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The purpose of this paper is to offer an explanatory process model of stakeholder management. The model shows how and why path dependence is manifested in stakeholder management issues.

The paper integrates stakeholder theory with key ideas from path dependence literature. The resulting propositions are examined in the context of a longitudinal case study of the United Airlines and US Airways abandoned merger in 2000‐2001

The paper's analysis demonstrates that initial conditions are accentuated by the sequence of actions, offering a plausible explanation for process outcomes.

On the practical side, the paper provides a problem‐solving tool for stakeholder management to analyze the stakeholder linkages during strategic initiatives.

The paper addresses an important research gap, exploring how stakeholder‐related path dependencies influence the process of conflict escalation.

This paper aims to offer a conceptualization of how and why corporate level strategic change may build on historical differentiation at business unit level.

Methodologically, an historical case study of Nokia Corporation's drastic business model transformation between the years 1987 and 1995 is reported.

The conceptual and historical work results in a process model of business model change, demonstrating how central business units feed strategic alternatives and capabilities to the corporate‐level transformation process.

The results highlight the importance of corporate level “market mechanisms' that allow promising strategic alternatives to emerge and select out inferior options. In this process, a key mechanism is the exchange of executives and cognitive mindsets between business units and corporate headquarters (CHQ).

The reported research offers an original contribution by showing the dynamic interplay of cognitive and organizational change processes, and highlighting the importance of building on existing capabilities and competencies despite the pressure to demonstrate strong turnaround activities.

The primary purpose of this paper was to perform an in‐depth analysis of the strategic process that occurs within family firms.

This study analyzed the historical development of the growth strategies of four family firms in the US, Finland, and Sweden.

The results of this study suggest that family firms typically adopt conservative strategies in the early part of their life cycle. During their formative years, family firms often implement financially conservative strategies and place an emphasis on maintaining tight control of the strategic decision‐making process within the family unit. However, the competitive pressures experienced by family firms over time often force these companies to embrace a more entrepreneurial posture during the latter stages of their life cycle.

The stage in the company life cycle plays an important role in determining the strategic behavior of family firms. Future research aimed at replicating the results of this study may help shed further light on the strategic process that occurs within family firms.

Although the firms examined in this study were from various cultures, their strategic development over time was very similar. This tentatively suggests that the evolution of the strategic process that occurs within family firms may be generalizable across cultures.

Our findings indicate that there may be an important distinction between family firms and entrepreneurial organizations. That is, all family firms are not necessarily entrepreneurial, especially early on in their company life cycle.

Employee stock ownership programs (ESOP) may become a source of competitive advantage but a threat to a firm’s survival as well. Strategic stakeholder negotiation, on the other hand, is a process through which an organization negotiates with multiple stakeholders in order to achieve a strategic goal. Such perspective helps to illustrate the importance of understanding, balancing, and managing stakeholder demands in ESOP‐related negotiations. The airline industry provides an interesting arena in which to study this process. Specifically, this paper examines the various forms of stakeholder negotiations crucial to the competitive behavior of US airlines, focusing especially on employee ownership negotiations in United Airlines during

The purpose of the paper was to outline a generic framework for the business model and illuminate its linkages to managerial cognition.

The paper reviewed the focal literature focusing on the actions and evolution of a firm and built a synthesis that describes the different components of a business model.

The main finding was that a business model is essentially both a cognitive phenomenon as well as being built on the material aspects of a firm.

The paper proposes that the business model can be scrutinized in future studies, especially from the viewpoints of cognition, thus creating new avenues for intra‐firm evolutionary studies.

The paper found several implications for practising managers. First, the concept itself creates possibilities for self‐analysis and scenario building. Second, the understanding that a business model is systemic helps managers to evaluate their actions vis‐à‐vis the evolutionary path of the business model. Third, the outlined business model is useful in executive education as it creates a cognitive map of the various aspects of business activities.

The paper offers new insights into the functions and evolution of firms and will be of interest to both researchers and practising managers.

The literature on the past triggering learning in strategy practice is scant. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine the meaning of the past to learning in strategy practice and expands on the strategy-as-practice (SAP) literature. Understanding the relationship between the past and learning in strategy practice is important because learning is what keeps strategy practice in motion and remains in place, even if organizations and strategy practitioners change.

The authors used a longitudinal case study design combined with historical methods to examine how the past is embedded in present strategy practice. To capture learning in strategy practice over time, the authors applied a four-stage methodology in our analysis of document and interview data.

The authors identified four dimensions of the past embedded in the present strategy practice. These dimensions emerged from the analysis of the interviews and document data. The study’s results showed that the past appears in structures and routines, materiality, positioning and reflecting over repeated rounds of strategic planning. According to the study’s results, reflecting on strategy practice draws on past structures and routines, positioning and materiality. The past facilitates reflecting and reflecting on the past enables learning in strategy practice.

The authors constructed a conceptual model and showed that in strategy practice, reflection triggers learning. The authors contributed to theory development by demonstrating how the past is embedded in present strategy practice and is available for use by strategy practitioners. The authors showed that strategy practice is a continuous learning process.

This study reviews the literature on business-school (b-school) competition and competitiveness to extend our understanding of b-schools’ competitive strategies.

Both content and network analysis were used in the examination of the scholarly discourse.

The analyses distinguish three literature streams. The first concentrates on resources, capabilities and competencies; the second focuses on measures of competitiveness; and the third includes competitive dynamics and strategy discourse. The analysis shows that the conceptions of competitiveness are quite coherent concerning resources, capabilities and competencies. However, in the “measures of competitiveness” and “industry dynamics and strategy,” discourses were more diverse, indicating greater ambiguity in how the core competencies, capabilities and resources are portrayed as competitiveness outside the institutions. The literature suggests that the measures and indicators of competitiveness are ambiguous to external stakeholders and, furthermore, reflect institutional goal ambiguity.

The question of how, and to what extent, increasing competition in management education and research catalyzes unwelcome changes in the industry has been of great concern to management educators and scholars. This has given rise to a considerable body of literature referring to b-school competition. Despite its topicality, this discourse has remained theoretically fragmented and separate from the mainstream strategy literature. Therefore, this study provides a review and critical discussion of the current state of research on b-school competition, as well as proposes avenues for future research and tools for strategic management of b-schools.