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The paper explores the relationship between organizational strategies and human resource management strategies. Data was collected from owners or top managers and managers in charge of human resource issues of 100 small and medium sized companies operating in Turkey. Human resource strategies were analyzed on a unipolar dimension ranging from internal orientation to external orientation. An instrument was developed to measure Human resource practices based on human resource functions. Organizational strategy was measured using an instrument developed by Zajac and Shortell (1989) based on Miles and Snow’s (1978; 1987) typology. The study revealed that prospector organizations were more likely to have an externally oriented human resource approach. A general external orientation in human resources is reflected in the recruitment, retention, and performance management functions of the organizations.

This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the bidirectional relationship between knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) in a specific subset of knowledge-based organisations, i.e. professional sport organisations. Through the review and conceptual discussion of two relevant research themes, i.e. KM strategies for IC value creation and IC codification, this paper aims to highlight research gaps useful to future research.

The authors apply a systematic literature review method to analyse 66 management and accounting studies on KM and IC in sport organisations. Internal and external validity tests support the methodology adopted.

The authors provide a conceptual model to explain how KM strategies about IC investments can be optimal, i.e. they create value for all the stakeholders but also suboptimal, i.e. they create value only for a group of stakeholders. Next, they provide evidence of the opportunistic use of the codification associated with IC investments that impair financial reporting information transparency and mislead managers and investors.

The results are informative for managers, regulators and policymakers to mitigate the inefficiencies regarding KM and IC codification and decisions.

This study contributes to the understanding of the bidirectional relationship between KM and IC in knowledge-based organisations by focussing on professional sport organisations in which KM and IC have played an important role for a long time. It also includes future avenues for advances in managing, measuring and reporting IC.

Service-oriented innovation economies are becoming the new trend for the construction industry. Benchmarking the quality management level of developed countries and improving quality management are also becoming necessities for promoting innovation in the economy. The purpose of this study is to analyse the internal relationships between the five enablers of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence model, based on a market-oriented strategy, to serve as a framework for managing and improving quality.

Considering the different market environment and culture, this study refines the strategy enabler based on Zebal and Goodwin's (2011) Developing Country Market Orientation Scale, and builds a market-oriented EFQM Excellence model. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to analyse the results of a questionnaire survey of 683 China construction industry top enterprises to explore the internal relationships between the model's five enablers.

(1) “Leadership” has a positive influence on “Market-Oriented Strategy”, “People” and “Partnerships and Resources”; (2) “Market-Oriented Strategy” has positive influence on “Partnerships and Resources”; (3) “People” has a low influence on “Processes, Products and Services”; (4) “Partnerships and Resources” has a medium influence on “Processes, Products and Services” and (5) the relationships between “Market-Oriented Strategy” and “People”, “Partnerships and Resources” are not significant.

This study refines the strategy enabler of the original EFQM Excellence model with Zebal and Goodwin's (2011) Developing Country Market Orientation Scale. It also develops a market-oriented EFQM Excellence model that is suitable for developing countries, and it tests the implicit relationships of its five new enablers in an innovation environment where cultural differences exist.

The purpose of this article is to provide a new perspective on the relationship between communication management as a strategic process and corporate strategy.

This paper compares approaches of the prescriptive and the descriptive branch of strategy research and highlights how these seemingly contradictory strategy concepts are interrelated. It integrates decision‐making and interpretive perspectives on strategy in management and transfers those perspectives to strategy in communication management. Two areas of communication management, problem definition and the identification of stakeholders, serve as examples to illustrate the conceptual framework.

A conceptual model of strategic decision making in communication management is developed. Strategy in communication management is understood as deliberately creating decision‐making situations. Strategic decisions in communication management are part of both retrospective and prospective sensemaking processes in organizations.

This paper points to fruitful tensions between different strategy concepts and suggests ways to resolve this tension partly. It offers further insights into the role of strategy in communication management by providing a comprehensive view on strategies of communication management from the perspectives of strategy content and strategy process research.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors influencing an organization’s predisposition to bridging strategy, and tests relationships between those factors and bridging strategy.

Online survey was conducted in South Korea. Hierarchical regression was used.

Identified factors are environmental complexity, top management attitude toward stakeholders, analysis orientation, and authoritarian culture.

By adopting the concept and measures of bridging as an organization’s public-engagement strategy, this study was able to capture an organization’s strategic approach for problem-solving in communication management.

Strong analysis orientation allows organizations to look into problems in their complex environments affecting their performance and their key stakeholders before deciding on strategies; resultantly, they are more likely to reduce problems and to improve their performance. In contrast, authoritarian culture discourages an organization’s adoption of bridging strategy.

This study is the first empirical study investigating the dynamics of factors influencing organizations’ strategic predisposition in communication management.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between corporate and supply chain strategy, as well as its implementation in a multinational paper producing company. Traditionally paper producing companies have had a strong interest in developing a physical infrastructure for their customer deliveries. However, supply chain thinking is still an unstructured issue in the case company.

This research work is mainly based on the case company's strategy material and interviews with senior management, is mainly qualitative and is based on a constructive research approach aimed at trying to find a workable and forward looking solution based on the three strategies.

The core findings concern the individual business division strategies, which jointly comprise the corporate strategy. Some of the business divisions do have a certain amount of supply chain management aims in their strategies. Furthermore, there is no real corporate supply chain strategy.

The research was conducted at a company with strong presence in Northern Europe, which limits its applicability. Thus, the research results mainly reflect a Northern European business environment and cannot be generalized on a global level.

The conclusions of the research work include a recommendation for a new management model for the corporate supply chain strategy, which is based on cooperation between the business divisions and logistics organization.

The value of this paper is based on the practical analysis of the case company's business divisions' strategies and interactivity between the logistics organization and the implementation of its strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceptions of farmers on the major sources of risk and to examine the effectiveness of the risk management responses of rural smallholder farm households in the semi-arid region of Northern Ghana from the socioeconomic perspective.

Both descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis were used on a Likert scale question to rank and identify the important risk perceptions and management strategies of the farmers. The linear regression model was used to highlight the significant factors that affect the farmers’ risk perception and management responses.

The effects of the variations in crop yield, fertiliser prices and crop price on household income were perceived as the three most relevant sources of risk. Stabilising household income by growing different crops, storing feed/seed reserves and spreading sales were the most effective risk management strategies. Factor analysis identified market risk, production risk and human risk as major risk factors whereas diversification, financial strategy, and off-farm employment were perceived as the most effective risk management strategies. Farm and farmer characteristics were found to be significantly associated with risk perceptions and risk management strategies. Risk perceptions significantly increase the risk management strategy adopted by the smallholder rural farmers.

The findings of the paper call for the integration of farmers’ risk perceptions and management strategies in the development of agricultural policies for the semi-arid regions of Ghana.

This paper deviates from the traditional technology adoption studies by modelling rural household perceptions and management strategies using, using descriptive, factor analyses, and linear regression.

The ideas expressed in this work are based on those put into practice at the Okuma Corporation of Japan, one of the world′s leading machine tool manufacturers. In common with many other large organizations, Okuma Corporation has to meet the new challenges posed by globalization, keener domestic and international competition, shorter business cycles and an increasingly volatile environment. Intelligent corporate strategy (ICS), as practised at Okuma, is a unified theory of strategic corporate management based on five levels of win‐win relationships for profit/market share, namely: ,1. Loyalty from customers (value for money) – right focus., 2. Commitment from workers (meeting hierarchy of needs) – right attitude., 3. Co‐operation from suppliers (expanding and reliable business) – right connections., 4. Co‐operation from distributors (expanding and reliable business) – right channels., 5. Respect from competitors (setting standards for business excellence) – right strategies. The aim is to create values for all stakeholders. This holistic people‐oriented approach recognizes that, although the world is increasingly driven by high technology, it continues to be influenced and managed by people (customers, workers, suppliers, distributors, competitors). The philosophical core of ICS is action learning and teamwork based on principle‐centred relationships of sincerity, trust and integrity. In the real world, these are the roots of success in relationships and in the bottom‐line results of business. ICS is, in essence, relationship management for synergy. It is based on the premiss that domestic and international commerce is a positive sum game: in the long run everyone wins. Finally, ICS is a paradigm for manufacturing companies coping with change and uncertainty in their search for profit/market share. Time‐honoured values give definition to corporate character; circumstances change, values remain. Poor business operations generally result from human frailty. ICS is predicated on the belief that the quality of human relationships determines the bottom‐line results. ICS attempts to make manifest and explicit the intangible psychological factors for value‐added partnerships. ICS is a dynamic, living, and heuristic‐learning model. There is intelligence in the corporate strategy because it applies commonsense, wisdom, creative systems thinking and synergy to ensure longevity in its corporate life for sustainable competitive advantage.

International projects very commonly experience failure due to various factors at the global level. Especially, large projects at the international level virtually have no chance of meeting scope, time, cost and quality. This fact has been underlined by most of the international surveys and published literature. Effective risk management plays a vital role in preventing projects from failure by implementing appropriate risk response strategies. The success of risk management will be based on the understanding of various risk categories which specifically affect international projects, analysis of their interdependence, prioritize them according to their importance and develop strategies for risk management based on the prioritization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper represents typical eight risk categories frequently observed in the international projects through literature survey and feedback from project professionals. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Matrice d’Impacts croises-multiplication applique´ an classment (MICMAC) analysis have been used to analyze the interactions among the risk categories and prioritize them. The strategy management tool threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths (TOWS) matrix has been used to develop the strategies for effective project risk management.

The analysis represents political risks, contractual and legal risks, cultural risks, and financial and economic risks as the highest priority risk categories, the mitigation of which should be paid the highest attention. The strengths-threats strategy has been applied to develop the strategies by identifying the various internal strengths of project organization to overcome the various threats caused by the eight risk categories observed in international projects.

This paper tries to represent the prioritization of international project risk categories which are generic in nature. For any specific international project, the risk categories as well as their prioritization may be slightly varying. The tool used for prioritization; Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is more suitable for few numbers of variables as it becomes complex as the number of variables increases. The strengths and threats considered for developing strategies using TOWS matrix are based on the feedback from project professionals and may vary according to the nature of project.

This paper uses ISM and MICMAC for risk prioritization in international projects and TOWS matrix for developing risk management strategies. This may trigger new opportunities for in-depth research in the risk management strategy development for international projects.