative phenomenological analysis of a single case study, we propose in this chapter that for organizations to leverage the productivity gains of implementing Transformational e-HRM, HR and frontline managers require access to readily available artificial intelligence productivity tools. For e-HRM to contribute to sustaining business performance, we add to strategic flexibility theory that this can be realized by using e-HRM to enable strategic flexibility and adaptive capability. As we propose that it will be about organizations using the strategic capability derived by using Transformational e-HRM to create flexible and adaptive organizations. Its implications for practice are stated.