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A new conceptual model for corporate strategy in the construction industry is presented that is derived from two principal inputs. First, the fundamental components of the model are based upon observations drawn from an empirical study of 24 international firms competing in global engineering and construction markets. Second, the accumulated intellect of different strategic theories developed over four decades of strategic management research helps to fortify the model with theoretical propositions and establish linkages among the model's basic components. The proposed model is comprised of seven strategic fields, two organizational mechanisms and a boundary notion that divides a firm's internal setting from its external environment. The model's development leads to two central propositions: strategic fields and organizational mechanisms should function as variables to react with external dynamics, and the interaction of these variables consequently promotes higher order differentiation factors that will enhance the strategic outlook of a firm.

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the concept of a learning organization from a normative perspective. A questionnaire was developed to operationally measure the described management practice attributes of a learning organization. Using a sample of four organizations and 612 subjects, support was found for three a priori predictive hypotheses derived from a conceptual framework. Implications of the results and further empirical research are discussed, especially for linking learning organization attributes to performance using larger samples and multiple measures.

The popular total quality management (TQM) approach has tended to focus on internal processes, rather than external issues such as competitiveness and market appeal, and is more reactive and adaptive than anticipative. The time has come to go beyond TQM and to understand the nature and application of organizational learning. Learning organizations envision change, are committed to generating and transferring new knowledge and innovation, and have learned how to learn. TQM may be embedded in the learning organization, but TQM is but the first step or wave in transforming and creating organizations which continuously expand their abilities to change and shape their futures. This article first defines and identifies the characteristics of a learning organization, then explores some techniques to develop and transform an organization into a learning organization, and finally suggests some traditional and newer techniques, such as data envelopment analysis (DEA), as ways to measure and evaluate organizational learning.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

We offer a new perspective on group affective diversity by introducing the construct of mixed group mood, denoting co-occurring positive and negative mood states between different members of a group. Mixed group mood is characterized by four facets, namely members’ distribution between two positive and negative subgroups, subgroups’ average mood intensity, subgroups’ mood intensity heterogeneity, and individual members’ mood ambivalence. Building on information/decision-making and social categorization/similarity–attraction perspectives, we explore the performance consequences of mixed group mood along these four facets and we discuss implications and directions for future research.

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

Addresses two shortcomings of service quality empirical research. Investigates the importance of service quality as a predictor of actual choice behaviour and examines the importance of process and outcome quality attributes as predictors of choice. Uses regression analysis to investigate the importance of service quality attributes on choice. Suggests that consumers utilise multiple process and outcome quality attributes in their choices.