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Reports on a study of the use of flexible manufacturing systems in three strategic business units over a period of six years. Describes each SBU′s manufacturing technology strategy and contrasts it with tactical measures of actual operations to gain insight into the role of manufacturing technology in the SBU′s business strategy and its evolution. Presents study results in ten propositions which question our knowledge of how strategy truly evolves in organizations.

This paper presents the results of a case/simulation study that evaluated a number of potential maintenance policies for a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). Empirical data were used to structure the operation of the FMS, and to simulate its failures and repairs on the shop floor. Five maintenance policies – corrective, 30‐day preventive, 90‐day preventive, on‐failure opportunistic, and 30‐day opportunistic – were compared on four performance criteria: equipment utilization, machine downtime, through‐put, and average flow time. The “30‐day opportunistic” policy performed best overall, although the “corrective” policy was a close second, outperformed only in the area of equipment utilization. The “on‐failure opportunistic” policy performed poorly on every measure of system performance.

The vineyards of the United Kingdom are small, few in number and struggling against a mass of foreign imports. In order to survive, the owners need a market that does not put them in direct competition with these imports. The thousands of tourists that visit rural areas of the UK could constitute such a market. This potential needs to be examined, and the required facilities put in place. Structure planning, both by governments, regional authorities and the industries themselves has been seen as a priority in tourist‐orientated economies throughout the world and UK vineyards need to follow these examples if they are to benefit from tourism. This will involve investment in improved information systems, communications, staff and shop facilities and image. It will also involve developing links with other similar rural attractions and ensuring that as a development, it is both successful as a tourist centre and has the support of the local community.

Through the framework of Michael Porterʼs five forces, this article compares sustainability in the Oregon and British Columbia wine industries. After describing the contrasting characteristics of the green niche model and the government-led model of environmental change, the article analyzes the emerging challenges for each type of change.The distinct sources for profitability and future innovation suggests diversity within the sustainability movement and two very different processes of translating environmental values into entrepreneurial practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not transaction marketing is being employed together with various types of relationship marketing. A classification scheme of contemporary marketing practices (Coviello, Brodie and Munro, 1997) is reviewed, and the need to enrich earlier research findings is discussed. A case study methodology for conducting research into the New Zealand wine sector is then considered. The preliminary findings suggest that vineyards increasingly employ a pluralistic approach to marketing combining transaction marketing with relational types of marketing, and that the softer sides of marketing are becoming important, such as social bonding, networks and interactions. The findings also give insights into whether or not vineyards are driven by their product or market.

In October 2004, Mr. Richard Sands, CEO of Constellation Brands, evaluated the potential purchase of The Robert Mondavi Corporation. Sands felt that Mondavi's wine beverage products would fit into the Constellation portfolio of alcohol beverage brands, and the opportunity to purchase Mondavi for a highly favorable price was quite possible due to recent management turmoil at that company. However, should it be purchased, strategic and operational changes would be necessary in order to fully achieve Mondavi's potential value. In making a decision, students need to consider the attractiveness of the wine industry, its changing structure, its share of the overall market for beverages, and rival firms' strategies. As rival bidders may emerge for Mondavi's brands, Constellation must offer a price that demonstrates its serious intent to acquire Mondavi.

There has been considerable discussion concerning the resource dependency theory of strategy but relatively little qualitative, empirical research has been conducted on the proposed models. Using the value chain as the conceptual framework, the research aims to show how organisations, in this case small and medium‐sized wineries, use their resources and how they access other resources by using strategic alliances. The article also aims to discuss the influence that their resources and capabilities have had on their ability to develop sustainable competitive advantage and superior performance.

This exploratory research looks at four medium‐sized New Zealand wineries (between 200,000 and 2 million litres) and six small ones (under 200,000 litres), of which six have over‐performed and four have under‐performed the industry. Semi‐structured interviews were used to develop an understanding of how the wineries organised their alliances along the value and how they accessed resources which were not available internally.

The wineries have engaged in strategic alliances, rather than structural ties, at various stages of the value chain, to gain access to scarce resources and capabilities. There is clear evidence that the over‐performers have had access to adequate resources, which has led to sustainable competitive advantage and superior performance.

Only one industry is examined and wider research is necessary, both of a qualitative and quantitative nature.

The research provides empirical support for the resource dependency theory and extends the understanding of its significance for small and medium enterprises.

Does it make economic sense to invest in winery startups with high land prices? This paper aims to apply a capital budgeting analysis for a startup project to investigate the role of land prices in the decision-making of a wine entrepreneur.

This paper uses a capital budgeting analysis to evaluate the value of a winery project using the six investment criteria: net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), modified IRR, profitability index, payback period (PB) and discounted PB.

This study finds that high land prices are economically justifiable (NPV is greater or equal to zero) when the weighted average capital cost is sufficiently low for investors who are able to diversify risks and with access to a cheap source of funds. Additionally, this study demonstrates that wine entrepreneurs need a long-term investment horizon because the recovery of the initial investment in winery startup projects takes many years.

The startup winery projects are heavily influenced by wine pricing, production and cost assumptions. As a result, different assumptions made at other wine regions may result in slightly different outcomes for the acceptability of the wine startup projects.

High land prices are economically justified for investors and entrepreneurs with the ability to diversify risk and access to cheap financial resources. As such, land prices can be a critical obstacle for individual entrepreneurs who experience a lack of capital.

In the famous wine regions of the world, high land prices may result in more wineries being owned by the capital rich wine conglomerates.

This paper provides estimations of land prices based on financial methods to discuss the justification of observed prices and the implications regarding the ability of investors and entrepreneurs to access capital.

This paper aims to provide a strategic analysis of how globalization has enabled Australian companies to transform the wine industry.

The global wine industry is analyzed from two strategic management perspectives: Michael Porter's positioning concepts and the hypercompetitive framework of Richard D'Aveni with particular emphasis on the success of the Australian Yellow Tail brand.

The forces of globalization have caused significant changes in a historically stable industry. The success of the Yellow Tail brand demonstrates how a focused strategy with the right product, distribution and marketing can cause significant industry disruptions. Overall, the D'Aveni framework of hypercompetition seems to best describe the impact of Australian wine companies, although the generic strategies of Michael Porter may still be applicable when considering the French industry.

The focus is on using two strategic frameworks; there are others which could have been included. The example of Australian wine companies has been used to illustrate the changes in the overall market, but studying other “new world” wine producers such as Chile or Argentina may also add insight.

The paper provides an example of how the academic frameworks of strategic management can be applied to different industries and shows that dynamic forces of globalization can emerge from any corner of the world and cause dramatic economic change.

This paper will be of interest to those studying the global dimensions of strategic management and its practical implications.

In this paper, we seek to highlight how adherence to a dominant logic is an effortful activity. Using rhetorical analysis, we show that the use of rhetorical history provides a key mechanism by which organizations may convince audiences of adherence to a dominant logic, while also subverting or obscuring past adherence to a (currently) subordinate logic. We illustrate such use of rhetorical history by drawing on the case study of Ontario wine industry, where wineries use rhetorical history to demonstrate adherence to the logic of fine winemaking, while obscuring the industry’s past adherence to the now-subordinate and stigmatized logic of alcohol making. Implications for future research on institutional logics are discussed.