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Although the managerial profession is subjugated by the discipline of strategic management, managers are not completely subordinate to it. Instead, they are able to use the institutionalized discourse of strategic management, which is not their own product, in novel and creative ways. In this paper, we focus on the tactics that managers, as central strategy practitioners, use to consume strategy. Drawing on the work of the late Michel de Certeau as a theoretical lens, we conduct an empirical analysis of discourse, produced by 36 managers operating in three case organizations. This analysis allows us to elaborate on three different tactics of strategy consumption: instrumental, playful, and intimate. The results capture the reciprocal dynamics between the micro- and macrolevels of strategy discourse, that is, between strategic management as an institutional body of knowledge and the discursive practice of individual managers.

By adopting relational practice theory on a case study of a Finnish software company, a solution provider for the public healthcare sector, this study examines how the nexus of practices, and their socio-historical premises, enable and constrain intentional strategizing in an organization about to survive the ten-year Death Valley phase. The strategy literature adopting a practice lens has been focused on the rationality of human actions or implicated that all practices are shaped by the historical socio-cultural background of the organization. As a consequence, the practice-based strategy literature tends to overemphasize the rationality of human action or reduces human agency to an extent where the autonomy of actors becomes problematized. These practice-based strategy views circumscribe relational agency as inherent in practice theory treating human agents as acting within a nexus of practices but also consider them as being free to make choices. Findings suggest that even during intentional strategizing, managers are not fully autonomous in their choices as practices constrain possibilities and set boundaries for strategic activities. Prior commitments determine the possible strategic themes to pursue. Within the boundaries of these strategic themes, strategic activities emerge where the strategic activities are shaped by a nexus of practices within and around the organizational boundaries. Depending on the complexity of mutually dependent entertwined strategic activities, they can be perceived as being beyond management control, or considered strategically irrelevant, which influences the strategic direction in the face of uncertainty.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

In the context of the digital economy, information technology (IT) investment has become a necessary way for enterprises to transform digitally. However, why and how IT investment can enhance digital transformation is lacking in the literature. Based on the resource-based view (RBV), this study explored the impact mechanism of IT infrastructure on the digital transformation of enterprises from the perspective of the digital transformation strategy. Further, this study examined the moderating role of top management on the relationships between IT infrastructure and digital transformation strategy and between digital transformation strategy and enterprise's digital transformation.

Through a questionnaire survey of Chinese enterprises, 180 sample data were collected, and the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to test the hypothesis.

Digital transformation strategy fully mediates the relationship between IT infrastructure and enterprise digital transformation. Furthermore, top management has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between IT infrastructure and digital transformation strategy, as well as the relationship between digital transformation strategy and digital transformation.

This study explores the moderating role of top management in the relationship between IT and enterprise performance, as well as the mediating role of digital transformation strategy in the relationship between IT infrastructure investment and digital transformation performance. As a result, the study adds significantly to the body of knowledge on IT business value, digital transformation and strategic management. The authors' findings can help update managers' perceptions of IT value and provide theoretical guidance on deriving digital transformation performance from IT infrastructure investments.

Despite the conceptual, empirical and theoretical advances in alignment–performance relationship, there is a limited research on the alignment dimensions and organizational performance measures. Though strategic alignment is believed to improve organizational performance, the purpose of this paper is to develop conjectures for understanding how different alignment dimensions influence organizational performance measures.

The data were acquired from 161 senior IT and business managers paired responses in China and were analyzed by using a structural equation modeling technique.

The hypothesized relationships are largely supported. Thus, quality-oriented strategic alignment dimension has a significant relationship with all performance measures. Contrary to expectations, both product and marketing-oriented strategic alignment dimensions do not show a significant impact on financial return. The marketing-oriented strategic alignment dimension also has an insignificant relationship with operational excellence.

This study suggests that the business–IT alignment can be dimensioned to better combine business strategy and IT strategy. Hence, managers can focus specific alignment dimension instead of entire strategies of a firm for a better decision making.

Findings suggest guidance for formulating combined business and IT strategic alignment into dimensions and proposing insightful and practical implications.

The multifaceted effect of IT in organizations has been widely examined. However, the intervening role of IT strategy and business strategy on the effect of managing IT on firm performance remains less strong. This study examines how managing information technology (MIT) effects on firm performance by looking at the mediating role of IT strategy and business strategy.

Drawing on the resource-based view of IT and contingency perspective, theoretical insights for managing IT and the mediating effect of IT strategy and business strategy on firm performance are established. The model is empirically tested by using hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling for the data collected through the survey of 194 senior IT and business managers in China.

The significant and impactful relationship found in the model for the proposed idea. The results show that both IT strategy and business strategy partially mediate the effect of managing IT on firm performance.

The findings highlight that managing IT does not merely influence better firm performance; instead, the coherent amalgamation of IT strategy and business strategy can enrich firm performance. The theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

In line with the call for rigorous research to integrate the managing IT and firm strategies, this study demonstrates the mediating role of business strategy and IT strategy between the managing IT and the firm performance relationship, hence contributing to the IS research literature.