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This paper aims to examine the capability of corporate foresight in the organizations and its impacts on innovation, quality of managers’ strategic decision-making and organizational performance in the banking industry of Iran.

In the first part, upon introducing corporate foresight from the two process and content perspectives, influential elements in this construct are discussed. Then, corporate foresight’s relationship with innovation and strategic decision-making is examined and its effect on organizational performance is analyzed within a structural model. Using interview and questionnaire, the data research were collected from the banking industry of Iran including 30 banks (state-commercial banks, specialist-state banks, interest-free loan funds and private banks). Through descriptive, inferential statistical analyses and structural equation modeling using SPSS and Smart PLS software, reliability of the measurement model with 576 samples was confirmed.

The results show that the corporate foresight playing three roles of initiator, strategist, and opponent affects the innovation. Moreover, the research results suggest that using the data from the foresight and identifying the weak signals, we can reduce the uncertainty and issue prior warnings in order to enhance the quality of manager’s strategic decision making and promote the organizational performance.

This paper is one of the articles from the sources of the doctoral thesis of Futures Studies as “The relationship between knowledge absorption capacity, corporate foresight and its effect on the performance of the banking industry in Iran”.

Reckons that managers of successful organizations work at guiding these actions and events, proactively ensuring that they move incrementally towards conscious strategies. States, that in practice, strategic management involves senior managers in trying to develop and maintain a coherent and consistent pattern. Concludes that, to be effective in goal setting and managing change, executives have to understand these processes, their meaning and their ramifications.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how strategy is developed and implemented in an organisation with an unusual ownership model. Partnerships are not a prevalent form of ownership but as this case demonstrates they can be extremely effective. Furthermore this case demonstrates how logical incrementalism can be used to implement major strategic decisions.

The paper draws on company documentary evidence and a semi‐structured interview with Mr Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of John Lewis Partnership. A chairman has a helicopter view of business whose perspectives are rarely captured by strategy researchers. This case study offers an insight into strategic thinking of a chairman and chief executive of a successful company.

The case study and interview offer a unique insight into the rationale behind strategic decisions within a successful partnership that has grown organically in a highly competitive retail market without high gearing.

This case study sheds light on strategic moves within partnership. Furthermore, very few case studies offer insight into the thinking of a chief executive who has successfully managed a business in a turbulent environment.

Informs executives of the dangers of entrapment which can occur when there is an increasing commitment to an ineffective course of action to justify previous allocation of resources when managing new projects.

Reviews research studies on establishing call/contact‐centres in local government across the UK. Data were also collected via interviews with executives in authorities experienced in setting up call/contact centres.

Centres involve spending millions of pounds but there was only limited knowledge of capital or ongoing revenue costs. Evidence of internal resistance, lack of any shared vision, or knowledge of the level of risk existed as well as only limited understanding of the centres' organisational impact, potential benefits or added value. There was an absence of stated project objectives or formal project appraisal and a creeping commitment to the projects continuation. The potential for entrapment existed

A single case study but one which adds to the existing literature on entrapment and focuses attention on the risks that can exist in the public sector.

Underlines the importance of setting out specific procedures for evaluating the potential costs/benefits and subsequent progress of new, particular large scale, business projects.

Shows that potential entrapment can be present in the context of projects of national importance. The paper is relevant to managers within the public sector engaged on new ventures and to all executives in any setting.

Reports findings from an empirical investigation into the process of operations strategy formation in six small manufacturing companies in the UK. A two‐stage methodology was used, with three companies being studied in‐depth and three as supplementary cases. The top‐down strategic planning mode, which dominates the manufacturing strategy literature, was found to be inadequate as a depiction of manufacturing strategy formation in SMEs in practice. Manufacturing strategy formation was shown to be a complex process involving a combination of deliberate and emergent actions and decisions, influenced by organisational culture, politics and powerful individuals. Emergent actions and decisions within manufacturing always played a part in manufacturing strategy formation. Manufacturing strategy formation could be more deliberate if greater use was made of business planning and by the identification of a set of explicit objectives for manufacturing. Manufacturing strategy formation could be less emergent if political behaviour could be reduced. Other factors that seemed to be influential included the interpretative processes of managers, the role of a corporate parent and the level of management education.

Planning tools originating from logical rational models of strategy formation still have their place in e‐commerce, albeit complemented with elements of incrementalism and vision. Tools for prioritisation specifically, though, are unvalidated in this sphere. Action research would seem to be well suited to turbulent environments such as e‐commerce, due to its immediacy of outcome, its future orientation, its respect for practitioners as co‐producers of knowledge and its cyclical process. An action research study is described which modifies the directional policy matrix (DPM) to take account of competition between business models, not just between individual organisations. Conclusions are drawn on the wider applicability of the matrix, the role of strategy tools in situations of uncertainty, and the role of action research in reducing the gap between theory and practice.

Involvement in formulating, implementing or evaluating public policy initiatives, regulatory requirements, or executive/legislative interaction provides a rich opportunity for “reflective practitioners” of public policy to inform the outside community on how the government really operates. However, their close involvement in the process requires a multifaceted methodological approach to ensure objectivity and clarity. The combination of participant observation and case study offers such a vehicle. This approach may create an expanded qualitative methodological vehicle for reflective practitioners to inform students of public policy by breaking out of the confining and simplistic “iron-triangle” model, as well as adding “substantive flesh” to the “stark skeletons” of systems analysis, operations research, rational incrementalism, and logical positivism. Though the search is for objectivity in the social sciences, this does not mean that one is required to become a cybernetic machine or to pursue the study of politics and policy to the exclusion of the involved actor's perspective. The development of this article will hopefully add behavioral, operational, and methodological legitimacy for the reflective practitioner's input to the existing academic, journalistic, and impressionistic literature on the policy-making process.

Examines the nature of managerial decision making during the process of a programme of workplace reform at a major local government authority in New South Wales, Australia. Draws parallells between the synoptic and disjointed incrementalist approach to decision making during organizational change. In particular shows that the synoptic approach is not applicable in this case, and instead stresses the prevalence of incremental, reconstructive, serial and remedial decision making, characteristic of the disjointed incrementalist model. Presents and analyses the reasons for this. In so doing also draws attention to the importance of four factors which are interwoven with the non‐synoptic approach throughout the case, namely: continuity of purpose, probing for openings, seizing opportunities and waiting (and pouncing).

Describes two international development education projects in the context of requirements for project success and in terms of a project design model developed by the authors. The first section assesses conditions for project initiation and sustainability for in‐service education projects in Swaziland and Malawi, Africa. An analysis of each project indicated that factors such as the significance of key individuals as the locus of intervention, objectively measurable outcomes, and logical sequencing of project events contributed to project success. In the last section, describes the parameters of the international developmental educational model (IDEM).

This study of a market-leader in a turbulent hostile telecommunications market uncovers how the competitive context influences strategy-making and cultivates central control that opposes autonomous initiatives. It shows how a highly competitive industry context reduces organizational slack that inhibits autonomy and drives central actions. Strategic initiatives primarily arise as deliberate actions induced by top management. This creates an information gap between ongoing experiences gained by employees operating in the periphery of the organization and the perceptions of decision-makers at the corporate center. In this organizational setting, the authors observe maverick behavior among entrepreneurial individuals that deliberately circumvent the formal rules to turn autonomous initiatives into viable strategic ventures in the best interest of the firm. Where conventional views presume that power delegation and organizational slack are necessary for autonomous strategic initiatives to emerge, the authors find that central control can provoke autonomous rule-breaking maverick behavior among resource-deprived entrepreneurial individuals inside the organization.